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Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Movie: 6 stars out of 5. Brilliant
DVD Quality: Flawless
Sound: Be prepared for huge transitions from silence to bursts of sound, but then again, you've seen the film, right?
Extras: 50/50.

While it's no secret that Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood was among my favorite films of 2007 and repeat viewings don't change that opinion. Paul Thomas Anderson has turned in a wide screen epic masterpiece for the new century. TWBB and Andrew Dominick's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (you just KNEW I was going to work that one in here, didn't you?) are a magnificent 1-2 punch for 2007 which was overall, one of the strongest years in recent memory, IMHO.

As for the DVD, the transfer is gorgeous. Needless to say, the film is presented in widescreen, enhanced for 16x9 TVs and on my 50" Sony, it looks gorgeous. The 5.1 sound is great, with Johnny Greenwood's stark and painfully appropriate score ringing through as clear as a bell.

The Fountain
Written and Directed by Darren Aronofsky

I wasn't as prolific about this film upon release as I could have been, to be honest. In an email I sent to Darren Aronofsky and Eric Watson after I saw the film I wrote: "Along with a very talented group of people, you have created a beautiful, thoughtful, and heartfelt film" and of course, I told everyone I knew how the same thing. Some of them scoffed at me (most of them never having actually seen the film). I didn't write a review for this blog and I wasn't assigned to review it for any other outlet and for that, I am sorry. I certainly talked it up and considering how many people know, my mouth may be mightier than my pen. However, in the 8+ months since I saw the film, the traffic for this blog has grown approximately 500%, so maybe, just a little bit, I can influence a few more people.

One of the those "perfect little films" that you hear about, Roger Mitchell's Venus will, hopefully, find a larger audience on DVD than it did in the theaters. Honestly, there is little, if anything, wrong with this little gem, written by veteran Hanif Kureshi (Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, My Beautiful Laundrette) which received an 82 on Metacrtic.com, including three perfect scores of 100. Not far from a pervy Pygmalion, Venus stars the never better Peter O'Toole as Maurice, a sort of horny Henry Higgins alongside the delightful newcomer Jodie Whittaker as Jessie, a Northern chav cum Eliza Doolittle. Jesse has just come to London to stay with her great uncle Ian (a wonderfully cranky Leslie Phillips) and proceeds to turn everyone's lives arse over tits, as they say.

By now any self-respecting action film fan or comic book geek knows that Fantastic Four (or The Fantastic Four, if you like your grammar correct) was the 11th highest grossing film of 2005. It's also likely that The Chronicles of Narnia: Jesus, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will push it down to 12th, once it's all said and done. Fantastic Four was also not a very good film. Disappointing really isn't the word, because I didn't have much hope for this one which actually might explain why I have a few nice things to say about it!

I didn't hate it and actually found something redeemable here. How so? Please continue, faithful readers!

I love Tim Burton. While yes, it is true that I haven't seen Big Fish, Planet of the Apes, Corpse Bride or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ...or, um.... Sleepy Hollow, I have seen and very much enjoyed Beetle Juice, Batman, Batman Returns (although not as much as Batman), Ed Wood, Mars Attacks (I really only liked the "Ack! Ack!" bits) and of course, The Nightmare Before Christmas. True, Burton didn't direct this last one, Henry Selick did, but it is billed as Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas and Burton created the story and characters. I have Tom Hall to thank for that one, as a group of us watched it one chilly October night in East Hampton, while working for that festival.

That's all fine and good, but one of the films I hadn't seen until a few nights ago, was Burton's fourth feature, Edward Scissorhands.

Over the next 3 1/2 weeks I will be reviewing, previewing and spotlighting items that you might buy for friends and loved ones this holiday season. It'll be mostly DVDs with some books and other assorted goodies thrown in. No, this ain't just for Christmas and if you want to hint to Bubbe what might make your shayne punim light up with joy, slip her my URL, and say goodbye forever to tube sock and gelt!

First up are two DVDs that really couldn't be more different. The first, the recently released Office Space Special Edition With Flair! (20th Century Fox, $19.98 list) is one of the better comedies made in the past 10 years and while a failure at the box office, the film developed a cult following on video and rightly so. The second is Murder One: The Complete Second Season (20th Century Fox, $59.98 list), the sophomore and final season of the taught and original crime drama created by Steven Bochco (NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues).

