The Screengrab : Transsiberian

DVD Digest for November 4, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week is a big one for classic TV on DVD, plus an old-school sci-fi franchise gets the Blu-Ray treatment.

DVD of the Week: My pick this week is only applicable if you have a Blu-Ray DVD player, which exempts a number of Screengrab readers including myself. However, if you have a Blu-Ray player, nothing this week can touch the release of Planet of the Apes: 40 Year Evolution Blu-Ray Collection (Fox). Of course, even fans of the series acknowledge that the Planet of the Apes films are widely uneven. Yet unlike most franchise box sets which pile the lion’s share of extras on the classic films and leave little for the others, Fox has lavished plenty of care on all of the Apes films, regardless of quality. The biggest news for fans is the newly-restored cut of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which went largely unseen since the 1972 studio test screenings. According to Screengrab’s own Scott Von Doviak, the new version of Conquest is much more darker and violent than the version that was eventually released in theatres. The set also contains a number of new extras, including new making-of featurettes for each of the sequels, a documentary on the evolution from Pierre Boulle’s original novel to the screen, and isolated score tracks for each of the sequels. In other words, everything that one could possibly need to satisfy even the most ravenous Planet of the Apes fan, although for the rest of all the movies are also sold separately.

For us non-Blu-Ray types, the big news this week is the release of the Fraggle Rock Complete Series Collection (Lionsgate), which collects all 96 episodes of Jim Henson’s classic HBO series in a massive 20-disc box set. In addition, the collection includes an exclusive new Fraggle Rock short directed by Cory Edwards, who will direct the upcoming Fraggle Rock feature film, which I hadn’t heard about until today. Other notable TV on DVD releases include: Batman: The Complete Animated Series (Warner), Futurama: Bender’s Game (Fox, also Blu-Ray), Little House on the Prairie: The Complete Television Series (Lionsgate), and Reaper Season 1 (Lionsgate).

The highest-profile recent release coming to DVD today is the big-screen update of the classic series Get Smart (Warner, also Blu-Ray). This week also brings the indie trifecta of Brad Anderson’s Transsiberian (First Look, also Blu-Ray), Luke Wilson in Henry Poole Is Here (Anchor Bay), and Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth in When Did You Last See Your Father? (Sony). And for the kids, there’s Alvin and the Chipmunks Special Edition (Fox) and Shrek the Halls (Paramount).

The annual onslaught of holiday DVDs continues this year with the A Christmas Story Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray), although for my money nothing beats watching this over and over on TNT. Also of note this week is the re-pressing of two John Cassavetes classics, A Woman Under the Influence (Criterion) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Criterion). Finally, there’s the Waterworld Extended Edition (Universal), in case that’s your kind of thing.

Finally, this week’s non-ape Blu-Ray only releases include Monster’s Ball (Lionsgate) and Universal Soldier (Lionsgate). And honestly, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more unlikely pairing. Satantango and Rush Hour? Pretty Woman and Irreversible? I’ll have to think about this one…

Movie Review: "Elegy"

Phil Nugent — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Back in the early 1980s, a new kind of movie hero appeared onscreen, a dashing international man of mystery pitted against historical bad guys. Now that the actor who played that role is in his sixties, there was some trepidation expressed in some quarters that he might be getting, as they say, too old for this shit. But now that the smoke has cleared, it seems clear that, yes, this has truly been the summer of Gandhi. Or at least of the actor who played him, Ben Kingsley. Things got off to an inauspicious start with the Mike Myers train wreck The Love Guru, where he made funny faces. More recently, he appeared in Brad Anderson's indie thriller Transsiberian, where he made with a funny accent. And in between, there was Jonathan Levine's The Wackness (also known as I Love the '90s: The Motion Picture), where he made out with an Olsen twin. (I forget which one--they do look alike, after all--but I'm guessing that it was whichever one was on Weeds. She seems to be the one with the wild-child gene.) Now Kingsley has a full-on starring role in Elegy. directed by the Spanish-born filmmaker Isabel Coixet from Nicholas Meyer's adaptation of the Philip Roth novel The Dying Animal.

