GONE WITH THE WIND Blu-ray

If America would preserve only one film from its sprawling legacy of motion pictures, there would be no better candidate than Victor Flemming’s Gone with the Wind. And no, I’m not just saying that because its main character is where I derive my namesake. No, Gone with the Wind is the quintessential American masterpiece. A film that has it all, an epic story of the history of a nation, expansive with the biggest sets, largest casts, most splendid art design and a truly timeless use of Technicolor. With a runtime just shy of four hours, pound for pound there’s no single artifact of grander splendor than this defining moment of the peak of the Classical Hollywood era. You don’t need me to tell you its greatness, though; Hollywood has done a good enough job of that with all the countless re-releases, be they on television, video, DVD or theatrical re-engagements. As long as pictures still move, there will be no wind that could ever carry this film away.

And now today, on the dawn of its 70th anniversary, the film is being released again once more. This will mark its fifth incarnation on DVD, but of greater significance its first time on Blu-ray. From the burning of Atlanta to the epic silhouettes at sunset, the film is filled with some of the most beautiful images committed to celluloid. Three strips of celluloid, to be specific. Yes, there have always been revival film exhibitions of the film with every passing decade it seems, this gives us the first time to really deconstruct the images up close. To pause it, to look deep into the deep focus photography to admire and ingest all the production value inherent in every frame. Gone with the Wind has always stood as an artifact of perfection – just how perfect is it in HD?

For me, this perfection that Gone with the Wind has attained in its grandiose cinematography, it’s colossal sets and the unending supply of extras has almost given the film a hollow sense of cold calculation. There never seemed to be any degree of creative pressure. No lack of budget to force a scene to be down-scaled. No lack of extras to force a scene into close-ups. No lack of daylight to get that countryside crane shot. Anything this film wanted, and I do refer to the film as a separate entity since it passed through so many hands creatively I couldn’t dare just call it Flemming’s, it seemingly got. Art to me has always been in fighting limitations to create greatness. Without a seeming limit on time or budget, though, it’s seemed as if Gone with the Wind never had to endure the hardships that almost any other work of significant artistic merit has had to endure. But now, in HD, the film tells a different story. Yes, it’s still a masterfully idyllic tale of the Civil War, but now, stitched into that veil of perfection, are the seams of craftsmanship.

The added resolution tellingly reveals shots that had always appeared to be sprawling vistas to instead be lifelike matte paintings. Death defying effects now reveal a grain structure that disrobe the optical imagery over-top. Those scenes on the stagecoach reveal backgrounds only achievable on a set. Yes, the clarity and color saturation indeed make the film more beautiful than it surely has ever looked at home, but even more importantly it reveals the humanity behind the production. It gives it a living, artistic blip of imperfection that it’s been long deprived since it’s made its way to the home and to new generations.

In HD no longer is this a film of almost robotic technical perfection, but instead it reveals itself as a movie driven by creativity – from the hands that painted the glorious matte paintings throughout to the optical effects of falling fire or stagecoach speed. This wasn’t just a masterpiece made by a bottomless budget, but instead one by a colossal team of artists that make the effects crews in Avatar seem like location’s manager in My Dinner with Andre. I’ve always respected, admired and awed at the film, but the way it is presented here with such clarity, I can finally appreciate it for the artistic fortitude of its creators. They have made a film where every image – from the color to the composition of actors, props and sets, is of satiating beauty. Even at four hours, this is a film that could still enthrall based on image alone.

Of course, Gone with the Wind is so much more than a pretty picture. It’s story is a wonderful combination of the macro and the micro – presenting on one hand a unified tale of the birth of America, or modernity, of the present and on the other the coming of age of one spoiled little girl. Like other grand epics to follow in its mold, Titanic and Doctor Zhivago among them, it’s able to expertly involve the audience in the plight of history by centralizing it in the heart of a lowly protagonist. It glorifies the era of Southern slavery the same way D.W. Griffith’s now sadly reviled The Birth of a Nation does, but the difference here is that it presents a developed core of central characters that aren’t just caricatured to mere brush strokes. Indeed Hattie McDaniel as the maid was the first black performer to ever win an Oscar for her impassioned performance. You won’t see that from any of the chicken eating black-faced stereotypes in The Birth of a Nation.

For a film so awe striking with all its visual splendor, it’s amazing that the performances, from Hattie McDaniel to, even more memorably, the two star crossed leads whose posterly embrace has forever resonated as a staple of fictional characterizations. As rendered by Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara are two of the grandest screen characters that just happen to reside in the most grandest of motion pictures. At a time when romance was so often melodramatic and telegraphed, the two stars inject a wily sense of unpredictability to each part that never ceases to surprise. Rhett is a rascal and Scarlett a pouty little brat, and perhaps it is these deviations from the traditional romantic archetypes that makes this love story so endearing. Or maybe it’s because the film refuses to resort to the standard clichés of romance that makes the film transcendental when Hollywood at the time was all about presenting uniformity. Gone with the Wind then, as it does now, presents a storytelling of difference that stood out from the pack not just by the splendor of its visuals, but by its refusal to be conventional, either in the story or the performances.

