Treasures From American Film Archives (4 Volumes, 2000-2009)

For silent and experimental film fans, four box sets dedicated to the most historically important American moving images.

Treasures From American Film Archives
Extensive info at Silent Era
This info from The National Film Preservation Foundation:

Academy Film Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences™
Luis Martinetti, Contortionist (1894, 1 minute), peepshow kinetoscope of the Italian acrobat made by the Edison Co.
Caicedo, King of the Slack Wire (1894, 1 minute), the first film shot outdoors at the Edison Studios.
The Original Movie (1922, 8 minutes), silhouette animation satire on commercial filmmaking, by puppeteer Tony Sarg.
Negro Leagues Baseball (1946, 8 minutes), footage featuring Reece "Goose" Tatum, the Indianapolis Clowns, and the Kansas City Monarchs.

Alaska Film Archives, University of Alaska Fairbanks
The Chechahcos (1924, 86 minutes), first feature shot entirely on location in Alaska.

Anthology Film Archives
Rose Hobart (1936, 19 minutes), artist Joseph Cornell's celebrated found-footage film.
Composition 1 (Themis) (1940, 4 minutes), Dwinell Grant's stop-motion abstraction.
George Dumpson's Place (1965, 8 minutes), Ed Emshwiller's portrait of the scavenger artist.

George Eastman House
The Thieving Hand (1908, 5 minutes), special-effects comedy.
The Confederate Ironclad (1912, 16 minutes), Civil War adventure, here accompanied by the original music score, in which the tough heroine saves the day.
The Land Beyond the Sunset (1912, 14 minutes), social problem drama about a tattered newspaper boy who yearns for a better life.
Snow White (1916, 63 minutes), live-action feature of the Brothers Grimm tale starring Marguerite Clark.
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, 13 minutes), avant-garde landmark created by James Sibley Watson, Jr., and Melville Webber from Poe's short story.

Japanese American National Museum
From Japanese American Communities (1927-32, 7 minutes), home movies shot by Rev. Sensho Sasaki in Stockton, California, and Tacoma, Washington.

Library of Congress
Demolishing and Building Up Star Theatre (1901, 1 minute), the time-lapse demolition of a New York building, preserved from a paper print.
Move On (1903, 1 minute), Lower East Side street scene, preserved from a paper print.
Dog Factory (1904, 4 minutes), trick film about fickle pet owners, preserved from a paper print.
Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy (1909, 5 minutes), special-effects fantasy of a tormented smoker, by the Vitagraph Company.
White Fawn's Devotion (1910, 11 minutes), probably directed by James Young Deer and the earliest surviving film by a Native American.

Minnesota Historical Society
Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther (1939, 14 minutes), small town portrait by amateur filmmakers, Dr. and Mrs. Dowidat.

Museum of Modern Art
Blacksmithing Scene (1893, 1 minute), first U.S. film shown publicly.
The Gay Shoe Clerk (1903, 1 minute), comic sketch with celebrated early editing.
Interior New York Subway, 14th St. to 42nd St. (1905, 5 minutes), filmed by Biograph's Billy Bitzer shortly after the subway's opening.
Hell's Hinges (1916, 64 minutes), William S. Hart Western about a town so depraved that earns its own destruction.
The Lonedale Operator (1911, 17 minutes), D.W. Griffith's race-to-the-rescue drama, starring Blanche Sweet.
Three American Beauties (1906, 1 minute), with rare stencil color.

National Archives and Records Administration
We Work Again (1937, 15 minutes), WPA documentary on African American re-employment, including excerpt from Orson Welles' stage play of "Voodoo Macbeth".
The Autobiography of a Jeep (1943, 10 minutes), the story of the soldier's all-purpose vehicle, as told by the jeep itself.
Private Snafu: Spies (1943, 4 minutes), wartime cartoon for U.S. servicemen, directed by Chuck Jones and written by Dr. Seuss.
The Battle of San Pietro (1945, 33 minutes), celebrated combat documentary directed by John Huston.
The Wall (1962, 10 minutes), USIA film on the Berlin Wall made for international audiences.

National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
From The Keystone "Patrician" (1928, 6 minutes), promotional film for new passenger plane.
From The Zeppelin Hindenburg (1936, 7 minutes), movies by a vacationing American family made on board this famous lighter-than-air-craft, one year before its destruction.

National Center for Jewish Film
From Tevye (1939, 17 minutes), American Yiddish-language film, directed by Maurice Schwartz, adapted from Sholem Aleichem's stories.

National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
From Accuracy First (ca. 1928, 5 minutes), Western Union training film for women telegraph operators.
From Groucho Marx's Home Movies (ca. 1933, 2 minutes).

National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
From Beautiful Japan (1918, 15 minutes), early travel-lecture feature by Benjamin Brodky.

New York Public Library
From La Valse (1951, 6 minutes), pas de deax from George Balanchine's 1951 ballet, featuring Tanaquil Le Clercq and Nicholas Magallanes and filmed at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.
Battery Film (1985, 9 minutes), experimental documentary of Manhattan, by animator Richard Protovin and photographer Franklin Backus.

Northeast Historic Film
From Rural Life in Maine (ca. 1930, 12 minutes), footage filmed by Elizabeth Wright near her farm of Windy Ledge, in southwestern Maine.
From Early Amateur Sound Film (1936-37, 4 minutes), scenes of family life captured by sound-film hobbyist Archie Stewart.

Pacific Film Archive
Running Around San Francisco for an Education (ca. 1938, 2 minutes), early political ad, shown in San Francisco theaters, that helped win approval of local school bonds.
OffOn (1968, 9 minutes), Scott Bartlett's avant-garde film, the first to fully merge film and video.

UCLA Film & Television Archive
Her Crowning Glory (1911, 14 minutes), household comedy, with comic team John Bunny and Flora Finch, about an eight-year old who gets her way.
I'm Insured (1916, 3 minutes), cartoon by Harry Palmer.
The Toll of the Sea (1922, 54 minutes), Anna May Wong in an early two-strip Technicolor melodrama, written by Frances Marion, and here accompanied a performance of the original music score.
The News Parade of 1934 (10 minutes), Hearst Metrotone newsreel summary of the year.
From Marian Anderson: The Lincoln Memorial Concert (1939, 8 minutes), excerpt from a concert film, reconstructed from newsreels, outtakes, and radio broadcast materials.

West Virginia State Archives
From West Virginia, the State Beautiful (1929, 8 minutes), amateur travelogue along Route 60.
From One-Room Schoolhouses (ca. 1935, 1 min), amateur footage from rural Barbour County.

4 DVDs
DVD RELEASE: May 10th, 2005 (First Edition 2000)
SYSTEM: NTSC
SCREEN: Various from (Picture boxed) 1.15:1 to Full Screen (Standard) - 1.33:1
COLOR: Black & White/Colour
AUDIO: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Mono)
LANGUAGE: Silent/English
INTERTITLES: English
RUNTIME: 642 minutes
FILE SIZES: 6.64/7.34/6.54/7.09GB

more volume and link download information click here

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When You're Strange

Directed by: Tom DiCillo
Starring: The Doors , Johnny Depp

Unhappy with what Oliver Stone did to Jim Morrison and the Doors in his 1991 biopic? Here?s the doc for you. Director Tom DiCillo avails himself of archival footage as Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore leave their musical mark on the 1960s. Clips from a film Morrison made of himself in the desert are alone worth the price of ?admission. Since the movie was first shown at Sundance in 2009, DiCillo (Living in Oblivion) has tightened the pace and brought on Johnny Depp to replace him as narrator. Good choices. New fans and old will find the experience hypnotic.

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Inspiring Quotes From "The Secret"

The following quotations are selected from the best selling new DVD and book by Rhonda Byrne "The Secret". It is about The Law of Attraction and how to use it to bring whatever you desire into your life. The author says this law explains what you you have now, and it can be used to change what you have now, or attract more things you desire. These quotations may or may not be representative of the book, and you may have selected different ones. These should, however, give you an idea of something about The Secret as to whether you would like to read further into the book or watch the feature length DVD itself.

1. We all work with one infinite power.

2. The Secret is the Law of Attraction (LOA).

3. Whatever is going on in your mind is what you are attracting.

4. We are like magnets - like attract like. You become AND attract what you think.

5. Every thought has a frequency. Thoughts send out a magnetic energy.

6. People think about what they don't want and attract more of the same.

7. Thought = creation. If these thoughts are attached to powerful emotions (good or bad) that speeds the creation.

8. You attract your dominant thoughts.

9. Those who speak most of illness have illness, those who speak most of prosperity have it..etc..

10. It's not "wishful" thinking.

11. You can't have a universe without the mind entering into it.

12. Choose your thoughts carefully .. you are a masterpiece of your life.

13. It's OK that thoughts don't manifest into reality immediately (if we saw a picture of an elephant and it instantly appeared, that would be too soon).

14. EVERYTHING in your life you have attracted .. accept that fact .. it's true.

15. Your thoughts cause your feelings.

16. We don't need to complicate all the "reasons" behind our emotions. It's much simpler than that. Two categories .. good feelings, bad feelings.

17. Thoughts that bring about good feelings mean you are on the right track. Thoughts that bring about bad feelings means you are not on the right track.

18. Whatever it is you are feeling is a perfect reflection of what is in the process of becoming.

19. You get exactly what you are FEELING

20. Happy feelings will attract more happy circumstances.

21. You can begin feeling whatever you want (even if it's not there).. the universe will correspond to the nature of your song.

22. What you focus on with your thought and feeling is what you attract into your experience.

23. What you think and what you feel and what actually manifests is ALWAYS a match - no exception.

24. Shift your awareness.

25. "You create your own universe as you go along" Winston Churchill.

26. It's important to feel good ( ( ( (((good))) ) ) ).

27. You can change your emotion immediately .. by thinking of something joyful, or singing a song, or remembering a happy experience.

