DVD Reviews
Duel Universal
Starring Dennis Weaver
Written by Richard Matheson
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Rated: PG
Original Release: 1971
Reviewed by Russell Bartholomee
We’ve all been there. You’re driving down a highway, not a car in sight, making great time. You come upon a semi going way below the speed limit, and since it’s a two-lane highway, passing is difficult. Finally, you get around the truck, only to have the joker speed up, pass you, and then slow back down. “You’re not getting in front of me!” the diesel fumes seem to say. For most people, the story ends there, with no greater consequence than hurt pride and a longer drive.
But in Steven Spielberg’s 1971 feature-length debut Duel, this common annoyance sparks the beginning of an ultimately deadly confrontation between a man on his way to work and a trucker bent on sending him to his grave instead. Released for the first time on DVD, Duel is a taut, compelling thriller that showed the world Spielberg’s adroitness as a director for the first time.
I was born in the 70s and, as a result, only got to see most classic 60s and 70s cinema on the small screen with commercial breaks. I have seen Duel several times over the years, but never without interruption, and never with such high-quality picture and audio. Taking into account that this was his first feature film - and a made for TV movie-of-the-week at that - Duel is a remarkable piece of work.
The tension builds steadily, with each encounter between man and machine relentlessly raising the stakes. With shades of Hitchcock, we never see the deadly trucker’s face. We are never allowed to know what motivates his murderous desire. But the truck has a face of its own, its many license plates serving as notches in his belt for every previous successful hunt. The pacing is superb; there are no lulls in the story. When the action slows down, it is only long enough for the main character David Mann (played to perfection by Dennis Weaver) to catch his breath for a moment while Spielberg and writer Richard Matheson turn the screw a little tighter. By the film’s satisfying end, both Mann and the viewer are exhausted.
I was especially impressed by how well Spielberg was able to tell his story without relying on the special effects with which his later work would become so inundated. Spielberg has made a wide range of films, from classics like Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Schindler’s List to schmaltz like Hook and Always. If his films have shared a common element, it has been grandness; they are all sprawling, polished epics. But with Duel, he was able to make no less grand a film with an immediacy and economy that no longer seem to be colors in his pallet. That’s not a bad thing; the guy who made Duel could have never pulled off Schindler’s List. But it’s a treat to see what the young director was able to do with a small budget and a small screen.
Also a treat are the special features included on the DVD. For many releases, the trailers, posters, and a trio of short documentaries would seem barely adequate, but these featurettes are superb. We get an interview with the screenwriter, a short piece about Spielberg’s television work, and--in the best of them—an explanation by Spielberg of the making of the film in detail. We learn how the more difficult shots were achieved and that Dennis Weaver did most of his own driving and stunts (including the harrowing scene where he exits a phone booth seconds before it is smashed to pieces by the truck). Perhaps most interesting to me was his discussion of the parallels between Duel and many of his later films. For example, the sound effect employed as the truck goes over the cliff is the same Godzilla-like roar the director used when the shark sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor in Jaws. This detail, like so many others in the special features, gives us a glimpse of how immense a talent Spielberg was right out of the gate.
This is a must for any Spielberg fan, obviously. But if you, like me, are sometimes disappointed by the more mediocre movies he sometimes produces, this DVD release is an especially valuable reminder of how good a filmmaker Spielberg is when he doesn’t allow a great story to be buried in hype and sentiment.
Garfield & Friends, Vol 1 Fox Home Entertainment
Reviewed by Adam D. Miller
Over the past few years, we have seen a whole slew of cartoons we loved as kids being turned into mediocre films. The most recent of these being Garfield, in which a computer animated, updated version of Garfield hit the big screen in an embarrassing way (despite the fact that Bill Murray did the voice of our beloved feline). Fortunately for the rest of us, those smart enough to avoid the movie but who had grown up on Garfield, Fox Home Entertainment has released the 1980s cartoon series Garfield and Friends on DVD. Unlike many vintage cartoons which are still heavily syndicated on cable, the release of Garfield and Friends marks the first time in a while that the witty yet simple cartoon can be seen anywhere.
In many ways, Garfield and Friends marked the end of an era when it came to teleivision cartoons and the way they operate. The series was well written and animated, with Jim Davis, creator of the original Garfield comic strip on hand as the show’s producer. Rather than utilizing the latest cartoon technology, or tell a story in a fast and obnoxious fashion, Garfield remains silly in an old-fashioned cartoon sort of way. Each episode is divided into multiple segments, beginning and ending with a Garfield skit. Memorable are the Garfield “Quickies”, which are very short and very funny. In the middle of each episode is a “U.S. Acres” skit. Strange barnyard animals such as Orson the pig, Wade the duck, and Sheldon, the chick who, aside from his feet, has yet to hatch from his egg.
