Every week film critic and Detroit Film Critics Society member, Kirk Baird, recommends new DVD releases for your library.
Camelot on Blu-ray
The 1967 classic musical Camelot makes its Blu-ray debut this week in a splendid-looking version that receives a fresh digital scrubbing. Written by Alan Jay Lerner and based on the successful 1960 stage musical he wrote with Frederick Loewe, Camelot is the story of good King Arthur (Richard Harris), whose noble dream of a land ruled by law and protected by a special band of knights (“might for right”) is sullied by his wife Lady Guenevere (Vanessa Redgrave) and his most-trusted knight Sir Lancelot du Lac (Franco Nero) and their affair for the ages. It’s a stellar, beautiful cast blessed with the acting and vocal chops to pull off the dramatic scenes and regal musical numbers.
The transfer of the 45-year-old film to high-definition is reliably stunning. The gorgeous, Oscar-winning set designs by John Brown and the Oscar-nominated cinematography by Richard Kline, making his feature-film debut as director of photography, have never looked this vibrant, though there are the occasional lapses when the film goes grainy for a few moments. The Blu-ray, at three hours in length, is also the original theatrical release and includes the restoration of deleted scenes, dialogue, and musical numbers. It also includes a soundtrack sampler from Rhino, featuring four of the Lerner-Loewe songs. This is the definitive version of the musical, and it's the best way to celebrate “that … one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot!”
Also Out This Week
Marvel Anime: X-Men & Marvel Anime: Ironman
X-Men and Ironman go anime in two new Japanese series from Marvel-Sony. The idea was to introduce the American comic-book icons to an Asian audience, with a more adult look to the superheroes to go along with more mature stories written by veteran comic-book scribe Warren Ellis (Red). This isn’t your bland Saturday morning cartoon series. Rather, it’s an engaging and engrossing movie-ready plot sold to audiences via stylish animation that makes these familiar characters fresh again. And naturally, both series feature Japan heavily in their stories. The DVDs even include a choice of Japanese or English audio as well as subtitles. If you’re a fan of superheroes in film and TV, both Marvel Anime sets are worth a look.
Cinema Verite is a star-studded HBO film from 2011 that’s a behind-the-scenes account of the 1973 PBS documentary, An American Family, one of the first American reality TV showcases. The cast includes Diane Lane, Tim Robbins, James Gandolfini, Kathleen Quinlan, Patrick Fugit, and Lolita Davidovich.
Every Tuesday film critic and Detroit Film Critics Society member, Kirk Baird, recommends new DVD releases for your library.
Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol The Mission: Impossible movies have been a game of one-upmanship among the four different directors in the series. But it’s Brad Bird, a filmmaker best known for the animated features The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, who tops them all with the biggest, boldest, and most audacious Ethan Hunt adventure yet.
Hunt (Cruise, in a return to action-hero form), as usual, is on the wrong side of the U.S. government, and he and his team of spy operatives are blamed for the bombing of the Kremlin. The film’s plot is about restoring their names and, of course, saving the world in the process.
Jeremy Renner is a great addition to the cast as a former field agent, and the film’s impossible-to-believe stunt on Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai—the world’s tallest building—is not for those with a fear of heights. Ghost Protocol was the best-loved film in the series by audiences (nearly $700 million worldwide) and critics (93 percent “certified fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes) for a reason: This is the best mission yet.
Shame
Michael Fassbender appeared in four films last year. His best role among the quadrumvirate was also his riskiest: a New York City sex addict whose controlled life disintegrates after his sister (Carey Mulligan, also terrific) moves in.
Fassbender is creepy and pathetic, a damaged character difficult to like, and the script by Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady) doesn’t give us reason to, either. Shameis rated NC-17, and there is a considerable amount of nudity, but an honest film about sexual addiction wouldn’t have worked without it.
Old School Flick Now on DVD
Tom Selleck was originally cast as Indiana Jones, but his TV commitment to Magnum, P.I. kept him from the role. If you’re curious about how Selleck would have fared as an action-adventurer, check out 1983’s High Road to China, co-starring Bess Armstrong.
Written by Kirk Baird, film critic and Detroit Film Critics Society member
Ridley Scott defined our future. At least, as we see it in film. He did this first in 1979 with Alien and again in 1982 with Blade Runner, which is why most people—at least film fanatics—associate the visionary director with science fiction.