Kingsley plays David Kepesh, a New York literature professor and host of a Leonard Lopate-like radio talk show. (The novel marks Kepesh's third starring role in a Roth novel. He first appeared in the 1972 The Breast, which he narrates from his hospital bed after having metamorphosed into the 155-pound title character. After that, apparently, he got better.) Obsessing over his inability to fold in the face of "the tyranny of beauty" has always been Kepesh's thing, and this time the dictator with his heart (or any blood-pulsing organ) in her hand is Penelope Cruz, playing a student thirty years his junior who eases into a post-semester affair with the panting old thing. Actually, the biggest surprise of Elegy may be just how well Kingsley holds up his end of their steamy affair, especially in his bare-chested bedroom scenes. When Kingsley was a much younger man, he often had the reticent manner and the looks of someone who seemed to be killing time waiting to become as old as he felt. Now that he's 64, there's something commanding about him that goes beyond acting technique. I found the sexual attraction between him and Cruz convincing. Cruz herself is a different matter. Physically she embodies the concept of the tyranny of beauty just fine, but she still can't act with any authority in English, and Coixet makes her look kind of ridiculous by dressing her as if she were in her teens or early twenties (or as if she were a thirtyish woman acting out a premature midlife crisis, which doesn't seem to be the idea). In her shiny dark bangs and colorful East Village folk costume, she's the human equivalent of a Hello Kitty backpack.

Coixet--she made the deathwatch melodrama My Life without Me-- is not the world's most visually resourceful director, and here, telling a story that depends a lot on emotions that would be impossible to convey in words, she puts a lot of weight on Kingsley, shoving the camera in his face when he's alone in the frame and practically yelling, "Act!" (She and Meyer have also accommodated their star by making Kepesh a transplanted Englishman. This will come as news to Roth fans, but it's a relief to get to hear Kingsley caressing his dialogue in his own voice for a change.) The movie is worth seeing for his scenes with the other actors in the smallish cast: Patricia Clarkson as his semi-regular fuck buddy of the past twenty years, Peter Sarsgaard as his (embittered) son the doctor, and especially, and surprisingly, Dennis Hopper as his best friend, a bearded poet named George O'Hearn. Kingsley and Hopper may actually be a weirder pairing than Kingsley and Cruz, especially since this one works. I'd assumed that Hopper was perfectly content in his little rut, but he looks incredibly happy to get to be in a movie where he doesn't have to snort coke or get his thumbs scissored off or try to think up a new way to deliver the line "Fuck!" while wielding an Uzi, and he gives a fine, engaging performance that lends Kingsley solid back-up. (His wife is played by Deborah Harry, who, like Hopper, has aged a lot more gracefully than you might have thought possible: in profile, she looks as if she ought to be posing for her official portrait as First Lady of something.) And Ben Kingsley establishes himself as a formidable post-middle-age sex symbol for the literary appreciation set. It's a measure of just how formidable that he's got me trying to think up alternative terms for "old", since he looks as if he might conceivably be able to kick my ass.

Independent Film Festival of Boston 2008

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

The Boston Film Festival began in 1976 at the late, lamented Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge, and was reborn, in a new incarnation, in 1985. Although hardly a big, buzzy fest like Sundance or Toronto, packed with deal-making, career-launching glamour, the BFF was still an exciting venue for independent cinema, where local audiences got their first glimpse of films like Blue Velvet and Down By Law, complete with special guest appearances by the likes of David Lynch. And, while the Boston Film Festival is still up and running, offering hometown premieres of future arthouse fodder like Jesus Camp and The U.S. Versus John Lennon, it’s telling that the Best Comedic Actor Award at last year’s edition of the fest went to Dane Cook for Good Luck Chuck.

But even as The BFF becomes ever more non-essential, the Independent Film Festival of Boston (which kicked off last night with the East Coast premiere of local hero Brad Anderson’s latest, Transsiberian) has restored the excitement and thrill of discovery to Beantown's movie-going diet.

Reflecting the fresh energy and opportunity of the Hub’s resurgent indie scene (as well as its recent adoption by Martin Scorcese and other Hollywood players), the IFFB presents itself as a vital, hands-on event, with a “filmmaker friendly” focus, offering panels like “Breaking into the Boston Film Industry” while championing homegrown talent like Anderson and mumblecore progenitor Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha).

Click here for more information on IFFB 2008 (which runs through April 29), and stay tuned for reviews of this year’s festival fare!