The DVD package doesn’t offer much aside from the cartoons itself, and one wonders if they could have done a better job with restoration, which is spotty at times. Still, since the cartoon is one of the best of its time and cannot be seen on television anymore, it is a great nostalgia trip for those of us who grew up in the mid-to-late 1980s, and serves as a much better introduction to Garfield than the recent film version.
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Starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, George Carlin & Liv Tyler
Written & Directred by Kevin Smith
Reviewed by Adam M. Anklewicz
“Why in gods name would I wanna keep writing about characters whose central preoccupation are weed and dick and fart jokes? I mean, ya gotta grow man. Don't you ever want anything more for yourself?” - Holden, Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back
If you are looking for jokes about gay sex and farts, Jersey Girl is not where you will find them. Writer and Director Kevin Smith takes this opportunity to do something different. After putting to rest the title characters in Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, Smith is moving ahead. Now a father himself, Smith writes about a single father who must raise his daughter while trying to come to terms with a life he never saw himself in.
Ollie Trinke (Ben Affleck) had the perfect life. A wonderful wife (Jennifer Lopez), a child on the way, a great job and lots of money. Everything changes when his wife dies during their daughter’s birth. Leaving his daughter with his father, Trinke tries to balance work with raising a child and ultimately loses his sights on her. After losing his job, Ollie reluctantly takes the job as Gertie’s father while still keeping his eyes open for his old job to return.
George Carlin plays Ollie’s father Bart. Carlin gives an incredible performance, guiding and teaching Ollie to be a father. There are three emotional arcs to the movie: the featured arc between the Jersey girl Gertie and Ollie, the arc with Ollie and new romance Maya (Liv Tyler), and between Bart and Ollie. Bart and Ollie’s relationship is what keeps the movie and Ollie grounded. Bart is whom Ollie can turn to when he needs a hand.
Jersey Girl is about Ollie’s realization that being a father is more important than what he had lost before. Smith creates a wonderful story and executes it well. Funny, smart, romantic, and silly, Jersey Girl provides the audience with humour that is true to Kevin Smith’s previous movies. Comparable to Smith’s third film Chasing Amy, The film is serious while still giving the audience some laughs.
The DVD is packed with special features. Two audio commentaries: one featuring Kevin Smith and Ben Affleck, and another with Kevin Smith, Scott Moser (producer) and Jason Mewes (who played Jay in all of Smith’s previous movies but does not appear in this one). As Smith’s DVDs always have been, the audio commentary is funnier than the movie. Also featured on the DVD are half a dozen short films made for The Tonight Show. Those should also keep you laughing.
Kevin Smith will have a hard time living up to the high point that was Dogma, but Jersey Girl tries to get there kicking and screaming.
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Kill Bill, Vol 2 HBO Home Video
Starring Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah & Michael Madsen
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Rated: R
Reviewed by Adam D. Miller
I will begin this review by saying that I never really cared for the work of Quentin Tarantino. As a result, I wasn’t nearly as excited about Kill Bill as many of my friends were. Tarantino’s explicit brand of sex and violence simply didn’t appeal to me, despite his effective and nostalgic soundtracks (which did). So yeah, giving this film five stars is a big deal for me. It would disappoint many of you to know my ratings of Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs would not have been nearly as high.
Kill Bill, Vol. 1 was one of those great surprises that mainstream cinema provides on occasion. You enter a film several weeks after the hype has worn off (cause who wants to deal with the Hollywood popcorn audience anyway?), not quite knowing what to expect from it. The film was a blood bath, with ridiculous martial arts sequences, silly dialogue, unrealistic characters, and dated music. I loved it.
I think what appealed to me the most about Kill Bill, Vol. 1 was the way the story was presented. The film was divided into a series of chapters, with the visuals and the music remaining consistently perfect throughout. Few films flow as well as this one. As for the violence, it didn’t seem to bother me. After all The Bride (Uma Thurman) had been through, you wanted her to succeed, even if it meant chopping the limbs off of her enemies. The film is extraordinarily violent, but not in a sickening way. I was so drawn into the story and its characters that by the time it ended, I was ready to see what came next.
