Year:  2002
Genre:  Horror
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Kevin Zegers, Jesse James, Linda Purl, Charles Powell, Rachel Skarsten
Eye candy:  Skarsten
Director:  Lance W. Dreesen
Run time:  86 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Rachel Skarsten is a major piece of eye candy.  She is sensational, and a pretty good actress too.  Too bad she’s only in Fear of the Dark for about ten minutes.  Linda Purl and Charles Powell are decent too.  I think.  But they’re only in the movie for about ten minutes also.  The other 66 minutes of the film are just Kevin Zegers and Jesse James (no, not that Jesse James) being afraid of the dark.

     James is a 12-year-old boy who is terrified of the dark.  He knows there are things lurking there, things that want to hurt him and eat him and all that.  His brother, and the rest of his family, are skeptical.  Of course.  When his parents finally, for the first time in years, leave the house for the night, his older brother (Zegers) will discover that maybe those things in the dark are real after all.

     Of course, the one night when the parents leave, all worried about leaving their neurotic weirdo terrified-of-the-dark kid by himself with his brother, is the one night where there’s a giant storm and the lights all go out.  Wouldn’t you think that parents who are really, really worried about their kid being home without lights would rush home quickly in the event of a city-wide blackout?  Like, if my kid had an irrational and dangerous fear of bees, I would probably rush home if the killer bees finally showed up.  Probably.

     At any rate, Zegers and James are decent together, but they aren’t given much to do.  And Skarsten, Zegers’ girlfriend, is gone the whole time.  Of course, SHE comes to the rescue near the end of the movie – does SHE really care more than the parents?  Either way, she’s just there to provide the cop-out ending, wrap things up in a neat little package, and bring the whole thing to a close.  A close that could have come 60 minutes sooner.

Year:  2007
Genre:  Horror
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Richard Tyson, Kimberly J. Brown, Sarah Aldrich, Christopher Shyer, Trevor Duke, David Naughton
Cameo:  Clint Howard
Eye candy:  Aldrich, Brown, Robin Sydney (brief boobs), Sarah Smith (brief boobs), Jennifer Roa, Shannon Malone (much boob)
Director:  Lance W. Dreesen
Run time:  96 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     There are a few things worth mentioning, off the top, about Big Bad Wolf.  First, David Naughton makes a few brief appearances as the sheriff.  Naughton became famous for American Werewolf in London in 1981.  Obviously, he didn’t parlay that success into a long and successful career, since he is now reduced to cameos in awful, awful werewolf movies.  Also, Richard Tyson appears as the bad guy.  You may remember Tyson as the bad guy in Kindergarten Cop in 1990.  Obviously, he didn’t parlay that success into…well, you know the rest.  Oh, and Clint Howard has a two-minute cameo as well.

     So…there’s the positive stuff.  I could also suggest that the occasional boob is positive as well, but that’s just not the case.  See, this werewolf is chewing up all these people, and occasionally rips their clothes off first.  But he also rapes them.  This is supposed to be funny, as the werewolf cracks wise while…raping people.  It’s also supposed to be titillating, with the exposed boob and all.  But it isn’t funny, because the werewolf says nothing funny.  He just says “she’s not a virgin any more…hahahaha” and…we’re supposed to laugh because the werewolf’s talking?  While raping?  Why is that funny?  So with nothing funny in the scene, it’s just a rape.  Which makes it less than titillating as well.

     The werewolf is a mean, mean guy – he rapes and claws and eats people and generally does anything he can to be as gross as possible.  Like spilling guts and tearing off heads and so forth.  But as a person, he might be even worse.  Mitch is the ultimate Evil Stepfather, a wife-abusing, child-endangering whackjob who is willing to rape his stepson’s girlfriend – and this is when he’s in human form!  Wouldn’t it be more interesting if he were a nice guy as a person?  Then when it came time to kill him, it might be a moral dilemma of sorts. 

     As it is, it’s just a guy being awful.  For an entire movie.  An exploitative, gory-for-the-sake-of-gore, unpleasantly violent against women, unfunny attempt at comedy, virtually unwatchable movie.  Which comes out October 5th, along with four similarly tasteless, idiotic horror movies, from Alliance Films.

