DVD Articles: March 2008

How can that voice be contained in such a petite, compact woman? And how does she not just blow apart every time she unleashes it?

Hooray for 'Hollywood': Second volume of '30s 'Forbidden' films is a fascinating collection.

All these films reflect the gendered assumptions of their era. But Grant emerges victorious, no matter the role. His coat of armor is his charm, and he inhabits it seamlessly.

If you are a listener with faith, the type of music lover who would drop everything if Quincy Jones invited you to go to Switzerland and jam, this collectible DVD is for you.

In time for baseball season comes a trio of worthy releases: Bull Durham, Eight Men Out and The Pride of the Yankees

A dark, slippery love story, a meditation on the risks of embracing one’s muse, a study of the author and his/her “creation”, a quiet reflection on the nature of “human understanding”, this film is many things at once.

As they rose from starving Sub Pop indie artists to major label beneficiaries, one couldn’t help but think that Tad could develop into a band every bit as strong as Nirvana.

A beautiful movie. So very, very beautiful. Achingly beautiful, excruciatingly beautiful, tear-inducingly beautiful.

The degree in which the media has colluded war efforts is shocking. Solomon offers insight, no doubt from his experience in the industry, to show how truths are manipulated.

Drawing on the timeless and well-worn cultural chasm between Italy’s great and "sophisticated" North and its interminably provincial and "backwards" South, Lattuada takes full advantage of the dark humor and cruel realities that can be extracted from such prejudices.

An interesting, if brief (at 59 minutes), look at Hitchcock's craft that goes off in a couple of intriguing directions.

Watching Thunderbirds 40 years on, it is no surprise that Stanley Kubrick tried to hire the masterful innovator Gerry Anderson to work on 2001: A Space Odyssey.

This is a sensitive, kind adaptation of a well-loved book, and the DVD has well-crafted features that help extend the message of what is essential to human existence: hope.

For all of pretense surrounding these films and their attempts to grapple with "big ideas", they are, ultimately, experiences that one must live through; they demand viewing and listening.

I am baffled as to how a band that started so strongly could have transformed themselves in the space of a decade into, well, the arch, faux-upper-crust British counterpart to American yacht-rock like Hall & Oates.

This show has a fizzy, gothic atmosphere and a biting insider-outsider critique of society.

The Highlander films have made a cottage industry of testing fans' patience with pseudo-science nonsense and a ham-handed treatment of its own mythology.

This film is quietly provocative, well crafted, and a subtle meditation on the future.

Too dry for teenagers, and not sophisticated enough for anyone who has ever seen an espionage movie better than Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever.

Well, at least it doesn't take much sense to be funny.

I have seen Powerpoints that had more faith in their content.

Ritchie's understanding of the term "psychological" seems to be rooted in the idea that people, like, have conflicting thoughts, like, inside their head and stuff.

This offers a fine example of how film history is continually forgetting and rediscovering itself, and it is our best legacy of Hayakawa's independent career.

Many films of this era tap into fear and paranoia but not many address if destruction will come from those who fear it or those who ignore it.

The film’s treatment of how one navigates the grief process, and the hidden trauma that follows inexplicable loss, is sensitive and thought-provoking.

Marla is the most abstract part of the story; a girl with no motive caught in a web of adults who are full of them.

An everyman nucleus surrounded by idiosyncratic grotesques, grounded in a simple plot of the everyman reconciling the irrationality surrounding him, tangential and irrelevant comedic asides.

The History Channel slums it with this sensationalistic account of the recently-unearthed contents of Nostradamus' lost book of prophecies.

Columbus was a fascinating person, and the contradictions of his character would in turn save and imperil his expeditions.

A must-have for serious country fans, many of these performances never before available on DVD, are knock-outs.

While Lola's problem is emotional communication, Bolivar's is technical – but it's Bolivar's story that will really move you, here.

A rather accurate historical recreation of the fiery destruction of the German city, and a comment on the difficult moral issue of justifying or condemning the strategic bombing of densely populated areas.

What started as a cold war propaganda mission was transformed into an achievement of the whole human race, and it's beautifully captured here in all-original footage.

We think of Expressionism, as practiced in the theatre and film of Germany and other European countries during the early 1900s, as a way of distorting the plastic elements -- Culture's extension of Nature's pathetic fallacy, where instead of trees and clouds reflecting our moods, it's the furniture and stairways.

The program suffers from over chattiness and navel gazing, always at the expense of group’s soaring, era defining music.

Vivid impressions that make us look closely into Baumbach's fascinating, semi-miserable world.

Predating Tarantino and Rodriguez’s Grindhouse by seven years, this small film makes excellent use of poor production values, bad acting, and outlandish plots to create authentic-looking schlock.

A "follow your dreams" narrative in a package that belies the cliché that it expounds upon.

It's too bad that by the end of the '70s, video had allowed the adult film industry to explode, and the sort of sophistication in pornography that Emmanuelle gives us a glimpse of didn't last.

This film has a great deal of potential, but like many of the characterizations, it's not fully realized.

If 24 is star-centered Hollywood pulp, MI-5 is more like a John Le Carre novel.

Two out of four The Smiths ain’t bad. But it certainly ain’t best.

Crawling with mermaids and monsters, irony, and gore, Beowulf delivers the goods, without betraying its core narrative.

This documentary underscores that zine culture is made by interactive communities of readers and creators, all of whom bring distinctive sets of purposes, interests, and passions to their work, reading, and sharing.