28. When you get the hang of this, before you know it you will KNOW you are the creator.

29. Life can and should be phenomenal .. and it will be when you consciously apply the Law of Attraction.

30. Universe will re-arrange itself accordingly.

31. Start by using this sentence for all of your wants: "I'm so happy and grateful now that.... "

32. You don't need to know HOW the universe is going to rearrange itself.

33. LOA is simply figuring out for yourself what will generate the positive feelings of having it NOW.

34. You might get an inspired thought or idea to help you move towards what you want faster.

35. The universe likes SPEED. Don't delay, don't second-guess, don't doubt.

36. When the opportunity or impulse is there .. ACT.

37. You will attract everything you require - money, people, connections.. PAY ATTENTION to what's being set in front of you.

38. You can start with nothing .. and out of nothing or no way - a WAY will be provided.

39. HOW LONG??? No rules on time .. the more aligned you are with positive feelings the quicker things happen.

40. Size is nothing to the universe (unlimited abundance if that's what you wish) We make the rules on size and time.

41. No rules according to the universe .. you provide the feelings of having it now and the universe will respond.

42. Most people offer the majority of their thought in response to what they are observing (bills in the mail, being late, having bad luck...etc..)

43. You have to find a different approach to what is through a different vantage point.

44. "All that we are is a result of what we have thought" - Buddha

45. What can you do right now to turn your life around?? Gratitude

46. Gratitude will bring more into our lives immediately.

47. What we think about and THANK about is what we bring about.

48. What are the things you are grateful for?? Feel the gratitude.. focus on what you have right now that you are grateful for.

49. Play the picture in your mind - focus on the end result.

50. VISUALIZE!!! Rehearse your future.

51. VISUALIZE!!! See it, feel it! This is where action begins.

52. Feel the joy .. feel the happiness :o)

53. An affirmative thought is 100 times more powerful than a negative one.

54. "What this power is, I cannot say. All I know is that it exists." Alexander Graham Bell

55. Our job is not to worry about the "How". The "How" will show up out of the commitment and belief in the "what".

56. The Hows are the domain of the universe. It always knows the quickest, fastest, most harmonious way between you and your dream.

57. If you turn it over to the universe, you will be surprised and dazzled by what is delivered .. this is where magic and miracles happen.

58. Turn it over to the universe daily.. but it should never be a chore.

59. Feel exhilarated by the whole process .. high, happy, in tune.

60. The only difference between people who are really living this way is they have habituated ways of being.

61. They remember to do it all the time.

62. Create a Vision Board .. pictures of what you want to attract .. every day look at it and get into the feeling state of already having acquired these wants.

63. "Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." Albert Einstein

64. Decide what you want .. believe you can have it, believe you deserve it, believe it's possible for you.

65. Close your eyes and visualize having what you already want - and the feeling of having it already.

66. Focus on being grateful for what you have already .. enjoy it!! Then release into the universe. The universe will manifest it.

67. "Whatever the mind of man can conceive, it can achieve" W. Clement Stone

68. Set a goal so big that if you achieved it, it would blow your mind.

69. When you have an inspired thought, you must trust it and act on it.

70. How can you become more prosperous?? INTEND IT!!

71. 'Checks are coming in the mail regularly'... or change your bank statement to whatever balance you want in there... and get behind the feeling of having it.

72. Life is meant to be abundant in ALL areas...

73. Go for the sense of inner joy and peace then all outside things appear.

74. We are the creators of our universe.

75. Relationships: Treat yourself the way you want to be treated by others .. love yourself and you will be loved.

76. Healthy respect for yourself.

77. For those you work with or interact with regularly .. get a notebook and write down positive aspects of each of those people.

78. Write down the things you like most about them (don't expect change from them). Law of attraction will not put you in the same space together if you frequencies don't match.

79. When you realize your potential to feel good, you will ask no one to be different in order for you to feel good.

80. You will free yourself from the cumbersome impossibilities of needing to control the world, your friends, your mate, your children....

81. You are the only one that creates your reality.

82. No one else can think or feel for you .. its YOU .. ONLY YOU.

83. Health: thank the universe for your own healing. Laugh, stress free happiness will keep you healthy.

84. Immune system will heal itself.

85. Parts of our bodies are replace every day, every week..etc... Within a few years we have a brand new body.

86. See yourself living in a new body. Hopeful = recovery. Happy = happier biochemistry. Stress degrades the bod.

87. Remove stress from the body and the body regenerates itself. You can heal yourself.

88. Learn to become still .. and take your attention away from what you don't want, and place your attention on what you wish to experience.

89. When the voice and vision on the inside become more profound and clear than the opinions on the outside, then you have mastered your life.

90. You are not here to try to get the world to be just as you want it. You are here to create the world around you that you choose.

91. And allow the world as others choose to see it, exist as well.

92. People think that if everyone knows the power of the LOA there won't be enough to go around .. This is a lie that's been ingrained in us and makes so many greedy.

93. The truth is there is more than enough love, creative ideas, power, joy, happiness to go around.

94. All of this abundance begins to shine through a mind that is aware of it's own infinite nature. There's enough for everyone. See it. Believe it. it will show up for you.

95. So let the variety of your reality thrill you as you choose all the things you want.. get behind the good feelings of all your wants.

96. Write your script. When you see things you don't want, don't think about them, write about them, talk about them, push against them, or join groups that focus on the don't wants... remove your attention from don't wants.. and place them on do wants.

97. We are mass energy. Everything is energy. EVERYTHING.

98. Don't define yourself by your body .. it's the infinite being that's connected to everything in the universe.

99. One energy field. Our bodies have distracted us from our energy. We are the infinite field of unfolding possibilities. The creative force.

100. Are your thoughts worthy of you? If not - NOW is the time to change them. You can begin right were you are right now. Nothing matters but this moment and what you are focusing your attention on.


source: http://hubpages.com/hub/100_Quotations_from_THE_SECRET__

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DVD Review: Frozen River

Here's the double Oscar nominee you haven't seen yet. We hope it takes home a gold statue or two come Oscar night.

Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) is a mom who only wants to do right by her two sons, teenager T.J. (Charlie McDermott) and five-year-old Ricky. But a week before Christmas her husband robbed them of the little cash they had in their "tin crapper" house trailer and lit out for ... well, Ray and the boys have no idea. The only certain thing is that he abandoned his car at a bus stop and hopped a Greyhound for God knows where. Now Ray is trapped in the December wasteland of rural upstate New York with kids who need a pantry that holds more than popcorn and Tang. All she has are a dead-end part-time job at the dollar store, an impossible balloon payment on a relatively palatial double-wide (no more frozen pipes) her family dreams of, and a desire to let her kids "have Santa Claus" when Christmas finally comes.

When opportunity and desperation meet, Ray turns to crime just to get by. That opportunity arrives in the form of Lila Littlejohn (Misty Upham), a young woman on the nearby Mohawk reservation. Marginalized by family and tribe alike, Lila has her own quiet desperation to unfold through the story. Their uneasy relationship begins when Lila recruits Ray into a scheme smuggling illegal aliens (of various nationalities) from Canada to the U.S. in the trunk of Ray's car. The job pays well, and Ray absolutely needs the money, but the clandestine trips back and forth involve evading both the state troopers and the tribal hierarchy that already know what Lila's up to. And then there's that little matter of driving a fully packed car across a temporarily frozen river at night. Lila's husband is somewhere under that ice, "lost on a run" the previous winter.

A tense, emotionally gripping tale of the heroically struggling poor, Frozen River (official site) is now the reason for Melissa Leo's Best Actress nomination at the Academy Awards. Its first-time writer-director, Courtney Hunt, is also an Oscar hopeful for best original screenplay. And that's after Frozen River's five Independent Spirit Award nominations -- including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actress -- and the big win of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Drama at Sundance. The American Film Institute dubbed it one of 2008's top movies, as did a list of professional press critics as long as your arm.

So how come Frozen River is the Oscar contender that has so many people asking, "What the hell is that? I've never even heard of it."

Like sausages and laws, motion picture PR and distribution deals are things you don't want to see actually being made, the process is that ugly and sometimes bloody a grind. Frozen River's limited initial distribution did it no favors, and the advertising imagery fails at hooking us into the film's beautifully written and played substance. But that's being corrected now by a new theatrical run and a timely release this week on DVD and Blu-ray disc. That's a smart move, as Frozen River absolutely deserves our attention as indeed one of the best films of 2008. Its center of gravity is Melissa Leo's finely tuned performance as Ray. In her close orbit are most notably Charlie McDermott, who chose to not play T.J. as an easy Angry Teen, and first-timer Upham, who, even while maintaining a deadened flat affect, holds her own with Leo in every one of their many shared scenes.

Having finally caught the film on Blu-ray, I couldn't be more pleased if the film takes away both its potential Oscars. My only regret is that there's no Oscar for Most Impressive First-Time Director Who Could Teach Studio Hacks With Vaster Resources and Budgets a Thing or Two.

As both a writer and a director, Tennessee-born Hunt displays a flair for a good story well told. She understands the power of subtlety in hard realism, and exhibits a feel for the revealing details that speak volumes -- a bra strap so old its elastic is dead; a lower back tattoo on the young blonde co-worker that tells us in one glance everything we need to know about why Ray isn't getting ahead at the dollar store; Ray's reasoning while abandoning on the ice a Pakistani family's duffel bag -- maybe it holds a nuclear bomb or poison gas, "and I don't want to be responsible for that," when in fact what it holds becomes a key connection between Ray, Lila, and the immigrants who are also just trying to do right for their families as best they can. Looking at Melissa Leo's worn-through, terribly authentic face, you see that Ray knows hardship down to her marrow. Ray's ease with a handgun clues us in to a life's worth of understanding that even the most determined resolve sometimes requires its own backup plan.

Assisted by Reed Morano's cinematography and the supportive musical scoring by Peter Golub and Shahzad Ismaily, Hunt is a filmmaker of such restraint, and she avoided so many moments that could have careened into studio-imposed clichés we've been conditioned to expect, that Frozen River let me forget I was watching a movie, something that didn't happen often in 2008.