Year:  2010
Genre:  Comedy, Cartoon, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Trey Parker, Matt Stone
Creators:  Trey Parker, Matt Stone
Box set distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     South Park has done this before.  They have released The Cult of Cartman in box-set form, a collection of the best Cartman episodes.  That was likely a tough task – Cartman has had many brilliant moments over the course of the show.  Now, they do the same with Butters, the best character on the show (personal bias noted).  I think they likely grabbed all the Butters episodes and put them together on two discs.  He doesn’t have quite the oeuvre of Cartman.

     That being said, Cartman of course figures prominently in the Butters box.  One of the best episodes sees Cartman dressing up as a “robot” to get Butters to divulge his dirtiest secrets so Cartman can make fun of him at school.  But when Cartman discovers that Butters, in fact, has some damning evidence against Cartman, he’s forced to keep the charade going.  He can’t eat, can’t go to the bathroom, can’t do anything because he’s supposed to be a robot.  Hilarious.

     And such is the life of Leopold “Butters” Stotch.  Sometimes he’s the antagonist, when he dresses up as his alter-ego Professor Chaos and fails to destroy the world.  Most of the time though, Cartman is the antagonist who does despicable things to the mild-mannered, cheerful and loveable Butters.  Butters, who is eternally the optimist and so mild that he is mostly unaffected by things like his parents trying to kill him, or trying to sell him to Paris Hilton.  (The Paris Hilton episode is the cutest – with Butters dressed up as a little bear – but also the most disgusting…I won’t go into detail about that.)

     The box set comes with a bunch of Butters-related paraphenalia.  An “Inspector Butters” badge from the episode where the little guy catches his dad visiting bath houses.  A canceled cheque from Paris Hilton from the episode where she tries to buy him.  A pimp chain from the episode where Butters becomes a pimp.  A “manuscript” of The Poop That Took a Pee, the novel the boys wrote with the intention of getting it banned.  A newspaper clipping of the tap dancing accident that left eight people dead.  And a “what would Butters do” wrist band.  It comes out September 28th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

     Matt Damon stars in the next Clint Eastwood-directed movie, Hereafter.  Can’t wait!

Year:  2010
Genre:  Comic book, Action
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Mickey Rourke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jon Favreau, Sam Rockwell, Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, Gary Shandling, Paul Bettany
Cameos:  Christianne Amanpour, Bill O’Reilly, Stan Lee
Eye candy:  Paltrow, Johansson, Leslie Bibb, Kate Mara
Director:  Jon Favreau
Run time:  126 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Iron Man 2 works best when Robert Downey Jr. is NOT on screen.  When Iron Man is the worst character in your Iron Man movie, you have a problem.  In the first film, Tony Stark was fantastic – a sort of flawed superhero, a Van Wilder type who could get away with sleeping with every hot babe and ignoring bigwigs and officials on the strength of his charm alone.  Yes, he did bad things, but he was just a charming rogue and was therefore easily forgiven.

     In Iron Man 2, Tony Stark is now a jerk.  He’s Paris Hilton in a metal suit, a fame whore whose most carefree antics are still obnoxious and mean-spirited.  He’s also a drunk and a lout and is meanest to those closest to him.  I get the idea – he’s supposed to have become a boorish douche who has let fame go to his head, and he’s supposed to be worried because he’s dying.  And that gives him a chance at redemption in the final act.  That way, the movie has somewhere to GO, you see.

     The thing is, I disliked Tony Stark so much during the film that by the final act, I no longer cared about whether he found redemption.  Or whether he lived.  The cartoonish bad guys (Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke) are no better drawn than Stark in this second installment, but I still found myself rooting for them to put Iron Man out of my misery.  Flaws or not, I shouldn’t be rooting against the star of a comic book movie.

     That being said, there are lots of reasons to like the film.  It’s visually amazing, once again.  The only format in which to see an Iron Man movie is HD, so I highly recommend the Blu-Ray version out today from Paramount Home Entertainment.  Scarlett Johansson is sensational, and lovely, and totally kick-ass, and badly underused as a new minor character who will likely go on to become a much bigger one in some later sequel.  One that I really hope is more like the first one than like this one.

