Home Video Releases for November 2000
Compiled by Eddie Cockrell, 3 November 2000
Written by Eddie Cockrell, Gregory Avery

Nitrate Online explores a sampling of the most noteworthy, provocative and satisfying video and/or DVD releases for the month of November 2000 (give or take a few weeks). Titles are followed by original country and year of release, as well as release date (if known). Street dates change constantly and often differ from format to format, so check with your favorite click or brick supplier for up-to-date information.

An FBI agent with a talent for disguise (Martin Lawrence) goes undercover as the title matriarch to snare an escaped killer (Terrence Howard) stalking a small Georgia town in pursuit of his girlfriend Sherry (Nia Long), the granddaughter of, uh, Big Momma. "They use Crisco for everything down here," gasps trusty sidekick John (Paul Giamatti), and that’s a good barometer for the level of sophistication employed by screenwriters Darryl Quarles and Don Rhymer in their pursuit of just about every lowest-common-denominator cross-dressing and bodily function joke ever floated in junior high school study hall. Others have pointed out the blatant similarities between this film and recent outings by Eddie Murphy (the Nutty Professor franchise) and Robin Williams (Mrs. Doubtfire), but this film has none of the admittedly marginal charms of those movies. Big Momma’s House isn’t bad, exactly, and it made a lot of money at the American box office this past summer. But it’s also achingly predictable, and those not yet convinced of Lawrence’s leading man caliber will not be persuaded by the evidence here on display (or not: he spends virtually the entire film buried in the rubbery prosthetics used for the role). The DVD edition, set to street November 28, has no special features.

Kind of a millennial spin on the old "Love American Style" TV show, Boys and Girls is the overly chatty saga of a mismatched couple who finally find each other after years of miscommunication and disagreement. The courting is done against the contemporary backdrop of UC Berkeley and environs; what little tension there is in the midst of carefree partying and self-absorbed whining has to do with the difference between definition and reinvention common to college kids as long as beer’s been brewed. These two points of view are manifested by analytical engineering student Ryan (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and visceral Latin major Jennifer (Claire Forlani, awkwardly miscast), who spend the bulk of the film wandering around picturesque San Francisco area real estate and debating these and other weighty issues. Ad infinitum. There’s a nicely surreal club dance sequence to remixes of "Stop the Rock" and "Car Wash" that blends the unreality and charm of the milieu in a way the picture as a whole can’t approach. What will future generations make of this spate of teen-oriented comedies? Will they have the same nostalgic value as, say a Frankie-and-Annette beach picture from the 1960s does now? Or a John Hughes movie (two of which are plugged here)? Hard to tell, but at the moment there’s a great deal of artifice and precious little spontaneity in either the glib screenplay of "The Drews" (Andrew Lowery and Andrew Miller) or the perfunctory direction of tube veteran Robert Iscove. American Pie’s Jason Biggs provides some forced comic support, and that’s Blair Witch victim Heather Donahue as the perky blonde blown off by Ryan at one of the interminable mixers that pepper the film. At the moment, Boys and Girls is available exclusively to rent on VHS; no DVD release date is in the pipeline.

Among the year’s most mischievous and engaging studio releases (for once "fun for the whole family" actually has meaning), Chicken Run marks the feature film debut of the crew at Bristol, England’s Aardman Animation after years of cult status via the Wallace & Gromit franchise and a string of Oscar-winning short films. In the chicken coop of Mr. And Mrs. Tweedy (voiced by Tony Hagarth and Miranda Richardson), a group of hens lead by the plucky Ginger (Julia Sawalha) scheme repeatedly to escape, only to be thwarted in their attempts. With the arrival of brash American rooster Rocky Rhodes (Mel Gibson), things begin to look up, although it is eventually their own pluck that leads to freedom. The spoofy script works for adults as well as children: the storyline provides for in-jokes referencing the veritable history o prison and escape pictures, from Stalag 17 and The Great Escape to the little-known Robert Aldrich thriller The Flight of the Phoenix. As with the majority of animated films, the distinctive stop-motion animation technique that is Aardman’s hallmark glows on DVD. DreamWorks’ features-packed disc includes two behind-the-scenes documentaries; an unexpectedly generous essay in the accompanying booklet; a commentary track with directors Peter Lord and Nick Park; an internet link to games, screensavers and the like; and a useless but delightful "Panic Button" that accesses a clip of the intrepid hens doing just that.

