Roman Polanski’s Chinatown gets a new special edition release this week. It’s hard to say if the timing is good or bad, given all the acrimony stirred up by Polanski’s arrest and probable extradition to the U.S. to face sentencing for a crime he confessed to before fleeing the country (over his fear of the rampant judicial misconduct in the case) over 30 years ago. Whatever one feels about Polanski the man (and in this case it is at the very least a disgust and revulsion for a man who raped a 13-year-old girl), it shouldn’t dim the accomplishment of the artist. Simply put, Chinatown is one of the masterpieces of American cinema of the seventies and a classic of American cinema, and Chinatown: Centennial Collection (Paramount) is a duly respectful DVD with intelligent supplements that dig into the creation of the movie and the Los Angeles history that inspired the story. Jack Nicholson strolls through the role of cynical private eye J.J. Gittes with the sneering confidence of a smart cookie in a situation far more complex than he realizes and Faye Dunaway brings an echo of tragedy to potential femme fatale Evelyn Mulwray, a socialite whose private life Gittes splashes across the newspapers. Robert Towne’s labyrinthine yet tight and resonant script, inspired by classic films noir and real Los Angeles history, won the film its only Academy Award (it was nominated for eleven, including Best Picture). Roman Polanski transformed the script into a modern film noir of sleek style, milky color, and sad cynicism, putting the corruption, greed, and moral monstrosity of Los Angeles in the thirties under the crisp light of the California sun. John Huston is brilliant as the maverick robber baron Noah Cross and Polanski gives himself an unforgettable cameo: he’s the weaselly thug who slices Nicholson’s nose.

Jack Nicholson in Chinatown

“So the first thing I was struck by was how much I liked how sinister the logo treatment is in black and white,” says filmmaker and unabashed fan David Fincher to screenwriter Robert Towne, jumping right into the newly-recorded commentary without even a preamble. It’s a conversation between professionals rather than a lecture and Fincher plays the impassioned fan making astute observations and asking provocative questions of Towne. It sometimes goes silent for what seems like minutes, but all in all it is thoughtful, considered and introspective and Towne seems to get more modest with age. The two-disc set also includes the original three-part, 80-minute documentary “Water and Power,” which explores the real-life history and politics of the irrigation of California at the center of the film, and the new 26-minute featurette “Chinatown: An Appreciation,” with contemporary filmmaker and film artists discussing the film. Carried over from the previous DVD edition is a collection of three retrospective featurettes with interviews with director Roman Polanski, star Jack Nicholson, screenwriter Robert Towne, and producer Robert Evans. It’s a fine edition, but my question is: when will Paramount give it the Blu-ray treatment?

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The Middleman and Wendy: the pop-art phase

The Middleman is my discovery of the week, a TV series that ran for a brief but brilliant twelve episodes on the ABC Family Channel last fall before it succumbed to dismal ratings. Perhaps it would have found its audience on the SciFi Channel (now just identified by the mutant SyFy logo). Perhaps a cult audience will likewise discover this deliciously tongue-in-cheek spy fantasy series on DVD and the groundswell of support will revive it like Family Guy. (I can dream, can’t I?) All I know is that it was canceled before I had really heard about it, let alone ever seen an episode, and it had me in the first ten minutes of the pilot episode. Matt Keeslar is a Boy Scout of a special agent – part Men in Black operative, part Doctor Who freelance good guy with a faceless boss and a crotchety receptionist robot stuck in battle-axe mode – who specializes in unconventional cases (aliens, demons, a genetically enhanced super-ape that aspires to be a mafia Don). and Natalie Morales is Wendy Watson, an art-school grad and sidekick in training scouted by The Middleman (it’s apparently his name, his job and his rank all in one) from her adventures in temping. Keeslar is both colorful and clean, like Jack Bauer with impeccable manners and kick-ass skills, while Morales is Piper Perabo with a dash of Rosario Dawson. And by jiminy, it’s gosh-darn great, absolutely hilarious and marvelously inventive, a rare gem of genre TV that both lovingly quotes and hilariously parodies its inspiration. It deserves to be seen by everyone who likes their genre TV funny, clever and hip as they come. More on this when I complete the series. For now, I’m doling the episodes out like precious treats.

Criterion originally released Repulsion on laserdisc, the old-school high-definition standard of the pre-DVD age. For its long-awaited DVD and Blu-ray debut, Criterion goes back to the original elements for a beautiful new digital transfer approved by director Roman Polanski. "I always considered Repulsion as the shabbiest of my films," confesses Polanski in the commentary track, originally recorded in 1994 for the laserdisc, referring to the technical seams and budgetary limitations. Reviewing the film after decades, it’s in fact a masterfully conducted portrait in madness, a horror defined not in the the murders perpetrated by an unbalanced young woman (Catherine Deneuve) losing herself in nightmares and phobias, but in the loss of self as the alienated Belgian beauty disconnects from the world and unravels into her fantasies and fears. Deneuve’s Carol is a child-woman both fascinated and repulsed by sex, but her nightmare fantasies of rape also suggest repressed memories of abuse bubbling to the surface in her isolation and urban alienation. Polanski doesn’t explain, he explores with imaginative detail and eerie imagery (walls split with a thundercrack, hands reach out from the hallway like a Cocteau nightmare, food decomposes) as the fragile girl slips into helpless madness. One thing is certain: Apartment living is dangerous to your mental health and your soul in Polanski’s movies. This is his first victim.

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I review the new Will Ferrell comedy Step Brothers, a largely plotless exercise in grown men behaving with the juvenile irresponsibility and self-centered obsession of spoiled children, for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. There’s not much really to say:

Man-boys are Ferrell’s stock in trade. John C. Reilly convincingly devolves into an overgrown child behind his pudgy face and high-pitched whine, matching Ferrell for willful obstinacy and screaming tantrums. There’s way too much of both in the one-note gags and it wears thin long before the third act of useless life lessons and forgiveness for a lifetime of infantile entitlement and egregious irresponsibility. Guys, just grow up.

Read the complete review here.

Also reviewed this week is the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired:

Roman Polanski, the Polish-born director of such modern American classics as “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown,” survived the Holocaust that killed most of his family, endured authoritarian Communist rule and faced the murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate. It was the American media (at its most reckless and sensationalistic) and a judicial nightmare worthy of Kafka that almost destroyed him…. The film walks a fine line between contempt for Polanski’s crimes and sympathy for his trials and his screwed-up psyche, and it manages both while showing us why he fled the U.S. rather than face the corrupted judicial circus.

Read the complete capsule review here.