Year:  1996, 1997
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Action
Country:  Canada
Language:  English
Starring:  Cameron Daddo, Carrie Anne Moss, Christina Cox, Kevin Dobson, Jason Blicker, Chris P. Anson
Eye candy:  Moss, Cox
Producers:  Jay Firestone, Stephen Downing
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     The DVD cover of F/X: The Series Season One displays Carrie Anne Moss prominently.  Like she’s the star of the series.  As you can see from the picture I managed to dig up for this review, that is not the cover of this DVD.  That image has yet to reach the web for some reason.  Anyway, Carrie Anne Moss is not, really, the star of this show.  She just happens to be the biggest name to come out of it, with her work in The Matrix and Memento and all that coming later on.

     The real star of this show is Cameron Daddo, who plays a long-haired MacGyver type.  He’s a Hollywood special effects master who saves women in distress and helps the cops solve crimes through the use of makeup and explosions and other action-movie silliness.  The first disc in the Season One DVD set is the two-hour pilot, which is better than the rest of the season.  But it’s still darn silly, with cartoonish bad guys and even sillier premises.

     But there is something to be said for F/X.  Cameron Daddo is generic and average at best as the lead, but the supporting cast is solid.  Moss is terrific as an aspiring actress who helps out, and I’m a huge fan of Christina Cox, who plays the tough-chick assistant.  I don’t know if that makes Season One, out September 28th from Alliance Films, worth buying.  I think it at least makes it worth watching once.

Years:  2009, 2010
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Laurence Fishburne, George Eads, Eric Szmanda, Robert David Hall, Wallace Langham, Paul Guilfoyle, Marg Helgenberger, Liz Vassey
Eye candy: Helgenberger, Jorja Fox (recurring), Natalie Gulbis, Scout Taylor-Compton, tons of other Vegas-style hotties
Guest stars:  Rocco Mediate, Gary McCord, Duffy Waldorf, Nathan Kress
Creator:  Anthony E. Zuiker
Run time:  17 hours 22 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     There has been enough cast turnover on CSI to make it feel as though it’s sort of a different show than it used to be.  Sort of.  I mean George Eads is still there.  Doing stuff.  And Marg Helgenberger is still there.  Being crazy hot.  Other than that, most of the cast is fairly new.  Like Greg (Eric Szmanda) who is being given more and more to do with every passing season.  And Laurence Fishburne, who’s a doctor and stuff.  And…OK, that’s about it.  The episodes are still pretty much the same.  There’s some people who died.  And the investigators figure out how, and at whose hand.  And the next episode the same.

     In this case (Season 10, which comes out September 28th from Alliance Films), there is a new wrinkle thrown in now and again.  And again, and again, and again, and once more for good measure.  Now, there’s a serial killer who operates on his victims and does weird stuff with their insides and takes a piece and leaves a piece and so forth.  It would be OK if the Dr. Jekyll killer showed up once a season, like that serial killer who had the whole thing going with Grissom in the first few seasons.  But even in episodes where Dr. Jekyll doesn’t show up, he is being referenced.  Is THIS the work of the Dr. Jekyll killer?  Oh, no.  It isn’t.  Moving on…

     CSI has decided, much like every other show on TV and in the history of mankind, that each and every season must end with a cliffhanger, where the life of one of the cast members hangs in the balance.  I guess they assume we don’t read the tabloids between shows – we know when William Peterson is leaving and when Laurence Fishburne is staying before every season starts.  And if we don’t, the summer break has been so long that we no longer remember or care what happened (or is GOING to happen) to a particular character.  Or, at least, I don’t.  And when it comes to the DVD sets – one year apart – I really don’t expect to be holding my breath for a year.  I guess I could just watch the opening episode of Season Eleven on TV to find out what happens to Ray.  But I won’t.  Because I just don’t care.  I still like this show, but cliffhangers?  I don’t like it that much.