Yes, Frozen River is a knowing, naturalistic, bone-and-blood story of racial inequities and women on the verge of having their lives crack beneath their feet to swallow them down. But remember this, because the PR here is missing the opportunity to hook us in -- it's also a tightly wound, albeit low-key, crime thriller. And emerging from the shady dealings and gunshots and suspense are moments of unforced humor (how do you mask the smell of smoke after you almost burn your trailer down?) and lovely little revelations (what is T.J. building with that blow-torch?). Think a low-humming Fargo vibe without the Coens' exaggerations, or Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan minus the conventional plot theatrics.

What the publicity campaign is completely missing is Hunt's subtly conveyed mainspring piercing through Frozen River. It winds itself on the unifying, universal importance of family, that hard, irreducible, driving force that joins our common humanity no matter where we come from or where we're going or what we're willing to sacrifice in between.

Now on DVD and Blu-ray from Sony, Frozen River presents as well as you'd expect a new film shot in digital HD to look on home video. A few dark scenes tend to get unusually murky to my eyes, but that's the worst I could say about it. The only significant extra is the commentary track with Hunt and producer Heather Rae. It's a disappointing track for anyone taking notes on Hunt's production techniques or how she worked toward her sudden rise as a filmmaker to watch. She and Rae remark on production points here and there, give us some background on Frozen River's origins as a short film shown at the New York Film Festival, and of course they rightly praise everyone on screen and behind the scenes for their good work. It's not a bad track, for sure, but there's too much dead air and not enough prepared information on how it was all done and what they can teach us about the latest wave of filmmaking and "the industry" today.

Besides that, the only extras here are the theatrical trailer and a half-dozen trailers for other recommended indies such as The Wackness and Rachel Getting Married.

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This review written by Mark Bourne, published at film.com

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The ultimate family DVD list

Clockwise, from top left: images from "Time Bandits," "Iron Giant," "The Princess Bride," and "My Neighbor Totoro."


Back at the beginning of June, I posted a little note in my column asking for ideas for family videos that might be a little off the beaten track. I knew readers would be interested; it's a nearly universal question. What can parents, kids of various ages and other adults watch together during the inevitable summer-vacation downtime, without recycling the usual Disneyfied computer-animated spectacles or some product of the George Lucas universe?

I've got nothing against Buzz Lightyear or the Ewoks, honest. My 4-year-old twins, Nini and Desmond -- who inspired this idea, naturally enough -- are passionate followers of Lightning McQueen and his universe of vehicular pals. (Which is interesting, since they've seen the movie "Cars" exactly once.) But let's face it, I'm a pretentious art-film snob whose workday sometimes consists of watching obscure Slovenian and Japanese movies, and then reading other people's blog entries about Joseph Losey and Chantal Akerman. If I can't come up with something more interesting (not to mention less nauseating) than "The Little Mermaid" or "Pocahontas" on family movie night, I'm just about a worthless pop.

Some 250-odd responses later -- and they keep trickling in, weeks after the fact -- what we've got here is the first draft of a collaborative thingummy I call the Awesome Kids' Video Project. It's interactive! It's synergistic! It's me taking all the stuff you wrote and turning it into a list! I suspect it's the beginning or the middle of a conversation, rather than a finished product. What follows is a pseudo-democratic top 40 of not-quite-mainstream family videos that's largely drawn from reader suggestions, with a few picks I just decided to include because I thought they belonged.

A few words about what's not included. There are no Disney films made after the 1960s, and no major box-office hits of at least the last 30 years. There are quite a few family classics that could plausibly be included but got hardly any reader votes, probably because they seemed too obvious: "Mary Poppins," "The Sound of Music," "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," "The Wizard of Oz," "It's a Wonderful Life." I've included a couple of foreign-language films that seem perfect for introducing the young 'uns to subtitles, but that almost demands its own category. There were a few things I might have included that just aren't available on DVD, like the Chuck Jones version of "Phantom Tollbooth" or the 1977 adaptation of Russell Hoban's "The Mouse and His Child."

I've got a runner-up list of movies that got votes but that I didn't include for a variety of reasons, which I'd be delighted to share in the letters or in a subsequent post. And Eric Beckman of the New York International Children's Film Festival has provided a thoughtful response to this list, and suggested some things he thinks I/we have overlooked. I agree with him about the Marx brothers, for instance (where's "Duck Soup" or "A Night at the Opera"?), and it's surprising, in retrospect, that hardly anyone voted for "A Hard Day's Night" or "Little Shop of Horrors." On the other hand, I can do without "Oliver!" (which actually did get votes). I wasn't much interested when it was a big deal 40 years ago, and I don't especially want to watch it now. So sue me!

Because my kids are young and just beginning to watch and understand a wide range of non-Lightning McQueen material, there's some inevitable excited-parent bias toward the younger end of the age spectrum, and not that much aimed at kids older than 11 or 12. (I would suggest "Smiles of a Summer Night," "The Wages of Fear" and "Throne of Blood" for that age group -- but that's just me.) Again, I suspect that movies for teens and tweens, poised so agonizingly on the precipice of adulthood, deserve their own category, but I've tucked in a few strong choices here and there.

As mentioned, I've included a few personal selections that got no votes whatever, but maybe those are balanced out by the ones I absolutely, definitely would not have chosen myself but that hordes of readers clearly love. "Mom and Dad Save the World" would be the champion in that category. And let's reserve a special prize for the bizarre outliers, suggestions so weird and inappropriate as to be seductive. I think the person who suggested "Last House on the Left" was kidding -- either that, or their kid is seriously advanced and/or sociopathic. Other what-the-hell ideas included "Top Gun," "The Hudsucker Proxy," "Night of the Living Dead" and, perhaps most peculiar of all, "Rear Window." Hey, if your kids want to see a thriller about paranoia, emotional paralysis and sexual repression, no problem. My parents took me to see Hiroshi Inagaki's 207-minute samurai epic "Chushingura" when I was 9 or 10. I was enthralled, and understood maybe 10 percent of what was going on. Explains a lot, I guess.

THE UNDISPUTED CHAMPIONS

These four movies dominated the reader submissions -- so do they qualify as offbeat selections in any way? Controversy! Paradox! Debate! In any event, a great way to begin.

"The Iron Giant" Brad Bird's 1999 animation (based on a children's book by the late British poet Ted Hughes) about a boy's friendship with a giant alien robot has become a genre classic in less than a decade. Actually, the action sequences are a little intense for my twins, but most kids 6 and up, along with plenty of grown-ups, will enjoy it.

"My Neighbor Totoro" We got more votes for Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki's films than for any other single director, but the gentle, magical universe of "Totoro" will enchant viewers of virtually any age. "Kiki's Delivery Service" and "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" are also terrific choices, and children mature enough for the more morbid and mystical elements in "Spirited Away" and "Princess Mononoke" will love those too. All ages.

"The Princess Bride" This 1987 fantasy spoof from director Rob Reiner and screenwriter William Goldman was our overall top vote-getter. Which means you probably know about it already! Still, there are few films that work so well for both kids and adults, without patronizing or winking at either group. And what a cast! Some readers have noted that the Rodents of Unusual Size and torture sequences (however jokey they may be) can frighten younger viewers. Shall we say suitable for 7 and up?

"Time Bandits" Misanthropic crackpot that he is, Terry Gilliam lands two films on this list, with this rip-roaring, three-quarters deranged time-travel fantasy among the reader faves. I'll cautiously say that "Time Bandits" is great for 11-year-olds, will click with the most intrepid 8-year-olds, and is likely to terrify younger kids.

THE SURPRISES

This category reflects democracy in action: I wouldn't have picked any of these on my own, most likely, and there are quite a few I've never seen. To my mind, these are evenly divided between delightful, unexpected choices and what-the-hell head-scratchers. But you viewers at home out there in Salon-reader-land sure loved them, so here they are.

"The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" I'm of two minds here: I think Gilliam's insane fantasy-adventure, a box-office debacle in 1988 that permanently scorched his career, is one of those failures that's nearly a masterpiece. As a kids' movie? I guess that depends on you and your kids. So take my warning on "Time Bandits" and double it, be aware that the Robin Williams cameo as King of the Moon will scare the crap out of anybody, and have fun.

"The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) Clearly for older kids (and parents) who will be thrilled rather than troubled by the cheerful and continuous violence, but this cornball Technicolor classic with Errol Flynn remains among the great swashbucklers, and has most of the thrills of "Rush Hour" without, you know, being "Rush Hour." Adult movie geeks will enjoy the hambone performances by Basil Rathbone, Olivia de Havilland, Claude Rains, et al.

"Alice in Wonderland" (1949) I will argue that there is no perfect or even wholly satisfactory film or TV adaptation of Lewis Carroll's meta-literary masterpiece, although there have been almost two dozen efforts, dating back to 1903. We probably got more votes for the 1951 Disney version, a decent animated film that presents a thoroughly defanged form of Carroll's weirdness. So I'm overruling in favor of director Dallas Bower's intriguing Anglo-French version, an odd but effective mix of live action and puppetry with Carol Marsh in the title role. Of course, there's also the 1985 TV version with Sammy Davis Jr. as the Caterpillar; the 1999 version with Ben Kingsley, Whoopi Goldberg and Miranda Richardson; at least two black-and-white versions from the '30s; at least two made in Spanish and at least two silent films. Let the debate rage! And stay tuned: Tim Burton is planning to direct a new version for release in 2010.

"Born Free" I know I saw this multiple Oscar-winner about Kenyan game warden Joy Adamson and her lion cub Elsa, but I haven't thought about it much since. Still, I got a couple of insistent e-mails from people who said they were surprised to discover how well this 1966 film held up for contempo-family viewing. What would you say? Roughly 8 and up, with a few littler animal lovers in the mix?

"Bringing Up Baby" OK, I think there were two votes for Howard Hawks' 1938 screwball classic with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, but what an awesome idea! One correspondent reports that his 10-year-old daughter talked like Hepburn for a week afterward, which is approximately the cutest thing I've ever heard.

"Labyrinth" I'm pretty sure all these votes came from adults who want an excuse to watch David Bowie's wild-haired Jareth the Goblin King match wits with Jennifer Connelly's teenage heroine in Jim Henson's 1986 fantasy adventure. And, hey, I've got no problem with that. Much too dark and scary for most little 'uns, I'd say, but a dynamite alternative to Potter and Shrek for the over-10 set.