Walt Disney’s third animated feature, Fantasia surprised 1940 audiences by being nothing like the two celebrated works that had preceded it, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938) and Pinocchio (1940). A compendium of some of the world’s great musical pieces visualized by stirring -- if today somewhat primitive -- animation sequences, the film, which was originally called Concert Feature, is highlighted by the immortal "Sorcerer’s Apprentice" sequence in which Mickey Mouse learns the wisdom of avoiding forces beyond his control. Unfortunately, Fantasia was a flop with audiences for a number of reasons, not the least of which was a general reaction of pretentiousness that greeted this one-of-a-kind movie. Retaining the whimsical Mickey Mouse passage, Disney’s nephew Roy has commissioned new sequences (something his uncle had planned all along until marketplace hostility forced him back to more commercial entertainment) to create a movie that at once duplicate’s the original’s sense of wonder and mimics the very pretentiousness that sank it. Sequences include visualizations of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Stravinsky’s "Firebird Suite", Respighi’s "The Pines of Rome" and more; as with the original, these are punctuated by ill-advised guest host sequences featuring Steve Martin, Bette Midler, James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury and others. Fantasia/2000 was first released in 1999 as an IMAX attraction, again expanding on Uncle Walt’s then-groundbreaking concept of a primitive type of surround sound that theater owners were reluctant to install. A 35mm run followed, and now both versions are available in individual tape and DVD editions. For the truly enchanted, Disney also offers "The Fantasia Anthology," an exhaustive three-disc set that features more deleted sequences, conceptual reconstructions and behind-the-scenes information than can be listed here. As magnificent as the package is, fans may find themselves returning over and over again to Mickey and his marching broomsticks, among the most enduring passages in the Disney legacy.

Russell Crowe as a general in the army of the Roman Empire who falls into disfavor with the new emperor (Joaquin Phoenix), is sold into slavery, and winds up a popular hero in the colosseum games. Part Spartacus, and with a lot of The Fall of the Roman Empire thrown in (Phoenix is a younger version of Christopher Plummer in the latter film, and Richard Harris turns up as an older version of Alec Guinness' Marcus Aurelius), plus some nasty digitally-created tigers and more of that jittery camera stuff that Ridley Scott used earlier in G.I. Jane to evoke excitement during the action scenes. (Instead, it makes you want to see if your contact lenses are in correctly.) Crowe, however, emerges as a genuine screen hero---dignified, powerful, yet with a sense of innate decency; Phoenix turns the story's decadent emperor into a not-unsympathetic personage; and, as a traveling merchant specializing in the purchase and training of gladiator material, Oliver Reed, in his last screen performance, is simply terrific. The VHS tape is priced to rent, while the feature-laden 2-disc DVD edition sports 25 minutes of deleted scenes, the HBO production featurette, commentary by Scott (along with editor Pietro Scalia and cinematographer John Mathieson), and even The Learning Channel’s special "The Bloodsport of a Gladiator."

So tiresome, it's hard to even want to recall it. The first part is Notorious redux, with Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt coercing a safecracker and thief (Thandie Newton, very appealing) into resuming a romance with a renegade I.M.F. agent (the incredibly unappealing Dougray Scott), who has swiped a super-virus, and its antidote, to wreak the usual world-havoc stuff. The film's second half involves explosions, shootouts, birds taking wing, people flying through the air while choral sounds are heard on the soundtrack, an incredibly protracted chase, and, finally, an even more protracted physical fight in which one suddenly realizes that you have been reduced to watching two guys hammering away at each other again and again and again. The cleverness and stealth that made the original "Mission: Impossible" T.V. series so popular to begin with (half the interest was in watching how the I.M.F. agents were able to achieve their objectives without raising any suspicions) is gone. And there's nothing here that comes anywhere close to director John Woo's earlier films, such as A Better Tomorrow and (arguably his masterpiece) Bullet in the Head, in which the action was driven by the highly affecting human elements in their stories. Woo and screenwriter Robert Towne, to put it mildly, seem to have lost sight of that with this picture. While the VHS edition is priced to rent, the feature-laden DVD includes exclusive interviews with key cast and crew, an alternate title sequence, that "MTV Movie Awards" spoof, Woo’s commentary track and the Metallica video for "I Disappear."

Water, water everywhere. Wolfgang Petersen's film of the Sebastian Junger book stars George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg as two Massachusetts fishermen who turn their boat straight into the biggest storm to hit the Eastern seaboard in years. One feels, while watching it, the film trying, and just missing, hitting the emotional heights of a Herman Melville or Joseph Conrad saga, but the picture nonetheless has many stirring, and harrowing, scenes, and Clooney's performance finally establishes him as a bona-fide Movie Star (which he deserves, and which makes one even more anticipatory to see him in the Coen brothers' new film, O Brother Where Art Thou?, later this year). The DVD features commentary from Petersen (who also made Das Boot), Junger, and other technical staff; HBO’s "First Look" documentary on the production; interviews with various Gloucester fishermen; and a fascinating look at composer James Horner’s scoring process (although the overwrought music is perhaps the film’s most serious miscalculation).

In 1990, 13 years after getting pummeled in the ring, retired boxer Arturo Ortega (Jimmy Smits in a bad hairpiece) cajoles and bullies his three sons into the ring as "The Fighting Ortegas," only to alienate everyone around him as the years pass with his exasperatingly single-minded determination. A resolutely strident affair, Price of Glory remains too doggedly serious to be taken seriously. This is a pity, for debuting feature director Carlos Avila has made a number of short films of distinction, including the provocative and distinctive Distant Water (1991) and La Carpa (1992). His chief liability here is Smits, one of those fine television actors who have yet to project their magic on the big screen. Alternately charming and screeching, Smits’ very presence is too shallow for the complexities demanded by the role, and his mood swings project the kind of emotional gear-grinding that gives the entire enterprise the air of a made-for-TV movie. A close-cropped Jon Seda, late of the sorely missed "Homicide: Life on the Streets" television program -- and a former New Jersey Golden Gloves boxer himself -- fares better as the eldest Ortega offspring Sonny, and the generational tensions between the men represent the story at its best (Avila’s short films also deal with these issues). Comedian Paul Rodriguez pops up in support, and a cigar-chomping Ron (Alien Resurrection) Perlman is a thuggish promoter who manages to come across as more practical and rational than the hotheaded Arturo himself. This is emblematic of the film’s fatal lack of emotional balance, a situation that will undoubtedly be remedied once Avila finds a script worthy of his obvious talent. The DVD edition features deleted scenes and a commentary track from the director.