Year:  1978
Genre:  Action, Kung-fu
Country:  Hong Kong
Language:  Mandarin w/ English subtitles, English dubbing
Starring:  Kuo Chue, Chiang Sheng, Sun Chien, Lo Meng, Lu Feng, Chen Kuan-Tai, Johnny Wang, Philip Kwok Tsui, Jamie Luk, Pan Ping-Chang, Dick Wei
Director:  Chang Cheh
Run time:  109 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     You gotta love old-school kung fu.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  You don’t have to love it.  But you oughtta.  And I absolutely adore these movies.  The totally questionable morality, the bonkers plot ideas, the crazy fight scenes that are half cheesy and awkward, and half violent and amazing.  Return Of The Five Deadly Venoms is a terrific example of all that makes old-school kung-fu kick ass.  See, there are these four guys, all crippled by the same evil kung-fu master.  One has been blinded, one has been deafened, another has had his legs chopped off, and the fourth has been turned into a giggling idiot with no brain.  And maybe, with their forces combined, they can defeat the kung-fu superman!

     Things get off to a fantastic start.  In order to exact revenge for some unknown slight, three bad guys show up to do bad deeds.  Discovering that their intended target is not home, they decide to do serious harm to his family.  The exchange of dialogue goes something like this:

  “Cut off the wife’s legs and the son’s arms”

  “Okay.”

     And so it begins.  Now the wife has died from her injuries, missing legs and all, but the son survives and his missing arms are replaced with iron fists, making him even more powerful at kung-fu.  The experience has embittered both he and his father, the kung-fu master, become douchebags, tyrants in a small town.  Everyone is afraid of them, except for these four guys.  So they blind and deafen and amputate and lobotomize them.  Because they have become douchebags.

     Now, I know what you’re thinking.  Wait – if there’s only four of them, why the FIVE deadly venoms?  Where do they get the FIVE?  There are three main bad guys – the kung-fu master Chu Twin, his son Chu Cho Chang, and his right-hand man who wields a club on a chain like that young schoolgirl in Kill Bill.  So including them, that makes seven.  There is a sort of good-hearted bad guy who shows up near the end to fight the four heroes, but in any permutation that would still give us either four or eight.  The “Return” portion of Return of the Five Deadly Venoms makes little sense either, as this film has absolutely nothing to do (plot-wise) with the original Five Deadly Venoms.

     No, the only connection between the two is The Venom Mob, a group of actors from the Shaw Brothers studios in Hong Kong in the 70s and 80s who often performed together.  So the two movies have pretty much the same cast.  Which is fine, but why not give this movie another title entirely?  Well, they kind of did – one name for this movie is Crippled Avengers, a more apt title since it makes no obvious connection with a movie with which it has…no obvious connection. 

     That being said, I’ll make a comparison anyway.  Five Deadly Venoms is a superior film.  It’s funnier in a cheesy way.  It’s cheesier in a funny way.  The kung-fu itself is more interesting and exciting and better.  And there is a more cohesive plot (if such a thing is even possible in one of these films).  And since it’s a sequel in name only, and has nothing to do with the first film, there is no need to get both movies to be a completist.  However, there are merits to Return of the Five Deadly Venoms, mostly that the cast is cheesily terrific and the kung-fu is more hit than miss.  There are a couple of scenes involving iron rings that are as intricately choreographed as anything in early Jackie Chan movies.

     So it’s worth it.  It may be the weakest, so far, of the Dragon Dynasty Shaw Brothers re-releases on DVD from Alliance Films, but all of them have so far been worth while in some way.  The whole crippled-kung-fu-fighters bit was entirely overdone in the 70s and 80s, but FOUR of them, in one movie?  Awesome…