It’s for these reasons and so much more that Gone with the Wind forever deserves the title as the greatest of all American films. There is no way Hollywood could ever recreate the expansive splendor of the art direction, the saturation of the Technicolor process, the brawn of the lead performances or the tenacity of its convention-defying story…especially not all in the same motion picture! It’s the Mona Lisa, it’s the Bible, it’s the very idea of perfection of its medium. And on Blu-ray that perfection is preserved all the more, with its few seams revealed just to remind us that yes, this perfection was indeed culled from things that sometimes weren’t. Wow.

Presentation…

Gone with the Wind is the first film I’ve seen on this new format in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Unlike DVD, which would present films natively in 1.33:1, Blu-ray and less specifically the HD spec, present films natively in the 16x9 (1.78:1) format. As a result, the film is presented pillarboxed inside the 1.78:1 frame. As I’ve elaborated on in my critique of the film, it certainly is beautiful, the deep Technicolor hues really benefitting from the broadened color space of HD. Images are clear and very detailed without showing any signs of digital sharpening. Edges have a slight softness to them that befits reality. There is nary a piece of film damage or debris throughout. The closest you get to it are the inherent grain in the film’s many optical effects. When it comes to vintage landmarks, especially those of the Technicolor order, the desire by Hollywood is to push the saturation as far as it can go. Thankfully here there is a restraint that keeps detail in the blacks and skin tones in check, yet still allows all the other colors to breathe as surely they were intended seventy years ago. That’s the toughest thing to take with this new transfer, though – that the film is actually that old. It’s wonderful that one of the most beautiful movies still looks just as beautiful today.

The film was initially mono, and the mono is preserved here, but it’s also been given a lift to Dolby TrueHD 5.1. The audio elements seemed preserved as well as ever, with almost all traces of hiss completely removed. Every audible bit is rife with clarity, although more than the image the sound definitely reveals its age. Dialogue often contains a flat tonality, lacking the broad depth of today’s sound devices. Max Steiner’s orchestral score is effectively spread around the sound space, and occasionally during the war scenes and other major action moments, there are bits of directionality to the effects. While not quite as glorious as the pictorial restoration, the sound here still is notably restored.

Extras…

Before we get to the hours upon hours of extras, first thing’s first: the packaging on this limited edition set is breathtaking. Like this year’s earlier The Wizard of Oz, the large box is upholstered in velvet with a beautifully embossed painting of the iconic poster image on the front. Open it up and inside is a similarly spectacular array of packaging, from a large hard cover book with plenty of promotional photos to printed reproductions of important letters passed around the studio regarding casting and production. Most memorable is a 1937 letter from David O. Selznick about his three picks for the Rhett Butler part. Also included is a pitch perfect reproduction of the original 1939 program complete with beautifully painted artwork on each page. In addition to many other Selznick letters there is a nice little package of 5x7” watercolor reproduction art prints that further help to demonstrate the careful artistry that went into making the picture. All that and I’ve just talked about the paper!

Contained on the four discs in this set is possibly the healthiest array of extras any release has ever seen. Unlike previous releases of the film on video, the entire four hour picture is now presented on a single disc. No more getting up to change tapes or DVDs – it’s quite the achievement that this massive picture is contained all on a single dual-layer BD. Not only that, but there’s also a four hour commentary with historian Rudy Behlmer containing enough fact to surprisingly sustain the four hours.

Disc two is another dual-layer BD, and like the BD for the film, compresses what was once two discs of footage onto one. In this case it is over 8 hours of footage (3 new and 5 recycled from previous releases). The new footage involves the hour-long documentary “1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year” and a new 30-minute historian retrospective on the film titled “Gone with the Wind: The Legend Lives On”. Finally, the last new extra on disc two, and certainly a notable inclusion, is the 1980 Telefilm “Moviola: The Scarlett O’Hara Story” which, you guessed it, chronicles the history of casting the part Vivien Leigh would immortalize. For those who haven’t gone through the previous 4-disc DVD, here are all the extras from that ported over to this BD:

• “The Making of a Legend” a 2-hour 1988 documentary narrated by Christopher Plummer on the rich and complex history of the film’s various stages.

• “Restoring a Legend”, made exclusively for the 2004 DVD release, about the process taken to restore the film. Too bad a Blu-ray update wasn’t also included…

• “Dixie Hails Gone with the Wind” a 1939 Newsreel of the Atlanta premiere

• “Atlanta Civil War Centennial” a 1961 Newsreel of the 100 year Civil War anniversary screening , again in Atlanta

• “The Old South” an illuminating 10-minute vintage short on the practice of cotton picking

• “Melanie Remembers: Reflections by Olivia de Havilland”a 40-minute interview with the gray and beautiful actress on what it means to be part of such a momentous picture

• “Gable: The King Remembered” an hour-long doc on the big eared Hollywood heartthrob

• “Viven Leigh: Scarlett and Beyond” a 45-minute look at the accomplished life of the actress, narrated by Jessica Lange

• “The Supporting Players” a sizable featurette on all the actors, from Ashley to Mammy, who made up the memorable cast

There are also a bunch of other little nick knacks, like the prologue detailing the history of the Civil War for non-American audiences, various scenes dubbed into different languages, several different trailers, and an awards listing. Whew!

