Italian auteur Marco Ferreri’s films profile a modern consumer culture that is not simply empty but diseased, deadening emotions and driving people (specifically men) to acts of excess. The epitome is La Grande Bouffe, his grotesque 1973 men so bored life they decide to end it all in one final orgy, a food-and-sex blow-out, but you can find the seeds of that in the 1969 Dillinger in Dead, recently restored and rereleased in a revival run and now on DVD from Criterion.

Michel Piccoli plays with his new toy

It’s not a gangster film but an eerie character study of an industrial engineer (Michel Piccoli) over a long night where boredom and ennui and alienation (he’s in the middle of designing a gas mask) take their toll. Set almost entirely within the walls of a cluttered modern apartment filled with cultural detritus, Piccoli’s character plays like a spirited kid in a life-size toy box while his gorgeous but emotionally disconnected wife (Anita Pallenberg) medicates herself to sleep. He watches (and then interacts with) home movies, cooks up a snack, grabs a quickie with the maid (Annie Girardot), but the toy that fascinates him most is a handgun (which he cleans in olive oil) that may have belonged to Dillinger (or is simply wrapped up in the gangster’s mystic, which becomes both as his tool of liberation and of his ultimate act of arrogance and human contempt.

Piccoli does it all with a sly little smile, like he’s up to something and enjoying his little insomniac night in, but ends the night with a vicious act of violence performed with cool emotional disconnection. It was a radical political statement in its day but his whole being is mired in an ugly sexist sense of superiority, where women are somehow less human than he is, merely more objects for him to play with and discard. And while Ferreri may have intended that to be merely another symptom of his cultural disease, his identification with the engineer, and Piccoli’s childlike attitude through the long (and frankly dull) evening of nocturnal play, give his actions an approval that rubs me wrong. It’s at times fascinating, a skewed commentary on consumerism and self-medicated existence, but his chauvinist entitlement leaves an ugly stain on the film that Ferreri’s subsequent films don’t wash off.

Features substantial new video interviews with actor Michel Piccoli and Italian film historian Adriano Aprà (who also has a cameo in the film) and excerpts from a 1997 Cannes roundtable with filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci and Francesco Rosi (among others) paying tribute to Ferreri, who passed away in 1997, plus a booklet with an essay and excerpts of printed Ferreri interviews.

On DVD from Criterion on Tuesday, March 16.

Breakdown (1952), the sole screen effort by stage director Edmond Angelo, is a low budget and very American quasi-noir boxing drama set against a culture of political corruption and the brutal arena where young boxers are destroyed by greedy managers. The charismatically anemic William Bishop is a hot young boxer sprung from prison by a shady ward boss (Sheldon Leonard, who also narrates) to help out his kid brother, an aspiring boxing manager (Wally Cassell), only to be pressured into fighting the champ in a match he isn’t ready for. Though running a brief 76 minutes and shot on the cheap, it’s more of a low budget indie than an actual B movie. There isn’t much style to this stage adaptation but it moves along at a good clip and leaves more casualties than you might expect. The print quality is unexceptional but fine for both, with a softness to the image, minor print damage and hiss on the soundtracks.

The films in British Film Noir Double Feature (VCI) are indeed British but less noir than lurid social dramas with arch moral lessons. Twilight Women (aka Women of Twilight) (1953) is set in a boarding house that takes in wed mothers and notorious women no “respectable” rooming home will have. It’s like a low-rent Stage Door by way of a prison film with Freda Jackson as the landlady who puts on a show of maternal concern but is little more than a prison warden preying off women who have no other alternative. This mercenary monster even gets away with murder, or at the very least negligent homicide when it comes to taking care of the babies, shorting them on milk and nutrients and refusing to call the doctor when one of them becomes ill from starvation. Lois Maxwell (the future Miss Moneypenny) is an unwed mother awaiting her fiancé to return from Canada and René Ray the most notorious resident who looks out for the utterly defenseless Maxwell while wallowing in self pity while her cheating lover goes to the hangman after murdering one of his conquests. It’s adapted from a stage play and never shakes off its staginess, and the “happy ending” is strange sort of lifeline, though at least heartfelt from the women involved.

The Slasher (aka Cosh Boy) (1953) isn’t about a killer, simply a sneering young thug, a piece of pure juvenile delinquent melodrama set in post-war London where aimless thugs attack little old ladies (the term “cosh” refers to hitting someone over the head with a sap) and hide out in the rubble of bombed-out homes. The bullying leader of the aimless gang, Roy (James Kenney), is an angry, manipulative bully coddled (and essentially enabled) by a war widow who refuses to believe he’s such a bad egg, but the film refuses to extend any blame to her willful ignorance. Joan Collins gets prime billing in a small role as the younger sister of a gang member who falls under Roy’s sway with predictable results. The post-war setting offers a potentially solid framework to explore the loss of parents and siblings and see the damage on those left behind, but it’s trite and tired with a musty morality and dime-store psychology (wouldn’t you know that the film figures all the boy needs a good thrashing from an authority figure). Director Lewis Gilbert went on to much better work: Alfie, Educating Rita and three James Bond movies. The transfers are adequate at best and there are serious audio deficiencies and soundtrack damage in The Slasher.

