Indiana Jones Special Editions (Paramount, $26.98 each)
With the newest Indiana Jones adventure due in theaters in less than a week, there’s never been a better time to catch up on the first three films, conveniently re-released by Paramount in a three-disc “Adventure Collection” box set. If for some reason you only want to revisit Raiders of the Lost Ark—the first and still the best picture in the franchise—the movies are also available for purchase separately for the first time.
Of course, hardcore fans are going to want the entire trilogy, in which case they probably own the four-disc set that was released a few years back. If you are one of the people that picked that set up, there’s no real reason to bother with this new release. Even though the box promises lots of new bonus features, there’s nothing here as comprehensive as the hour-long retrospective doc included on the earlier version. The only noteworthy extras are a trio of 5-10 minute “introductions” to each movie, which feature new interviews with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. There’s also a fun preview of the new Lego Indiana Jones video game, which is debuting on virtually every platform later this month. But if the extras disappoint, the movies themselves never do, although Temple of Doom remains a mixed bag—spectacular action sequences set against some truly offensive casual racism. At least The Last Crusade has aged fairly well, thanks largely to Sean Connery’s spirited performance as Jones Sr. We’ll soon know whether the nearly 20-year-wait for a new film has been worth it, but even if Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sucks, we’ll always have Raiders.
The Great Debaters (The Weinstein Company, $32.95)
For his second directorial effort after 2002′s Antwone Fisher, Denzel Washington takes another inspirational real life story and turns it into a too-conventional Hollywood production. The Great Debaters is based on the experiences of educator Melvin B. Tolson (played by Washington in full Dead Poets Society mode), who in 1935 led the debate team from historically black Wiley College to an upset victory over the national champions, the University of Southern California. This important, but long-neglected story has all the elements for a great movie, but the filmmakers try too hard to improve on history. In addition to inventing a bland romance between two of the debaters, the movie unnecessarily alters a number of other details, even substituting Harvard for USC in the climactic debate. Although these changes were made to heighten the drama, they mainly cause a true story to play more like fiction. Despite the movie’s flaws, this two-disc DVD is worth checking out for its rich well of bonus features. The always affable Washington appears in a behind-the-scenes documentary that also contains interviews with other cast and crew members. Two additional featurettes examine James Newton Howard’s lyrical score and the period costumes. The most interesting extras though, are the ones that deal with the real world rather than the reel world, most notably a documentary that features some of the real-life debaters and their descendents telling the story in their own words.
Untraceable (Sony, $28.95)
Like it or not, torture porn has become a viable film genre with the continued success of the Saw franchise, as well as such one-weekend wonders as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes. Still, the failures of titles like Captivity and Hostel 2 means that there can be such a thing as too much torture at the multiplex. That’s why the makers of Untraceable, which was a modest hit when it was released in theater this past January, made the smart move to fuse torture porn with another consistently popular genre—the Se7en-style police thriller. Diane Lane plays FBI agent Jennifer Marsh, who specializes in cyber crimes. Her current case involves a gruesome site called killwithme.com, which puts ordinary people in an elaborate trap that will eventually kill them as more and more people log on to watch. Although her bureau seems helpless to shut it down, Jennifer refuses to give up, even after she becomes the next target of the young psycho that operates the site. Despite solid production values and a generally strong cast, Untraceable is a bland sit—it’s too derivative of other movies to really stand on its own two feet. But don’t tell that to director Gregory Hoblit and producer Hawk Koch. Based on their glowing comments on the DVD yack track, you’d think they’ve made another Chinatown. Four making-of featurettes—totaling about an hour all together—round out the extras.
All You Need Is Love (MVD, $99.95)
A treasure trove for music lovers, Tony Palmer’s 17-part documentary series, which was televised around the world between 1976 and 1981, covers the history of popular music in America, from the spirituals and hymns that marked our early history all the way up to the British Invasion and the subsequent glam-rock movement. Packed with archival interviews and vintage performances, All You Need Is Love is addicting—and more than a little exhausting—to watch. Since I’m a classic rock fan, I headed straight for the fifth disc, which kicks off with an episode devoted to The Beatles and ends with an hour featuring ELO and Elton John. In between are appearances from The Rolling Stones, The Who, David Bowie and every other big and small name act you can think of. Next up, I’m planning to take a look at the folk music episode where Bob Dylan and Joan Baez are discussed in depth and slowly but surely I’ll work my way back through the decades to the 19th century, where the series begins. There are no extras to speak of, but with a series this dense I wouldn’t have time to watch any bonus features anyway!
