Arriving on disc this Election Day is a new Futurama adventure, a Civil Rights-themed ESPN hoops documentary, Kevin Costner’s daffy blockbuster WaterWorld and above-average indie thriller Transsiberian.
Futurama: Bender’s Game
Fox
$29.99
I hate to say it, but I’m starting to feel like Futurama should have remained one of those beloved shows that never received a second chance at life. Like everyone else, I was thrilled when Fox announced they would be reviving the franchise for four direct-to-DVD movies. So far though, the films just haven’t lived up to the series that birthed them. The first two entries—Bender’s Big Score and The Beast With a Billion Backs—had moments of absolute comic brilliance, but ran out of gas halfway through their 90-minute runtimes. Sadly, the third film Bender’s Game never even gets out of first gear. Maybe it’s the fact that the bulk of the movie is an extended Lord of the Rings/Dungeons & Dragons parody that wouldn’t feel so outdated if it was actually…you know, funny. The plot finds the crew of Planet Express trying to solve the planet’s energy crisis by destroying tyrannical corporate overlord Mom’s hold on the dark-matter market. Meanwhile, Bender becomes a D&D addict and somehow gets everyone transported to a fantasy world where he can live out his role-playing dreams in three-dimensions. A few funny gags aside, Bender’s Game feels like an idea the writers pulled out of the reject pile in the hopes that they’d be able to crack it during production. To put it simply, they didn’t.
Extras: Even if the movie disappoints, Bender’s Game comes with all the great DVD features we’ve grown to expect from the Futurama guys. There’s a commentary track from Matt Groening, David X. Cohen and the rest of the writing crew; a batch of deleted scenes and outtakes; a featurette about the influence of Dungeons & Dragons on the show and the movie and a trailer for the fourth and final direct-to-DVD film The Wild Green Yonder due out in 2009.
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Black Magic
ESPN
$19.95
Between the Michael Vick case, baseball’s steroid scandal and that NBA referee with the serious gambling problem, it’s been a long while since any positive news emerged from the wide world of sports. Once upon a time though, athletes were often heralds of great change. Think of Jackie Robinson taking the field alongside the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers or Billie Jean King defeating Bobby Riggs in straight sets in 1973. The ESPN documentary Black Magic introduces viewers to another set of sports stars whose actions on-court helped shake things up off-court. Spanning five decades from the 1940s to the 1990s, the four-hour film offers an in-depth look at the role basketball programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities played in the evolving Civil Rights movement. Through interviews with many of the surviving players and coaches from that era as well as lots of rare archival footage, director Dan Klores finds a fresh angle on a period in history that’s already been chronicled extensively elsewhere. In its best moments, Black Magic is an effective reminder that our nation’s social progress can be measured by the kinds of sports figures we root for.
Extras: Spread over two discs, the bonus features include extended interviews with many of the film’s subjects, red carpet footage from the film’s premiere at the Apollo Theater and special vignettes.
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WaterWorld: Extended Edition
Universal
$19.98
How many summer blockbusters can you name that open with the A-list hero peeing into a cup and then using some kind of futuristic strainer to transform it into pure H20 for his drinking pleasure? None, and that’s why WaterWorld remains such a strange, unlikely production more than a decade after it swept into theaters on a wave of bad publicity and nightmarish behind-the-scenes stories. Set in the very distant future, long after the polar ice caps have melted and covered the entire world in water (hence the title), the movie follows the exploits of The Mariner (Kevin Costner), a part-man/part-fish hybrid who pilots an awesome tricked-out ship. I won’t mince words here: on a storytelling level, WaterWorld is laughably bad and borderline nonsensical. That said, there’s something incredibly compelling about its apocalyptic vision of the future. It helps that director Kevin Reynolds filmed so much of the movie on the open water, which was a budgetary and logistical nightmare for the crew but gives the movie a realism that you don’t often get in these blue-screen dominated days. In fact, WaterWorld is mostly devoid of computer-generated effect. The Mariner’s ship is entirely practical and most of the major action sequences are performed by real stuntmen. Available on DVD for the first time, this two-disc set includes the original theatrical cut and an extended version that boasts an extra 40 minutes, making the film just shy of three hours long. Most of the new material involves more loony rants from chief villain Dennis Hopper and a longer version of the movie’s silly finale.
