New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 5/21/13

Today’s releases feature a plethora of titles that I missed when they were released theatrically early this year. 



First up, former California Govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first starring role in a decade (THE EXPENDABLES movies? Consider those cameos.), Kim Ji-woon’s THE LAST STAND comes out in single disc Blu ray and DVD editions. The action flick about Schwarzenegger as a small town Sherriff battling a Mexican drug lord, which looks like it could possibly be big dumb fun, comes with a smattering of Special Features including a nearly half hour featurette entitled “Not In My Town: Making THE LAST STAND,” a few shorter featurettes (“Cornfield Chaos: Scene Breakdown,” “The Dinkum Firearm & Historic Weaponry Museum Tour”), Actor-Cam Anarchy: with Johnny Knoxville and Jaimie Alexander, and over 20 minutes of deleted and extended scenes.

Another I missed, and barely noticed the existence of, Richard LaGravenese’s TWILIGHT-wannabe BEAUTIFUL CREATURES, starring Alden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert, hits the shelves in a double disc Blu ray package and in a single disc DVD. Special Features a 24-minute collection of behind-the-scenes Featurettes, 8 minutes of deleted scenes, trailers, and a TV spot. I seriously doubt I’ll be queuing this up.



A few films I’m actually interested also drop on Blu ray and DVD today: Fisher Stevens’ STAND UP GUYS and Steven Soderbergh’s SIDE EFFECTS. 



Available in 1-disc Blu ray and DVD editions, STAND UP GUYS stars the awesome trio of Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, and Alan Arkin as old school gangsters who get together to pull off one last job. Sure, it sounds clichéd as Hell, but I heard good things here and there and will likely give it a whirl this week. Stevens provides a director’s commentary, and other extras include a few featurettes, and a few minutes of deleted scenes. 

Soderbergh’s psychological thriller SIDE EFFECTS, available in a double disc Blu ray set or a single disc DVD package, once said to be one of the director’s final projects before retiring (he’s since said he’s only taking a film-making sabbatical), stars Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Channing Tatum in a tale about a young woman (Mara) who gets prescribed an experimental new medication called Ablixa. Special Features are pretty paltry: a 3 minute behind the scenes featurette, and a couple minutes of fake commercials for the fictional drugs depicted in the film. 

True Blood: The Complete Fifth Season, right in time for the upcoming 6th season of the wildly popular HBO series (premiering on June 16th) is also out today in a spiffy (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy) box set. I’ve not been a regular view of the show before, but the fine folks at HBO sent me a review copy of the nicely packaged season so I’ve been making my way through it. I usually like to watch shows from the very beginning, but I’ve gathered bits and pieces about what’s been going on in the Southern sometimes ultra-trashy world of Sookie Stackhouse, played with punchy energy by Anna Paquin. Since I don’t know all the back stories, and my grasp on the mythology is far from formed, I can get a bit lost, but the show moves fast and has a lot of sordid sex scenes so it’s pretty damn watchable. 



5 commentaries featuring cast and crew members are included, as are such extras as something called “advanced viewing mode,” in which gives viewers the options of getting 4 different angles on each episode along with trivia, production notes, character bios, and histories (hmm, maybe that’ll help me get up to date). There’s also an “Autopsy” of episode Six “Hopeless,” “Authority Confessionals,” and a few more featurettes.

Also from HBO, a film I reviewed when it premiered on the premium cable channel last November, Brett Morgen’s Rolling Stones documentary CROSSFIRE HURRICANE is now out in single disc Blu ray and DVD editions. The doc, which I considered a “purposeful primer of their formative years” although it adds little new for long-time fans, is enhanced by bonus material made up of of live and TV performances from the mid ‘60s (9 songs in all), an interview with director Morgen, and the theatrical trailer.

Notable retro-tinged releases today are PBS’s American Masters documentary about the legendary comic actor/writer/director Mel Brooks (Robert Trachtenberg's “Mel Brooks: Make A Noise”), the Criterion Collection edition of Haskell Wexler’s 1969 cult classic MEDIUM COOL, and Warner Bros. celebrates the 30th anniversary of NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION with a new special edition Blu ray (also 1997’s VEGAS VACATION, which wasn’t from National Lampoon incidentally, makes its Blu ray debut today).

Paul Borghese’s gritty crime drama ONCE UPON A TIME IN BROOKLYN, starring Armand Assante William DeMeo, Cathy Moriarty, and Ice T comes out on DVD today. Its plot sounds a bit like STAND UP GUYS – guy gets out of prison and gets back into illegal activities – but I bet that there’s a distinctly different tone happening. Director’s commentary, interview with Borghese and DeMeo, and deleted scenes. 

