New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 6/11/13

The two biggest titles releasing today, Sam Raimi’s OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL (no colon) and Tommy Wirkola’s HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS, are both the stuff of modernized fairy tale fodder, which makes it hard to believe that Tim Burton had nothing to do with either of them.

Anyway, OZ, starring James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, and a bunch of green screen/CGI effects, which I wrote was “Not a bomb, but no magical masterpiece either” (3/8/13) is available now in the standard Blu-ray / DVD / Digital Copy package. Special Features include six featurettes: “Walt Disney and the Road to Oz” (10 minutes), “My Journey in Oz” (a 22 minute sampler of a video journal by Franco). “China Girl and the Suspension of Disbelief” (5 min), “Before Your Very Eyes: From Kansas To Oz” (11 min), “Metamorphosis” (8 min), “Mr. Elfman’s Musical Concoctions” (7 min), and 5 minutes of bloopers. My review from its theatrical release last March is here.

HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS, starring Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, which I liked a lot less, is out in a likewise Blu-ray / DVD / Digital Copy edition, but adds a UltraViolet copy. Its Special Features are only 3 featurettes: “Reinventing Hansel & Gretel” (15 min), “The Witching Hours” (9 min), and “Meet Edward the Troll” (5 min). None of these extras are likely to sway me from re-thinking my description of the film last January that went like this: “From the same lack of inspiration that brought you ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’” comes this muddled mixture of the action genre with fairy tale mythology.” Read the rest of my review here.

Having only seen the film on a crappy truncated VHS release back in the ‘80s, it’s cool to see that Paul McCartney and Wings’ ‘70s concert film ROCKSHOW is out now on both Blu ray and DVD, marking the first time in over 30 years that the full over 2 hour program is available to the public. There’s only one bonus extra, a 10 minute backstage featurette entitled “A Very Lovely Party,” but the 30 songs of vintage Beatles, solo, and Wings classics from McCartney and crew’s 1976 tour of North America contained in this package should be satisfying enough on their own.

I skipped Ric Roman Waugh’s SNITCH starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson when it was released theatrically early this year, but folks who are into such action genre exercises should know that its new release (Blu-ray + UltraViolet + Digital Copy) is outfitted with Special Features like a 50 minute ‘Making of’ doc entitled “Privileged Information,” commentary with Director Waugh and Editor Jonathan Chibnall, and deleted scenes.

A more appealing looking title from earlier this year out today on both formats is Im Sang-Soo’s South Korean erotic thriller THE TASTE OF MONEY, available with sparse extras (“Behind the Scenes” featurette, trailer) on both 1-disc Blu ray and DVD editions. Other new movies hitting home video today include: Quentin Dupieux’s WRONG (Blu Ray + Digital Copy), and Jared Moshe’s 2012 Western DEAD MAN’S BURDEN (only on DVD).

Last week, this New Releases feature reported about the release of the Lifetime TV movie RING OF FIRE, a biopic about June Carter Cash as played by Jewel. This week, another RING OF FIRE comes out, but this one is a TV miniseries produced by REELZ about an oil rig causing a volcanic eruption in a small town starring Michael Vartan, Terry O'Quinn, and Ian Tracey. Since end-of-the-world scenarios are hot right now, maybe more folks than who saw it when it aired last March will check out this release (available in both 1-disc Blu ray and DVD editions), but probably not. Its lone Special Feature is a Sneak Peek of Reelz’s follow-up miniseries Eve of Destruction, which aired in April and is releasing next month on Blu ray and DVD.

Despite getting mixed reviews and a lot of internet ridicule for its unrealistic and pretentious agenda, Aaron Sorkin’s preachy HBO series The Newsroom was renewed for a second season that premieres next month (July 14, 2013). Folks who want to catch up with the trials and tribulations of self righteous news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), his neurotic executive producer (Emily Mortimer) and his mostly inexperienced staff at the fictional Atlantis Cable News (ACN) channel can pick up The Newsroom: The Complete First Season now out on 4-disc Blu ray (+ DVD Combo + Digital Copy) and DVD sets. 

Special Features include “The Rundown,” (an 25 minute long discussion about the show with Sorkin, Daniels, Mortimer, Waterson, executive producer Alan Poul and co-executive producer Greg Mottola), five commentaries with Sorkin, Poul, Daniels, Waterston, Mortimer and others, “Mission Control” (a behind-the –scenes featurette), “Inside the Episodes” (individual featurettes about each episodes), and deleted scenes. Now folks who loved hating the show will have a lot more material to “hate watch.”

