Not a very busy week on DVD, but some definite highlights. Hey, you can’t keep trying to learn how to find the ‘Wolverine’ workprint online forever.
New Releases: Mickey Rourke lets his Ram out in the Oscar-nominated – “The Wrestler” this week. Darren Aronofsky’s wrasslin’ drama, which earned well-deserved praise, only comes with a 43-minute doc and a music video for Bruce Springsteen’s theme, but the miracle of Rourke’s performance is solid enough to elevate the platter.
– Best Picture Oscar nominee “Frost/Nixon” also hits the format, and while Ron Howard generally makes worthless movies, the special features include lots of historical archival footage on the original David Frost interview that inspired the movie, as well as featurettes and a Howard commentary.
– Criterion’s “Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé.” Featuring nearly two dozen works from the famed French scientist/filmmaker (one of the first to capture marine life on film), this box set also features an original score by Yo La Tengo that accompanies eight of the films, as well as extensive interview footage with Painlevé from the French TV series “Jean Painlevé Through His Films.” The release of these films is fantastic, however, can we also get the seminal Louis Malle/Jacque Cousteau 1956 underwater documentary, “The Silent World” released on DVD anytime soon? Please?
– Finally, if you’re looking for something off the beaten path, there’s documentary “Audience Of One,” about a pastor who, receiving a direct message from God, opts to pool his ministry’s resources into “Gravity: The Shadow Of Joseph,” a $50 million science fiction biblical epic.
Reissues: Blu-Ray greets fancy new versions of “Hellraiser“ and the Criterion edition of “Wages Of Fear,“ both films with their own rabid fanbases- say hi to each other at the store, guys. Fox also repackages the recent DVD releases of the “X-Men” series into a boxed set just in time for “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” The real find of this week, however, is the Peter Bogdanovich two-pack featuring “The Last Picture Show” and “Nickelodeon,” the latter of which features some rather eyebrow-raising revisionism on the part of ’70s lodestar filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich (more on that in a second).
Our Recommendations: Reaching his peak in the early 70’s with an unimpeachable trifecta (“The Last Picture Show,” “Paper Moon,” “What’s Up Doc?”), something happened along the way to sideline Bogdanovich from becoming one of the iconoclasts of that era. Perhaps it was mismanagement of his career – his projects only became less and less commercial and enjoyable as he went along, and soon the man who could afford to turn down “The Godfather” couldn’t get a wide release for late seventies-early eighties output (most likely it was the hubris and karmic comeuppance that came from dumping the great production designer Polly Platt for the younger Cybil Sheppard). A lot of that promise can be seen in “The Last Picture Show,” being re-issued today in a brand new transfer. Like a precursor to “Friday Night Lights,” “Show” focuses on a dying town where high school football remains the stuff of dreams, from the bespectacled youth to the disillusioned adults. The film boasts excellent work from a very young Jeff Bridges and remains one of the definitive films of that exciting era in American filmmaking.
A comedy starring Ryan and Tatum O’Neal with Burt Reynolds, based loosely on the life of Cecil B. Demille, “Nickelodeon” (1976) and its onanistic cinema navelgazing, stemmed from a far less fruitful period in Bogdanovich life, and was considered a turkey upon its release.
But the filmmaker, always prone to wearing handkerchiefs as neckties, has gone back and offered fans a curious glimpse into a world where, perhaps, it would have been much better received. This is the first time the comedy — again, centering around Bogdanovich’s career-long obsession with the early era of filmmaking — sees a DVD release, and with the original cut Bogdanovich has also added a somewhat bold, director’s cut to the mix, one that digitally renders the film in a black and white hue, consistent with the subject material and the unifying visual style of Bogdanovich’s most successful films, but still a very revisionist move sure to irk film snobs (dude, why didn’t you just make it B&W back then??) The films arrive in a Director’s Choice two-pack, and it will be well worth your time to pursue them, but note, some film obsessives — who delusionally presume slackjaw video clerks know who David Kehr is — are already having trouble finding it in Manhattan video stores and are about to raise a ruckus.
Here’s a scene from “Nickelodeon” in its originally conceived color form.