Lastly, a few horror titles drop on DVD this week: H.P. LOVECRAFT’S COOL AIR, directed by Albert Pyun is out now only on DVD with no Special Features other than a trailer gallery, and AFTER DARK ORIGINALS: DARK CIRCLES, the full length directorial debut of Paul Soter, one of the Broken Lizard comedy team who brought you SUPER TROOPERS and CLUB DREAD. Soter appears with actor Johnathon Schaech, and blogger Ryan Turek on an audio commentary, and the sole other extra is a DARK CIRCLES behind-the-scenes featurette.

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NOT FADE AWAY: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now opening exclusively in the Triangle area at Crossroads 20 in Cary:

NOT FADE AWAY (Dir. David Chase, 2012)

David Chase’s debut as director, and first project since his seminal HBO show The Sopranos, is a tribute to the era in which the British Invasion led by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones hit America hard.

It was a time when tons of teenagers dreamed of forming a rock band that would have huge hit singles, tour the world, and be chased by crowds of adoring girls. This is the story of a New Jersey teenager (John Magaro), getting together with his friends to reach for that dream, but they never make it big. As a young female narrator (Meg Guzulescu, who plays Magaro’s sister), who pops up very sparingly, says: “Like most bands, you've never heard of them.”

Although Chase opens the film with the famous meeting of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (Dominic Sheerwood and Alfie Stewart) on a London train chatting about Chicago blues records, his is a personal film about the people listening who could only fantasize about having that iconic power; the impressionable teens watching life changing TV appearances of their heroes (there are several interspersed bits of black and white footage shown full screen including the legendary appearance of the Stones on the ABC variety show The Hollywood Palace in which they were mocked by host Dean Martin).

Our young protagonist, Magaro is obsessed with the revolutionary rock of the times. His change of wardrobe and hairstyle in the span of the 4-5 years this film covers makes him look more and more like Bob Dylan, something his sullen demeanor also calls attention to.

Magaro becomes the drummer for the never really named band (the soundtrack lists them as The Twylight Zones but that’s never made clear in the film), which also includes Will Brill and Jack Huston. At one early gig at a party, Magaro takes over on lead vocal for the Stones’ “Time is on My Side,” and catches the eye of Bella Hethcote as a girl he’d been crushing on since high school. Some conflict arises when Magaro suggests that he would sing one of their songs better than Huston, and before long he’s the lead vocalist and Huston is out.

Back on the homefront, the generation gap widens as Magaro’s father (Chase’s Sopranos star James Gandolfini) disapproves greatly of his son’s rock ‘n roll lifestyle in kitchen-set scenes that remind me of the incredibly touching, rambling monologues Bruce Springsteen would deliver between songs onstage in the ‘80s about his troubled relationship with his father back during the same period this film takes place.

Springsteen is an apt analogy as E Street Band member (and another Sopranos connection) Steve Van Zandt is executive produced, supervised the soundtrack, and wrote one of the band’s few originals “The St. Valentine's Day Massacre,” as well as played on it, and their other songs too.

The Stones dominate the soundtrack, but Chase and Van Sandt touch on a lot of crucial music including old blues artists like Lead Belly, Bo Diddley, and Robert Johnson, mixed with ‘60s pop like the Small Faces, the Moody Blues, and the Left Banke. Of course, the Beatles and Dylan can’t help but pop up.

Director/screenwriter Chase sets a tone for many scenes that can make it easy to pinpoint what’s happening next, and there are one too point plot-points that never add up (Gandolfini reveals he has cancer at one point but nothing really comes from it), but the naturalistic dialogue along with the moody engulfing atmosphere, enhanced grandly by the music, made me feel like I was in these peoples’ uncertain world.

Seeing Magaro’s band find their footing practicing in the basement, gigging at parties, and recording demos at a studio is affecting even when you know they’re never going to make it. A rude awakening for the band comes in the form of Brad Garrett as a New York music business bigwig who tells them that they’re not ready; that they need to pay their dues by playing clubs full-time for 6 months.

If you’ve even been in a band, or known people in a band, or if you are into bands at all, then you’re likely to “get” this movie.



Otherwise your reaction might be like Magaro’s when going with his girlfriend Hethcoteto to see Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 pop art classic BLOW UP: “What kind of movie is this? Nothing happens.”

Director/screenwriter Chase’s NOT FADE AWAY, which is a lifted title from a '50s Buddy Holly classic that has been countlessly covered, doesn’t overly romanticize the era, it just simply conveys the excitement mixed with confusion with being so swept up in the changing times that one can, like Magaro hitchhiking down L.A.'s Sunset Strip at midnight at the film’s end, find their lives blowing in the wind.