The complete first season of Netflix’s much hyped series House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey as ruthless U.S. Representative Frank Underwood, hits Blu ray and DVD today in 4-disc sets. The very entertaining and addictive show, episodes of which were directed by David Fincher (SE7EN, FIGHT CLUB, ZODIAC, THE SOCIAL NETWORK) and Joel Schumacher (a much less impressive filmography including THE LOST BOYS, BATMAN FOREVER, and THE NUMBER 23 - see what I mean?), also stars Robin Wright, Kate Mara, and Carey Stoll. Like many people did when all 13 episodes dropped on the streaming service last February, you can still watch the whole season in a little over half a day, because this release has no bonus material (no commentaries, featurettes, nothing) to add to the running time. No word yet about when the second season, now in production, will air.

Despite its similar title to the Will Smith sci-fi summer bomb AFTER EARTH, the History Channel’s 3-Disc Collection, AFTER PEOPLE, out today on DVD only, is a fascinating breakdown of what life on this planet would be like if the entire human population went extinct. Made up of 4 extended programs from the History Channel series Life After People, the set has no Special Features, but at its 288 minute running time, they’re really not needed. It may be too intensely scientific for some folks, but the insights and speculations, as well as all the CDI-ed global destruction, should strongly draw most interested viewers in.

On the older film front, titles new to Blu ray out today include a couple of early ‘70s Clint Eastwood Westerns (John Sturges’ JOE KIDD and Don Siegel’s TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA), Phil Alden Robinson’s 1992 Robert Redford thriller/comedy SNEAKERS, and the Criterion Collection edition of Igmar Bergman’s 1957 classic WILD STRAWBERRIES.

More later…

The Soulless Eye Candy Of Harmony Korine’s SPRING BREAKERS

Opening today in the Triangle area:

SPRING BREAKERS 
(Dir. Harmony Korine, 2012)

If you thought James Franco as Oscar Diggs was too family friendly in OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL (currently the #1 movie in the land), then what about Franco as Alien, a rapper/drug dealer/pimp with cornrows, shining steel teeth, and rich trash beachwear?

That’s how he appears in Harmony Korine’s SPRING BREAKERS, the arthouse film that doesn’t look like one, which you might’ve heard something about as it had a record-breaking limited screen debut last weekend (on only two screens, mind you) and has been getting a of buzz.

The hard R-rated film, from the writer/director of GUMMO and TRASH HUMPERS, concerns four college girls (Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine, all bikini-clad for almost the entire film) who rob a restaurant (“we held up the Chicken Shack with squirt guns!”) to get funds so they can go on spring break in St. Pete Beach, Florida. But that’s just the setup, because their world goes completely out of whack when Franco takes them under his wing, after he bails them out when they are arrested on drug charges at a frat boy party.

From the get go, Korine’s film, shot in fleeting beauty by cinematographer Benoît Debie, is all kinetic energy, with no shot lasting more than a matter of seconds; a flashy editing job by Douglas Crise (TRAFFIC, the OCEAN’S ELEVEN movies) that often makes the movie look like one big rave. In one of many partying montages, a grainy swirling effect has the imagery merge together as if Korine wants you to feel as fucked up as his characters.

It’s a dizzying display of debauchery, but that makes it sound like a lot more fun than it is.

Ominous overtones provided by Skrillex and Cliff Martinez’s soundtrack, and the prospect of Gomez’s religious guilt coming to the surface (her character is actually named Faith), indicate heavily that there’s something sinister underneath all of this, but since this is supposed to be Korine’s ode to the hedonistic pleasures he felt like he missed when growing up, I only took away from it that there's some crazy danger out in the sun-drenched sleaze so beware, kids! Any sense of sharp satire or sobering statement of any kind was lost on me.

After shedding some tears and expressing that she’s not on board following the Franco path, Gomez gets on a bus and leaves the movie. This is unfortunate because she was the only girl who made much of an impression – I can’t remember what the other’s names were). Rachel Korine (wife of the director) also leaves after getting shot in the arm by one of Franco’s competitor’s (the suavely menacing Gucci Mane) thugs.

Hudgens and Benson stay on to join Franco in his life of crime, ripping off other spring breakers, and planning a ambush a la SCARFACE (which Franco boasts his crib’s entertainment system plays nonstop) of his rival’s seaside fortress in revenge for their wounded friend.