[NOTE: The original version of the following was originally published at TV Squad]

MI-5 is, bar none, the greatest spy show in the history of television. Think I'm joking? I dare you to go out and rent the first season and tell me it's crap. No. Scrap that. Buy it. When you get to the bottom of this piece, click on one of the links and order the DVDs. If you don't agree with me, I'll wash your car. I'll windex the top of your kitchen cabinets and clean out your vegetable bins that haven't seen the light of day since the Johnson administration. I'll spay your cat for free. Oh, you silly, silly person! I won't do any of those things for you. But if you think 24 is sharp, well-paced and clever, this will knock your socks off.

In September of 1996 at my first opening night party of the New York Film Festival, I was a young(er) journalist, still somewhat wet behind the ears and indieWIRE was only 2 months old as a daily publication. I had, for the prior couple of weeks, been attending the press screenings of the films in the festival, including Lars Von Trier's Breaking the Waves, Michael Lindsay-Hogg's The Rolling Stones Rock n' Roll Circus, Jacques Audiard's A Self-Made Hero (Un héros très discret) and Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade, among them.

Infernal Affairs
Director: Andrew Lau & Alan Mak
Cast: Tony Leung, Andy Lau, Anthony Wong and Eric Tsang

The following is a combination of portions of my review from the US theatrical release, as well as additions to that review and my opinion on the DVD extras, sound, etc. My original review was written from a memory of a screening almost 2 years prior, so I felt I had to expand on it after viewing the DVD.

Infernal Affairs, the long-awaited and utterly brilliant Hong Kong crime thriller from Andrew Lau and Alan Mak was released in the US by Miramax on September 24th, 2004 and closed just 4 weeks later, grossing a paltry $92,584 (according to http://www.boxofficemojo.com). This result is not the fault of the film but rather the result of US distributor Miramax simply dumping this masterpiece on the US market and walking away. That action amounts to an artistic criminal act, as the film is an absolute gem and one of the best things to come out of Hong Kong since Mr. Phooey. Not only that, it is superior to any American crime thriller in decades, including Reservoir Dogs, Heat, Ronin and To Live and Die in LA, to mention but a few. Yes, I know you loved Dogs and how dare I go about dissing the pop culture darling Q.T. You know what? I loved Reservoir Dogs too, but considering Tarantino's love of Asian cinema, I suspect he (and his ego) can handle being placed behind something of such quality as Lau and Mak's triumph. This film harkens back to pictures like The French Connection and Serpico but is in no way a copycat of American films from the 70's. Affairs is instead infused with the singular style of Hong Kong filmmaking and at the same time is far from the usual by-the-numbers Hong Kong shoot 'em up.

Holiday Gift Guide #1

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Complete Seventh Season
20th Century Fox Home Video
Ratings:
Season: 4 out of 5
Extras: 3/5
DVD Quality: 5

This is it. The end of an era. Alas, here is not the space for a lengthy essay on the cultural and artistic importance of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Maybe I'll get to that someday, but right now it's season 7. Nor will I go into too much detail about the story arc of the season and why it was better than season 4 but not as good as seasons2, 3 and 5. If you're a serious Buffy fan and have collected seasons 1-6, you'll buy this set and well you should. The swan song for this popular and intriguing series is a reasonably strong 22 episodes for creator Joss Whedon and his more-than-capable team of writers, directors and story editors, given that many of them were concentrating on Whedon's other two TV creations, Angel and Firely. Wrapping up what is essentially one 7-year long, 144 episode story in a manner that won't infuriate the incredibly devoted and vocal fan base must have seemed a Sisyphean task, especially with spin-off Angel in production on its fourth season and new series Firefly also in production. While relying heavily on a creative team that were by then mostly well-seasoned Buffy vets allowed Joss to concentrate on Firefly, some could argue that Buffy suffered somewhat.

The uneven and occasionally sub-par season 4 (the top 5 "Hush" not withstanding) being a distant memory, the writers and directors of season 7 performed a Herculean task by coming up with a coherent and well put together final season, including an extremely chilling stand-alone episode ("Same Time, Same Place") and a rather silly one ("Him"). Also, much like season 6, Creator Whedon was the credited writer or director on only two episodes. Fittingly, he was the writer of the first episode of the season and the writer/director of the last. Names familiar to fans such as such as Marti Noxon, David Fury, Jane Espenson, Rebecca Rand Kirschner, David Solomon, Drew. Z. Greenberg, Drew Goddard and Douglas Petrie, among many others, all chipped in to do their best that this landmark series went out with a bang, not a whimper.

Angel: The Complete Fourth Season
20th Century Fox Home Video

Warning: Spoiler's Ahead! This review was written for people who know the series and have seen season 4.