And yet Scott hasn’t made a science-fiction film in more than a quarter century. Instead, he’s gone on to make critical and audience favorites: the hard-hitting drama Thelma & Louise (1991); the sword-and-sandal epic Gladiator(2000), which won Best Picture; the politically charged war movie Black Hawk Down (2001); and an only-in-America true crime story American Gangster (2007).
The 74-year-old British filmmaker has kept himself busy through the years. But in almost all of his time away from the sci-fi genre there’s been one persistent question asked of him: When is he going to make another Alien movie? Actually, James Cameron beat him to it in 1987 with Aliens, a highly successful action-horror film that redefined the franchise and made Sigourney Weaver a huge star and her Ripley character a cinematic icon.
But Aliens wasn’t the same as Alien. The sequel was non-stop action of swarming, nightmarish creatures attacking military personnel. While the original was a more intimate scare, featuring one nearly invincible creature against a handful of undermanned and desperately frightened humans. It was a haunted house in deep space and it truly terrified audiences when it was released in theaters.
The Alien franchise has fallen on hard times since these films, a victim of low budgets (David Fincher’s Alien 3), half-baked stories (Alien: Resurrection), and an obvious attempt by 20th Century Fox to milk the movies (the Alien vs. Predator series). Thus, you can forgive fanboys for their excitement when word leaked that Scott was finally making another science-fiction film and that it would involve the world of Alien.
Scott has talked about making another Alien for a few years—one that explained what these creatures were and where they came from—but he walked away from the idea before it was fully developed; the studio balked at the budget he needed to make the film. So he moved onto another project, a film called Prometheus, and fans again knew they would have to wait.
Then word leaked from Scott that there were “strands of Alien’s DNA” in Prometheus, and the buzz began anew. There were other tidbits as well. But finally, the new trailer for Prometheus settles the question: Is it or isn’t it an Alien film?
By now, everyone has heard of Fifty Shades of Grey, the Twilight fan fiction turned legitimate erotica. Penned by E.L. James, a a West London TV executive and mother of two, the book follows 21-year-old Anastasia Steele who falls for Christian Grey, the fiendishly rich and handsome sexual fetishist who plays Dominant to Ana's Submissive.
The well-reviewed S&M-filled book has become a literary phenomenon, selling "more print and eBook copies combined on Amazon.com than the top selling romance book sold in all of 2011," says Media Bistro. Additionally, Universal Pictures has already bought the movie rights.
Most popular initially as an eBook download, Fifty Shades of Grey has sinceexpanded into the paperback and—more recently—the audiobook market. Entertainment Weekly was the first to unveil an audio clip, explaining that now "there’s an even more discreet way to enjoy the salacious 'mommy porn' novel."
Read by Becca Battoe, the audio version is creating an entirely new Fifty Shades experience. Thus, we're extremely excited to announce that we now have the audiobooks and Playaways for all three entries in the Fifty Shades series. Now our auditory systems can join in on the naughty fun, too.
Written by Kirk Baird, film critic and Detroit Film Critics Society member
The Beatles changed music. And in a small way they also helped change movie animation with Yellow Submarine.
Directed by George Dunning, a Canadian illustrator who had also worked on The Beatles’ Saturday morning cartoon series for ABC, Yellow Submarine presented film animation as art—a mature expression of the popular children’s cartoons of the time, all grown-up and slightly surreal.
Its mix of acid-fueled psychedelia—a Peter Max stream-of-consciousness put to film—and Beatles songs made Yellow Submarine a critic and audience favorite when it released in 1968. After rights to the band’s music were cleared, Yellow Submarine came out on VHS nearly two decades later in 1987, but then went out of print. In 1999, Yellow Submarine made its DVD debut in a cleaned-up presentation that included the “Hey Bulldog” song segment from the European version of the film. The audio track was also remixed to Dolby 5.1, making it the best-sounding Yellow Submarine yet. The DVD then, too, went out of print.
With the rights to the movie having reverted to The Beatles and its Apple Corps label, Yellow Submarine now returns May 29 to DVD and for the first time on Blu-ray, looking and sounding better than ever before. The CD soundtrack is also reissuing on the same date.