Not to be confused with Amos Poe’s 1976 documentary of the same name, the 1979 Blank Generation (MVD) by Ulli Lommel also dives into the New York punk rock scene, but the parallels end there. Richard Hell stars as a burned-out singer having a tumultuous affair with an emotionally erratic French journalist (Carole Bouquet) in a film that seems to wanders around the streets of New York looking for a story and never finding one. What it does offer is a great snapshot of the city, grimy New York underground atmosphere and live performances by Richard Hell and the Voidoids, whose iconic punk hit is the film’s titles and theme song. Andy Warhol is an executive producer and makes a cameo as himself. Features a new interview 45-minute with Richard Hell conducted by Luc Sante, and the aging punk star doesn’t mince words about what he thinks is wrong with the film, director Lommel or even his own (non)performance. “There’s not a truthful moment in the film,” he confesses, though he does praise cinematographer Ed Lachman for his cinematic snapshot of 1978 New York. The DVD

And a film I didn’t have a chance to see but have set aside for later viewing is Return To The 36th Chamber (Vivendi), a sequel (of sorts) from The 36th Chamber of Shaolin director Lau Kar-leung and star Gordon Liu (playing, I’m told, a con man who impersonates Liu’s character from the original film). The Vivendi release is from the collection of Celestial Pictures restorations. The previous discs have looked excellent and arrived uncut and with original soundtracks and good subtitles (plus optional English dub track). No reason so suspect this is any different.

More cult titles: Battle Girl: The Living Dead In Tokyo Bay (Synapse) starring Japanese wrestling sensation Cutie Suzuki battling zombies; The Alcove (Severin), another sexploitation from Joe D’Amato offering up the ample charms of Laura Gemser, cult goddess of seventies and eighties Eurotica; and Wong Jing’s gangster drama I Corrupt All Cops (Tai Seng), set in the days before the 1997 handover and starring Tony Leung Kar Fai as an Inspector out to reform a corrupt department and Anthony Wong (who else?) as his nemesis.

Design your own Mad Men adventures with these retro action figures

Yeah, they’re a little creepy – Roger apparently got a facelift in the transition, Don is reduced to a blank blandness and Betty is generic Barbie with a sixties flourish. But at least Joan doll suggests the bombshell original, even if she doesn’t look much like her.

My Mad Men self portrait

The set, priced at $74.95, will be available on March 23 at BarbieCollector.com, amctv.com and select retailers (including, one hopes, at Corky St. Claire’s memorabilia store, where the Mad Men can have dinner with Andre in Corky’s brand new production). Wet bar not included, sadly. I’d love to see a selection of cocktail glasses as accessories.

More details at the New York Times here.

Me, I’ll just stick with my Mad Men portrait, courtesy of MadMenYourself at AMC.

Everybody should have one.

Heck, everybody should be one.

George Clooney: Untethered

Precious came away with two wins but Up In The Air (Paramount) is, in my opinion, the superior film (it is certainly the more subtle and nuanced film) and should have taken the Adapted Screenplay award. It’s also a refreshingly mature movie about grown-up characters and serious issues, handled with a light touch with a depth of character and great intelligence behind it. George Clooney stars as a 21^st century traveling man who has trimmed his existence down to what can be packed into carry-on luggage and turned business class seating and airport lounges into his comfort zone. He’s spent so much passing through life that he treats relationships like layovers: a brief, impermanent stop on a never-ending journey. Which makes it easier to do his job: he’s the man that companies bring to fire employees that they don’t want to face themselves, and he’s just been assigned to show the ropes to an ambitious young professional (Anna Kendrick) fresh from business school who finds that the human equation can be a tricky factor in putting theory into practice.

Clooney uses his trademark charm and easy confidence to create a character who skates along the surface until a connection with a sexy and smart fellow traveler (Vera Farmiga) starts him thinking that “Everyone needs a co-pilot” (a revelation as sales pitches). He’s perfect, smoothly amiable yet utterly impersonal behind his easy smile and unreadable eyes. And beneath his existential odyssey, the film simmers with the anxieties of working folks suddenly downsized out of their jobs and their identities: a cultural snapshot that is funny, bittersweet and ultimately painfully, tenderly human. I also wrote on the film for MSN’s “Best of the 2009″ wrap here.

It’s only Jason Reitman’s third feature but he really knows how to deliver a superior commentary track: he’s proud of his work, eager to share stories behind the scenes and generous in celebrating the contributions of his collaborators. He invites director of photography Eric Steelberg and first assistant director Jason Blumenfeld to share the track and makes a point of drawing them in to elucidate their contributions and share their stories. Most importantly, he fills the track with observations and inspirations and explanations that interest me because they get to the heart of both the creative process and the production process. Also includes a featurette on the credits sequence and five deleted scenes (with optional commentary by Jason Reitman). The Blu-ray edition presents the deleted scenes in HD and includes eight more deleted scenes, a brief piece that juxtaposes video storyboards to the finished film and a little outtake titled “American Airlines Prank.”

Who would have thought that this independent drama would become the most polarizing film of the year? Precious: Based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire (Lionsgate) was embraced by critics and audiences alike and took home a pair of Oscars (for Adapted Screenplay and Mo’Nique’s performance as a venomously angry mother who grinds her daughter’s spirit into the ground), it has also been criticized by many commentators and critics as being a gross caricature of slum life and a shamelessly manipulative melodrama. They have a point, but Gabourey Sidibe’s performance is no caricature and this film has gotten under the skin of a lot of viewers. My review of the DVD is on MSN here.