Fifteen years after the destruction of Earth at the hands of the evil Drej race, young hotshot Cale (Matt Damon) learns that the father he thought had abandoned him actually left the key to humanity’s future in his hands. Animation veteran Don Bluth’s entry into the space race, Titan A.E. smushes bits of Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey and just about every other futuristic film you can think of into a visually arresting yet dramatically predictable stew. And while the vocal presence of Damon, Drew Barrymore and a hip soundtrack suggests a movie skewed at a younger audience than usual for the genre, that target crowd can’t be expected to fully appreciate Bluth and Co,’s genuinely interesting mixture of hand-drawn animation and 3-D CGI work. At it’s best the film connects to the casually anarchic and empowering spirit of Robert Heinlein’s most enduring juvenile novels -- updated to reflect cureent trends, fashions and slangs -- while at it’s worst that updating results in often painful dialogue ("how’s it floatin’?") and an overreliance on the aforementioned predictability. Once again, however, it’s DVD to the rescue, as the Fox edition has no less than three soundtrack options (DTS, Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0); a commentary track with Bluth and co-director Gary Goldman; the 2-minute kid-targeted "Quest for Titan" featurette; four deleted scenes; the Lit music video for "Over My Head" trailers and TV spots; and, last but not least, a stills gallery with around 100 conceptual drawings, sketches and matte paintings from the movie’s gestation.

Bryan Singer's film, based on the highly popular comic-book series, may not have been the whammo-blammo movie of the 2000 summer season, but it's certainly more watchable than a lot of the other films that came out. Hugh Jackman (in an excellent performance) and Anna Paquin are drawn to an academy run by Patrick Stewart's Dr. Xavier, who has been both sheltering the "mutants" that the U.S. government has been seeking to legislate against, and enable them to use their unusual powers -- whether it be the ability to move objects paranormally, or summon the elements of the earth and sky -- in a constructive way. On the other side is Xavier's nemesis, Magneto (played by no less than Ian McKellan), who wants to level the controversy by making everyone "mutants". (Watch out for what he does to Bruce Davison's antagonistic U.S. senator.) The film delivers on action and excitement, but it also does something else -- take a premise that could have looked totally phony on the screen and make it believable. One of the few movies that you would actually like to see a sequel to. The VHS tape is priced to sell (read: cheap), and the DVD includes deleted scenes, Jackman’s screen test for Wolverine, excerpts from Singer’s interview with Charlie Rose, a still photo gallery, TV spots and a featurette called "The Mutant Watch."

Beyond the A List

In the early days of 1561, explorer Gonzalo Pizarro sends an advance team up the Amazon River in Peru. Although lead by one man, his second in command, the quite mad Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) convinces the men to forge onwards even as they’re picked off one by one at the hands of the natives. Over and above the inherent condemnation of colonialism, the film itself is a testament to the tenacity and vision of director Werner Herzog and his cast and crew. The first of the filmmaker’s one-of-a-kind movies to attract international attention, Aguirre remains today an apt metaphor for his own yearning to achieve the unachievable, and the maniacal zeal with which he went about the art of moviemaking. Although a notable step up from the Laserdisc pressing of the film, Anchor Bay’s new DVD is also presented in the dreaded pan-and-scan format (that is, a full-frame presentation of a film not shot that way), albeit with colors that look more vivid and a cleaner print overall. Regardless, it’s great to have this pivotal work in Herzog’s career available in the format. Two other recent releases of interest include Herzog’s recent documentary about working with Kinski, called My Best Fiend (United Kingdom/Germany/Finland/USA, 2000, August 15); and Anchor Bay’s release of the final collaboration between the two men, the derivative yet riveting Cobra Verde.

Before Diana Rigg's Emma Peel, there was Honor Blackman's Cathy Gale (Mrs.), who, from 1962 to 1964, who showed that a woman can throw aggressive malefactors with a mean judo move while still maintaining a haute couture look (Including black leather outfits that could be seen as precursors to Mrs. Peel's famous jumpsuit). Blackman appeared opposite Patrick Macnee's John Steed in these early black-and-white episodes, which also featured the music of superb jazz musician and composer John Dankworth, and they have rarely been seen since their initial broadcast; A&E gave them a couple of showings in the Eighties, and they are now making their first appearance on home video. Taped "live" in the studio (which accounted for their irregular running times, a stickler for syndication programming), they lean a bit more towards the straight-forward espionage and thriller side, but still have some of the teasingly bizarre story elements that would come more to the fore when the show changed producers and brought on Diana Rigg (and changed their format over from videotape to film). Honor Blackman then departed -- to play Pussy Galore, opposite Sean Connery's James Bond, in the film version of Ian Fleming's novel Goldfinger. The VHS editions are three-tape sets, while the DVD configuration finds each edition on two discs.