Disc three is exclusive to the Blu-ray set, although it’s contained on a dual-sided DVD. It contains the 6(!) hour documentary, “MGM: When the Lion Roars” which, not surprisingly, details the history of one of old Hollywood’s most notable studios with thorough tribute. This was originally a mini-series in 1992 and has been effectively preserved and presented here. For film buffs, watching this is a must! This was previously featured as a Blu-ray exclusive in the similarly packaged set for The Wizard of Oz also.

And finally, this colossal set is rounded off with a comparatively stingy sampler CD of the film’s soundtrack. The CD contains eight of the film’s many tracks, although most of the major ones, like the start, the end and the escape from Atlanta all represented here.

Four discs – two Blu-rays, a DVD and a CD, as well as printed material of all sorts, truly make this the benchmark release when it comes to retrospective features. Honestly, what more could you ask for short of bringing Leigh or Gable back from the grave?

Wrapping it up…

Gone with the Wind is THE seminal American film, a demonstration of all the splendor and reverie that film as a medium can offer. Similarly, this collectible Blu-ray package represents all the involving and educating experience the home video format can offer. With nearly 20-hours of bonus material, this truly is the most thorough and enlightening tribute to any film in home video history. The video and audio are painstakingly restored and presented in a manner certainly comparable to the first Technicolor printings of this Hollywood masterwork. No film has received greater tribute than this package from Warner, and no film is more deserving than this, the finest artifact from the Golden Age of Hollywood, the indisputable king of the moving image, Gone with the Wind.

overall... Content: A Video: A Audio: A- Extras: A Final Grade: A

HEAT Blu-ray

“I told you I’m never going back…”
-Last Lines, Heat

While it maybe be De Niro’s character, Neil McCauley saying that, it may as well be taken as De Niro’s commentary on his future career. After two decades of giving nuanced subtly both edge and pathos, depending on the character he played, De Niro seemed to lay it all out in Michael Mann’s truly iconic Heat. The movie ended up becoming one of those warmly reviewed but coldly received movies that sort of just got lost in the shuffle in 1995. While I wouldn’t levy all of De Niro’s career choices forward on this film alone, I’m sure it’s lack of awards and audience acclaim left him seeking a more commercial place in the spotlight. The Fan would come next, and between bombastic action or silly comedies like Analyze This and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Deniro became less an actor and more a figurehead for what good acting used to be. He also became a producer, and from the late nineties onwards, his career choices have been driven more by the producer’s desire to make money rather than the actor’s need to make art. But enough of that, let’s focus on one of his great roles in one of the grandest films of the nineties, newly on Blu-ray from Warner Brothers.


Heat pits De Niro against Pacino, but not really. Not really in the sense that neither ever share a frame of film together. They have a scene where they are in the same room, but the shots never allow either a chance to converge. They aren’t pitted together, either, because ultimately Mann reveals both characters to essentially be the same. They are professionals so obsessed with their work that they cause harm to those they love the most. They live for the thrill of the chase, but when the race is over they can’t leave the sidelines. De Niro is professional robber Neil McCauley, while Pacino is driven lieutenant Vincent Hanna. Neil’s got a team of robbers, lead by Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer), and Pacino has a team of officers, lead by Sergeant Drucker (Mykelti Williamson). Neil’s seeing Eady (sweet Amy Brenneman) and Vincent’s married with a daughter (Natalie Portman in one of her first roles), but for both of them, their family are their colleagues. Their job is their life.

What Michael Mann does over the next three hours is completely pick apart the cops and robbers genre, removing it from the good guy/bad guy archetypes it had become to one that taps into the universal essence of being. It matters less that Pacino gets his man, and more that in getting his man he’s given up everything. More than that, the poetically heart-wrenching finale finds that he hasn’t stopped a bad guy, but he’s lost a friend. He’s lost a part of himself. The supporting cast is terrific, the score, comprised of some beautiful steely ambient tracks from Brian Eno and a show stopping finale from the Kronos Quartet, is sublime, and the action scenes are just as intense as the dramatic ones. Like a De Niro performance in its prime, the film is both riling and understated, tense and contemplative, visceral and poetic. It came from a time when everyone was re-writing history, from Kevin Costner with Dances with Wolves to Clint Eastwood with Unforgiven, but there’s no question that Michael Mann re-wrote it best. Heat’s a film that burns brighter each and every year, and one of the true contemporary classics.

presentation...


After being one of the most ubiquitous DVDs of its time as a snapper cased budget title, Heat finally made the leap to the big leagues a couple years ago with a packed two disc special edition. Presentation wise, the DVDs were hardly different. The special edition had a slightly squeezed aspect ratio and at times slightly sharper picture because of the higher peaks in the bitrate, but overall the differences were negligible. Color timing was still the same and detail wasn’t at its best. This Blu-ray is an improvement in both detail and color timing, with details like the pores on skin or threads on a jacket now visible. While there is still noticeable grain from time to time, this is more a stylistic choice and less a fault of the transfer. Color has been corrected in most scenes, too, restoring a slightly colder hue that fits with the theme of detachment the film weaves so exquisitely. This Blu-ray is noticeably darker in scenes, which is odd considering most Blu-rays open up the contrast range, but given Mann is a perfectionist when it comes to overseeing the visuals of his films on DVD, I wouldn’t doubt he was behind that change. Overall, a decent upgrade compared to the previous DVD, but still not quite reference quality.