Frank Sinatra: The Early Years Collection (Warner Bros., $39.98)
Frank Sinatra: The Golden Years Collection (Warner Bros., $39.98)
The Rat Pack: Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner Bros., $59.98)
The Frank Sinatra & Gene Kelly Collection (Warner Bros., $24.98)
Frank Sinatra is best remembered for his musical career, but the Hoboken-born crooner was also a damn good actor and he had the Oscar (for his supporting role in 1953′s From Here to Eternity) to prove it. As part of their ongoing 85th Anniversary Celebration (and to mark the 10th anniversary of his death) Warner Bros. is unveiling four Sinatra-themed box sets covering the various stages of his career. The aptly-named Early Years Collection kicks off with 1944′s Higher and Higher, which marked Sinatra’s acting debut and also features Step Lively, It Happened in Brooklyn, The Kissing Bandit and Double Dynamite. The Golden Years Collection picks up in 1955 with the one-two punch of The Tender Trap and The Man with a Golden Arm. Although dated now, at the time of its release, Golden Arm encountered a firestorm of controversy over its harrowing depiction of drug addiction. The Rat Pack set, meanwhile, offers some of Sinatra’s later romps with buddies Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., including the original Ocean’s Eleven and Robin and the Seven Hoods. And if you’re still in the mood for more Frank, the three-disc Frank Sinatra & Gene Kelly Collection contains three popular Golden Age musicals, On the Town, Anchors Aweigh and Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Extras for all four sets range from behind-the-scenes featurettes to commentaries to vintage trailers.
Also on DVD
The Tony-award winning Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun (Sony, $24.94) proved two important things: 1) There is an audience for all-black plays on Broadway and 2) Sean “Diddy” Combs can actually act when he puts his mind to it. Combs and the rest of the cast, which includes Sanaa Lathan and Phylicia Rashad, reunited for this made-for-TV adaptation that scored big ratings for ABC earlier this year. Extras include a commentary from director Kenny Leon and a featurette about the history of this iconic play. After a decade in retirement, Francis Ford Coppola returned to filmmaking with Youth Without Youth (Sony, $29.95), a deeply odd and yet strangely compelling film about a man (Tim Roth) who ages in reverse from an elderly professor to a strapping young globetrotter. If you go in expecting another Godfather or Apocalypse Now, prepare to be disappointed, but if you’re a fan of Coppola’s more obscure pictures like One From the Heart, you’ll probably find Youth a provocative experiment. Cross The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with a ’50s-era British farce and you’ve got The Cottage (Sony, $24.96), a horror/comedy hybrid that follows two bumbling kidnappers as their foolproof plot to ransom off their boss’s daughter goes awry, first because of their own ineptitude and then because of the axe-wielding maniac that lives next door. Despite a strong cast, which includes Andy “Gollum” Serkis, the movie never really finds its groove—it either needed to be funnier or scarier or both. The tone-deaf Canadian comedy Walk All Over Me (The Weinstein Company, $19.97) casts Leelee Sobieski as Alberta a minimum-wage slave who makes her way to Vancouver to reconnect with her old babysitter Celene (Battlestar Galactica hottie Tricia Helfer). To Alberta’s surprise, Celene has switched careers from sitter to dominatrix, mainly because the pay is better. Interested in earning some dough herself, Alberta sets up a meeting with a prospective client who turns out to have stolen a lot of money from some very bad men. On the commentary track, Sobieski and Helfer wax rhapsodic about how fun this movie was to make—too bad its not equally fun to watch. Had it been made a decade ago, TKO (Lionsgate, $26.98) would have starred either Jeff Speakman or Jean-Claude Van Damme. But times have changed and mixed-martial arts stars are now the most popular names in direct-to-DVD fight movies. Fortunately, the bone-crunching brawls remain the same. Finally, those viewers who grew up during the heyday of Saturday morning cartoons will undoubtedly remember the futuristic sci-fi serial The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers (Koch, $39.98), out today in a four-disc set from Koch. Set in the year 2086, the series imagined a universe populated by intergalactic cowboys and the alien races they encountered. This comprehensive set—the first in a two-volume series—comes packed with such fan-friendly bonus features as original artwork and the never-before-seen pilot episode.