Although routinely considered among the very best American movies ever made, the particulars behind the inspiration for and making of Citizen Kane ran the danger of becoming lost in the mists of time for the average moviegoer -- that is, until the making of the incisive and engrossing The Battle Over Citizen Kane. The film, newly released by WGBH Boston Video, charts the mercurial rise of Welles the wunderkind and the battles he faced making a movie that at the time was a thinly-veiled and potentially incendiary biography of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. Directors Thomas Lennon and Michael Epstein use a wealth of material to make visually clear what most buffs already know: the fictional Charles Foster Kane is as much, if not more, a big-screen embodiment of Welles and his operatic appetites as a ringing condemnation of Hearst and his shady practices. Newcomers to the world of precocious Wellesian genius are strongly encouraged to view not only Citizen Kane (a DVD of which is promised in 2001) but the newly-restored Touch of Evil as well (see below). Of less urgency but equally interesting is the recent cable film RKO 271, a fictionalized version of the film’s gestation and production. The full-frame, bare-bones DVD edition does manage to squeeze in a jarring commercial for Scot’s Lawn Fertilizer; the company sponsored the original airing of the program and were repaid via this spot.

In a bucolic small American town, inquisitive teenager Steve (Steve McQueen, billed in the credits as "Steven") takes charge and defies the cynical local cops when a mutant lump of goo threatens his very way of life. One of the very few -- if not the only -- 1950s horror/slash monster movies to take the side of the young, The Blob is a surpisingly craftsmanlike thriller that loses dramatic steam as it goes along but preserves the edgy, improvisational style (and piercing blue eyes) that subsequently made McQueen a star. Twenty-seven at the time, he plays 17 with a convincing blend of awkwardness and courage. The new DVD from The Criterion Collection is a stunner, restoring the film via a widescreen digital transfer to a previously un-hinted-at glory. Feature include a detailed booklet (with accompanying poster); audio commentaries from producer Jack H. Harris in conversation with film historian Bruce Eder and director Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. with actor Robert "Tony" Fields; and a range of "Blobobilia" (did you know the Italian title is Fluido Mortale?) from collector Wes Shanks.

On December 31, 1999, Jesus Christ (Martin Donovan) arrives at Kennedy Airport in New York with assistant Magdalena (P.J. Harvey) in tow. Intent on initiating Armageddon, he has second thoughts after doing battle with the Devil (Thomas Jay Ryan, star of Henry Fool) and observing the advances in technology and communications. "I think aesthetics and economics have a lot to do with each other and I see no reason for that to be a drag," Hal Hartley says of The Book of Life, his drolly funny and pithy (sixty-three minutes) digitally-shot contribution to the "Year 2000 Seen By…" series commissioned by a French production company (the films screened extensively on the 1999 festival circuit). Utilizing material he’d researched but ultimately discarded for a play about Christian Millennialists, Hartley "welcomed the opportunity to render an image of Christ that related a little bit more to my own reading of the New Testament. To put it simply, whoever that man is they’re describing in those pages, he does not seem like a vengeful person." Also available as separate tapes and DVD’s in the "Year 2000 Seen By…" series is Tsai Ming-liang’s excellent Taiwanese feature The Hole as well as five additional titles from all over the world: Life on Earth, The Wall, My First Night, Tamas and Juli and The "Sanguinaires."  

There are those who feel director David Lean’s masterpiece is the sweeping Lawrence of Arabia, while others opt for the opulent historical romance of Dr. Zhivago. But for sheer thrills there’s no topping the heroism and veracity of The Bridge on the River Kwai; Hollywood agreed, bestowing seven Oscars on the film, including Best Picture, in 1957. During World War II, the by-the-book Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness, who won the Best Actor Oscar for the role) jousts with the commandant (Sessue Hayakawa) of his sun-baked prison camp (Ceylon subbing for Burma) while blindly building a bridge for the Japanese that’s been targeted for destruction by a Yank operative and former prisoner (William Holden). Made well before computer-generated special effects -- when getting this kind of footage required dragging mammoth machines into humid jungles -- the film is a clear and crisp throwback to old-fashioned filmmaking that will open the eyes of those accustomed to CGI derring-do. The Bridge on the River Kwai is available as a single-disc DVD, but the smart collector will want to spring for the sturdily designed two-disc "Exclusive Limited Edition" (it’s slightly thicker, with a faux-bamboo cover motif), which supplements the film with a slew of special features that include two enthralling making-of featurettes; an appreciation by filmmaker and script doctor extraordinaire John Milius (no slouch in the adventure department himself, having helmed The Wind and the Lion and written Apocalypse Now); various photo galleries and talent files and the like; and, of perhaps the greatest value, a 12-page booklet that incorporates the obligatory scene selection list with the complete text from the brochure distributed during the film’s initial run. Columbia TriStar is to be commended for a terrific transfer and solid packaging of David Lean’s first truly great film and a true adventure classic.

Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, who played George and Joy Adamson in the 1966 film Born Free and were married in real life, play themselves in this 1969 film, where they return to Kenya to housesit for a friend and end up adopted, whether they like it or not, by a trio of elephants. Travers then turns to the real George Adamson, whom he had portrayed in Born Free, for advise. Travers co-wrote the original screenplay with Born Free director James Hill, who also directed this film, which is imbued with a genuine warmth towards the country and its wildlife. The filmmakers couldn't have known it at the time, but the scenes of elephants, cheetahs, ostriches, rhinoceros, giraffes and other animals roaming across the wilds were caught at the brink before vanishing forever, the result of two-thirds of the African continent plunging into some form of political or military conflict over the next thirty years. The tunes written for the film by Bert Kaempfert should sound familiar: they became a hit at the time of the film's release and would be recycled for years afterwards. Anchor Bay’s fullscreen DVD presentation includes a theatrical trailer.

A triumph of genre storytelling in the service of social criticism, the noir-ish Brazilian thriller Foreign Land -- shot in a stark black and white reminiscent of the 1960s Cinema Nuovo spirit in Brazil -- takes as its jumping off point the economic plan implemented in 1990 by newly-elected president Fernando Collor. Conceived to combat economic stagnation following 30 years of military dictactorship, the confiscation of each and every personal savings account had a disastrous side effect: in excess of 800,000 young Brazilians left or planned to leave to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Young actor Paco (Fernando Pinto) lives in Sao Paolo and dreams of getting out at any price, while Alex (Fernanda Torres) struggles as a waitress in Lisbon. Their love story is a stunning dramatic metaphor for a country in the throes of racism, cultural disparity and a yearning for security and identity. A cautionary tale for the disaffected everywhere, Foreign Land was among the most striking feature filmmaking debuts of 1995 for its directors, Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas -- the former of whom went on to make the much-lauded 1998 drama Central Station.

As a director-for-hire, Michael Apted did the kind of skillful job at the helm of the latest James Bond adventure, The World is Not Enough you’d expect from a filmmaker with thirty feature film and documentary credits to his name (including Coal Miner’s Daughter, Bring on the Night, Nell and Gorky Park -- the last due on DVD via MGM in December). But there’s another franchise just as old that Apted’s been working on since the very beginning: the legendary "Up" films, which have been charting the success and failures of a group of socially diverse British children at seven-year intervals since 1962. Fans of the series (28 Up and 35 Up are available on video with some effort) will hang on every word -- is Tony still a jockey? Has Suzy found peace after a troubled childhood? And what became of willful outcast Neil? -- yet the extraordinarily intimate footage spanning thirty-five years and the intuitive editing of it will thrust newcomers immediately into the phenomenal ongoing drama inherent in each of these "average" lives (there’s even a book commemorating the series). The cumulative effect is nothing short of stunning, with more than a few surprises along the way.

Long known as the line of cultural demarcation between a perhaps ephemeral 1960s innocence and the weary cynicism that accompanied rock and roll into the 1970s, what is striking about Gimme Shelter three decades after the 1969 Rolling Stones tour that it documents, a tour which culminated in the violent and chaotic Altamont Speedway show in which a gun-waving spectator was stabbed to death by the Hell’s Angels hired as security for the event, is its detail: initially hired to film the Madison Square Garden show that opens the film, David and Albert Maysles followed the band to Alabama as they worked on the pivotal "Sticky Fingers" album and observed the chaos -- both offstage and on -- that marked the Altamont event, framing the performance footage with sequences of Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts watching the film on an editing table. The exhaustive coverage (a young George Lucas is credited as one of the many cameramen) and the Maysles’ groundbreaking approach to unobtrusive observation, combined with the Stones at the dawn of their scruffy, preening peak -- showcased by a muscular Dolby Digital remix -- ensures Gimme Shelter a permanent place in the documentary pantheon. And the superlative Criterion Collection DVD issue of the film is a virtual film school in a box, offering as it does a fascinating restoration demonstration; 22 minutes of previously unseen footage (including an impromptu backstage acoustic jam between Jagger and Ike Turner during which Tina makes fun of Mick’s hair in an old photograph); a collection of printed essays in a whopping 44-page booklet; commentary from Albert Maysles and co-director Charlotte Zwerin, an Altamont stills gallery and much more. Would that every DVD release received a quarter of the attention lavished on this essential pressing of Gimme Shelter.

Richard Dutcher's film, about L.D.S. missionaries serving in Los Angeles, turned out to be the Little Film That Could, drawing audiences across the country well after many other summer Hollywood offerings had folded their tents and stole away. (His next film: a murder mystery set in a small town.) The only picture I saw this year where I suddenly realized, after the closing credits had rolled, that there was no sex, violence, nudity or profanity in it (about as bad as the language gets is when one character exclaims in surprise, "Oh,... golly."); and Dutcher's portrayal of Elder Dalton, the man who acts as mentor, friend, and occasional disciplinarian to the young men under his charge, is still one of the best performances of the year. Available on VHS and DVD.