In Capitalism: A Love Story (Anchor Bay), America’s rabble rouser everyman activist of a documentary filmmaker Michael Moore takes on nothing less than the entire foundation of our economy, the business culture of profit at any price and government complicity with corporate interests that has transformed it into a giant casino. He’s cheeky, he’s outrageous and he can get awfully full of himself (“For 20 years I tried to tell GM this day was coming. Maybe now they’ll listen to me.”), but he does have a way of getting your blood up with his mix of real stories, sly commentary, exasperating revelations and street theater. But for all that, he has a point that isn’t being addressed (at least to my satisfaction) in the public discussion: the American Dream of the 1950s, where a working man could afford a home and college tuition for a house full of kids on a single income job that provided health insurance, is long gone in an era of two-income families, contract positions and rising housing and health care prices. His point is simple: if this is capitalism at work, then something is wrong. And along with his checklist of offenses and offenders, he offers stories of activism, community response and reaction, ground-level defiance and populist triumphs. People still can make a difference and take charge if they have a big enough voice and a strong enough resolve. The DVD features 80 minutes of bonus material, not simply deleted scenes and interviews but entire topics shaped into ten featurettes by Moore, and the Blu-ray includes an eleventh featurette plus a digital copy of the film for portable media players.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (Sony) – I guess a sequel was inevitable, but what a weird trip it took. The original 1999 The Boondock Saints was a high-profile script bought by the Weinsteins, who shut done production in a notorious clash with its director/writer Troy Duffy, who wound up making it with another company on a fraction of the original budget. It still turned into a massive theatrical flop before becoming a cult hit on home video. In the meantime, Duffy became a notorious figure of ego run amuck (the tale is told in the documentary Overnight, which offers plenty of cringe-worthy arrogance and crowing by the anointed Duffy before he shot a frame of film) and it took him ten years to get another film off the ground. Sure enough it was a sequel in the same vein: the MacManus Brothers (Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus) return from their exile in Ireland to continue their work as the psychotic choir boys blasting their way through Boston’s underworld armed with a small arsenal and righteous vengeance. Reedus pretty much captures the entire film with his signature line: “Let’s do some gratuitous violence.” This time through Clifton Collins Jr. teams up with the boys, Julie Benz plays a sassy FBI agent with her own endgame, Judd Nelson tortures a Boston accent with a mob snarl and Peter Fonda assassinates an even worse Italian accent as the Italian capo pulling the strings of this absurdly convoluted plot. Duffy scripts like a wannabe Tarantino and directs like a guy who has seen too many John Woo gangster movies and ends up with a cartoon posing as an action movie.

This one scored a major release but not much profit so Troy Duffy milks the DVD release for all its worth, helming not one but two commentary tracks. The first with stars Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus and Billy Connolly is largely a jokey party track but he gets to indulge his auteur fantasy in the second (largely solo) track and, my God, is he insufferable and full of himself. But, as he likes to say, “The fan-base gets it.” Also includes deleted scenes, the 25-minute “Unprecedented Access: Behind the Scenes” and a hotel-room conversation between “Billy Connolly and Troy Duffy: Unedited.” Exclusive to the Blu-ray releases are three additional featurettes and the standard BD-Live features.

Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery are no saints

The title of Gigante (Film Movement), Adrian Biniez’s affectionate character piece, refers to Jara (Horacio Camandule), a big but gentle security guard who works the night shift of a supermarket, moonlights as a bar bouncer (who would rather talk out a conflict than get physical) and spends the rest of day watching TV and playing video games with his young nephew. This lonely guy kind of sleepwalks through life until he notices Julia (Leonor Svarcas), a young woman fresh from the countryside working on the overnight cleaning crew. Too shy to face her, he monitors her via security camera and starts following her outside work: to the movies, to a karate class, window shopping on streets packed with vendors and market stalls. What could be an uncomfortable edge of stalker obsession is softened by his innate protectiveness, which he extends to everyone: other cleaners, fellow guards, even a rival for Julia’s affections that he saves from a mugging. Camandule brings a gentle giant quality to Jara while Svarcas suggests a complete character without us ever hearing her utter a word, simply through a friendly smile, happy eyes and a body language that shows her happy to be alive. This is a small film with a big heart, filled with quirky details and likable characters. There’s no earth-shaking drama or little narrative complication, just a sunny slice of in a little suburb on the outskirts of city Uruguay that, language aside, isn’t that different from suburbs on this side of the equator. In Spanish with English subtitles. Also features the bonus short film “Dennis” from Denmark (directed by Mads Matthiesen), another film about a big, shy guy, this one a bodybuilder preparing for a first date.

The famed lore of the brothers who created and ran Warner Bros. through Hollywood’s great studio era pretty much come down to Jack Warner. “The last man standing” of the founding brothers, he rewrote the studio story after they passed and left them out of it. The Brothers Warner (Warner), directed by Cass Warner Sperling and based on her book by the same name, is an attempt to set the record straight. As the granddaughter of Warner Bros. studio founder Harry Warner, she has a vested interest, but she also has an interesting story, if not exactly an interesting documentary. There’s plenty of Warner Bros. studio history here, but the focus is on the men themselves—eldest brother and guiding hand Harry Warner, Albert, Sam and Jack, the ambitious youngest brother who took over the studio in a play everyone still considers “the betrayal to end all betrayals”—and how their personalities and passions shaped the studio. It’s also a reminder of the era when studio heads could and did make policy based on their beliefs and passions and egos, even if it cost them at the box-office. When the Nazis rode a wave of anti-Semitism to power in Germany and turned prejudice into policy, Warner Bros. was the sole Hollywood studio to cut business ties with Germany and make films that exposed the realities of Nazi Fascism in their movies (or at least try to; the censors refused to allow them to mention the concentration camps in films). The rest of Hollywood pressured them to stop endangering their profits in Europe and even the American government got involved to stop them from stirring things up… until December 7, 1941, of course, and then Warner was encouraged to do exactly what they’d been forbidden to do. It arrives on DVD a day after its premier showing on Turner Classic Movies.

Also new this week: The Stoning of Soraya M. (Lionsgate), which I reviewed previously on my blog here, Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (Sony) from Lasse Hallstrom, The Wedding Song (Strand) from director Karin Albou., Service (Serbis) (E1) from Brillante Mendoza, Old Dogs (Disney) with Robin Williams and John Travolta and the animated Planet 51 (Sony).

For TV on DVD for the week, see my wrap-up here. For the rest of the highlights, visit my weekly column, which goes live every Tuesday on MSN Entertainment.