"A Little Princess" (1995) Not the recent animated series or the 1930s Shirley Temple movie, but the Alfonso Cuarón film based on Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved children's book. I've never seen it and don't know the source material either, but this got so many enthusiastic votes it clearly belongs. Available in a DVD set with Agnieszka Holland's version of Burnett's "Secret Garden," listed below.

"Microcosmos" Entirely depends on how your kids feel about bugs -- some love 'em, some are petrified. Absolutely the greatest documentary about insect life ever made, and while there's a tremendous amount of sex and violence in "Microcosmos," all of it involves invertebrate life forms.

"Mom and Dad Save the World" Never seen it, and am kind of dubious. But there's a tremendous reservoir of affection out there for this goofball 1992 fantasy-adventure with Teri Garr and Jeffrey Jones as suburban parents who must battle Jon Lovitz's evil Emperor Spengo. Many people wrote to say, essentially, that this is an unbelievably dumb movie but they love it. Sounds like a flick for the 8-12 group, but I'm only guessing.

"The Point" Apparently, I'm just the wrong age for this Pop Art-flavored 1971 animated feature based on Harry Nilsson's fable about a round boy in a pointed world, since I'd never even heard of it. Ringo Starr narrates the home-video version (it was originally Dustin Hoffman), with original songs by Nilsson. I gather this is likely to work with all ages, but correct me if that's wrong.

THE CLASSICS

This category comprises two phenomena: A) Readers voted for a movie that seems like a natural choice, and B) I just put something on the list because it damn well belongs, whether or not anybody else likes it.

"The Adventures of Milo and Otis" This chopped-up, Westernized version of Japanese director Masanori Hata's puppy-and-kitten adventure may have a checkered artistic pedigree, but has become a universally beloved kids' flick, suitable for nearly all ages. I'd be curious to see Hata's reputedly darker original, but I suppose a subtitled version of this kind of movie is a hilariously pointless endeavor.

"Beauty and the Beast" (1946) I am among those who think that Disney's 1991 version is among the studio's better recent animated films -- but that sure ain't this movie. Yes, Jean Cocteau's magical masterpiece requires either French comprehension or the ability to read subtitles, but I say get 'em started young on both counts. Eric Beckman of the New York International Children's Film Festival says he's encountered strikingly little resistance to subtitles among audiences of second-grade age or older; it's usually the parents who aren't interested. And what a magnificent, moving experience this movie is, at any age. Roughly 9 and up, I guess.

"The Black Stallion" Carroll Ballard's 1979 adventure about a shipwrecked boy and a mysterious Arabian stallion is justifiably considered one of the greatest of all animal films. Clearly too intense for younger viewers, but a tremendous cinematic experience for, say, ages 8 and up.

"City Lights" Look, it is your bounden duty as a movie lover to expose your kids to Charlie Chaplin, and you can consider this a generic rather than a specific recommendation (although this 1931 comedy-romance is arguably his best silent feature). Littler kids will be more readily engaged by Chaplin's early slapstick shorts, which are available in several DVD collections, and "The Kid" and "Modern Times" are also great choices. Here's the thing: I know you've been procrastinating on this. You think it'll seem like dutiful edutainment, like a valuable slice of history and not like fun. When your kids are rolling around on the floor howling at the gags, or weeping profusely at the sentimental scenes, then let's talk.

"Dumbo" Sure, it's a Disney film, but a gorgeous one, perhaps Walt's greatest variation on the classic theme of tragic mother-love. (And, with "Pink Elephants on Parade," it includes one of the earliest acid-freakout sequences in animated history.) Yeah, the singin' and dancin' "Jim Crows" are kind of a problem, somewhere between racist caricature and genuine African-American cultural history. Such discussion topics are good, not bad, and anyway this is my daughter Nini's favorite movie. (The game where she plays Dumbo's mommy and I play Dumbo is so sweet I can't even talk about it.) I don't want her to read this in 10 years and believe that I was so busy watching semi-pornographic 1970s Italian horror films that I didn't notice. While we're here, let's shout out to a few other highly enjoyable Disney classics your kids may not have caught, like "The Jungle Book," "101 Dalmatians" and the box sets of vintage Donald and Mickey cartoons.

"Fantasia" There were only two or three votes for this, I guess because of my apparent anti-Disney fatwa. But let's get real: It's one of the most amazing films ever made, a sound-and-light spectacle that teeters between wordless narrative and experimental animation. Sure, it came into existence as a Hollywood-high culture hybrid, a way of introducing tots to the expressive power of classical music. But I decline to think that's a bad thing, especially when the results are this magnificent. In keeping with the Mouse policy of rotating the classics on and off the shelves, this isn't currently available on DVD, but used copies are plentiful and I can assure you a Blu-ray version is on the way.

"The General" You know, I waffled on including the great silent comic Buster Keaton's greatest film -- an action-packed, locomotive-ridin' spectacular for kids, grandmas and everybody else -- because of the evident Confederate sympathies in its Civil War plot. Well, screw that. If your p.c. buttons really get mashed over watching Keaton play a Reb, you can watch Keaton's "Steamboat Bill, Jr." (on the same DVD!), or collections of his shorts, or pretty much anything by Harold Lloyd. But this one's actually better.

"The Great Muppet Caper" Another quasi-random selection, in that any of the "Muppet Show" collections on DVD will serve just as well to introduce your tykes to the delirious and delightful Jim Henson universe. (I'm going to assume they've already worn out their copies of "Sesame Street: Old School," an essential assortment of grittier pre-1979 episodes.) By consensus, this 1981 film is the best of the Muppet features.

"Kirikou and the Sorceress" This animated film-fest fave from French director Michel Ocelot adapts a traditional African legend into an exciting quest narrative. It's available both in subtitled and English versions, with music by Afro-pop legend Youssou N'Dour. Ocelot's gorgeous animations incorporate both Western and African influences, but your kids won't require a lecture on cultural diversity to enjoy the yarn. There's considerable matter-of-fact nudity, which may create issues for some adult viewers.

"Meet Me in St. Louis" There was a lot of support for the general category of classic Hollywood musicals, but not much agreement as to specifics. (Great primer: "That's Entertainment!") So I'm nominating Vincente Minnelli's Technicolor wartime confection about a turn-of-the-century family that sticks together in changing times, darn it all -- and visits the famous World's Fair in St. Louis, Louie, along the way. Great musical numbers (many sung by Judy Garland) and a fantastical Halloween sequence will keep everybody watching, and the intimations of doom, while present, are pretty light.

"M. Hulot's Holiday" Technically in French but with virtually no dialogue you need to understand, Jacques Tati's beach-vacation slapstick masterpiece ought to be an ideal DVD for the rainy afternoons of your beach vacation. Several readers have testified that their kids dig it, but Beckman insists that junior audiences at his fest "loathed it." I lack empirical evidence. In theory, terrific for all ages.

"The Nightmare Before Christmas" More for teens and tweens than for little ones who don't want their Christmas (or Halloween) traditions messed with, I guess. Still, Henry Selick and Tim Burton's latter-day stop-motion classic will surely delight more than a few daring 8-year-olds.

"The Red Balloon" Finally available on DVD (in a lustrous Criterion version) after many years of scratchy VHS, Albert Lamorisse's Oscar-winning fable about a lonely boy and his magical balloon offers grown-ups and kids alike a haunting vision of mid-century Paris. When Nini and Desmond first saw this, they were enchanted -- also a little intimidated by the roving gangs of boys who pursue and persecute our hero, and sad about the red balloon's tragic fate (of course). But Lamorisse's magical, redemptive ending made it all worth it.

"The Best of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Vol. 1" Hey, Rocky -- watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat! I'm going to suggest beginning with this compact sampler, because if you start collecting the box sets of complete "Rocky & Bullwinkle" seasons, you may never stop. Fan mail from some flounder? The main question you'll face is whether you can get your kids to watch these eccentric masterpieces of early-'60s Americana as often as you want to. And now here's something we hope you'll really like.

"The Secret Garden" (1993) Although Frances Hodgson Burnette's classic about a prickly orphan who finds magic in her uncle's garden has been adapted for film and TV several times, Agnieszka Holland's version is, I think, now definitive. Best for ages 9 and up, wouldn't you say? Available on a DVD with Alfonso Cuarón's "Little Princess," listed above.

"The Secret of NIMH" Renegade Disney animator Don Bluth's adaptation of the beloved children's book "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" is widely viewed as one of the few great animated films of the '80s. (Eric Beckman thinks this is already in every parent's collection, but I'm not sure he's right.) A terrific fantasy-adventure, probably best for ages 8 and up, with a truly peculiar voice-cast that includes Derek Jacobi, Dom DeLuise, Hermione Baddeley and Shannen Doherty.

"The Secret of Roan Inish" Made on the northwest coast of Ireland with a largely non-professional cast, John Sayles' wonderful variation on the Celtic/North Atlantic "selkie" legend might be the best-loved film of his entire career. I guess its romantic-tragic elements won't interest the youngest viewers, but some as young as 6 or 7 will be entranced by the magic, the genuine folktale feeling and the sweet but unsticky sentiment.

"The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" If your kids are big enough to watch action-adventure flicks, it's time for them to learn how it was done before computers. Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion monsters, in all their herky-jerky glory, convey a kind of effortful realism totally absent from today's $300 million spectacles. Certain boys, and certain tomboyish girls, will watch this every day for a month. (And then you can move on to "Jason and the Argonauts.")

"Singin' in the Rain" Another Technicolor Hollywood-musical classic that'll stand up to dozens of viewings. This possibly requires greater powers of concentration than "Meet Me in St. Louis," but who cares about the inside-show-biz plot when you've got some of the greatest singin' and dancin' and glorious-feelin' sequences ever set to celluloid?