Kino Video continues its resolutely eclectic and invaluable slate of video and DVD releases with two prime examples of Italy’s pre-World War I cinematic strength: the epic. In The Last Days of Pompeii, director Mario Caserini adapts Edward Bulwer’s classic novel into a sweeping tapestry of the doomed souls living in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. By comparison with Caserini’s exhaustively detailed yet static tableaux (a fairly common approach to silent filmmaking that emphasized the fixed, proscenium nature of staged drama), Giovani Pastore’s Cabiria, in which the title teenager is separated from her parents during the Punic Wars in the Third century B.C. (the film was shot on location in North Africa, Sicily and the Italian Alps), relies on the still-nascent mobile camera evident in its opening scene. Each film features elaborate special effects which will be a revelation to most film buffs, as well as enclosed liner notes by New York University professor and film scholar Charles Affron. Nothing less than an early missing link to such elaborate costume dramas as Spartacus and The Greatest Story Ever Told, these revelatory works will be required viewing in film courses and remain entertaining to the casual viewer even today.

During the summer of 1968, television audiences who were familiar with seeing Patrick McGoohan in the no-nonsense action series "Secret Agent" suddenly found themselves watching what appeared to be the same character in an altogether different setting: a rather rococo seaside town everyone called "the Village" (actually, the British coastal town of Portmeirion, a writer's retreat), where everyone was called by a number instead of a name and were accountable to someone named "Number Two," who, in turn, answered to "Number One." Everyone there called McGoohan "Number Six," But who was "Number One"? And why did the person who was "Number Two" keep changing? And why was "Number Two" so keen on learning why "Number Six" had abruptly quit the secret service (sort of like McGoohan suddenly leaving "Secret Agent")? He refuses to tell him -- he doesn't have to tell them -- but the muckety-mucks in charge of "the Village" use ways and means, large and small, and elaborate scenarios (including an escape to London and even, at one point, having "Number Six" turn up as a gunslinger in a frontier Western town) to make him yield. Appearing in the U.S. as a summer replacement series for Jackie Gleason's Saturday night show on CBS, the series was envisioned by McGoohan as something that people wouldn't just sit back and watch, but would actually think about (or, McGoohan has even said on some occasions, make them "angry"). It was also envisioned to run for a set sixteen episodes (long before the term "mini-series" was even imagined), with a two-part conclusion that McGoohan himself wrote and directed a chunk of (and the first part of which is brilliantly played by him and Leo McKern, the one actor who appeared as "Number Two" most often on the series). "The Prisoner" addressed themes of individuality, conformity, anarchy, psychological warfare, subversion of the norm, pacifism, violence, questioning authority, and submitting to limits imposed by society (there is a system in place to ensure that there's no escape from "the Village").

In short, the series did everything that you weren't supposed to do on prime-time television at the time, where everyone was supposed to play by a set number of rules, placate the audience, especially placate the sponsors, and never do anything that would make the viewer change the channel. Here was a series that was not only superficially bizarre, but wouldn't yield its "answers" all to easily (although, of course, the answers to the series' "questions" are all laid out on view for anyone who can see them). "The Prisoner" is finally making its debut on DVD, three episodes at a time, and, before screenwriter-turned-director Christopher McQuarrie's movie remake hits the screen, they are definitely worth having a look at. Many people were outright indignant that McGoohan, a popular star, would do such a thing as "The Prisoner." Wasn't he happy just doing bang-bang, boom-boom stuff on "Secret Agent," like a lot of other actors? But while "Secret Agent" has faded, like a lot of other things that made up the secret agent craze in the 1960s, "The Prisoner" continues to shine with its own, tantalizing light. By the way, McGoohan has said that the most important episodes to keep an eye on are episodes one, two, four, eight, nine, sixteen, and seventeen. Be seeing you. The first set features episodes one, four and eight on three VHS tapes or a single DVD, while the second set includes episodes eleven, two and three with the "bonus" of episode six on three VHS tapes or two DVD discs. Why they are in this order I don’t know. Both sets also have original promo spots for the show (with McGoohan himself doing the voiceovers) and galleries of stills.

Monte Hellman made these two low-budget Westerns back-to-back over a six-week period in the mid-Sixties, using much the same cast and crew for each. They then became exceedingly difficult to see, and acquired a considerable word-of-mouth reputation before they were finally released on second-and-third-rate video in the Eighties. The first film concerns two men (Warren Oates and Cameron Mitchell) who are fleeing a lynch party, eventually climbing up a mountain and taking a brief respite in a small cabin found there; the second concerns three men (Oates, Will Hutchins, and a young actor named Jack Nicholson) who agree to help a woman (Millie Perkins) chase down a murderer, with disastrous results. The films are of interest to see Nicholson, who also produced both films with Hellman and wrote the screenplay for Whirlwind (Adrien Joyce, who wrote Five Easy Pieces, wrote the script for The Shooting), in his pre-Easy Rider period, and to see Warren Oates, one of the best actors ever to work on the American screen. (He would give an indisputably great performance in Hellman's 1971 film Two-Lane Blacktop -- itself long unavailable but now back in print.) But be advised: the films will either strike you as either minimalist classics, or as the equivalent of watching paint drying on a wall.

Nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1997 (the award went to the Dutch thriller Character) and awarded prizes at festivals in Berlin and Chicago, Secrets of the Heart is the incisive yet mournful story of young Javi (Andoni Erberu), whose adolescence in the early 1960s Spanish farming village is fraught with emotional upheaval. Javi and his older brother Juan (Alvaro Nagore) have lost their father to a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and their uncle (Carmelo Gomez) has somewhat tenuously assumed the duties of father and husband to their mother (Sylvia Munt). When Javi hears them together in bed and is told by Juan the noises belong to his father’s ghost, the boy equates the sounds to those he hears at an abandoned house near the home of the maiden aunts to whom they’re sent. As Javi struggles to absorb these changes in his life and the mysteries of the world around him and the adults who inhabit it, he learns about the complex webs that humans are capable of weaving. Director Montxo Armendariz understands not only the delicacy of his material but the power of his young actor’s face, and the film is never better than when Javier Aguirresarobe’s camera lingers on Javi as he observes a spider’s nest in the sinister basement -- itself a low-key yet intense metaphor for his confusion. New Yorker’s letterboxed video has clear, sharp subtitles, clarity presumably shared by the bare-bones DVD edition.

Howlingly funny, this fast-paced, penetrating documentary by the folks behind Trekkies follows one of the interviewees from that film, the engagingly eccentric Richard Kronfeld, from his Minnesota home to Roswell, New Mexico (home to the largest mozzarella cheese factory in the world) for the town’s fiftieth anniversary celebration of the UFO that supposedly crashed in the nearby desert in 1947 (he also wants to be abducted). Wandering around the UFO Encounter, he meets intergalactic belly dancers, Native American spiritualist sweatlodge artists and various extraterrestrial theorists and abductees, including author Whitley Streiber. Along the way Kronfeld gets an alien haircut, goes to a buffet in the hangar where the aliens were stored (the twenty-five-dollar-a-plate price is too steep so he just has water) and attends the premiere of the Roswell Community Little Theatre’s production of "Roswell, The Musical." He uses his deadpan seriousness to coax equally serious responses from the merchants, believers and assorted hangers-on at the event -- all to great comic effect. At once mocking and loving, Six Days in Roswell has a unique and engaging voice. The Synapse Films DVD has a production featurette, deleted scenes and commentary from Kronfeld, producer Roger Nygard and director Timothy B. Johnson. Beatnik Home Entertainment, the company that distributes the video edition, has an eclectic slate of recent releases that includes the hour-long documentaries A Hole in the Head ("don’t try this at home," begins this often gory history of the title medical procedure called trepanation); Escapes from Alcatraz: The True Stories (selected profiles of the thirty-four men who managed to flee the rock); the more mainstream Secrets of the Wine Country (the triumphs of the Napa Valley vintners); and Urine: Good Health, which reveals the medicinal value of ingesting…well, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Who says specialty distributors are an endangered breed?

Monte Hellman made these two low-budget Westerns back-to-back over a six-week period in the mid-Sixties, using much the same cast and crew for each. They then became exceedingly difficult to see, and acquired a considerable word-of-mouth reputation before they were finally released on second-and-third-rate video in the Eighties. The first film concerns two men (Warren Oates and Cameron Mitchell) who are fleeing a lynch party, eventually climbing up a mountain and taking a brief respite in a small cabin found there; the second concerns three men (Oates, Will Hutchins, and a young actor named Jack Nicholson) who agree to help a woman (Millie Perkins) chase down a murderer, with disastrous results. The films are of interest to see Nicholson, who also produced both films with Hellman and wrote the screenplay for Whirlwind (Adrien Joyce, who wrote Five Easy Pieces, wrote the script for The Shooting), in his pre-Easy Rider period, and to see Warren Oates, one of the best actors ever to work on the American screen. (He would give an indisputably great performance in Hellman's 1971 film Two-Lane Blacktop -- itself long unavailable but now back in print.) But be advised: the films will either strike you as either minimalist classics, or as the equivalent of watching paint drying on a wall.

In a small, dingy town on the Mexican-American border, a stalwart detective from the south (Charlton Heston) must match wits -- while on a honeymoon with his wife (Janet Leigh) -- with a slovenly, corrupt American lawman (director Orson Welles). Among the most storied B-pictures ever made, Touch of Evil existed for years in a version that compromised the visual and aural motifs envisioned by its maker (who, according to one legend, agreed to make the film after grabbing a pulp novel from an airport stand while arranging financing with the producers at a payphone). Lovingly restored by archivist Rick Schmidlin and editor Walter (Apocalypse Now) Murch (how sincere are they? Their names appear nowhere on the packaging), this grungy, eye-catching noir is now much closer to the work that Welles envisioned. It’s a pity that legal issues prevented a documentary on the film’s history to be included on the disc (that’s the story going around, anyway), and the viewer must read the legendary, lengthy memo from Welles to the producer imploring changes on the screen instead of in the shockingly skimpy insert. Welles had studio troubles throughout his career; see The Battle of Citizen Kane, above. But in view of this edition’s very existence these are quibbles; nevertheless, Touch of Evil is essential viewing for novice and buff alike.