Heat blazes in a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track, and it sounds great. Really full and almost organic at how the sound effects and all of the ambient musical tonalities come out bleeding from each speaker. It’s mostly subtle, but the big heist sequences certainly pack a punch too. The end sequence, with the airplanes flying by, makes a significant impact in TrueHD. A very strong upgrade.

extras...


The first extra bullet lists “New Content Changes Supervised by Director Michael Mann”, but by the looks of it, he didn’t have to supervise all that much. The extras are essentially identical to the previous two-disc DVD. Considering how packed that set was, though, I’m not really complaining. First is a commentary with Michael Mann. It’s got a lot of dead space in it, (and how could it not at 170 minutes?) but Mann still does expunge a lot of good detail about character and his overall director’s intent.


There are 11 additional scenes included, running just under10 minutes total. Some scenes are just a few collections of Pacino one liners, while most others are longer scenes with supporting characters like Tom Sizemore or Danny Trejo that add to the story but aren’t essential to the narrative. They are all presented interlaced and full screen letterboxed.


The meat of the extras are the five featurettes that run close to an hour and a half total. Each deconstructs a different facet of the film, and the people behind these must be commended for assembling so much of both the cast and the crew. Almost all the actors have come back again to speak, save for De Niro who participates via a 1995 interview. What’s great is that all the crew, from the first assistant director to the sound mixer, are back to talk about their recollections of the film. You can tell this was an important film and a passion project for so many because everyone has such vivid recollections of Michael’s vision and the awestruck moments that happened throughout the production.


Breaking it all down, here’s how the featurettes are brought together:

The first three featurettes are grouped together with an optional play all function. The first is “True Crime” (14:45) which talk about the real life cop and criminal who inspired Vincent and Neil in the film. The second is “Crime Stories” (20:25) where the actors reflect on their impressions of the story, Michael Mann talks about trying to add dimension to stock characters and how it had its genesis as the television pilot for L.A. Takedown. Of the three “Into the Fire” (23:52) is the best, talking about the actual production, including the heist sequence and the training that had to be done, rife with footage of De Niro firing real bullets on the gun range.


Curiously the other two featurettes, done in the similarly intertwined recollections fashion, are included on their own. The standout is naturally “Pacino and De Niro: The Conversation” (9:54) where actors, producers, a critic and Michael Mann all reflect on the magic that was the first scene where Pacino and De Niro share the same scene. They talk about first the actual effect the meeting has in the final film, and then later reveal how it was accomplished and just how professional both actors were in pulling the whole thing off. The second bit, “Return to the Scene of the Crime” (12:12) has the location manager and the associate producer returning to all the locations in the film, including the final scene at the LAX airport, explaining how the locations were, why Michael Mann wanted it and whether or not it would be possible to film there today.


Heat is such an important and epic picture, it’s wonderful that Warner treated it as such with its extras, avoiding any facet of promotion and instead zeroing in on the material as if it were a full class on film. The biggest surprise for me was just how eloquent everyone was in describing themes and interpretations from the film. Ashley Judd and Jon Voight in particular really come off as quite insightful and intelligent.


Rounding off the extras are the three trailers that were found on the original DVD, and ones that are nearly as iconic as the picture itself. The “Two Actors Collide” trailer has always been a favorite, and even in its short timeframe, evokes such an incredible, even nostalgic, mood.

wrapping it up...


Heat is a sprawling 170-minute character study masked as an L.A. crime picture. It’s Michael Mann’s ability to capture both the big picture and the small moments sometimes together at the same time that makes the picture such a touching and enthralling rarity in cinema. This is one of the rare movies where I’ll occasionally just fire up the ending and find myself floored nearly to tears at the beautiful tragedy that Mann creates. It’s one of a kind, and with a powerful presentation and hours of truly worthy featurettes, deleted scenes and commentary, Heat’s a movie everyone should warm to. Whether you get this Blu-ray or the supplementally same DVD, this is an essential purchase.

overall... Content: A Video: B+ Audio: A- Extras: A- Final Grade: A

SILENT SCREAM on DVD

There is no greater paradox, both in title and product, than Silent Scream. A title like Gentle Mutilation would have made about as much sense, but that didn’t stop moviegoers in 1980 from flocking to the film. The other paradox is that the film found great success as a slasher, since when it was released in early 1980 there were really no other slashers in competition. Of course the flood gates would be dropped later on in the year with the genre-affirming success of Friday the 13th, but at this point there was a demand without supply. Aside from a few bloody kills, though, it’s not a slasher. It’s indebted to Psycho more than it is Halloween¸ but the success of Carpenter’s flick is what made it its money and is why the film is still bunched into slasher lists still today. It was initially announced as a Code Red title, but upstart Scorpion Releasing has instead made Silent Scream its inaugural release. Is this a new studio worth screaming about, or one better left in silence? Take a deep breath and get ready to clear your lungs.