"Small Change" François Truffaut's episodic small-town ensemble drama from 1976, with its focus on teenage and child characters, makes for a charming and thoroughly accessible introduction to foreign-language films (perhaps as a companion piece to "Beauty and the Beast"). There's more sexual frankness than there would be in a kid-oriented American film, and one brief shot of an exposed breast. But, hey -- if they're old enough to read subtitles, maybe they're also old enough to talk about that kind of stuff with you.

"The Thief of Bagdad" (1924) We got votes for both the 1940 Technicolor version and the Douglas Fairbanks black-and-white silent, and I say if you're going to venture into this territory at all, go all the way. It's a swashbuckler classic, one of the greatest silent action films, and you can explain that the, um, cultural representations should not be taken too literally. Besides, the sooner your kids know where Baghdad is, the sooner they'll be ready to ship out!

"Winged Migration" Another amazing nature documentary made by Europeans, and an easier sell to many kids than "Microcosmos," I should think. Be alert for that scene where a migratory bird with a broken wing is set upon by crabs -- unless your kids are into that sort of thing. Possesses the great advantage of being easy to watch in small increments.

"Yellow Submarine" My adored big brother, who knew all about things like the Beatles, took me to see this when I was 7 or 8. If I've never thanked you, Michael, I'm thanking you now. If any of your kids or mine feel one-tenth the transports of ecstasy I felt at this inscrutable but completely friendly work of psychedelic candy floss -- which is somewhere between a triviality and a masterpiece -- we'll have some happy families. Which is a great place to end.

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― Andrew O'Hehir. Salon.com

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New DVDs: ‘A Throw of Dice’ and Summer Serials

There’s hardly a frame in the 1929 film “A Throw of Dice” that doesn’t provide a surge of visual pleasure. Produced by the German director Franz Osten and the Bengali lawyer and crusading nationalist Himansu Rai, the movie itself seems poised between two cultures, balancing the highly developed technique of German silent filmmaking and the rich iconography of Indian tradition. Jungles and palaces, elephants and tigers, princes in silk and servants in rags were photographed on location in Rajasthan and presented with the meticulous lighting, enveloping depth effects and rhythmic editing patterns of the Weimar cinema at its height.

Based on an episode from “The Mahabharata,” the ancient Indian epic, the film tells the story of two kings, the open-hearted Ranjit (Charu Roy) and the devious Sohat (played by Rai himself) who, during a hunting expedition, fall in love with Sunita (Seeta Devi), the beautiful daughter of a wise man who lives deep in the wild. Ranjit wins Sunita’s heart, but on the day of the wedding, the conniving Sohat lures his rival into a game of chance using trick dice. Ranjit loses her, along with his kingdom and his personal freedom, and returns to Sohat’s palace as a slave. Chance has led Ranjit to this dreadful pass; chance, perhaps, will rescue him.

Largely forgotten until a restoration by the British Film Institute made a splash last summer at a screening in Trafalgar Square in London, “Dice” was the third film produced by Osten and Rai. (The first, “The Light of Asia,” has been restored by the European cultural channel Arte.) All three seem to have been substantial successes in Europe and Asia, a phenomenon explained partly by the decision to cast Indian actors (although Ms. Devi, born Renee Smith, was Anglo-Indian) rather than the European performers in dusky makeup who had populated previous German visions of India, like Joe May’s 1921 film “The Indian Tomb.”

Though hardly free of the colonialist curse of Orientalism, “A Throw of Dice” seems less concerned with presenting its characters as exotic/erotic “others” than with creating a common ground of artfully presented spectacle. Osten returned to India in 1935 to work at the studio Rai had created, the mellifluously named Bombay Talkies Workers Industrial Co-Operative Society, where he directed 15 more features — a run that came to an end during the production of “Kangan” (“The Bangle”) in 1939, when Osten, a member of the Nazi party, was arrested by British colonial officials and held through the end of the war.

The new disc, originally produced for British release by Tim Pearce and Nadine Luque, features an appropriately cross-cultural score by Nitin Sawhney that blends Western orchestrations and Indian motifs. (Kino International, $29.95, not rated)

SUMMER SERIALS

Columbia Pictures thought so little of its serials that it apparently didn’t bother to maintain the copyrights for many of them, and it has fallen to individual collectors and enthusiasts to keep them in circulation, often in substandard prints.

One of the independent companies fighting the good fight is Restored Serials (restoredserials.com), which a few months ago came out with a digitally cleaned and polished version of one of Columbia’s most entertaining efforts, “The Green Archer” (1940). Based on a 1923 novel by Edgar Wallace, its 15 lively chapters describe the epic battle between Spike Holland (Victor Jory), a passionately dedicated insurance investigator, and Abel Bellamy (James Craven), a waspish antiques dealer whom Spike suspects of heading a gang of jewel thieves.

The main setting is Garr Castle, a sprawling edifice that serves as Bellamy’s headquarters and is honeycombed with a satisfyingly large number of secret passages and trap doors. The Green Archer of the title is a mysterious masked figure who materializes whenever Holland needs a hand or the plot needs advancing, popping up to pump arrows into bad guys or deliver crucial clues.

“The Green Archer” was one of four Columbia serials directed in 1940 by James W. Horne, a veteran filmmaker best known for his comedy shorts and features starring the likes of Laurel and Hardy (“Way Out West,” 1937), Charlie Chase (“Looser Than Loose,” 1930) and Buster Keaton (“College,” 1927). Like all of his serials, “The Green Archer” is a frequently hilarious exercise in self-conscious camp, created decades before that concept entered the mainstream with the television version of “Batman” in 1966.

Carried along by the surprisingly deft performance of the unknown Craven (whose first film this was), Horne turns the villainous Bellamy into a study in slow-burning, comic frustration. Like the perennially exasperated Edgar Kennedy of the Laurel and Hardy shorts, Craven’s Bellamy stares in disbelief as his bungling minions mess up his most elaborate plans, his temper eventually erupting in torrents of sarcasm. At one point Horne shows three of Bellamy’s hulking henchmen engaged in a fierce game of tiddlywinks.

Stunts like that could have gotten you fired over at Columbia’s chief rival, Republic Pictures, where serials were taken seriously. In his engaging 1995 autobiography, “In a Door, Into a Fight, Out a Door, Into a Chase,” the Republic director William Witney describes exactly that happening to one of his colleagues, Alan James, when he tried to slip a much tamer gag into “S.O.S. Coast Guard” (1937). Republic believed in its serials, even when they weren’t believable, an attitude that might benefit many of today’s popular filmmakers, even as they continue to exploit Republic’s basic formulas. (Hello, Indiana Jones.)

Working with John English, Witney created many, if not most, of Republic’s best serials, among them “Daredevils of the Red Circle” (1939) and “Drums of Fu Manchu” (1940). (The two directors would alternate behind the camera, one filming while the other prepared for his shoot the next day.) Recently the independent distributor VCI (vcientertainment.com) added English and Witney’s rare 1938 “Dick Tracy Returns” to its catalog of digitally restored serials, and it’s a pip: 15 chapters of magnificently staged, marginally plausible action, starring Ralph Byrd as Chester Gould’s pointy-jawed comic-strip cop.

Tracy’s nemesis, as was the custom in the newspaper strip, is a stylized version of a notorious gangster then in the news, in this case, one Pa Stark — a sort of Ma Barker, complete with killer brood, recovered for the patriarchy. Stark is played by one of the most identifiable actors of the form, Charles Middleton, who lent his long, sour face and grand, Shakespearean diction to Ming the Merciless in the three “Flash Gordon” serials.

“He was always cast as the head of the orphanage,” Witney wrote about Middleton, “the one who loved to beat little kids. In real life, he was the nicest, most gentle person imaginable.” (“The Green Archer,” Restored Serials, $19.95, not rated; “Dick Tracy Returns,” VCI Entertainment, $29.99, not rated)

source: www.nytimes.com/

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Where The Light Is: John Mayer Live In Los Angeles

Where The Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles captures the multi-Grammy® Award-winning, Platinum-selling singer/songwriter in the element where fans love him the most: live on stage. This special concert includes three sets: an acoustic performance, a rare set with John Mayer Trio (John Mayer, Steve Jordan and Pino Palladino), as well as a set featuring Mayer's full band.

John Mayer's Where The Light Is includes 22 songs and features a one-of-a-kind song list made up of the three distinct performances - all recorded the night of December 8th, 2007 at the NOKIA Theatre in Los Angeles.

Disc Tracklisting
Acoustic Set:
1.Neon
2.Stop This Train
3.In Your Atmosphere
4.Daughters
5.Free Fallin'

Trio Set:
6.Everyday I Have The Blues
7.Wait Until Tomorrow
8.Who Did You Think I Was
9.Come When I Call
10.Good Love Is On The Way
11.Out Of My Mind
12.Vultures
13.Bold As Love

Band Set:
14.Waiting On The World To Change
15.Slow Dancing In A Burning Room
16.Why Georgia
17.The Heart Of Life
18.I Don't Need No Doctor
19.Gravity
20.I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You)
21.Belief
22.I'm Gonna Find Another You

Special Fetures:
Slow Dancing on Mullholland Drive
Who Did You Think I Was- Steve Jordan & Pino Palladino Multi-angle Cam
Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #52 in DVD
* Released on: 2008-07-01
* Rating: NR (Not Rated)
* Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
* Number of discs: 1
* Formats: Color, DVD-Video, PAL
* Original language: English
* Number of discs: 1
* Running time: 164 minutes

Customer Reviews

Great Music, Great Value5
I paid even less by pre-ordering but that's of no consequence. The DVD is a top-shelf production with a great variety of music (I mean come on--22 tracks!) and worth two-times the retail price. I'm a BIG JM fan...this is the next best thing to an actual concert experience...I couldn't be more pleased.

Buy it! PERIOD5
It is amazing to watch Mr. John Mayer and the musicians he hangs with.
Guys old enough to be his father but Mayer showing that respect that can only come from a true music man!

His respect for the different genres and players of those genres is very appealing!
And did i say he plays the hell out of a guitar - cheez - that boy is on fire!!!!