Bruce Boxleitner and Kate Jackson

I can just hear the pitch: He’s a slick playboy, she’s the mom next door. He’s charming and worldly, she’s chatty and practical. She dotes on him and, despite himself, he becomes quite fond of her. Especially since his boss decides she’s just the stabilizing influence this risk-taking solo agent needs and drafts her help as a freelance operative whenever they need believable cover in “the real world.” Which, it turns out, is practically every week. Meanwhile she keeps her double life a secret from her mother (Beverly Garland, forever trying to get her remarried), her grade-school sons and her (unseen) dates. It’s hard to call the growing affection between them as romantic tension, but there is a slow build and couple of near-kisses (always interrupted by the timely arrival of a suspect or a world-shaking crisis) to string the viewers along to the next season of their very low-key flirtation.

You’d think Amanda would be too instinctively honest and empathetic to be an effective agent, but she’s a natural who instills a sense of trust in the folks that Stetson is assigned to protect (who better to befriend a princess sick to death of phony protocol and political gamesmanship?) and, in one episode, negotiates a Christmas Eve détente between armed and dangerous spies trying to kill each other. I’m reminded of John Steed’s description of Emma Peel in “The Avengers” TV series: “a talented amateur.” That’s Amanda King. “I think of my entire graduating class, I’m the only one who became a spy.” For a show full of assassination attempts and foreign terrorists with a late Cold War backdrop, it’s pretty unconcerned about putting a civilian in harm’s way over and over again, and the show’s breezy attitude (battling a conspiracy in a suburban enclave, Stetson duels with the spike ends of pink flamingo lawn ornaments) and underplayed romantic tension makes it work. You can probably chalk some of that up to executive producer Juanita Bartlett, who came to the show from The Rockford Files. Mel Stewart co-stars as Stetson’s boss and Martha Smith is the junior agent jealous that Amanda gets so many assignments without a lick of training. The show ran for four years. 21 episodes on five discs in a standard case with hinged trays. No supplements beyond the episodic previews.

Lee Horsley’s brief blast of TV fame hit its stride with Matt Houston: The First Season (Paramount), an eighties mystery series starring Horsley as a millionaire Texas cowboy in Los Angeles who balances the dull life of being a jet setting corporate honcho by freelancing as a private detective. Horsley is a southern charmer and who works his Texas drawl and colorful euphemisms on every case and gets an extra boost of southern charm from his sassy and sexy assistant C.J. Parsons (Pamela Hensley), who narrates the pilot episode (an experiment thankfully not repeated in the series proper). It’s a real snapshot of eighties network TV action, with chauvinism in full swing, comedy relief provided by colorful ethnic types, a computer right out of “Star Trek” and a millionaire bachelor pad with a waterfall and a mechanical bull. Yee-ha! 23 episodes on six discs in a standard case with hinged trays. No supplements beyond the episodic previews.

Tremors: The Complete Series (Universal) – After a series of direct-to-DVD sequels, the crazed subterranean eco-system of Perfection Valley became the location of a short-lived original series made for the SciFi Channel in 2003. Michael Gross reprises his roles as Burt Gummer, the survivalist gun-nut who refuses to leave his home even under the constant threat of becoming dinner to the underground omnivores, even after it has been turned into a sanctuary for the endangered species. But of course, the series finds ways around that protected status so that Burt and his new wingman (Victor Browne) can unleash arsenals of firepower at the various creatures that escape the confines of the valley. It’s your basic prehistoric gore-fest comedy adventure. Marcia Strassman and Dean Norris co-star. 13 episodes on three discs in a standard case with a hinged tray.

Greek: Chapter Four (Disney) – It’s a whole new school year for the college students of the ABC Family Channel series: golden girl Casey (Spencer Grammer) is trying to make the most of her senior year in the most exclusive sorority on campus, geeky little brother Rusty (Jacob Zachar) is balancing a science major with brotherhood in the college’s answer to “Animal House” and the Greek wars of house rivalries and dirty tricks continue unabated and even turns it up a notch when sorority queen bitch on wheels Frannie (Tiffany Dupont) starts her own sorority to spite her old house when she’s snubbed in the elections. Which makes it even more unlikely when rival frat presidents Cappie (Scott Michael Foster) and Evan (Jake McDorman) become brothers in a secret society. Plus Jesse McCartney guest stars as a new pledge that buddies (and fraternity rivals) Rusty and Calvin fight over. There’s plenty of backbiting and bonding and fumbling through the hard lessons of life and young love and youthful excess but I confess that (as if you couldn’t tell from this gleefully recounted checklist of melodramatic machinations) I’m a fan of this young adult college comedy-drama. At times it may play like a nighttime teen soap in a minor key but the young cast actually looks the part and the small scale show is filled with fun characters and all the pop culture references you could hope for. 12 episodes on three discs in a standard case with a hinged tray.

Stargate Universe SG-U 1.0 (MGM) actually came out weeks ago but my copy arrived late and I only recently caught up with it. I’ve never been a fan of the original Stargate SG-1 series (which began on Showtime and then moved to the SciFi Channel) and I never even dipped a toe into Stargate: Atlantic, but this show intrigued me. The Stargate franchise has become the Star Trek universe of the SciFi/SyFy channel (and, to take the metaphor to its logical conclusion that would make SG-U the equivalent of Star Trek: Voyager), but this latest spin-off was developed in the wake of Battlestar Galactica and that grittiness and dramatic darkness has been incorporated into the fabric of this series.