Click here to read the full review at HORRORDIGITAL.COM

MY BLOODY VALENTINE on Blu-ray

“Oh the legend, they say, on a Valentine’s Day,
Is a curse that’ll live on and on;
And no one will know as the years come and go,
Of the horror from long time ago.”

For twenty eight years it did seem as if My Bloody Valentine was doomed to a curse by censorship. Forgotten, though, it wasn’t. Everyone knew of the horrors the MPAA inflicted upon this little Canadian cash in on Paramount’s past success with Friday the 13th. So revered were the death scenes that were all but excluded from the finished film that I’m sure, if you were to tally the threads, Valentine received more uncut requests than even the Friday films that spawned it. All the petitions, posts and emails, though, couldn’t escape the fact that the film remained a property of Paramount, and not only was the film too small a fish to fry, but they don’t even go unrated for their biggest properties. All that changed earlier this year when, gasp, Lionsgate of all companies got a hold of the DVD rights. It seemed like some fanboy had hacked into the Lionsgate email, but reports were coming out first that the deleted footage had been found, and then later that it would actually be seamlessly branched into the feature film. Seemed too good to be true, and now it’s gotten even better – it’s on blu-ray. Let’s cut to the heart of this slasher favorite.

Click here to read the full review at HORRORDIGITAL.COM

TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: Season Two on DVD

When we think George A. Romero we usually think indie pioneer. A guy always outside the system, struggling to get his vision on the screen. Each new film is a triumph even before it is seen because of the mere fact that it was actually released. There was a fleeting time though, shortly after the success of Creepshow in 1982, that Romero could actually be considered studio. Creepshow brought in big bucks for Warner Brothers and revitalized the idea of horror anthology (with Twilight Zone: The Movie and Cat’s Eye to follow shortly after) and it was that success that saw Romero at the apex of his commercial clout. What did he do? He took it to the small screen with Tales from the Darkside, which ran for four seasons before being spun off into Monsters for another two years until Tales from the Darkside: The Movie took the whole thing full circle. While Romero is still gleefully mining the now esoteric depths of his Dead franchise, it’s interesting to look back on the work he made for the mainstream, for everyone to tune into week nights in syndication. The second season is usually make or break for a series, so what side of the line does Romero’s Darkside fall?

Click here to read the full review at HORRORDIGITAL.COM

MELROSE PLACE: The Fifth Season, Vol. 2 DVD

While it’s curious that CBS chose to split Melrose Place, Season Five into two separate volumes, especially considering Beverly Hills 90210 and all the MP prior had been full season sets, it sort of makes sense. Season five was tumultuous with a huge hemorrhaging of the main cast and a big influx of new residents. While the show stayed as steamy as ever, the demographics certainly changed a lot between the first and second halves of the season. The adage of season five truly was “out with the old, in with the new”. Also leaving with the old, though, were viewers, and season five marked the start of a steady ratings decline after the peak of the explosive season opener in season four. Should fans who have collected the series thus far on DVD follow suit, or do the new season five residents more than pay their rent? They definitely do enough of it on their back, at any rate!


I’m going to spare the lengthy synopsis, since if you’ve made it to the second half of season five, you know your Melrose. That and I’ve already written about it at length for the previous volume of season five. Instead, I’ll try and dodge major spoilers and instead just give you an appraisal of the real estate for this season’s second half. Jane (Josie Bissett) is gone and Kimberly (Marcia Cross) will be making her exit shortly after, too, but even on her death bed she keeps the love triangle between her, my main man Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro) and Megan (Kelly Rutherford) alive and kicking. Just as soon as Kimberly is gone (and typical of Melrose’s ability to one-up itself, another person leaves the same episode!) there’s a new tenant in LA, Jennifer (Alyssa Milano) who happens to be of the Mancini persuasion. Like her older brother she isn’t afraid to scheme to get what she wants, and she’s got her eyes set on a few tenants on Melrose. Jake (Grant Show) and Alison (Courtney Thorne-Smith) are still falling in and out of love, Matt’s dealing with the sudden appearance of his abandoned niece, Taylor’s (Lisa Rinna) out of Kyle’s (Rob Estes) place and into the bed of many others and Sydney (Laura Leighton) settles down, first with one man and then another in white. Suave sonofabitch Peter Burns (Jack Wagner) is playing cat and mouse with Michael for control over Wilshire memorial, and Billy (Andrew Shue) and Sam (Brooke Langton) face hardship as her jailbird daddy comes back asking for favors. That leaves us with the queen of the show, Amanda (Queen Locklear), who tackles both marriage and divorce in the same season and a bunch of other side investments.