Year:  2006
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Directors:  Robert Altman, Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorcese, Robert Benton, Tim Burton, James Cameron, Chris Columbus, Wes Craven, Cameron Crowe, Frank Darabont, Jonathan Demme, Nora Ephron, Richard Donner, William Friedkin, Ron Howard, Terry Gilliam, Lawrence Kasdan, Spike Lee, Barry Levinson, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, David Lynch, Adrian Lyne, Garry Marshall, Penny Marshall, Sydney Pollack, Rob Reiner, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Brian Singer, Oliver Stone, Robert Zemeckis, David Zucker
Actors and Jerry Bruckheimer:  Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Beals, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Cruise, Ossie Davis, Robert Englund, Harrison Ford, Morgan Freeman, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Elliott Gould, Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Hopper, Michael Keaton, Leslie Nielsen, Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey, Roy Scheider, Wil Wheaton
Run time:  4 hours
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     On the second disc of Directors: Life Behind The Camera, Kevin Bacon is interviewed.  That means that THIS, more than A Few Good Men, more than Mystic River is THE movie to use to play “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”.  I’m not going to list all the participants here.  I have already done so above.  But just look at that list!  Is there an actor or director or wardrobe adviser in the entire world who hasn’t worked with one of those people?  I think the game now ought to be “two degrees of Kevin Bacon”, thanks entirely to this documentary.  That is, unless you play the game without including documentaries.  Or voices in animated movies.  Or some other crappy, obscure rule to make the game harder but less fun.  In which case, you are a party pooper.

     OK, on to the film itself, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon aside.  If you’ve ever thought about making a film, if you’ve ever thought about acting or holding a camera or even knowing a little more about the movies you watch, this documentary is invaluable.  It’s a bit of an effort – there are many menus.  In each one you have the option of playing “all directors” or one at a time.  I recommend “all directors” – even the ones I don’t much care for (Tony Scott, Adrian Lyne) have something really interesting to say.  They talk about their starts in the business, the actors and how they get a certain performance out of a certain person, their favourite movies and the relationship between a director and a script.  And they all have a totally different take.

     The actors are interesting also – they appear on the second disc, talking about the styles of the various directors.  DiCaprio talks about James Cameron and Titanic, for example.  And they all have interesting anecdotes.  I won’t divulge them all here, because I think you should watch this.  But Jennifer Beals tells a funny story about a young boy who was a body double for her in Flashdance, and had to shave his legs for the part, much to his embarassment.  Kevin Spacey sheds some light on the scene in The Usual Suspects where everyone cracks up during the police lineup.  Dustin Hoffman explains some of the inspiration for the lines in Rain Man.  Brad Pitt talks Thelma & Louise, the list goes on and on.

     And what an incredible list it is.  There are other movies, documentaries, where directors talk about their craft.  Recently I reviewed a terrific documentary about documentary film makers called Capturing Reality.  A couple of the participants in that movie could have been great in this one as well, particularly Werner Herzog, who has done some terrific feature films as well as documentaries.  But I wouldn’t dream of bemoaning the fact that he is missing, or that the notoriously reclusive Terrence Malick is missing – they’ve got just about everyone else! 

     Another great film about film is called A Personal Journey With Martin Scorcese Through American Movies.  This is one of the DVDs that made me absolutely excited about movies, that made me go out and buy some of the great American classics like High Sierra and The Bridges At Toko-Ri.  That might be the most interesting and watchable of all documentaries about directors and film.  And Scorcese (along with the hilarious Garry Marshall and the reticent Clint Eastwood) is one of the most entertaining and fascinating directors interviewed in Directors: Life Behind The Camera.

     At the other end of the scale is a movie I once picked up called Directed By John Ford, where we get to see the iconic Western director at his crusty, close-mouthed best.  “Why were so many of your movies shot in Monument Valley?”  “What a stupid question.  Shmalawsssns.”  There’s not much of interest in that one – unless you want to watch Ford be cranky.  Which I kind of do.  And there ARE interviews with John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart, which are FAR more informative than those with Ford himself, most of which consist of only seven or eight words.

     Directors: Life Behind The Camera is somewhere in the middle.  It’s very good, and incredibly full of information.  But it isn’t the kind of DVD I can’t stop watching, like the Scorcese one.  In fact, it often encouraged me to stop watching, because another menu would pop up and I would have to navigate around again.  Then again, it gets the best information and the best stories out of the very best the movie industry has to offer.  And that in itself makes Directors a DVD that is totally worthwhile.  There’s four hours of stuff here – think of it as a project in loving movies, one that you can absorb over the course of a few weeks, or a lifetime. 