They may look like a team, but there's not much camaraderie in this crew

The pilot episode sends a group of officers, soldiers, scientists and civilians on a blind leap through an ancient Stargate and the previously inaccessible “ninth chevron” and the episode opens with them tumbling into dark room that turns out to be on an ancient spaceship—”Destiny,” according the English translation of the alien designation—flying faster than light away from the Milky Way, currently 7 billion light years from Earth (give or take a few million). The way back has been destroyed by an enemy attack that destroyed the base (and quite possibly the entire planet) and there isn’t enough energy on the ship to power a Stargate jump back to Earth even if they had the codes so the best they can do is learn all they can about this automated ship and its mission. But this is not the civil atmosphere of a Star Trek series, or even the necessary collaboration of Galactica. Dr. Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle), the scientific genius leading the investigation, is obsessive and arrogant, working from his own agenda and too self-absorbed to bother communicating his discoveries or his worries to anyone else. Neither the military nor the civilians trust him but they need him. Air is leaking from the ship and CO2 building up from their presence. They need food, water, energy, and information. “It’s essentially on auto-pilot,” explains Rush. “We’re just along for the ride.”

Colonel Everett Young (Justin Louis) puts the mission under military command but half these people aren’t military. There are power struggles for command. Only one person, civilian Eli Wallace (David Blue), a mathematics genius and laid back guy, is trusted by everyone, and his openness and optimism is sometimes all that gives them hope. Drawing the scientific magic of the Stargate universe, they have one communications lifeline back to Earth: the communications stones, which can send a consciousness across the galaxy and into another body for a period of time. And even that just creates more tensions as an officer back home (Lou Diamond Phillips) tries to take charge of the mission remotely without fully understanding the situation.

The series combines hardcore science fiction atmosphere of alien technology and mystery with a volatile atmosphere of human anxiety and desperation in a situation from which they see no way home and every day is another crisis. They are “the wrong people in the wrong place,” tossed into a mission that weren’t prepared for with no replacements on the way for anyone lost in a crisis. And the stakes become all too apparent in the final episode of this collection of ten episodes, when a murder investigation reveals rifts to deep they threaten to tear apart the leadership. The shift in tone and style has alienated some longtime Stargate fans while bringing in new viewers, like me. It’s still a show looking for its footing, but I like the atmosphere and the mystery and especially the focus on survival that so many shows ignore. It makes this universe a lot more real to me.

The DVD and Blu-ray releases both feature all 10 episodes from the show’s initial 2009 run, plus an alternate extended version of the three-part story that opens the series (with footage not seen in the broadcast version). There is commentary for each episode (by various actors and members of the production), numerous short featurettes on various aspects of the show, the production and the concepts brought over from the earlier Stargate shows, and extended versions of the “Kino Video Diaries” seen in the series. New episodes begin running in April, 2010.

Also new this week: Dalziel and Pascoe: Season One (BBC), In Plain Sight: Season Two (Universal) and Walker, Texas Ranger: The Seventh Season (Paramount).

For more DVD releases, see my picks for the week at my blog and my DVD column at MSN.

Setsuko Hara and Masayuki Mori speak no evil in The Idiot

“This story tells the destruction of a pure soul by a faithless world.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky was one of Akira Kurosawa’s favorite novelists and a great influence on the director; he had long wanted to make his novel The Idiot into a film. After completing Rashomon (1950), he finally embarked on his passion project, which he transposed from 19th century Russia to a contemporary Japanese setting. Where Kurosawa took great liberties in adapting subsequent western works into Japanese contexts, from Shakespeare (Throne of Blood, 1957, and Ran, 1985) to Maxim Gorky (The Lower Depths, 1957) to Ed McBain (High and Low, 1963), here he remained almost totally faithful to the original novel.

Read the complete piece on the TCM website here. The film plays Tuesday, March 9, on TCM, and is available on DVD in a box set from Criterion’s Eclipse line.

A reflective moment for wild things

The DVD features four behind-the-scenes featurettes by Lance Bangs. Originally shown as webisodes, these pieces each have their own integrity as snapshots of an element of the production or profiles of collaborators and are full of personality and person expression in addition to providing a peak behind the scenes. Exclusive to the Blu-ray edition are the original live-action adaptation of Sendak’s Higgelty Piggelty Pop! or There Must Be More to Life (a fantastic live action/animated storybook creation brought to life with marvelous costumes, wonderful puppets, stop-motion figures and the voice of Meryl Streep), the “HBO First Look: Where the Wild Things Are” making-of featurette and four more webisode shorts.

Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait Of Maurice Sendak (Oscilloscope) plays like the bonus material of a lavish special edition but is in fact a unique release, a documentary portrait of Maurice Sendak directed by Wild Things director Spike Jonze and his special projects collaborator Lance Bangs (who produced and directed the featurettes for Wild Things) shot over the course of years as Jonze embarked on his adaptation with the blessing and encouragement of Sendak. They became dear friends and that trust and affection comes through in this intimate portrait of the author, illustrator and designer. Now 80 years old and playfully cantankerous, he talks about the inspirations for his most famous books (some of them quite painful and personal), his philosophy of writing for children (“I think what I offered was different… because I was more honest than anybody”) and the controversies surrounding his books, with passing comments on how he came to terms with being gay a long time ago. The title of the film comes from a comment made by Sendak in the film: “I said anything I wanted because I don’t believe in children. I don’t believe in childhood. I don’t believe that there’s this demarcation. “Oh, you mustn’t tell them that. You mustn’t tell them that.” You tell ‘em anything you want. Just tell ‘em if it’s true. If it’s true, you tell ‘em.” The 39-minute documentary was originally shown on HBO. The DVD also features “Q&A with Spike Jonze and Maurice Sendak at The Museum of Modern Art,” tributes and readings by Meryl Streep, James Gandolfini and Catherine Keener from a Sendak birthday tribute organized by Tony Kushner and a playful short film with Spike Jonze and Catherine Keener acting out a story from Sendak’s childhood that the author shared with Jonze on one of their interviews.