It’s in this season that the favorite Melrose hangout, Shooters, is finally retired and Kyle’s new dig, After Dark, takes its place in full jazz fashion. Other than Marcia Cross, all the other full-timers make it to the end, but whether they die or make it out of Melrose amicably (yes, it actually can happen!) , the end of the season sees the last of, count ‘em, Grant Show, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Laura Leighton and, if you discount the one episode farewell at the start of season six, Doug Savant. That’s a big hit, but under the wing of Frank South, who was promoted to head writer after creator Darren Star left in season four, the season proves that big twists and sharp dialogue can always trump big changes and sharp exits. Because so much of the cast does leave this season that makes for a lot of good drama on its own, but the new cast certainly gives some new blood, too. Craig Field (David Chavert), who by my estimation provided the best drama for the first half of season five with all his office scheming with Amanda, continues to smarm it up, and bringing in Alyssa Milano as Michael’s sister was the perfect way to both flesh out Michael’s otherwise untapped family (every other main character has had some major run-ins with family) and to add in another feisty, passionate female lead. Kyle and Taylor really start to settle into their parts by the second half after the whole Taylor-Peter subplot finally resolves itself. While Megan is nice if not entirely exciting, the sore thumb is definitely Sam, who really drags Billy into the clenches of boredom for all their parts this season. It’s only at the end where she really, uh, crashes, the party.


While none of the major twists match the wig-tearing, building blowing, head-smashing rise-from-the-grave fun of previous seasons, this season, and particularly this half, certainly has its share of big twists. Even if there are more bumps in the road this season than ones past, it still comes together for a grand two-hour finale. The problem, though, is that the bar was just set too high with the wild and sensational seasons three and four, so by the time they hit five, where the focus shifted more to the spicy personal drama of season two, it just seemed a little…anti-climactic. There was no shortage of climaxing this series, though, with the bed hopping that made the series famous still in full swing. It all ends bittersweet as many of the characters say goodbye (either suddenly or not) to their longtime roomies, and don’t worry, Melrose fans, the last two seasons don’t really give you much time for remorse. From this half of Melrose Place onwards, each season has a completely different feel and cast, but bask in this, the last of the old and the start of the new. If transition is tough, don’t worry, Michael Mancini never changes his smug, selfish ways throughout the entire show, so as long as he’s aboard (and that stands again now for the recent revamp) I’m there. Consider this my deposit.


presentation...

The final 13 episodes are presented in their original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Sadly, they are also presented in their original interlaced exhibition, which makes for a less than flattering HDTV viewing experience. Other than that self-imposed softness, there’s added softness in the overall image too. It’s not the sharpest picture, and that might be due to the fact that each dual layer disc is pushing three and a half hours. Thankfully the image is nice and vibrant, so colors hold up quite well. Some scenes are darker than they should be, and every so often some grain permeates the frame, but overall it’s like most any other nineties show on DVD – watchable, but definitely no knock out. Chalk it up to old video tape archival.


Sound wise, the episodes are presented in English Stereo. Don’t go looking for some left to right separation, even during some of the inevitable explosions that happen throughout this second half. Dialogue comes through nice and clear, and the music is adequately mixed. It should be noted that again, music has been changed from the original airing. While I normally don’t have a problem with it, since I understand the complexities of copyright management in the digital era, a show like Melrose Place¸ which was always garnished with the hottest tracks, certainly suffers without them. Some of those post-opening credit music beds are really, really tacky. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when season seven rolls around, when bands like Tal Bachman and Hanson were playing live at Kyle’s bar.

extras...


Any extras that were planned for this second set have been evicted. Or maybe the whole extras department has been condemned, since there hasn’t been a supplement on Melrose Place since season three. Too bad.

wrapping it up…


While it’s sad to see so many regulars go at the tail end of this fifth season, the series hardly bothered to look back, moving forward with sexy, saucy and scandalous melodrama. New tenants like Rob Estes, Lisa Rinna, David Chavert and Alyssa Milano really add some good personality, and it’s fun to see how all the old favorites bid farewell. At only 13 episodes (compared to the 19 of this season’s previous volume) it’s kind of tough to recommend this set at the same price point (especially since previous full length, 30+ episode seasons retail for the same), but if you’ve enjoyed Melrose Place thus far, don’t jump ship. There are still plenty of delights in season six and seven. In Mancini We Trust.

overall... Content: A- Video: C Audio: C+ Extras: F Final Grade: B

ORPHAN Blu-ray

It’s kind of perverse the draw we have to killer kid movies. What is it about us that gets off in seeing prim children doing terrible things? Is it because we bide in the belief that all children are inherently good? Is it some sort of wish fulfillment for the power we ourselves lacked as weak kids? Is it a way to challenge order and normalcy? Hate for procreation? For parents? I don’t know, but no matter the motivation, I always get some sort of primal satisfaction with these kinds of movies. Orphan, released earlier this year to theaters, purported to be different. It offered a twist. Just what was wrong with Esther? To add to that now on home video, is there anything wrong with this Blu-ray? Read on, children.