Year:  2009
Genre:  Documentary, Political
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Director:  Jean Bodon
Run time:  58 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     Before a few days ago, I had never heard the name of Leon Blum.  This man was thrice the Prime Minister of France.  He was a leader in the Popular Front, a socialist movement that had great power in France before the second world war.  He was taken prisoner in World War II by the Nazis, and lived through the end of the war in the Buchenwald concentration camp.  He was Jewish.  And I had never heard his name until I got Leon Blum: For All Mankind on DVD from First Run Features.

     This is a man whose life ought to be celebrated.  Moreso than it already is, I guess.  I assume that the reason I didn’t know his name is that he is not celebrated enough.  Or maybe I have been reading all the wrong history books.  In a tight 58 minutes, director Jean Bodon has presented the man’s entire life, as described by a number of French historians and a very few surviving contemporaries.  It’s a fascinating look at the life of a fascinating man.  So watch it.

     That being said, you will get a little more out of the experience if you understand French.  The subtitles are short and concise, and they move the story along efficiently.  But they do leave out a lot of what the speaker is saying – for example, one of the stories is about one of Blum’s friends who was executed by the Nazis.  From the subtitles, that’s all the story you get.  But the person telling the story goes into more detail – the man was taken out into the woods and shot three times in his head as he exited his car.  Small details, I know.  But they do give the story more life.  And this is a story that deserves as much life as it can get.

Year:  1999
Genre:  Drama, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper, Mena Suvari, Scott Bakula, Sam Robards, Allison Janney, Peter Gallagher
Director:  Sam Mendes
Run time:  120 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     American Beauty was, of course, one of the great movies of the 90s.  It was funny, it was dark, and it was a terrific skewering of suburban malaise, creating unlikeable characters and then offering them a sort of redemption when they need it most.  It featured some of the great acting performances of the decade (Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Chris Cooper and Mena Suvari, specifically) and earned five major Oscars.  Best Picture, Director (Sam Mendes in his film debut), Screenplay, Actor (Spacey) and Cinematography.

     The key Oscar, when it comes to this new Blu-Ray Sapphire Series release, is the one for cinematography.  The “beauty” in American Beauty doesn’t refer only to the scene where Mena Suvari lies down under a barrage of rose petals.  Although that is certainly beautiful – enough that it makes the cover of the Blu-Ray.  Now I’m thinking about that scene…where was I?  Oh yeah.  Beauty.  The real beauty in this film comes from the cinematography, which makes every single camera shot a work of art.

     There is a chance that this could become annoying, or even nauseatingly obvious, as one of the characters (Wes Bentley with his videocamera) is always searching for beauty in everyday life, in the mundane details of suburbia, and so forth.  And the fact that the camera work in the movie does the same thing could be obnoxious.  But the focus on such details as perfectly-manicured lawns, impeccable clothing, spotless SUVs and the other banal suburban fixtures is what really makes American Beauty a near-perfect film.

     In the intervening years, Mendes has managed to perfect this same formula, and Revolutionary Road is an even better film.  But I’m hard pressed to think of a director who had a better debut than Mendes with American Beauty.  It truly is one of the most incredibly filmed movies of the 90s, and for that reason it gets even better on Blu-Ray.  The Sapphire Series Blu-Ray is released September 21st from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Year:  2004
Genre:  Documentary, Political
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Howard Zinn
Featuring:  Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Tom Hayden, Marian Wright Edelman, Matt Damon (narrator)
Directors:  Deb Ellis, Denis Mueller
Run time:  78 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     Howard Zinn was an absolutely fascinating man.  He lived a fascinating life, and just hearing about it is totally enthralling.  That’s You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, the commemorative edition of which comes out September 21st from First Run Features.  Zinn’s story is told through the words of his contemporaries, notably Noam Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent), and Daniel Ellsberg (The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers).  Yes, I’m putting movie titles in as though these intellectuals were movie stars.  To me, they are.

     There is one movie star involved with this project, and it’s Matt Damon who narrates.  The rest of the participants (novelist Alice Walker, activist Marian Wright Edelman, politician-activist Tom Hayden and many others) are just really smart people who appreciate the life of a really incredible man. 

     Zinn was many things in his life.  Activist, historian, author, playwright, professor, and now documentary subject.  You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train takes us from his early days as a bombardier in the second world war through his involvement in the civil rights uprising in the southern United States to his tenure at Boston University and his vehement anti-war stance, especially concerning Vietnam. 