2012 (Sony) – It’s the end of the world as we know it… again! But hand it to Roland Emmerich, an old hand at cinematic Armageddon, for making the apocalypse such an entertaining ride. The premise is just exotic enough not to groan throughout: something about solar flares heating up the Earth’s core (temporarily, of course) enough to shift tectonic plates like shuffling a deck of cards, set off volcanoes and earthquakes and generally do a number on the planet. Which is all just an excuse to create a cascade of spectacular disasters for our hapless everyman hero (John Cusack) and his family (like ex-wife Amanda Peet) to overcome on their desperate journey to survival. The gazillions of people left behind (conspiracy theory survivalist Woody Harrelson, for one) are just collateral damage. Features commentary by director Roland Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser, deleted scenes and an alternate ending (which reveals the survival of a few folks left casualties in the theatrical version). Exclusive to the Blu-ray edition is the “Roland’s Vision” picture-in-picture track (a fancy title for the usual repurposing of interview clips), multiple featurettes, an interactive Mayan calendar, movieIQ and the usual BD-Live supplements, plus a digital copy of the film for portable media players.

Produced by Paramount Pictures with a rich cast and imagery designed look like the original storybook illustrations come to life, the 1933 Alice in Wonderland (Universal) wasn’t the first film based on Lewis Carroll’s books but it was the most lavish and extravagant version ever attempted at that point. The stars are the selling point here—W.C. Fields griping and quipping as Humpty Dumpty (a giant costume that the actor may or may not actually be inside), Cary Grant voicing the Mock Turtle (ditto) and Gary Cooper under a bald camp and huge tufts of white hair sprouting over his ears and under his nose as the bumbling White Knight—but it’s the likes of Edward Everett Horton, Edna May Oliver, Ned Sparks, Louise Fazenda and a roll call of character actors whose faces and voices are more familiar than their names that enliven the film. Under strange and sometimes grotesque masks and costumes, they give Carroll’s nonsense verse and surreal dialogue the snap of a screwball comedy. Charlotte Henry (the only unknown in the cast) holds her own as the imaginative and unflappable Alice, unfazed by the crazy dialogue and surreal creatures. You might not peg Norman Z. McLeod as a comic absurdist but the former animator dives into the witty nonsense of Carroll’s world with the same rapid-paced, straight-faced energy as his two Marx Bros. comedies, never stopping to belabor a gag or explain a wordplay. He just rides the weirdness to the next scene. Joseph L. Mankiewicz and William Cameron Menzies (who also designed the film, uncredited) deliver a wonderfully clever and perfectly Carrollian script, which is as episodic as most adaptations but quite lively and a lot of fun. The effects are predictably primitive, especially the giant articulated puppets and creepy paper-mache masks, but it all moves so rapidly and so strangely that it doesn’t matter. No supplements.

The maddest apocalyptic epic every told continues in 20th Century Boys 2: The Last Hope (Viz), the second of three chapters, set 15 years after the giant robot attack on Tokyo of the first film. The messianic leader turned despotic president know only as Friend has practically brainwashed the world by now (no one thinks it’s weird that, like a Mexican wrestler, never sheds his mask in public) but the kickass schoolgirl niece (Airi Taira) of Kenji continues to investigate Friend’s shadowy network of cult followers, brainwashed operatives and his own brand of re-education camp (called “Friend Land” and run like a theme park with overly-chipper employees intent on making you drink the Kool-Aid). This sprawling tale, based on a long running manga serial by Naoki Urasawa, jumps back and forth in time (literally, figuratively and, at one point, via a virtual reality brainwashing program) and pings around a diverse set of characters who have gone underground to continue the resistance against Friend’s truly mad plan. None of this will make sense to if you haven’t seen the first film—it doesn’t necessarily make any more sense to those who have seen it—but it’s so strange and entertaining and densely woven that I find myself hooked on the very elements so beyond logic they defy rational explanation. This is all about the irrational run amuck. Yukihiko Tsutsumi directs with lots of humor and energy and personality and is surprisingly adept at keeping the various characters and plotlines (comparatively) easy to follow, but he takes the narrative seriously enough to invest us in the consequences of the conspiracy. These big screen adventures are tremendously creative and entertaining fantasy thrillers and I can’t wait for the finale (which is previewed after the close of the end credits). In Japanese with English subtitles. Features the trailers for each film in the trilogy but no other supplements.

My review of Ponyo and the new special edition releases of three earlier Hayao Miyazaki films is here.

Also released this week is Cold Souls (Fox) with Paul Giamatti, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (Screen Media) with Robin Wright Penn and the documentary We Live in Public (IndiePix).

For TV on DVD for the week, see my wrap-up here. For the rest of the highlights, visit my weekly column, which goes live every Tuesday on MSN Entertainment.

Ponyo: Below the waves

His most recent film, Ponyo (Disney), is released this week by Disney, which—despite the great voice line-up of their English language adaptations—treats his films more like exotic imports than mainstream movies. Part Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid, part ecological fable and part children’s fantasy come to life, this gentle storybook film is a simple, sweet tale animated with a delicacy unique to animated features. Ponyo is a water sprite, a curious undersea creature and daughter of the sea gods who gets swept to the shore, trapped in the pollution of the human world and rescued by a human boy, with whom she falls in love. This isn’t the romantic type of love of Disney’s The Little Mermaid but the unconditional affection of young kids and she takes human form to join him on land, which upsets the balance of nature so carefully kept in check by her wizard father (voice of Liam Neeson) and elemental mother (Cate Blanchett).