Go Johhny, Go Johnny - Go Johnny GO!!!

like punching underwater5
Having been a John Mayer fan since I first heard his Why Georgia song two years after it came out I knew there was more than meets the eye. So I explored and found all the JM info I could..and then Any given Thursday came out and City Love and Covered in Rain proved me right.. So needless to say I was waiting for him to come out with a lengthy live DVD, and people this is it.John Mayer approaching his prime, this is a great performance(specially Paparazzi part) and you won't regret this purchase. Mayer can shred with anyone out there alive right now.. BUY IT or and...
REMEMBER DUANE ALLMAN

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New DVD releases: `Step Up 2 the Streets'

Selected home-video releases:

"Step Up 2 the Streets"

Are you ready to rumba? This follow-up to the 2006 teen mini-hit "Step Up" again mingles the raw world of street hoofing with the refined circles of formally trained dancers. This one lands a rough but talented street dancer (Briana Evigan) at the Maryland School of the Arts, where she tries to blend in with snooty classmates and teams up with a hotshot student (Robert Hoffman) to compete in an underground dance competition. The DVD and Blu-ray releases come with deleted scenes, two behind-the-scenes segments and five music videos, including tunes by Flo Rida and Missy Elliott. DVD, $29.99; Blu-ray, $34.99. (Disney)

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"College Road Trip"

Martin Lawrence makes life miserable for Raven-Symone as they hit the highway in this family comedy. Lawrence plays a well-meaning but meddlesome dad who butts into his daughter's hunt for the right college, accompanying her and her friends on their mishap-laden trip. The DVD and Blu-ray discs have an alternate opening and alternate endings, plus deleted scenes with commentary from director Roger Kumble. The full movie has commentary with Kumble, Raven-Symone and the screenwriters. Raven-Symone also pitches in with a music video and a video diary of her experiences on the set. DVD, $29.99; Blu-ray, $34.99. (Disney)

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"The Bank Job"

Jason Statham makes an unauthorized withdrawal in this solid heist flick from director Roger Donaldson. Statham stars as a car dealer who meets up with a beautiful woman (Saffron Burrows) from his old haunts and gets in way over his head after she lets him in on a robbery of cash and jewels from a London bank. Two-disc DVD and Blu-ray editions come with extended footage, a making-of featurette and a segment on the 1971 Lloyd's Bank job that inspired the film. Both releases also include a digital copy of the movie for portable video players. The movie also comes in a bare-bones single-disc DVD. Single DVD, $29.95; two-disc DVD set, $34.98; Blu-ray, $39.99. (Lionsgate)

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"Shutter"

This horror tale centers on a photographer (Joshua Jackson) and his new wife (Rachael Taylor) who are exposed to a vengeful spirit from beyond on a trip to Japan, where the photos that result contain ghostly images of a woman on a haunting mission. The movie is available on DVD in the theatrical version or an unrated cut, both containing a couple of background featurettes. The unrated DVD and Blu-ray releases also have deleted scenes and an alternate ending, five more behind-the-scenes featurettes and commentary with Taylor and some of the filmmakers. DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.98. (20th Century Fox)

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"Penelope"

Christina Ricci is the fairest pig-faced girl in the land in this contemporary twist on fairy-tale romance. The comic tale stars Ricci as a young woman afflicted by a family curse _ the snout of a pig _ with James McAvoy as a suitor who may hold the key to lifting the curse. Ricci and McAvoy are backed by a great cast that includes Catherine O'Hara, Peter Dinklage, Richard E. Grant and Reese Witherspoon, who also is a producer on the film. The scant DVD extras include a making-of featurette and a sneak peak at this fall's teen vampire tale "Twilight." DVD, $25.99. (Summit)

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"Trafic"

French filmmaker and actor Jacques Tati returns to his Monsieur Hulot persona one last time with this 1971 comedy about an automotive designer who encounters endless troubles while taking his gadget-loaded camper to a car show in Amsterdam. Highlighting the extras in the two-disc set is the 1989 two-part documentary "In the Footsteps of M. Hulot," made by Tati's daughter, Sophie Tatischeff. The set also includes a 1971 interview with cast members from French television, the 1973 TV show "The Comedy of Jacques Tati" and an essay by film critic Jonathan Romney. DVD set, $39.95. (Criterion)

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TV on DVD:

"Saving Grace: Season One" _ Academy Award winner Holly Hunter heads to the small screen for this unusual crime drama, playing a cop whose life is heading into the drink when an angel steps in from above to help her turn things around. The first 13 episodes are packed in a four-disc set, along with commentary on the pilot and a handful of background segments. DVD set, $49.98. (20th Century Fox)

"Evening Shade: Season One" _ Burt Reynolds returned to TV with this 1990s comedy about a former pro football player who takes a job coaching his hometown's high school team. The cast includes Hal Holbrook, Marilu Henner, Ossie Davis and Charles Durning. The five-disc set has the first 24 episodes. DVD set, $42.99. (Paramount)

"Dallas: The Complete Ninth Season" _ J.R. Ewing would love to be in business with today's oil prices. Larry Hagman and the rest of the conniving Ewing clan are back in the prime-time soap about a Texas oil family. Year nine's 31 episodes come in a four-disc package. DVD set, $39.98. (Warner Bros.)

"Eureka: Season 2" _ The real brain trust of America lives in an idyllic, secret Northwest town set up after World War II for the best scientific minds to hatch all our great technological advances _ and complicate their lives with the same interpersonal issues that trouble the rest of us. A three-disc set has the second season's 13 episodes. DVD set, $39.98. (Universal)

"Reno 911! The Complete Fifth Season" _ The band of rough and not-so-ready Nevada cops are on the beat again with a three-disc set packing the fifth year's 16 episodes, along with cast commentary and extended scenes. DVD set, $39.98. (Paramount)

"Birds of Prey: The Complete Series" _ This short-lived 2002 spinoff of the Batman universe, arriving just days before "The Dark Knight" hits theaters, follows the adventures of Batman and Catwoman's daughter (Ashley Scott) and two allies (Dina Meyer and Rachel Skarsten) as they fight crime in New Gotham City. All 13 episodes come in a four-disc set. DVD set, $39.98. (Warner Bros.)

"Swamp Thing: The Series _ Volume Two" _ Dick Durock returns as the man transformed into a plant-humanoid hybrid battling evil. The first 25 episodes from season three are contained in a four-disc set. DVD set, $39.99. (Shout)

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New DVDs: ‘Mishima’ and ‘Framed’

caption: Ken Ogata as Yukio Mishima in Paul Schrader’s 1985 film


In Paul Schrader’s “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985), the Japanese writer and cultural warrior Yukio Mishima is played by the cocky, square-jawed Ken Ogata, an actor best known to Western audiences as the businesslike serial killer in Shohei Imamura’s “Vengeance Is Mine” (1979). It’s a difficult role, because Mishima himself was always playing Mishima: a fantastic character of his own invention.

Mr. Schrader’s movie, which the Criterion Collection is releasing on Tuesday in a handsome, superbly restored edition, does a fine job of describing how the sickly, withdrawn Kimitake Hiraoka, the son of a minor government official, recreated himself under the pen name Yukio Mishima as a modern-day samurai and omnipresent media figure.

In between writing some of the most popular and critically respected novels of postwar Japan, Mishima bulked up through weight lifting; appointed himself the head of his own private army (with uniforms he designed himself, “with help from de Gaulle’s tailor”); starred in a series of action films (for directors like Yasuzo Masumura, Kinji Fukasaku and Hideo Gosha); displayed his toned physique in book and magazine photo layouts; and expounded his peculiar brand of Japanese nationalism, which managed to offend both the right and the left.

In American culture Mishima’s only equivalent as an author-exhibitionist is Norman Mailer, and even Mailer could not equal the audacity of Mishima’s final gesture. On Nov. 25, 1970, he led four of his recruits into the Tokyo headquarters of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, took a general hostage and made an impassioned speech to the troops, urging them to rise up and reclaim the glory of imperial Japan.

When the troops laughed and jeered in response, Mishima returned to the general’s office and committed seppuku, ritual suicide, by disemboweling himself. It was a gesture he had imagined many times before, most notably in his 27-minute film, “Patriotism” (1966), in which he plays an army officer who takes his own life. (Criterion is also releasing “Patriotism” on Tuesday, on a disc that includes some fascinating Mishima material.)

Mr. Schrader’s film takes that November day as its point of departure, and spins a complex structure around it, with flashbacks to Mishima’s smothered youth and visualizations of three of his novels: “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion” (1956), “Kyoko’s House” (1959) and “Runaway Horses” (1968). Moving between biography and fiction, Mr. Schrader (who wrote the screenplay with his brother, Leonard) underlines the similarities between Mishima’s life and his work, but also draws important distinctions.

While the biographical material is presented in realist terms, the fiction is extravagantly stylized, broadly acted and shot on constrained studio sets designed in bold colors by Eiko Ishioka. Mr. Schrader’s camera sometimes looks over the top of these four-walled constructions as if peering into the compartments of Mishima’s brain, where his characters are doomed to endure forever, endlessly repeating the same gestures and reliving the same stories.

Mishima might have been his own greatest creation, but he’s also the ultimate Paul Schrader character: a wounded visionary, a compromised saint, a seeker of truth and transcendence. Like the protagonists of “Taxi Driver” (Mr. Schrader’s most perfect screenplay) and of “American Gigolo,” “Light Sleeper” and “Affliction” (to name three of his best films as a writer-director), Mishima is brought back to earth by the sordid facts of material existence: the need to make a living, to get along with other people, to eat and sleep and deal with the whole range of inconvenient human appetites.

Ours is no longer a world, Mr. Schrader suggests, that tolerates saintly ambitions; psychological wounds and physical circumstance drag such men down, turning would-be heroes into monsters, and messiahs into figures of ridicule. His triumph in “Mishima,” his most completely satisfying film, lies in creating a seeker who is aware of his own absurdity, and who is willing to embrace the ridiculous on his way to the sublime. (The Criterion Collection, $39.95, R)

FRAMED

Released in 1975, “Framed” is among the last of the old-school films noirs. Three principal members of its creative team were part of the genre’s prime: the director Phil Karlson (“99 River Street,” 1953), the producer and screenwriter Mort Briskin (“Quicksand,” 1950), the cinematographer Jack A. Marta (who shot close to 200 B movies for Republic Pictures). The plot is practically a pocket guide to noir conventions. Joe Don Baker, a big man with a sad mouth, stars as Ron Lewis, a professional gambler who stumbles across a homicide involving some unknown, powerful people, who get him out of the way by sending him to prison on a trumped-up charge.