Kill Bill, Vol. 2 is the second chapter in a film that was divided into two, largely for marketing and promotional reasons. Despite the fact that this is merely the second half of a single movie, it is different enough to be considered a sequel. Its form of narrative is much slower and more psychological than Kill Bill, Vol. 1. Furthermore, its cast largely changes. Many of the characters who we only saw a slight glimpse of in Vol. 1, such as Bill himself, are major characters in Vol. 2. Remaining in the spotlight is Uma Thurman as ‘The Bride’, who fits the role perfectly. We learn a lot more about her in Vol. 2. We learn about her name, her wedding, her relationship to Bill, her pregnancy, and her martial arts training. The film lacks much of the violence of Volume 1, and each time you think there will be a huge action-packed climax, you are instead treated with something unique and different. Tarantino proves to be a master of building expectation and fulfilling it with something altogether different. And now that Volume 2 is available on DVD, fans can view the film as it had originally been intended: as one cohesive film.
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Outfoxed The Disinformation Company
Directed by Robert Greenwald
Reviewed by Brighid Mooney
"Media is the nervous system of a democracy," says former MSNBC and Fox News contributor Jeff Cohen as Outfoxed begins. "If it's not functioning well, the democracy can't function." It is as true a statement as any, and with this idea Robert Greenwald sets out to prove the gross untruth of the Fox News slogan "fair and balanced." Using a host of interviews with media watchdogs and former Fox employees alike, and citing internal memos from Fox News executives as well as a legion of statistics, Greenwald makes a compelling case against Rupert Murdoch's journalistic integrity. But what proves to be the most damning and convincing evidence of all is the multitude of clips taken from the Fox News network itself. From the comical, if not somewhat infuriating, demands of Bill O'Reilly for his guests to shut up whenever they don't agree with him, to reporters being pulled off of stories for asking the tough questions their job supposedly requires, the Murdoch empire is painted as a right-wing government propaganda machine run amok rather than a non-partisan news supplier. A dry and straightforward documentary with an obvious agenda, Outfoxed gives incendiary ammunition to those already irked by the network's approach to journalism, but probably won't be enough to win over most of the 4.7 billion already in Murdoch's audience.
Outfoxed attempts to prove that Rupert Murdoch's news outlets, a media conglomeration that reaches as much as 3/4 of the world's population, have been less than responsible when it comes to providing their audience with objective information. Several internal memos from Fox executive John Moody are quoted to show executives' habit of giving producers and reporters direct orders as to what stories should and shouldn't be covered, and with what specific viewpoint. In one memo, Moody tells reporters that US marines should be referred to as "sharpshooters" rather than snipers, because of the negative connotation the word "snipers" evokes. Former Fox News reporter Jon Du Pre talks about how he was suspended for not showing "celebratory" enough images of the celebrations at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley on Reagan's birthday, despite there not actually being much of a celebration to report on. A good chunk of time is also devoted to Fox News reporters' use of the phrase "some people say" as a vehicle for slipping opinions into the broadcast under the guise of legitimate, if unsourced, reporting.
Outfoxed also prominently features the work of Bill O'Reilly, and his frequent hostility toward his own guests whenever they present an opposing viewpoint. One of the more memorable clips is of O'Reilly proclaiming that "once the war begins we expect every American to support our military and if they can't do that they can shut up." And one can only then wonder if by "we" he means himself, or Fox News in general. Outfoxed also presents various tactics used by Fox News, including the character assassination of those who threaten the current administration, like Richard Clarke or Jesse Jackson. "We were told on several occasions that he was one of our targets," Du Pre says of his instructions for reporting on Jackson. And then there are the network’s constant attempts to undermine the credibility of democratic candidate John Kerry with the incessant use of phrases like "flip-flopper" or jabs at Kerry's alleged Frenchness. The blatant disregard for the Fairness Doctrine and the obvious conflict of interest of correspondents like Carl Cameron, whose wife was campaigning for Bush even while Cameron continued to cover the campaign, are also targeted in the documentary, as well as their tendency to always show Bush in a positive and heroic light, a sometimes difficult proposition. By the end of the film, Fox News-hating liberals will have plenty of facts to back up their arguments, and those on the fence may think twice about relying on the network for unbiased information. For those who already accept Fox News as the "fair and balanced" programming it purports to be, Outfoxed may be a tougher sell. But as former conservative media insider David Brock insists, "Murdoch doesn't believe in objectivity. Opinions can't be proven false."