Click here to read the full review at HORRORDIGITAL.COM

NATURAL BORN KILLERS Director's Cut Blu-ray

Natural Born Killers began innocently enough as a script by Quentin Tarantino. Like its sister script, True Romance, which Tarantino also sold to Warner Brothers to fund Pulp Fiction, Killers is a testament to everlasting love in the midst of violence. While Tarantino wrote Killers as more of a classical throwback to road on the run romances like Badlands, once Oliver Stone came aboard it turned into a completely different animal. The script quickly evolved into a shouting, exaggerated satire of violence and its symbiotic relationship with American media. Building on the quick cut, multi-format menagerie of JFK and utilizing Trent Reznor and a Bible’s worth of stock sound effects and music cues from all sources, Stone took the script even further by to make it full-fledged assault on the senses. It’s long been a subject of contestation, on the one hand praised as an audacious indictment of television, and on the other an irresponsible glorification of violence.


Whatever the opinion, it still remains relevant, and has had more home video releases over the years than almost any other film from the nineties. Warner recently released a nice book style Blu-ray of the theatrical cut, but if you wanted the uncut director’s cut, you had to go to Lionsgate because of Warner’s strict policy against non-rated material. I don’t really know what that policy is, since they have and do release unrated material, like Rest Stop or Beerfest, but at one point they must not have, hence leasing the sought after director’s cut of Killers to Lionsgate. Whatever the case, it’s back at Warner now, and they’re now debuting the cut on Blu-ray and DVD simultaneously, now with a new featurette and introduction. Fans have been waiting for the miracle a long time, and it appears to have finally struck. Let’s take a look at Stone’s stoned out film.


Oliver Stone treats the material like television right from the start. Not television in the derogatory sense of lesser production value or second-rate story, but television as a medium rather than a genre. We start into the film chronologically out of order, as if we just channel surfed to a show midway through. Mallory (Juliette Lewis, Cape Fear, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape) is dancing away to some jukebox hits, while Mickey (Woody Harrelson, Cool Blue…okay and The People vs. Larry Flint and White Men Can’t Jump) is sitting at the diner counter eating some key lime pie. A couple hicks flirt with Mallory, Mickey finishes his bright green sliver of desert, and the two congregate to shoot the shit out of everyone in the diner. They are a couple of serial killers who kill for the thrill and the media is always there one step behind them.


What drove them to such absolutes? Before we blame it on the media, we get a wonderful scene, perhaps the standout in the movie, that parodies the fifties era sitcom, titled “I Love Mallory”. Rodney Dangerfield plays type and against all at once as her perverted, incestuous father barking vile threats and vulgar catcalls to Mallory while a studio audience laughs on. Mickey walks in and the audience cheers, and Harrelson even gives a humble smirk and a beat to the camera to really sell the shallow vapidity of such sitcom constructions of everyday life. Mickey and Mallory meet, drown the father and burn the mother, and then head off on their cross country trek for drugs, fame and maybe even a little meaning.


On their trip they get married, run into a Native American, whose detachment from media hegemony makes him the martyr of the film, sensationalist crime journalist Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr., Less Than Zero, Chaplin), who will do anything to interview the lovers to boost his own fame, corrupt FBI agent Detective Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore, Saving Private Ryan and that sex tape he was in a few years ago) and tart, mustachioed prison warden Dwight McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones, Under Siege, Black Moon Rising), among many others. They get bit by a snake, search for drugs, get arrested, break out of prison, rape a hostage and finally get a one on one with Wayne Gale. Only after the Gale interview only one is left standing. It ain’t Wayne.


If Marshall McLuhan, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Sam Peckinpah (take that, scorpion!) made a movie together, it would probably be something like Natural Born Killers. It’s one of those grand, multi-leveled films where the visuals alone can speak to a disconcerting audience, the violence can speak to another, and then the complex semiology of visual and audible symbols another still. It takes jabs at the American zeitgeist via its mosaic of visual pastiches, whether it’s those old Hollywood driving scenes set to disconnected backdrops (like those sequences at the start of The Naked Gun movies), rabid rabbits right out of Night of the Lepus or laugh tracks from old sitcoms. When it’s not taking up the full screen, these visual signifiers to our media culture are playing behind windows, in the sky or on the television – regardless of whether Mickey and Mallory are paying attention, they’re being inundated with consumption culture.


Stone gives consumption a color, too, via the green that makes itself prominent on a few select objects and scenes in the movie. Mickey’s vibrant key lime pie, junk food in a junk culture, the jukebox that Mallory plays her canned pop hits to help goad her sexuality (it's green when she's eaten out on her car, too), and the drug store (“DRUG ZONE” as it is not-so-subtly blown up as), where the two seek out treatment for their condition. Green appears once more during a tinted scene in the prison riot, suggesting, finally, that violence is America’s last major form of consumption. So whether he’s using old media, different film stocks, contrapuntal sound cues or even single colors, Stone is constantly layering his film with levels of metaphor, context and understanding.


The film has the pacing and the structure of a couch potato with his finger on the dial, surfing back and forth between film stocks and even story points. All the subliminal editing with demons, fire and negative image animals all culminate to the grand, indicting finale. After Mickey and Mallory have their grand face off with media and television literally with Wayne Gale, the channel then changes, and we are given a channel surf summary on the sensationalism of American media, with shots of the Menendez, Simpson and Bobbit trials, as well as a Tonya Harding skate. That end film montage does the opposite of what detractors of the film say about Natural Born Killers – rather than turn the two into heroes it instead makes them a flash in the pan. Film naturally glorifies or inflates its subject, but after two hours the “heroes” become nothing more than a channel worth changing. We never find out what happens to them, not because it matters, but because our A.D.D. information generation couldn’t be bothered for the follow up. There’s other stuff on TV.

presentation...


