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Movies & TV

Gershon rocks Coming Tuesday, April 13

Rating: NNNNN


Prey For Rock & Roll

(Lions Gate, 2003) D: Alex Steyermark w/ Gina Gershon, Drea De Matteo. Rating: NNN alex steyermark makes his direc torial debut with this film about a 40-ish veteran of the L.A. punk scene. Based on Cheri Lovedog’s semi-autobiographical script, Prey For Rock & Roll gives Gina Gershon the showiest role she’s had since Bound – and adds yet another lesbian scene to the Gershon canon. The film veers between hard-edged portrait of marginal rock life and the most badass movie ever slated for late showings on the Lifetime Channel. With The Sopranos’ Drea De Matteo, Lori Petty and Marc Blucas in support, it’s a low-budget movie with some star power, and the script has the caustic wit that Gershon likes to chew on for a while before spitting it in the face of whoever’s in the scene. EXTRAS Director commentary, English and Spanish subtitles.

The Bank

(Microfilms, 2001) D: Robert Connolly, w/ David Wenham, Anthony LaPaglia. Rating: NNNN here’s a crisp australian finan- cial thriller, with David Wenham (Faramir in The Lord Of The Rings) as a computer whiz who designs a foolproof method to allow the titular institution to make a killing off a predicted financial downturn, much to the delight of bank honcho Anthony LaPaglia. The Bank wears its politics on its sleeve, and let’s just say it has no sympathy for the institutions of high finance.

The cast is very enjoyable. Wenham isn’t likely to cross over to the States – he’s the Australian equivalent of Aaron Eckhart or Thomas Jane – but I’ve never seen him give a bad performance, and it’s always fun to see LaPaglia, best known for his TV series Without A Trace, with his Australian accent back in place.

Robert Connolly’s commentary is informative but a bit confusing. The director keeps referring to features on the DVD that aren’t there they’re on the Australian DVD for which Connolly originally did the commentary. EXTRAS Director commentary, theatrical trailer, storyboard/film comparison with commentary.

The Grapes Of Wrath

(Fox Studio Classics, 1940) D: John Ford, w/ Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell. Rating: NNNN the grapes of wrath may be an official classic of American literature and cinema, but John Ford’s adaptation of Steinbeck’s novel about Dust Bowl refugees trying to find work on California fruit farms during the Depression was very controversial in its day. Neither the California agribusinessmen nor the New York bankers who backed Fox were in favour of the film being produced.

In this period – How Green Was My Valley came out the next year – Ford cemented his position as the painter laureate of the American cinema. Shooting on location, he achieved the sort of stark visual poetry seen in Dorothea Lange’s photographs of migrant worker camps, and from Henry Fonda as Tom Joad he got one of the greatest performances in American cinema.

The ending softens the message (Ford let Zanuck shoot Ma Joad’s We Are The People speech), but there’s no denying the film’s political stance and visual brilliance.

Delayed for several months, the DVD offers a magnificent transfer, true black-and-white with just enough grain in the image to still look like film. The extras, which aren’t as good, include a rather dry commentary and some material from the Fox archives. EXTRAS A scholarly commentary by Ford biographer Joseph McBride and Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw that is so polite, 20 minutes go by before you realize they’re in the studio together A&E Biography episode Darryl F. Zanuck: 20th Century Filmmaker Movietone news on droughts UK prologue restoration comparison. English (original mono and stereo remix), Spanish versions and subtitles.

The Pink Panther Collection

(MGM, 1963-1982) D: Blake Edwards, w/ Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom. Six discs. Rating: NNN this peculiarly padded digi-pack fold-out offers five of Blake Edwards’s Pink Panther comedies and a disc of extras that includes several of the animated Panthers. The transfers are gorgeous, with the first two discs really bringing up the brightly artificial 60s colours of The Pink Panther and A Shot In The Dark. There’s no set critical consensus about these films. I actually prefer the later ones like The Pink Panther Strikes Again, in which Edwards has surrendered the pretense that the films are anything but vehicles for his own sense of languorously baroque gag construction and Sellers’s increasingly insular self-regard.

The problem isn’t what’s in the box. It’s what’s not , specifically the 1976 film Return Of The Pink Panther, for which Artisan holds the rights. MGM offers no indication that this is not a complete set of the canonic Panther films. The package does, however, include the dreadful Trail Of The Pink Panther, constructed from outtakes after Sellers’s death.

The second problem is the box itself. The case puts six discs on three panels, so you have to remove discs one, three and five to get at discs two, four and six. This is doing it all wrong. EXTRAS Director commentary on A Shot In The Dark, short documentaries on the making of the series and the animation, six Pink Panther cartoons, including the Academy Award-winning Pink Phink. English, French, Spanish versions and subtitles.

Sherman’s March

(First Run Features, 1986) D: Ross McElwee. Rating: NNN ross mcelwee got a grant to make a documentary charting the historical impact of Sherman’s March to the Sea during the American Civil War. Remember the burning of Atlanta in Gone With The Wind? That was Sherman. Fortunately, McElwee got tangled up in his own romantic dissatisfactions, and the result may be the most self-absorbed film ever made by someone not named Chantal Akerman.

With his 16mm camera perched on his shoulder, McElwee tracks his encounters with an assortment of Southern women, some of whom he dates and some of whom just rip into him for hiding behind his camera instead of living his life.

It’s a fascinating portrait of a man disappearing into his own self-consciousness, and very funny.

I wish First Run Features could have found a better print. This one looks like they were working from a secondary source, not the original. EXTRAS Director interview, photo gallery, William Tecumseh Sherman text biography.

Kill Bill, Vol. 1

(Miramax/Alliance Atlantis) Just in time for the theatrical release of Kill Bill, Vol. 2, or, as hardcore Quentin Tarantino fans think of it, 4.

Casa De Los Babys

(Columbia/TriStar) Speaking of Daryl Hannah, Kill Bill’s other altitude-enhanced blond, John Sayles assembles a stunning cast for this film about American women seeking children in South America: Lili Taylor, Mary Steenburgen, Marcia Gay Harden, Maggie Gyllenhaal. And Daryl Hannah.

Tokyo Godfathers

(Columbia/Tri-Star, 2003) A live-action remake of Three Godfathers set in the urban lower depths, from Satoshi Kon, the director of such noted anime as Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress.

Charade

(Criterion/Morningstar) Not so much a new release as an upgrade, Criterion’s edition of the classic Stanley Donen Hitchcock pastiche has a new anamorphic transfer. Now I can get rid of my The Truth About Charlie DVD, which contains the only available anamorphic transfer of Charade as an extra.

= Critics’ Pick
NNNNN = excellent, maintains big screen impact
NNNN = very good
NNN = worth a peek
NN = Mediocre
N = Bomb

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