As part of the restoration, Yellow Submarine was cleaned up by hand, frame by frame, for several months. A computer wasn’t used in the remastering process for fear it would alter the film’s rich and delicate hand-drawn art work. Additionally, the film was restored in 4K digital resolution, meaning it’s of the highest-quality resolution possible—even better than a high-definition television—for now and for years to come.
When released, the new DVD and Blu-ray version of Yellow Submarine will be the definitive version of the film, and the best way to experience this ground-breaking and trippy aural and visual feast.
As the Beatles might say, “All you need is love…and our newly remastered Yellow Submarine.”
Written by Kirk Baird, film critic and Detroit Film Critics Society member
The Iron Lady
Meryl Streep won her third Best Actress Oscar (out of 17 nominations) for her role as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Streep’s towering performance is dead-on; it’s not so much an impersonation as it is a well-researched and nuanced interpretation of the steadfast conservative British Prime Minister, both on the job and in her less steely moments at home.
Some may quibble with director Phyllida Lloyd’s narrative structure: building a film around a present-day Thatcher whose dementia conjures imagined conversations with her dead husband (Jim Broadbent, who steps out of Streep’s considerable shadow), while casually rummaging through milestones in her life to share via flashback. Conventional filmmaking flaws be damned; this is Streep’s movie all the way. And the greatest actress of her generation delivers with a magnificent turn.
Not to Miss Documentaries
German filmmaker Werner Herzog released two great documentaries in 2011: Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Into the Abyss. The latter, which releases today, is the better of the two. It's a politically balanced examination of capital punishment, focusing on two convicted murderers—one serving a life sentence, the other a death-row inmate only days before his execution—and the lives they affected.
Inspiration for Hugo
It’s wonderful to see tributes to pioneering filmmaker Georges Melies—first with Martin Scorsese’s Hugoand now with the limited edition Blu-ray of A Trip to the Moon Restored. You could make a movie about how Melies’ short film A Trip to the Moon, the first science-fiction movie, was painstakingly restored beginning in 1999 from a lost, hand-colored print discovered nearly two decades ago. And in fact, the filmmakers did just that, including a documentary detailing the restoration process, The Extraordinary Voyage, in this two-disc Blu-ray set.
Celebrate 1970s TV
Season 3 of Rod Serling’s Night Galleryoffered some of the best frights on TV and provided work for a young director named Steven Spielberg. Another new release, Logan’s Run: The Complete Series, takes the premise of the Michael York-Jenny Agutter 1976 film of 23rd Century fugitives from a doomed and dystopian city and (pun intended) runs with it.
Also, to get you primed for Dark Shadows’ big-screen treatment in May, the cult TV soap opera of the same name is being released in several DVD packages, including 25 collections as well as several best-of sets.
Written by Kirk Baird, film critic and Detroit Film Critics Society member
With the Wrath of the Titans hitting theaters last week, patrons' interest in Greek mythology may pique. Be sure to display these other great DVDs based on Greek mythology in your library.
Ulysses (1954): Based on Homer’s The Odyssey, Ulysses stars Kirk Douglas as the unlucky king and his doomed voyage as he tries to return home to his wife after the decade-long Trojan war.
Jason and the Argonauts (1963): Jason (Todd Armstrong) leads a perilous quest to find the legendary Golden Fleece, but the real star of the film is the special effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen.
Clash of the Titans (1981): Harryhausen co-produced this stop-motion effects extravaganza based on Greek hero Perseus (Harry Hamlin) and his battles with Medusa and other mythological creatures to save the girl, Princess Andromeda (Judi Bowker), from the giant Kraken. The film was remade in 2010.
Hercules (1997): Disney left the medieval world of castles and princesses in distress for this animated ancient Greece romp that focuses on a young Hercules as a god-turned-mortal looking for a heroic deed to restore his immortal powers. Features the voices of Tate Donovan, Danny DeVito, and James Woods.
Troy (2004): Brad Pitt is legendary warrior Achilles and Eric Bana his rival Hector in Wolfgang Peterson’s (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm) more flesh-and-blood take on the Trojan War—one that omits the gods and instead leaves mortals to their own fate.
Any we missed? What's your favorite Greek mythology tale?
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