There are moments of personal magic (the boy “talks” with his sailor father as he passes their Cliffside home using signal lamps), natural magic (schools of fish become literal waves curling upon the shore in the search for the missing Ponyo) and imaginative magic (Ponyo turns a toy boat into a watercraft sized just right for a couple of kids), but the film’s real magic is in the generosity and love on display from humans and spirits alike. Unlike Anderson’s fairy tale, this is no tragedy but a celebration of a meeting of cultures and the possibility of a healthy (and ecologically responsible) co-existence, all told with a sense of wonder. The English language version was scripted by Melissa Mathison (E.T.) and produced by Pixar honcho John Lasseter with Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy, and features a voice cast that also includes Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Cloris Leachman and Lily Tomlin, among others. Features an English language introduction, the “Storyboard Presentation of the Movie” (which replays the entire film soundtrack to a slideshow of storyboards and sketches) and “The World of Ghibli,” a collection of featurettes (both Japanese and English language productions) on the film and the English adaptation, plus interactive peaks at other Miyazaki features. The Blu-ray features a bonus DVD of the film, which is about the best supplement you could have for protecting your Blu-ray from little fingers.

Timed to Ponyo’s release are new special editions of three earlier Miyazaki films. Castle in the Sky (1986, Disney) is a grand adventure from the director’s private mythos, the odyssey of an orphaned girl with a magic crystal and a courageous young engineer’s apprentice is set in a world of magnificent flying machines and sky-born cities. Chased by a wacky pirate family and shifty, suspicious government agents, it all converges on the legendary floating castle of Laputa, an ancient civilization in the clouds which holds the key to great power. The voice cast for the English language version include James Van Der Beek, Anna Paquin, Cloris Leachman, Mandy Patinkin, Mark Hamill, and Andy Dick.

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989, Disney) takes place in a magical variation of our own world. Strong, plucky young heroine Kiki (voiced by Kirsten Dunst in the English language version) has turned thirteen, the age when witches leave the nest for a year of solo training. She’s ready to take on the world with her broomstick and her best friend Jiji, a cautious but supportive black cat (a tiny wisp of a feline voiced in English by a gently subdued Phil Hartman) if she can only get her flying under control. Miyazaki’s gentle rhythm and meandering narrative capture the easy pulse of real life. The magic of Kiki is the girl’s sense of wonder in her new world, whether it’s her soaring flight among the migrating geese or a bicycle ride with Tombo (Matthew Lawrence) to see the dirigible. Kiki and Tombo are marvelous models of courage, drive and self confidence and her adventures have as much to do with real world situations, such as fear of failure and blows to her self esteem, as with the lyrical flights among the birds and over the forests and city streets (a lovingly detailed middle Europe seaport town of red tiled roofs and cobble stone streets). A wholesome, life affirming picture that doesn’t speak down to kids or up to adults. The American voice cast also features Matthew Lawrence, Debbie Reynolds and Janeane Garofalo.

My Neighbor Totoro

My Neighbor Totoro (Disney) is perhaps my favorite of Miyazaki’s films, a magical family film with a darling story of two young sisters befriended by forest spirits (among them a friendly, perhaps imaginary, giant blue hedgehog who introduces them to the wonders of nature) one magical summer. While the fantasy and whimsy captures the playful imagination of children, a powerful undercurrent of emotional crisis grounds their experience: their infirm mother is recuperating from some unexplained illness in a local hospital and the anxiety takes its toll on the youngest. The compassion of Miyazaki’s world is in the way the spirits (including a bus that is part Cheshire Cat) rally to look after the little girl lost. Rarely has there been such a tender and respectful exploration of the emotions and fears of children, and never in such a delightful flight of fantastical adventure and wonder. A masterpiece of modern animated fantasy made for children and adults alike.

Each film is available with original Japanese soundtracks and English dub soundtracks produced by Pixar director (and die-hard Miyazaki fan) John Lasseter with excellent American voice casts, and each set features a bonus disc of supplements. Along with introductions by Lasseter and a couple of English language featurettes, the American DVD releases include the “Storyboard Presentation of the Movie” (which replays the entire film soundtrack to a slideshow of storyboards and sketches) and never-before-seen featurettes and new interviews with Miyazaki produced for the Japanese market.

Kurt Russell is Elvis - thank you very much

Elvis impersonator Ronnie McDowell provides the singing voice and Shelley Winters, Pat Hingle and Joe Mantegna co-star. Trivia note: the film is written and produced by Anthony Lawrence, who earlier wrote three of the silliest of Elvis musicals back in the sixties. This is the DVD debut of this superb made-for TV production and the first time that the complete 170-minute production that has been available in any form for decades. Includes the featurette “Bringing A Legend To Life” featuring archival interviews with Kurt Russell and John Carpenter, commentary by vocalist Ronnie McDowell and author Edie Hand (who co-authored a handful of Elvis recipe books) and rare performance clips from “American Bandstand” among the supplements.

Alice (Lionsgate), the 2009 production made for the SyFy Channel, reworks the fantasy world of Lewis Carroll’s novels “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” into a kind of warped mirror version in the cyberpunk fantasy mold, courtesy of writer/director Nick Willing, who previously reworked “The Wizard of Oz” as the “Tin Man” mini-series. In this version, Alice (Caterina Scorsone) is a twentysomething women with a black belt in judo and a fear of heights who chases a man known as The White Rabbit through a looking glass passageway between dimensions and lands in an alternate universe Wonderland where despotic forces have enslaved the population and our heroine becomes a hero to the rough, desperate underground resistance. It’s a cliché in its own right, but it does offer lots of opportunities to mutate the fantasy imagery, have fun with the playing card and chess piece motifs and rewrite the whimsy of the surreal children’s tale as an adult adventure in a strange land. Thus the Hatter (Andrew Lee Potts) is a scruffy rogue working in the margins, the White Rabbit is a mercenary, the March Hare an assassin and the Red Queen (Kathy Bates) a cruel dictator who is stealing human emotions to turning them into wonderland drugs. It’s not so much smart as clever and colorful, with art deco designs and splashy Vegas settings and lots a offbeat humor. Matt Frewer is the doddering White Knight (the last of his race), Tim Curry is a very dangerous Dodo and Harry Dean Stanton plays the Caterpiller, the eccentric head of the resistance who puffs on a pipe and has a habit of disappearing. The complete three hour production is on a single disc and features commentary by director Nick Willing and actress Caterina Scorsone.