Extras: Absolutely none, which is a real shame. I can understand Costner and Reynolds not wanting to revisit this episode in their careers, but surely someone from the movie could have gone on record talking about the lengthy shoot and the myriad production problems the movie faced. Even a ten-minute retrospective featurette would have been nice. Give us something to justify the $20 price tag!
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Transsiberian
First Look
$28.98
Alfred Hitchcock would probably have gotten a kick out of this Strangers on a Train-style thriller, which follows a pair of American tourists (played by Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) traveling from Beijing to Moscow via locomotive. In the course of their week long journey, the two befriend secretive nomads Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and Abby (Kate Mara), who may be carrying more than just souvenirs in their luggage. (I’m talking about drugs, people!) Also in the mix is Ben Kingsley as a Russian narcotics officer hiding his own dark secret. Unlike a lot of recent thrillers, Transsiberian is genuinely surprising and suspenseful much of the time. Director and co-writer Brad Anderson does a good job crafting the narrative so that you’re never quite sure what’s going to happen next. The performances are strong across the board as well, with Noriega and Mortimer in particular doing some of their best work. Transsiberian does careen off the rails in its final half-hour, when the story takes a turn that pushes it into generic action movie territory. But up until that point, this is a solid thriller that’s well worth a rental.
Extras: Nada.
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Also On DVD
Sure The Dark Knight was a darn good Batman movie, but as far as I and many other Bat-freaks are concerned, the definitive portrayal of the Caped Crusader outside of the comic books remains Bruce Timm’s brilliant Batman animated series, which ran from 1992 to 1995 on Fox and then from 1997 to 1998 on the Kids WB! line-up. Previously available in four individual box sets, the good folks at Warner Brothers have packaged the whole enchilada into one big box. Batman: The Complete Animated Series (Warner Bros., $107.92) houses all 109 episodes from the show’s lengthy run, as well as the special features from the previous editions and an all-new retrospective documentary. In other complete series news, Fraggle Rock: The Complete Series ($139.98) is a Gen-Xers dream—a box set of the awesome puppet show that every ’80s kid grew up watching religiously. This 20-disc extravaganza boasts two-hours worth of behind-the-scenes featurettes and a nifty poster. Buy it for your kids or the kid that still lives inside you.
Other TV on DVD releases this week include the British sci-fi serial Primeval: Volume One (BBC, $49.98), about a group of science geeks who pursue strange beasts transported to our time from the past and the future, and Reaper: Season One (Lionsgate, $39.98) which follows a retail wage slave who is becomes a reluctant demon hunter after learning his parents sold his soul to Satan when he was born. And what better way to celebrate the Election Night than taking a break from obsessively monitoring poll results and wandering down memory lane with Comedy Central Salutes George W. Bush (Comedy Central, $14.98), a collection of the best Bush-bashing moments from such Comedy Central shows as That’s My Bush, South Park and Lil’ Bush. Don’t let the door hit ya on your way out Dubya!
You can tell the holidays are almost here, because studios are already unleashing a wave of gift-list ready box sets. Those damn dirty apes finally go Blu in the Planet of the Apes: 40-Year Evolution Blu-ray Collection (Fox, $159.98), a set of all five Apes flicks (sans the awful Tim Burton remake) re-mastered in beautiful Blu-ray with lots and lots of bonus goodies. On a more serious note, classic movie lovers will be thrilled with The Gregory Peck Film Collection (Universal, $59.98), a seven disc set sporting such beloved titles as To Kill a Mockingbird and Cape Fear.
Finally, saving the best for last, the perennial holiday favorite A Christmas Story returns to disc via A Christmas Story: Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner Bros., $39.98). Let’s start with the packaging, a collectable tin box that houses an apron, various Christmas-themed cookie cutter shapes and an illustrated book of recipes for such treats as Black-and-White Cookies and Old-Fashioned Meat Loaf. Also mixed into this cookbook are bios of the film’s stars and production stills. Oh and there’s also a two-disc DVD included in this elaborate confection as well. The first disc contains a commentary featuring the film’s now-grown child star Peter Billingsley, while Disc 2 holds two featurettes, a making-of documentary and a trivia game. Clearly, the studio ain’t lying when they called this the “Ultimate” edition.