Franco convincingly inhabits the persona of Alien, particularly when he’s spouting out his philosophies as if he’s being interviewed on MTV or tenderly singing a Britney Spears ballad (“Everytime”) on his lavish white poolside piano, but the movie’s cut-up confines keep his performance from being truly electrifying (it does comes close though in a shot of him giving fellatio to two gun barrels at once).

Korine’s work here isn’t a matter of style over substance, it’s more a matter of style of substance abuse that gets pounded into our heads with every techno beat, instance of in-your-face sexuality, and moment of stupid behavior we witness.

The repetition throughout of Gomez’s voice-over recitation of a letter to her Grandmother about the trip before things get crazy dangerous (“It's the most spiritual place on earth,” “I want to come back here next year with you!”), doesn’t seem to have a discernible point either, unless it’s just to stress naivety on her part.

The soulless eye-candy (hey, I think one of the girl’s names is Candy!) of SPRING BREAKERS skirts the surface of what a terrifying provocative film about thrill-seeking teenagers going too far could really be. But it seems content though with its day-glo, neon-lit, tawdry surface, so movie-goers prone to empty-headed partying may be content with it too. You know, the kids who’d smuggle a beer bong into the theater if they could. Those are the ones who’ll really love it.

More later...

OZ: Not A Bomb But No Magical Masterpiece Either

Opening today at nearly every multiplex in the Triangle area:

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL 
(Dir. Sam Raimi, 2013)

At one point in this movie, Sam Raimi’s lavish prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” when James Franco as the title character is making his way through the Land of Oz, I half expected him to run into a gang of Hobbits. These lush green 3D fantasy worlds can really look alike, you see.

Raimi is counting on familiarity here, with plot points matching the beats of the 1939 original (even has an extended black and white opening), but as keen on the details as he and his crew are, OZ feels like just another souped-up fairy tale update, interchangeable with the kind of projects Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have been doing for the last decade or so. 

It's a notch above, say, Burton's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, but not enough of a notch that makes it anything special. If it really was something special, it wouldn't be releasing at this time of year.

Franco certainly puts in an energetic performance as carnival magician con-artist Oscar Diggs, especially when he finds himself in a hot air balloon caught in a tornado. That's when he calls upon some 127 HOURS-ish method skills. Unfortunately the film's comic thread of Franco reacting to fantasical events with a modern day wiseacre delivery goes down as badly as it did in YOUR HIGHNESS.

On his journey on the Yellow Brick Road through the Dark Forest to Emerald City, Franco meets a cast of characters including some counter-parts to folks he knew back in black and white Kansas including Zack Braff as Finley the Flying Monkey (a CGI-ed monkey sidekick in a bellhop uniform, mind you), Michelle Williams as Glenda, Mina Kunis as Theodora (looking, at first, positively like a porcelain creation), China Girl (an actual porcelain creation via CGI voiced by Joey King) and Rachel Weisz as Evanora. 

The trio of beauties, Williams, Kunis and Weisz all become witches (one good, two bad), with Kunis getting transformed the most into the iconic green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West who screeches at the top of her lungs, and yes, gives us an ample sampling of that famous cackle. Kunis does her best, but still seems miscast, and the story-line of how she feels wronged by Franco isn't satisfyingly fleshed out.

The premise of a selfish scoundrel finding redemption by becoming what others believe in, in this case, the Munchkins, the tinkers, and the farmers of Oz thinking that Franco is their wizard savior from the reign of the Wicked Witches and using his trickery he becomes just that, is a well worn one that packs very little power in this all too conventional family friendly fairy tale.

There's a sometimes jarring disconnect between Franco and the artificial landscape surrounding him. I haven't been as aware of the heavy use of green screen since the STAR WARS prequels. In one bit, another allusion to the original WIZARD OF OZ, which has Franco and Williams travelling in bubbles in the sky, it was hard not to visualize the actors stumbling around on a sound stage - the desired effect of experiencing a different world sure wasn't happening there. Raimi's SPIDER-MAN movies are much more visually convincing.

OZ isn't directly based on any of L. Frank Baum's original Oz novels - it's supposed to be set a few decades before the first one ("The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" from 1900) - so it's a prequel to both the books and the 1939 movie, but despite the efforts of the capable cast, the savvy director, over 20 writers (that's right), and hundreds of computer animators it comes off more like glorified fan fiction than canon.

Still, it's not a total bomb; it's passable entertainment if you don't go in expecting a magical masterpiece (and if you're a Raimi fan you'll enjoy the Bruce Campbell cameo). It also may inspire some kids to seek out Baum's books, and watch the 1939 classic so there's that. 

More later...