At a wintry ski resort, the lives of a handful of characters become intertwined with provocative results. The movie Tom Tykwer made before Run Lola Run, Winter Sleepers is a complex, stunningly photographed wide-screen drama in which the random acts of a group of only vaguely-related characters conspire with fate and chance to produce shattering epiphanies for all concerned. In a tiny mountain village, nurse Laura (Marie-Lou Sellem) shares her childhood home with attractive translator Rebecca (Floriane Daniel), who often entertains her shallow ski instructor boyfriend Marco (Heino Ferch). While visiting after a trip, Marco leaves his car door open and the automobile is borrowed for a drive by slightly tipsy projectionist René (Ulrich Matthes) -- who is promptly involved in a horrible road accident with farmer Theo (Josef Bierbichler). From there it is only a matter of time before little misunderstandings lead to huge miscalculations: Rebecca and Marco bicker, Laura begins dating the strange René, and tragedy is just around the corner. As hypnotic a film as has been seen in recent memory, Winter Sleepers is for the receptive viewer an overwhelmingly absorbing and rewarding experience, a disconcerting trip through randomness that shows Tykwer to be in frighteningly authoritative control of the medium. Winstar’s bare-bones DVD edition is a gorgeous transfer; retaining all of Lola’s stylishness but infinitely more cerebral and affecting, Winter Sleepers is a revelation that confirms Tykwer’s status as a wunderkind of world cinema.

Box Set Corner:

An occasional exploration of DVD’s higher end

Before there was a Ken Burns there was Carl Sagan; imagine the creator of "The Civil War" and "Baseball" directing a "Survivor"-like smash and you’d be close to the stir caused by "Cosmos" when it first aired on the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980. An instant -- if improbable -- success, the 13-part series conceived by and featuring astronomer and researcher Carl Sagan is nothing less than the story of how the human species continues to develop its understanding of Earth’s precarious place in space and time. Although his distinct vocal mannerisms made him the butt of many a joke (remember "billions and billions"?), Sagan’s genuinely fascinating theories, impeccable scientific credentials and innate grasp of publicity opportunities made him a true pioneer in the mass marketing of science and astronomy. Each hour-long installment tackles issues of knowledge, history and exploration with an appealing mixture of fact and fancy, from the opening treatise "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean" through profiles of scientists, explorers, planets and "Who Speaks for Earth?", the famous, climactic episode advocating nuclear disarmament. The stylish box set, available as either 7 VHS tapes or region-free DVDs (that means they’re playable on any machine in the world), features all 13 hour-long chapters remastered and with a general introduction by series producer Ann Druyan, now the CEO of Carl Sagan Productions. Most of the episodes include update epilogues filmed by Sagan in 1990, and although the catchy, new age-y music shows its age a bit the program as a whole is surprisingly fresh and engaging. "Cosmos" (which won Emmy and Peabody awards) is currently available exclusively online from three sources: amazon.com, onecosmos.net and carlsagan.com. The perfect gift for that inquisitive young person (supplement the experience with another viewing of Robert Zemeckis’ 1997 drama Contact, adapted from the scientist’s novel and among the first of the feature-laden DVD releases), "Cosmos" is as engaging, invigorating and provocative as when Carl Sagan first invited the viewing audience to join him in the Spaceship of the Imagination.

"And Now For Something Completely Digital…," promises A&E’s, uh, Holy Grail of Python shenanigans, and this mammoth 14-disc box set delivers the silly goods all right: every single episode of the ground-breaking "Monty Python’s Flying Circus" is presented in chronological order, from 1969’s "Whither Canada?" (with John Cleese’s Lawrence Welk-ish Mozart and the elaborate "Funniest Joke in the World" sketch) to season 4’s climactic and quite bloody 45^th installment, "Party Political Broadcast" (with Eric Idle’s quintessential "The Man Who Finishes Other People’s Sentences"). Sure, you could buy the set two discs at a time (there are three episodes on each disc), but why would you want to? Getting them that way would set you back substantially more than your best surfing deal on the box, and you’d also be denied A&E’s cheap but colorful cardboard case (all the inserts are the same, though).  For the generation who grew up taping these episodes off of PBS (often on Beta machines), the visual and aural quality, while modest by today’s standards, is guaranteed as clean as they’ve ever seen -- and probably ever will see. Each DVD features a handful of detailed extras, including a weblink to PythonShop.com, a "Pythonism Glossary," clips from other episodes, clever and complete profiles of each Python and art galleries of "Gilliamanimations."

As a boy, Monty Python "kinda replaced religion for me" actor Kevin Kline confesses, and that sentiment pretty much sums up the American devotion to the legendary British comedy troupe. Completists and casual fans alike will rejoice in this 2-disc set, which collects the recent, BBC-produced documentary on the merry band (hosted by Eddie Izzard) with Michael Palin’s "Pythonland" travel spoof of actual sketch locations in and around London.  Along with these features, disc one includes "The Lost Python Mayday Special," that Meat Loaf-hosted musical tribute "From Spam to Sperm" Monty Python’s Greatest Hits" and a brief tribute from those mischief-makers at "South Park." Disc two is the real attraction, though, presenting the legendary German episodes that were never broadcast as part of the original Python package (you haven’t lived until you’ve seen and heard "The Lumberjack Song" in German). Now then: where’s that complete "Fawlty Towers" box, what?

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