When, four years later, Lewis returns to the unnamed Southern metropolis he calls home, he finds that his adversaries have taken political control of the city and are moving in on the state. But Lewis, dehumanized by his experiences, isn’t deterred: with the help of a prison buddy, a syndicate hit man with a Sonny Bono haircut (Gabriel Dell, one of the original Dead End Kids back in the 1930s), he sets out to exact a terrible, bloody revenge.

“Somebody I don’t know took everything I had away from me,” he says, in a line from the Film Noir Hall of Fame, “and I’m going to make him pay. Double.”

Karlson and Briskin enjoyed a freak hit in 1973 with “Walking Tall” — essentially, a retooling of Karlson’s noir classic of 1955, “The Phenix City Story” — with Mr. Baker as a Southern sheriff fighting corruption. Their “Walking Tall” clout allowed them to make “Framed” without compromises, and this is a harsh, unlovely film, charged with unsettling anger and filled with a violence that was quite graphic for the time, and is still startling today.

Although “Framed” would prove to be the last film for both men, it is no nostalgic farewell. It’s a poison-pen letter filled with bitterness, paranoia and despair. When Lewis finally tracks down the individual responsible for his suffering, he finds — in another classic noir device — a man much like himself, with personal reasons for what he’s done. At the end of the journey lies its beginning, a film noir way of knowledge. (Legend Films, $14.95, R). [source: NYTimes]

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The Closer - The Complete Third Season

Product Description

Episodes:HomewreckerGrave DoubtSaving FaceECRubyThe Round FileDumb LuckFour to EightManhuntBlindsidedCulture ShockLover's LeapTill Death Do Us (Part 1 & 2)Next of Kin (Part 1 & 2)System Requirements:Running Time: 685 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS UPC: 085391201151 Manufacturer No: 120115
Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #9 in DVD
* Brand: Warner Brothers
* Released on: 2008-07-01
* Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
* Formats: Color, Widescreen, NTSC
* Subtitled in: English, French, Chinese, Portuguese
* Dubbed in: Portuguese
* Number of discs: 4
* Dimensions: 1.00 pounds

From Turner Network Television (TNT)
List Price: $39.98
Price: $25.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.


Customer Reviews

They'll bring you in. She'll make you talk.5
Kyra Sedgwick plays a deputy chief, who despite rubbing everyone up the wrong way on occasions proves that, despite her apparent ditziness at time, she can get to the root of any crime put her way and bring in a conviction.

Bizarrely, when I first watched the first episode of this, which I found by accident on TV, I wasn't sure about it. It wasn't like anything else I'd seen, and I wasn't wholly sure of the character of Brenda.


also wondered what 'The Closer' meant, as being English, I read it as 'closer' meaning 'nearer'! Duh.

But this is one of the best shows on TV. Whether or not you like the genre, it has a lot more to it than just a 'cop show'. The plots are important, intricate and there is often a very blackly humourous juxtaposition of the most terrible events and character comedy.

And it's the characters who really make it. Even the members of the squad who don't demand the most screen time really fill out their roles well - and I'm surprised that not everyone is included in the opening credit sequence (which is also different in there is no big credit sequence, just a series of intercuts). Their interactions are very cleverly mixed, so that even though poor Robert Gossett seems destined to be the bad guy, even he has redeeming features at times.

Excellent T.V. drama!!5
This is one of the best made for cable-T.V. crime dramas. It has just the right mix of suspense, drama, comedy, & a little love story. It keeps you guessing from begining to end. Kyra Sedgewick is a WONDERFUL actress that is a star for the younger as well as the uuuuhhhmmmm older (like me) fans. She is easy to identify with,especially being a woman working in a man's field. (like me!)You can't go wrong becoming a fan of this series!

Closer--consistently good from season to season5
The Closer - Season 3

We have enjoyed the Closer since it first started. Kyra Sedgwick has always been an excellent actress, but it's the ensemble cast that makes the whole show work. And the writers should be given Emmies for some of the cleverest dialogue and storylines on TV. Here's what's in season 3:

1--Homewrecker (the brutal murder of a family reveals a man who led two lives, and had a complete other family in another city)
2--Grave Doubts (a young man's body is discovered with Lt. Provenza's business card in his pocket and the prime murder suspect is a prominent man running for government office)
3--Saving Face (a dead woman's body is discovered in a cop's casket and the church becomes a crime scene, creating a media fiasco with a very irate bridezilla)
4--Ruby (a young girl goes missing and the prime suspect is a recently released sex offender; definitely one of the best episodes of the season--it takes you into the twisted mind of a sex offender)
5--The Round File (a senior turns up claiming to have killed several other retirement home residents and the prime suspect turns out to be someone else at the retirement home)
6--Dumb Luck (a personal trainer is murdered while on a date and it turns out he wasn't even the intended victim; two very stupid people got their dates confused and the wrong guy ends up dead; a very funny episode with some of the best lines of the season)
7--Four to Eight (two Catorce gang members are shot to death and Brenda ends up needing medical care)
8--Manhunt (two bodies turn up and the suspect serial killer kills in sets of three, so the squad struggles to find victim number three before it's too late; one of my favorites with a twist ending in which Brenda is almost killed with a cattle prod)
9--Blindsided (Brenda is forced to take a journalist on a ride-along, but the car with her, Gabriel, and the reporter is shot at; one of the best confessions of the season takes place in this one, in an elevator of all places)
10--Culture Shock (a Chinese business woman is found dead on a tour bus leading the squad to discover she led a very interesting life, one her in-laws couldn't abide by)
11--Lover's Leap (this one involves a Dept. of Homeland Security employee who turns out to be having an affair with Pope)
12--Til Death Do Us Part, Part 1 (a famous Hollywood divorce attorney is found dead; one of the best of the season has many twists and turns, including a house full of marijuana and a very angry wife)
13--Til Death Do Us Part, Part 2
14--Next of Kin, Part 1 (Brenda ends up chasing a murder suspect back to Atlanta and involving her parents in his apprehension; they take a very long RV ride back to LA with the suspect)
15--Next of Kin, Part 2

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American Teen

Nanette Burstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture) spent ten months filming four high school seniors and their friends in Warsaw, Indiana, to make American Teen, a documentary that explains why high school hasn’t changed since High School. Frederick Wiseman’s 1968 documentary focused on institutionalized rituals. Burstein illustrates the continuing effect of those rituals on the teens’ relationships with family and friends. Her Millenials run the same obstacle course of parental interference, outdated curricula, and a social hierarchy built on homecoming queens and star jocks that Wiseman’s Baby Boomers had to scale in order to graduate. Burstein chose her subjects from among teens who volunteered and who may live to regret their decision: One breaks up with his girlfriend by sending her a text message, and another e-mails a topless picture of her friend to everyone in her address book. It’s high school, just the way you remember it.

If Burstein’s subjects appear stereotypical, her purpose in choosing them was obviously to explore the complexity behind the roles they either assign to themselves, or they were consigned to play, in the boot camp of conformity that is high school. The nerd, Jake Tusing, is an irrepressible romantic whose search for a soulmate seems surprisingly out of character. Colin Clemens, a basketball star; Megan Krizmanich, the daughter of a prominent surgeon; and Hannah Bailey, the artsy outcast who lives with her grandmother, are from very different social and economic circumstances, but what they have in common lies at the core of Burstein’s insight into the teens’ lives. They have parents who try to limit their horizons or relive their own lives through their children. In Burstein’s eyes, it’s the parents who are to blame for many of the pressures the teens grapple with, and for the unchanging atmosphere of high school.

Indiana was a conscious choice, and a good one: As anyone who has traveled the contiguous 48 knows, Warsaw is actually far more emblematic of the United States than, say, New York City or Los Angeles. Warsaw did present Burstein with a few challenges, mostly that all her subjects are white. Megan is from very comfortable economic circumstances, while Hannah lies at the other end of the spectrum and has the additional stigma of mental illness—her mother is bipolar. These differences distinguish the teens’ individual experience of high school and their aspirations for the future. Hannah wants to get out of Warsaw at any cost to attend a San Francisco film school she’s read about. Megan wants to get out, too, but for her the prestige of acceptance to Notre Dame holds the promise of an Antipodean escape.

Burstein, who cut 1,000 hours of footage to an excellent 95-minute documentary, catches the teens’ parents in controlling and often psychologically damning moments with their offspring. They are not just reliving their own youth through their children; this time around, they’re determined to get it right, even if they have to suppress their children’s desires and replace them with their own. Altering the crucible of high school would be too unsettling to the re-enactment of their own youth, so the parents also reinforce the educational system’s outmoded ideas of what constitutes success after high school. It’s clear from the glimpses we have of the teens’ lives at school that teachers and administrators simply perpetuate the status quo, upholding what they and the parents view as solid American values.

The Academy-nominated filmmaker (On the Ropes) observes the four seniors and allows them to speak directly to the camera. Hannah’s liberal ideals clash with the local culture, but her mother makes desperate attempts to keep her in Indiana. Megan is a brat, but when she slumps in a chair in front of her father’s desk, anxious over whether or not she will be accepted to his alma mater, she’s just a kid with a controlling father. He tells her she shouldn’t want Notre Dame for his sake, but in the same sentence reminds her that her two brothers haven’t found fault with it. Megan’s sister wasn’t accepted, and she later committed suicide. Colin’s father, a celebrated high school athlete, won’t pay for college, insisting that his son win a sports scholarship, the implication being that he wants Colin to achieve what he only aspired to. In each situation, punctuated with animated sequences that reflect the teenagers’ fantasies, Burstein recalls the bittersweet experience of being 18.