     His early experiences in bomber aircraft, one of which was the early use of napalm dropped on a French town near the end of World War II, shaped his anti-war philosophy over the next fifty years.  After watching this documentary, I had to go out and buy a copy of A People’s History Of The United States.  Zinn’s book depicts the struggles of Native Americans, slaves, women, African-Americans and unionists, struggles that weren’t traditionally included in history text books at the time.  And perhaps still aren’t.

     I’m not going to summarize the entire documentary here.  I’m just going to say – watch it.  The best thing in the film is not the admiration you can feel from Chomsky, Ellsberg and others.  It’s listening to Zinn himself speak.  Old footage of him speaking at anti-Vietnam rallies is powerful stuff.  More recent footage of Zinn speaking out against the Iraq war may be even more powerful.  He says, “the question isn’t whether Iraq will be a democracy when the war ends, it’s whether America will be one”.  Wonderful.

Year:  1997
Genre:  Action, Spy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Marcel Iures, Alexander Baluev
Director:  Mimi Leder
Run time:  123 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The best thing I can say about The Peacemaker, which gets a Blu-Ray release on September 21st from Paramount Home Entertainment, is that it doesn’t feel at all like a two-hour movie.  It’s so fast-paced that the time really flies by.  But, like a marathon session at a Chinese buffet, the movie left me feeling decidedly empty when it was all over.  Moments after the final credits, I found it hard to remember details.  I suspect that within a few hours, I will have forgotten major plot points and much of the rest of the film.

     The Peacemaker is slick.  It’s fast-paced, it’s glossy and shiny, and it looks great on Blu-Ray.  With the exception of a few scenes (like an early one on a train and a few later ones) that don’t look great.  But it’s the kind of movie that has no soul.  The stars (George Clooney and Nicole Kidman) have no distinctive traits that mark them as human.  Every time they start to provide a window into their thoughts and feelings something blows up or a car chase erupts out of nowhere.

     At the beginning of the film, a very small effort is made to humanize both.  Kidman gets a bunch of flowers from (presumably) a lover who has wronged her in some way.  It never comes up again.  She shows a moment of indecision when she discovers she is in charge of the American operation dealing with the nuclear weapon that has just been set off.  She is overwhelmed and terrified, but it’s a fleeting moment and that emotion never returns.  Clooney is just presented as a charming, tough-guy plays-by-his-own-rules military commander.  That’s it as far as his depth goes.

     There are really two movies here – the nuclear detonation, the theft of nine nuclear weapons, and the mad scramble as the Americans attempt to hunt down the thieves.  Then there’s the one weapon that makes it out, gets into the U.S., and the mad scramble as the Americans attempt to hunt down the bomber before he blows up a piece of America.  The first part is more interesting – the second part is a little sad.  Like, of course an audience will care only if the bomb goes off in America, right?  Near some important landmarks, perhaps?

     The villain in the first part is a cartoon – a rogue Russian general (Alexander Baluev) who has stolen the nukes for profit and is presumably going to sell them to Iran.  He is bad.  You know he’s bad because he shoots his OWN men when they question him!  The villain in the second part (a terrific Marcel Iures) is a little more nuanced.  An attempt is made to humanize him – he’s a reasonable man driven to unreasonable measures after the murders of his wife and daughter…but really this is just a glossy half-assed attempt to make him identifiable and give him motivation.  But really – a reasonable guy who responds to the death of his family by murdering millions of others?

     The movie is as pretty, as charming and as soullessly dead-eyed as Nicole Kidman herself.  For the first time with this movie, I paid close attention to how Kidman looks in HD.  That flawless porcelain doll look she has couldn’t possibly be real, right?  There MUST be a few blemishes that show up in high definition!  Well…nope.  Kidman is as gorgeous, as perfect and as flawless as she looks the rest of the time.