Considering the film is shot on 17 different exhibition formats, from 8mm to 35mm, black and white to video, it’s pretty tough to guage image quality. The cinematography is so stylized and over-processed that it’s never fully clear, but even in the flurry, the reality of the transfer is that it is soft. Even the 35mm color footage lacks edge sharpness and detail. There are never any scenes that provide the window effect of looking at reality, but perhaps that’s just as well considering it’s a film about the obtrusive hegemony of television. The one thing that this new Blu-ray really does offer over past DVDs is the boost in color. Robert Richardson’s cinematography is unkempt with a flurry of vibrant primary colors, with each color rich with many intertwined metaphors. Colors are so important in Natural Born Killers, and here they’ve never been more expressive. This 1.78:1 anamorphic 1080p VC1 encoded transfer may not be top quality, but the cinematography still is and it’s preserved well enough here.


Natural Born Killers is presented in Dolby TrueHD 5.1, and the mix is a forceful one. Gunshots, rioting yells and some heinous laughing all really shoot out with force, and the LFE always gets a workout because of it. There’s an amazing selection of music here, from light fifties pop to Leonard Cohen’s perfectly nihilistic anchoring. Cohen supplies three songs for the film, all during the key moments (start, end and the riot climax) and if anything I’ll remember the sound for that rather than any sort of envelopment. There is some nice effects work moved to the rear speakers, although dialogue stays stuck in the center speaker. It’s a wild, abrasive film, and it has a soundtrack to match.

extras...

All the extras from the theatrical cut Blu-ray have been brought over for this new Blu-ray, including the 44-page booklet that was built into the packaging previously. Now it’s a booklet inside a regular Blu-ray case, along with a new 2009 introduction, but the content is otherwise the same. Extras from the previous release include the standard definition, interlaced:

• Theatrical trailer
• Twelve minute Charlie Rose interview with Stone
• Audio commentary with Oliver Stone
• Around 27-minutes of deleted scenes, including a memorable comedic rant on Mickey and Mallory by Denis Leary and other performances by Rachel Ticotin, the Barbarian Brothers and Ashley Judd. All scenes have optional introductions on their exclusion by Oliver Stone
• Alternate ending with optional Stone introduction
• It never made the previous Blu-ray, but the documentary from the original DVD, “Chaos Rising: The Storm Around Natural Born Killers”, is also included here in its 26-minute entirety.


On those extras: The deleted scenes are interesting, especially the Leary rant. Shame that couldn’t have made it into the final cut. The deleted scenes are otherwise of little consequence. The alternate ending is pretty contrived, and offers too much structured closure on a film that prides itself on its anarchy. All deleted scenes are presented full screen. The commentary is a lull, and really, it points to the idea that Stone is vastly overrated as a creative mind. The images and ideas he put on screen are certainly wonderful provocations, but when he’s forced to explain, as he tries to do here, he comes off as almost oblivious to the messages he seems to be getting at. Rather than dissect the meaning behind the many symbols in the film, he’ll instead say something like “I liked that shot” or something of that vapidity. The commentary was a big letdown, and the Charlie Rose interview is more an ego rest stop to push controversy rather than cut to the core of the man or the film. “Chaos Rising” offers a lengthy look at the making of the film, with most of the principal cast and crew weighing in on both the making-of and the controversy surrounding the film. It’s quite well made.


What’s new? Well, we get a short video introduction from Stone that is presented in HD. Through the nature of editing, this 4-minute introduction ends up coming off a lot more articulate than Stone does in any of the other pieces. There is also a new documentary, also in HD, called “NBK Evolution: How Would it All Go Down Now?” Running a TV-friendly 22-minutes, this is a fascinating documentary that manages to shed light on both the film and the media culture Stone was satirizing. It has several interviews both from the inside and outside, talking to filmmakers like Stone, Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as well as those in the media, from Wikipedia, YouTube and Twitter representatives to Tila Tequila and Joey Buttafuoco of all people. The editing is very good and complements the film quite nicely. The first half offers a nice look at the scandal of Natural Born Killers from today’s perspective, and the second half, on what it would be like today is interesting, if a little silly.

wrapping it up...


Natural Born Killers is a roughly sewn patchwork of violence, pastiche and television, yet as realized by Stone’s highly symbolic vision, Robert Richardson’s lucid cinematography and Leonard Cohen’s nihilistic prose, it ends up forming some beautiful fire blanket of American values. Winona, this is how you build an American quilt! The director’s cut is presented in full and with a bevy of extras new and old, some extras are better than others, but the set provides a good mélange of material. Killers is a film so packed with information that it can speak for itself more than anyone explaining it ever could. Hearing Stone shallowly deconstruct his fierce work only further signals that the less said about this nineties masterpiece the better. The image quality on the Blu-ray is acceptable, but soft, but the audio is at least an audible assault.

overall... Film: A Video: B- Audio: B+ Extras: B Final Grade: B