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New HBO Rolling Stones Doc Celebrates 50th Anniversary But More Their Bad Boy Image

CROSSFIRE HURRICANE (Dir. Brett Morgen, 2012)

   

To celebrate their 50th anniversary, the Rolling Stones have come out of retirement to release a few new singles (“Doom and Gloom,” and “One More Shot”), perform some surprise club shows leading up to a major tour next year, and have taken part in the new retrospective documentary, CROSSFIRE HURRICANE, which premieres on HBO Thursday night, November 15th.



Directed by Brett Morgen, best known for co-directing the acclaimed 2002 bio-doc THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE, about mega-producer Robert Evans, the film covers the early ‘60s to late ‘70s rise of England’s oldest hit-makers, featuring new audio-only interviews of band members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ron Wood, Bill Wyman, and Mick Taylor.



The doc packs a lot into its one hour and forty plus minute running time, including healthy chunks of such classics as “Street Fighting Man,” “Jumping Jack Flash,” “I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction),” “Sympathy For The Devil,” and “Honky Tonk Women,” mostly smoothly mixing an overview of their hits into the band’s layered narrative without overly cluttering it.



In one funny mid ‘60s TV clip, a straight-laced news commentator criticizes the raunchy rock group for their “carefully calculated air of ‘blow you, Jack!” This speaks volumes as the doc itself strongly appears to be a carefully calculated attempt to re-inforce the Stones’ legendary bad boy image right in time for their reunion.



There is much talk about how they were set-up by their shrewd manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldham to be the anti-Beatles, the bad guys to the fab four’s good guys, and a lot of back stage decadence displayed in the chosen footage including many shots of Stones’ members drinking every bit of available liquor there is. 



It’s like the Stones (most of who produced or executive produced this doc) are saying: ‘We know we’re old mainstream geezers now, but back in the day we were quite dangerous. We had tons of sex, drugs and booze along with our kick ass rock ‘n roll, and even spent time behind bars. We just want to remind you of all that.’



CROSSFIRE HURRICANE, which takes its title from a lyric in “Jumping Jack Flash,”only covers up to the Stones’ ‘1978 album “Some Girls,” though there is brief footage from Hal Ashby’s live concert film LET'S SPEND THE NIGHT TOGETHER (shot in 1981, released in ’83), so there’s a lot of story left to be told, but the film does ideally cover the band’s most vital eras. 


Since those eras have been already very well covered, Morgan’s doc often feels like a hodgepodge of clips from the many other Stones documentaries, almost resembling a greatest hits of the best bits from their filmography.



There’s cool black and white footage of Mick and Keith writing “Sitting on a Fence” from the newly restored and released doc CHARLIE IS MY DARLING (shot on their tour of Ireland in 1965), there’s an excerpt of the Stones playing in Hyde Park after the death of Brian Jones from THE STONES IN THE PARK (1969), there’s the great gritty film of the band recording in Keith’s basement at Villa Nellcôte in France that appeared in the 2010 doc STONES IN EXILE, there’s the shocking moment of murder at Altamont captured in the Maysles brothers’ essential GIMME SHELTER (1970), and so on.



Some of the same archival footage has also been used in Martin Scorsese’s SHINE A LIGHT (2008), from which Morgen also borrows a performance of “All Down The Line” for the end credits (the most recent film of the Stones in this doc).



So if you’re a big Stones fan, you are likely to have already seen a large percentage of this stuff, but if you’re a newcomer to this material, it functions as an purposeful primer of their formative years. 

As a longtime fan myself, I learned precious little I didn’t know before, but enjoyed a few fresh insights from the new interviews like when Richards remarks “The essence of Jagger and Richards together, I suppose would be ‘Midnight Rambler.’ Anybody could’ve written any of our songs, but I don’t think anyone could’ve written ‘Midnight Rambler’ other than Mick and Me.”



Or drummer Charlie Watt's assessment that guitarist Ron Wood, who replaced Mick Taylor in the mid '70s, became “the link between the two strong egos (Jagger and Richards), and the two light ones (himself and Wyman).”



Trying to sum up the group’s appeal, the late Brian Jones, looking back on their ‘65 breakthrough just a year later, tells a reporter that they had “the right type of sound, and the right visual image the kids of the world wanted at the time.”



Fifty years may have passed, and the Stones haven’t had that bad boy image for a long-ass time, but when the publicity machine kicks in with this doc, their new ‘best of’ 3 CD compilation (“GRRR!”) dropping this week, and their looming 2013 tour, surely to be one of the biggest grossing tours ever, it will again be inescapable that they are still hugely wanted by the world.



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