Season 4 was pivotal for this Buffy spin-off, with co-creators Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt showing their substantial dramatic chops in this penultimate season of the ever-intriguing epic saga of the vampire with a soul. Markedly darker in tone that its parent series, Season 4 doesn't disappoint, picking up a few months after season 3 left off, with Angel (David Boreanaz) trapped in a box at the bottom of the ocean, Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) ascended to a higher plane and Wesley (Alexis Denisof) exploring the dark side of his nature. Character development has long been a strong point of Whedon's creations and season 4 doesn't short the viewer.

Of all the changes Whedon et al. have visited upon their creations, Wesley's transformation from let's face it, a namby pamby English twinkie into a take-no-prisoners, "ends justify the means" badass is arguable both the most startling and the most welcome. Anyone who, for whatever reason, left the Buffyverse after Buffy The Vampire Slayer (BTVS) season 3, thereby missing Angel seasons 1-3, will be totally gobsmacked by what they find as season 4 kicks off. When last seen in BTVS, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce, Watcher sans watchee (having done such a bang up job with Faith) was whimpering as he was loaded into a stretcher after having done fuck all during the battle for the Hellmouth that was graduation. Flash forward and good ol' Wes is banging the shit out of Wolfram & Hart evil-minx-in-residence Lilah Morgan (Stephanie Romanoff) while keeping erstwhile Angel hunter Justine bound and gagged in a closet just off the bedroom. I haven't seen this level of kink on TV since Spike and Buffy on the Bronze catwalk in BTVS season 6. Of course Wesley's character change was more gradual than this over the first 4 seasons of Angel, but this comparison just goes to show where Whedon and Co. are willing and able to take their characters.

I don't think I need to say much about Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 at this point. Most of you who're going to see it have seen it and my review certainly isn't likely to pull anyone back from the Dark Side of the Force. In that spirit, I am going to write the rest of this review as if anyone reading this has either seen the film or is thinking of renting it. Time is too short to work on the hardcore Bushies and what's really important here can be split into two or three portions. One side is the film as film. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a superb piece of documentary work. Regardless of claims that Moore engaged in the stretching of truths or even outright lies, there is enough here, including interviews, uncontested footage and plain old common sense, to make anyone with any kind of compassion, decency or ethics at least question the war in Iraq and the events which led us there, including the election of 2000.

From the moment David Bowie greeted the Dublin crowd with a shout of "tiocfaidh ar la" (pronounced "chucky ar la") Irish for "Our day will come" and a slogan for the Irish Republican movement, he had then in the palm of his hands. A surprise from a performer who is rarely overtly political in his public statements, but then, we've come to expect surprises from the man. This DVD was recorded at two shows in Dublin at The Point and I was lucky enough to attend both. From the opening chords of "Rebel Rebel" to the final, celebratory notes of "Ziggy Stardust," the erstwhile David Robert Jones had us in the palm of his hand. While the mood among many I spoke to was that the second night at The Point was the best Bowie show they had ever seen, the first was not far off that mark. The crowd at both had an energy I rarely see in US audiences and as one who's seen DB over 20 times (a pittance among my contemporaries) trust me when I tell you, a good audience at a Bowie show gives the man energy like nothing else.

Saved!
Written by Brian Dannelly and Michael Urban
Directed by Brian Dannelly

Saved! is a sharp, funny and ultimately very insightful film that gets a particular aspect of the fundamentalist Christian segment of the US in its sights and fires away with both barrels, leaping up and down on the carcass with high-heeled boots for good measure. A fresh and original look at teen genre comedies, Saved! looks at what life might be like in a fundamentalist Christian high school through the uber-satirical mind of Dannelly and Urban. To wit, the first line of the film is: "I've been born again my whole life."

The cast is universally fantastic, with both Jena Malone as Mary and Mandy Moore as best friend Hilary Faye shining as students at American Eagle Christian High School. This friendship is put to the test when over summer break Mary's misstep causes her to undergo some, uh, changes, putting her gradually at odds with the strict, unfeeling dogma pouring from Hilary Faye's mouth.

To read the rest of this review, Click Here.

To purchase the DVD of Saved!, please visit my afilliate, Barnes & Noble:
Saved!

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly-Special Edition
Directed by Sergio Leone

"Therefore, according to the powers vested in us, we sentence the accused here before us, Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez..."

"...and any other aliases he may have, to hang by the neck until dead. May God have mercy on his soul. Proceed."

A true classic in all senses of the word, The Good the Bad and the Ugly makes a triumphant return to DVD in a new 2-disc collector's set that is packed with extras and restores the film to the length of the original Italian release of nearly 3 hours. This tale of revenge, robbery and murder set against the Civil War is a riveting example of a master Italian filmmaker completely dominating a classic American genre.