     I realized that this is the problem I have with Nicole Kidman.  She is absolutely flawless.  She is perfectly symmetrical and beautiful in every way and maybe the prettiest woman alive.  I know what you’re saying – that’s a problem?  Well, yes.  Kidman looks more like a computer-generated image of “the perfect woman” than she does a real person.  She’s an artist’s rendering of a gorgeous movie star, a blemish-free goddess who has no need for airbrushing or touchups but has a desperate need for something that gives her character. 

     Kidman really is a terrific actress, but her appearance alone sucks some of the soul out of every role she plays.  I may be alone in thinking this.  I have a similar opinion of many things – I think Rush are an extremely talented band who play with remarkable technical precision.  But I can’t hear the soul in the music, and I lose interest fast.  Same goes for Glenn Gould, Yngwie Malmsteen and The Peacemaker.  Which gets one extra star for looking great on Blu-Ray (for the most part).

Year:  2010
Genre:  Comedy, Stand-up
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Eric Stolhanske
Run time:   78 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I sort of like the Broken Lizard movies.  Club Dread has a fantastic soundtrack and a few funny moments.  Super Troopers was mostly good, except when it was disgusting and forgot to be funny.  Beerfest and The Slammin’ Salmon had a few good scenes.  Except when they went for the low-brow gross-out and forgot to be funny.  Sadly, Broken Lizard Stands Up takes most of the gross-out humour and leaves out most of the funny.

     There must be someone keeping these guys in check when they make their movies.  Because judging by this stand-up set, all five of them think that just saying “masturbation” is funny enough.  Swear words and stories about weed and sex and masturbation.  Get it?  Or was there a joke to get at all?  I didn’t laugh too much here, and I spent a lot of time drifting away and not paying attention.

     Broken Lizard Stands Up comes out September 14th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  Watch it if you want, I guess.  But you’d be better off just renting Super Troopers again.

Year:  2010
Genre:  Kids, TV series, Music
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Laurie Berkner
Run time:  44 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Laurie Berkner sings in little music videos that appear between TV shows on Nickelodeon Jr.  That means all of her songs are aimed at really, really little kids.  Which means those songs are really, really repetitive.  From a strictly musical standpoint, there is little to recommend Let’s Hear It For The Laurie Berkner Band, the DVD out September 14th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  If you watch the video posted above (the second song on this disc), you will understand that both Victor and Freddie ate their food like good little boys…or good New Jersey mobsters…and then did so again, over and over and over and over.

     Kids like any repetitive, bouncy and friendly music.  They like the Wiggles.  And the Jonas Brothers.  And AC/DC.  So they’re bound to like Laurie Berkner who, like Suzanne Pinel and Sharon Lois and Bram before her is bouncy and cheerful and pleasant and totally kid-friendly.  And I’m sure that they can sit through 45 minutes of this, although parents may not be able to hold out that long.

     Here’s the thing though – I think there is another market for Laurie Berkner’s music, much like there’s another market for cartoonishly upbeat bonkers children’s fare such as Spongebob and Yo Gabba Gabba.  The stoners.  Not being a stoner myself of course, I don’t know for sure that this DVD would go perfectly with an afternoon of giddy weed-fueled shenanigans.  I don’t know whether the random children who appear, floating in the air, would produce giggles or wide-eyed wonder.  I don’t know if the repetitive, relentlessly upbeat songs would be mesmerizing.  But I suspect they would.

     I also think there is something else going on behind the music.  Although Laurie Berkner appears to be a chipper, effervescent Sunday-School-style goody goody, I suspect that once the cameras are off, a new Ms. Berkner appears.  I think that after spending the whole day playing Paul Anka For Kiddies, she drives home to the strains of Megadeth with the windows cranked low in her Escalade.  Then the Wu-Tang reverberates through her house as she downs shots of tequila and logs on to a fetish website.

     I have a healthy distrust of most children’s entertainers.  I suspect the worst of that pirate guy on Spongebob and the dude from Blue’s Clues, just as I did Pee wee Herman and Mister Rogers in their day.  But I trust Laurie Berkner.  I think she is probably a very warm-hearted and lovely person.  With a dark side.  One that comes through a tiny bit in songs like “Victor Vito” (seen above).  I think it’s possible that Victor Vito and Freddie Vasco are more than just characters in her song.  I think they may also be her bookies.