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The Peter Sellers Story… As He Filmed It BBC DVD (UK Release only)
Reviewed by Jamie Rutherford
Peter Sellers often remarked that he was a bad guest at dinner parties. He believed that under all the Bloodknocks, the Clouseaus and the Strangeloves, there was no character of any interest called Peter Sellers. He was undoubtedly mistaken, as underneath the facade of his many characters lay one of the most brilliantly observant comedians and character actors of all time. This DVD gives us some semblance of how Sellers’ mind worked. An edited version of the three-part Arena documentary screened in 1995, it is a collection culled from hundreds of hours of film reel he took during his life, and rather than dwell on his many memorable roles in radio and film, it attempts to reveal the private man. It documents his young family and its eventual collapse after his early success, his marriage to Britt Ekland, the glamorous lifestyle accompanying his Hollywood fame, and two brief marriages towards the end of his life, showing glimpses of Sellers’ life as he experienced it. The footage is accompanied by personal accounts of the man given by Sellers’ wives, children, friends, and colleagues. In addition to the 86-minute documentary, the DVD also contains ‘I Say, I Say, I Say’, a personal series of sketches along the same lines as The Goon Show, that Sellers made with and for his friends. It also contains a previously unseen interview made for Irish television and several advertisements that feature Sellers in character.
While many authors have made the mistake of trying to analyse Peter Sellers by painfully documenting everything he was involved in, this DVD focuses on the private relationships he had with his family. Since it is comprised of home movies, the man we see is the undirected, unscripted man: the real Peter Sellers. It is a lot kinder to his memory than many Sellers biographies have been, (including Roger Lewis’ book, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, of which an major film adaptation starring Geoffrey Rush is about to be released) and although inevitably dwelling on his insecurities and dissatisfied nature, it is made clear that despite being a frustrating man to live or work with, he was still adored by nearly all that knew him.
The Peter Sellers Story… As He Filmed It is an easy, insightful, and often humorous view of Peter Sellers. It shows us the way he was perceived, as well as the way he perceived the world. Although the extra material is fun, ‘I Say, I Say, I Say’ in particular showing Sellers at his finest, it is mainly irrelevant to the DVD. Additional interviews to the one included would have better suited this release. While there is little here to attract casual buyers, anyone interested in the life or films of Peter Sellers would find this DVD worthwhile for the documentary alone.
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The Weather Underground New Video Group
Reviewed by Brighid Mooney
In the late 1960s, the United States was engaged in an unpopular foreign war where countless atrocities were committed and later disclosed to the American public through television and magazines. Public dissent and protest were on the rise, and the world seemed to be in a state of turmoil. Maybe not as much has changed in the last 40 years as we would like to believe. But if the subject matter of The Weather Underground seems frighteningly relevant to today's world, then directors Sam Green and Bill Siegel have probably accomplished what they set out to. The documentary, compiled from archived video and photographs as well as present-day interviews with several former members, seeks to tell, in stark and brutal truth, the story of the Weathermen, their goals, their tactics, and their mistakes. The film serves as a warning to both those desperate enough to resort to violence and to those who ignore peaceful protest, that violence doesn't have to be inevitable, but whether sanctioned by the government or carried out in the streets, it can never achieve true peace.
"The war was escalating, murder was escalating, and it was all being done in our names," former Weatherman Bill Ayers says. "So the feeling was that we had to do whatever we had to do to stop the war." By 1969, the anti-war movement had reached a zenith and thousands of students across the country had joined the peace effort. Students for a Democratic Society, a non-violent protest group that drew inspiration from the civil rights movement of the early 60s, was the leading student anti-war organization with 100,000 members nationwide. At that year's national convention the group split and the radical, militant Weathermen group was formed. Unlike their peers, the Weathermen did not commit to non-violence, and they didn't seek to change the government, but rather to destroy it. After several years of protest, the war in Vietnam still raged and President Nixon remained pervicacious in his vow to be unaffected by dissent. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, a war being fought halfway around the world was, for the first time, being pumped straight into America's living room, and Americans could see with their own eyes its devastating effect on both their own soldiers, and the Vietnamese citizens.
Weathermen organizer Bernadine Dohrn has said that "there's no way to be committed to non-violence in the middle of the most violent society that history has ever created." Indeed by that time the world was in a state of intense violence and despair, and the peace and love culture of the 1960s had been dealt a series of devastating blows signalling not only the end of the decade, but also the end of the hope that the decade had relied on. The Hell's Angels stabbed a man to death at Altamont, Charles Manson and his cult committed a slew of gruesome murders and the atrocities at My Lai were laid out for the world to see in the pages of Life Magazine. From out of this wreckage came the seriously misguided ideals of the Weathermen, whose slogan was "Bring the war home" and whose goal was the violent overthrow of the United States government.
When Saigon fell in 1975, the Weathermen suddenly became irrelevant. Pursued by the FBI for the better part of a decade, most had turned themselves in by the late 1970s. Today, most of the former members regret the tactics they employed and the extremist views of their youth, but their story remains a testament not only to how easily things can get out of hand when the people feel that their voice is not being heard, but also to the dangers and the futility of fighting fire with fire. "If you think that you have the moral high ground, that's a very dangerous position," says former Weatherman Brian Flanagan. "You can do some really dreadful things."
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