The creators of the BBC made-for-TV thriller The 39 Steps (2008) (BBC) borrow a little from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1935 film but otherwise return to the source: John Buchan’s 1915 novel. Where the original novel was a spy thriller set in the days leading up to World War I, and Hitchcock’s film was completely apolitical with a fictional international crime syndicate the villain, this version is all pre-war intrigue featuring German spies and Nazi sympathizers. Richard Hannay (Rupert Penry-Jones of “MI-5″) is a disillusioned soldier who is suddenly plunged into a conspiracy involving a British secret agent, enemy spies and top secret information hidden in a code book. He’s an amateur adventurer in the Cary Grant-light mold, a chauvinist and playboy on the run from both Nazi spies and British police with a headstrong suffragette (Lydia Leonard) in tow, a character borrowed from Hitchcock but given an entirely new twist for this take. In another nod to Hitchcock, Hannay is even chased by a biplane (a scene that recalls “North by Northwest”). The rest is sprightly and fun and romantic with a few surprises and a strong pre-war political tension that Hitch wouldn’t touch in 1935. For the record, this is actually the fourth screen version of the novel, and that doesn’t even take into account the 2005 stage play. Broadcast in Britain in 2008, it played in the United States on “Masterpiece Classic” in early 2010. No supplements.

Chris Kattan struggling comedian and Hollywood actor Chris Kattan in Bollywood Hero (Anchor Bay), a made-for-cable mini-series that sends the former “Saturday Night Live” star to Mumbai to take the lead in a Bollywood musical called “Peculiar Dancing Boy” (“It’s a poor translation,” the director assures him) and for once play a dashing hero. Or so he hopes. The comedy is built largely on Kattan’s mugging through the usual culture collision gags of the oblivious American in a foreign land, not to mention his blatant miscasting in a big budget musical drama (“You spend months in Hollywood looking for a star and THAT’S what you bring back?” screeches the producer, who just happens to be the sister of the director) and a production constantly on the verge of collapse because of financing problems (they have no money), casting disasters and star egos. Meanwhile he falls in love with his no-nonsense producer (Pooja Kumar), which gives him the opportunity to play a romantic lead (of sorts) off the set. Running 168 minutes, it’s a bit short for an American mini-series but the right length for your average Bollywood musical feature, and it’s filled out with a handful of Bollywood-style musical production numbers (staged by Slumdog Millionaire choreographer Longinus Fernandes), which gives Kattan the opportunity to show off the suave, sophisticated moves of a diminutive Jerry Lewis. It’s enjoyable and predictable and even a little sweet, but its insight to Indian culture as about as credible as Kattan’s dancing skills. Maya Rudolph, Jennifer Coolidge, Keanu Reeves, David Alan Grier and Andy Samberg all make cameos as themselves. Features about 8 minutes of deleted scenes and outtakes.

Poldark: Series 1 (Acorn), the 1975 British costume drama based on the novels of Winston Graham, arrived on American shores via “Masterpiece Theatre” in 1977 and immediately became one of the most popular British TV imports of its era. Robin Ellis is the dashing Ross Poldark, returned to Cornwall from the war in the colonies to find his betrothed engaged to another, his family estate in ruins, the copper mines targeted by a rival and his fortunes challenged. Though it’s produced largely on videotape (a British drama convention of the era that is only distracting for a few minutes), this production has a little more fire and grit to it than the usual British costume drama, thanks to the windswept Cornwall locations, a lively narrative of duels and deceit and betrayal, and to Ellis himself, who is alternately chivalrous, brooding, and fiercely driven as the worldly Poldark making his way in a provincial 18^th century world. The show’s first series of 16 episodes debuts on stateside DVD in a box set of four thinpak case.

Also new this week: Jonathan Miller’s  surreal version 1966 version of Alice in Wonderland (BBC) with Peter Sellers, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Michael Redgrave and Peter Cook, the BBC drama The Road From Coorain (Acorn) and Have Gun-Will Travel: The Fourth Season, Volume 1 (Paramount).

For more DVD releases, see my picks for the week at my blog and my DVD column at MSN.

"Days of Heaven": The magic hour

Malick’s use of the naïve narrator and the lovers on the run from a murder (they even create a short-lived Eden-like existence in the forest at one point) recalls his debut feature, Badlands (1973), but the resemblances end there. The story of Days of Heaven has echoes of the Old Testament story of Abraham and Sarah placed in the grandeur of the endless horizon and majestic skies of the Texas plains. The manor house and the grain elevators of this wheat empire stand like monoliths watching over the unending plains. The images of workers in their landscape look like impressionist paintings that cinematographer Almendros creates on the screen with the natural light of his location (Alberta, Canada, standing in for Texas).

Malick wanted to evoke the silent cinema of the teens, which was shot with available light and strove to create clear, sharp, vivid images. Almendros added to that the sensibilities and visions of such American painters as Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper, artists who strove for an evocative simplicity of image and lighting. In his autobiography, “Man With a Camera,” Almendros praised the working relationship with Malick, who not only approved of but encouraged his efforts to dispense with traditional Hollywood lighting and push his experiments with available light photography, and a core group of collaborators (including set designer Jack Fisk and costume designer Patricia Norris) who were equally dedicated to recreating the era in all its detail and texture.

Read the complete feature here.