For some of Burstein’s teens, on the brink of that archetypal journey to selfhood, the road will eventually lead back to Indiana. It is the untrammeled paths, the farthest point from Indiana and all that it represents, that Burstein had trouble uncovering in American Teen.In fact, only Hannah aspires to it, and the filmmaker devotes the final image of the documentary to her. Notre Dame is not to be dismissed, nor is a sports scholarship, nor the teenage romance Jake hopes to nurture, but those are roads marked by the constricting tread of our predecessors. Hannah’s path promises transformation.


Critic: Maria Garcia


Detail:
Distributor: PARAMOUNT VANTAGE
Running Time: 95 mins.
Color: Color
Production: An A&E IndieFilms presentation of a Firehouse Films and Quasiworld Entertainment production, in association with 57th and Irving.
Genre: Documentary
Film Width: 1.85
Sound: Dolby Digital (AC-3), DTS, SDDS
Language: English


Cast:
Hannah Bailey | Colin Clemins | Megan Krizmanich | Jake Tusing | Geoff Haase | Mitch Reinholt | Ali Wikalinska

Credits:
Director(s) Nanette Burstein
Writer(s) Nanette Burstein
Producer(s) Nanette Burstein | Eli Gonda | Chris Huddleston | Jordan Roberts
Executive producer(s) Patrick Morris | Molly Thompson | Nancy Dubuc | Lisa Pugliese | Robert Sharenow
Director(s) of photography Wolfgang Held | Laela Kilbourn | Robert Hanna
Edited by Nanette Burstein | Mary Manhardt | Tom Haneke
Music by Michael Penn

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DVD Review: Tears of the Black Tiger

Thai director Wisit Sasanatieng's avant-garde western, Tears of the Black Tiger is equal parts parody and tribute to both spaghetti westerns and Technicolor-era love stories. The movie is about Dum, a gangster more commonly known as the Black Tiger. Dum and his best friend Mahesuan are employed by the local crime boss, Fai. Dum's life gets turned upside down after he finds out that the man he is sent to kill is engaged to his childhood sweetheart, Rumpoey.

By far, the most noticeable thing about this movie is its visual appeal. Most of Tears of the Black Tiger was shot on closed sets with painted backdrops. These backdrops were never meant to be realistic, instead they invoke a dreamlike utopian feel. The colors of the sets are vibrant pastels and make the film look almost as if each frame was hand-painted. The fantastic production design and equally lavish action sequences are more reminiscent of early Warner Brothers cartoons than they are of any live action films.

The action in this movie is exaggerated and the characters are larger than life. The gunfights feature grenade launchers and automatic weapons. The violence is stylized with every wound spraying bright red blood and thousands of bullets flying while the protagonists are miraculously unscathed. There is even a shot from the perspective of a bullet as it dispatches one of The Black Tiger's adversaries.

The romantic elements are just as melodramatic as the action sequences are extravagant. The love story in this movie uses all of the major clichés. When Dum and Rumpoey are reunited in Bangkok, Dum initially tells Rumpoey that she has him mistaken for someone else because he feels like he would only hurt her. Later in the movie there is a scene where Rumpoey and Dum promise to meet at a gazebo that they feel is "their spot." Also, Dum's change of heart when he realizes that the man he is sent to kill is Rumpoey's fiancé is something out of the proverbial melodrama handbook.

In many movies the surreal sets, fanatical violence, and overly sappy melodrama would be too unbelievable to be entertaining. In the case of Tears of the Black Tiger, the more absurd things get the more fun the movie becomes. Few movies pull off "zany" quite like Tears of the Black Tiger does. It is hard to tell if director Sasanatieng saw too many or not enough love stories and westerns. The final duel scene at the movie's end is without a doubt heavily influenced by Sergio Leone, but the way that this scene is executed is more derivative of Mel Brooks' work than Leone's. The sweetness of the love story is something out of the Rock Hudson/Doris Day era while the delivery is as unabashedly hokey as Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride. Tears of the Black Tiger is more spectacle than substance, but unlike most movies with this quality, this one works exceptionally well and is worth recommending to total strangers.

Director: Wisit Sasanatieng
Movie Genre: Western, Romance
Country: Thailand

more about asian film review visit http://www.asianfilmreviews.com

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On DVD: Mama's Boy

When Warner Home Video's new DVD for Mama's Boy found its way into my mailbox this week, it caught me off guard. I'd just seen the trailer for it a few weeks ago on another DVD and thought, "Hey, I'll check that out." But it said Coming This November. "Oh, they're advertising a bit early. I guess I'll have to wait." Little did I know they meant last November, and that short of New Zealand, Turkey, and Romania, this film hadn't seen a theater screen. Not a good sign.

But when my wife and I sat down to watch Mama's Boy we found it very surprising. It wasn't a bad film at all. In fact, it was kind of cute. But it was immediately and abundantly clear exactly why this movie had been scrapped. It isn't a movie for most mainstream audiences. While Mama's Boy is a mainstream-style comedy that possesses a dry wit, it's popuated with unlikable characters. It's not that you hate them, but you don't ever like them. And that is a very bad thing for a mainstream comedy.

Jon Heder plays the titular mama's boy, eccentric Jeffrey Mannus, a 29-year-old wanna-be astronomer who responded to the death of his father at a young age by becoming inseparable from his mother Jan, played by Diane Keaton. But after mom hooks up with a new beau, Mert Rosenbloom (Jeff Daniels), Jeffrey reacts to the news poorly.

What follows is the typical out-of-control-spiral-into-the-darkside snipefest between Heder and Daniels -- a setup reminiscent of the classic Rushmore. Trouble is, Jeffrey's a jerk. A big, giant chucklehead. There are words for guys like this, but my editor prefers that I not use them. Seriously, imagine Jason Schwartzman from Rushmore, only even more pompous, arrogant, and without the real intelligence to back it up. Oh, I know this guy -- I've met many like him -- and Jeffrey is a great caricature of the type. But the movie barely manages to dangle the thinnest carrot of likability as a means to keep you watching.

And really, that's what prevents this from being a film for everyone. Because Jeffrey isn't the only barely likable character. The entire cast skirts the shores of dweebsville. Daniels plays one of those cheesy motivational speakers who spits out fortune-cookie answers that sound like they were read out of a Hallmark card. Keaton's Jan is spineless and plays into her demanding, loser son's every whim.

Anna Faris's Nora, the film's love interest, is a weak joke/commentary on the alterna-be culture. She's a singer writing an album about the evils of consumerism and corporations, while she's drinking coffee at Starbucks. Get it? Sigh. Fortunately, if you could capture sunlight in a jar and then coalesce it into a solid state, it would form Anna Faris. And they let Faris be Faris.

If there's one thing to be said about Mama's Boy, it's that the cast does an incredible job of overcoming their pathetic characters and making you feel for and kind of like them -- or at least you'll get where they're coming from.

As a comedy, the over-the-top, mainstream jokes tend to fall flat. But if you're paying attention to the wry, off-the-cuff remarks thrown out there by Faris, Daniels, Sarah Chalke, and an underused Eli Wallach, there's enough real humor that also serves as part of that keeping-you-endeared-to-them thing.

All in all, Mama's Boy is worth a watch as an interesting experiment in the type of character study you see more often in indie fare.

DVD extras are simply a routine commentary track by director Tim Hamilton and a collection of deleted scenes. Not a one of those deleted scenes is worth seeing, and together they make you believe that an editor or producer stepped in to save the film from itself through cutting, but the director insisted that they get placed on the disc.

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Ranking The Rambo Movies

John Rambo is one of those elite characters of the '80s that my friends and I would argue over as kids, shouting on the stoops in front of our apartments. Who would win in a fight? John McClane or Martin Riggs? John Rambo or John Matrix? Indiana Jones or Han Solo? Chuck Norris or Sly Stallone? Ah-Nuld or Michael Dudikoff (in American Ninja mode, of course)? Personally, I was always a McClane guy. In my mind a smart-ass quip can be more powerful than any vein in Sly's neck. But I digress.

Rambo returns to DVD this week. He remains a legendary cinematic figure and has four films to back it up. But how do they rank? Well let's take a look.

1. First Blood
Hands down the best film of the series and, in a way, one of the most violent. It doesn't have the body count of any of the sequels but it feels more violent than the second or third film (notice I didn't include the fourth). This film is also notable in that it took me fifteen years before I was fully able to understand what Stallone was saying in his final scene with Richard Crenna. I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean it literally. Rambo always sounded like he had mashed potatoes in his mouth, but that last scene was ridiculous.

2. Rambo: First Blood Part II
I don't think the sequels get enough credit for making Rambo what he is today in the hearts and minds of his fans. People like to lift their leg over them, but this is disingenuous I think. Yes, the first film is easily the best of the series and he was a great character in First Blood, but he be became a god of war after he went into Vietnam, where he fell in love, watched Co Bao die, wore that green stone around his neck, saved the POWs, killed Soviets, killed Vietcong, returned to base, knocked out the evil Cobra Kai Sensei, shoot up that sniveling snot Murdock's headquarters, gave this speech, and walked into the sunset.

3. Rambo
You can imagine my glee as I exited the theater earlier this year and found that the fourth entry in the Rambo series was a pretty darn good one. It's one of those rare time-capsule movies that really does transport you to another era of filmmaking, the kind of mindless action film that I used to eat up as a kid. It doesn't have lofty goals. It just wants to be a worthy Rambo movie and it is. It's also ridiculously simplistic and violent. In fact, this is by far the most violent film in the series. It doesn't have the nostalgia of the second film, but its story is just as timely and black-and-white. There are no grays here. Just black and white. Good and evil. And John Rambo's on the side of righteousness.

4. Rambo III
Rambo III is kind of like the sloth of the series. Not to mix my '80s love around, but the Fratellis were ashamed of Sloth and kept him chained in the basement. Maybe I have a little Fratelli in me because I haven't seen this one in a long time. Maybe there's something to love here. I doubt it. It's pretty deformed, but perhaps ignoring it isn't the answer. It makes me wonder, though, whether or not Rambo indirectly helped the Taliban and bin Laden by helping the Afghans defeat the Soviets. Charlie Wilson's war, my tookus.

film.com

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