Pictured From Spain, the charming My Mother Likes Women. Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation. Liam Neeson in Kinsey.
The new DVD line-up includes a huge assortment of titles that kept your devoted DVD disciple glued to his player, including some must-have titles for My People.
My recommendations:
GAY AND LESBIAN
The unrated edition of Bear Cub ( 2004 ) from TLA Releasing gets things off to a hot start. This Spanish drama, which was first seen at last year's Chicago Film Festival in a screening co-sponsored by WCT, is amazingly successful at balancing the relationship of a dentist who is caring for his young nephew for an extended period while maintaining an avid, anonymous sex life and friendships with fellow 'bears.' Deleted scenes are included. Highly recommended. Also from Spain is the charming My Mother Likes Women ( 2002 ) that had a brief theatrical run at Facets and is now out from Wolfe Video. When divorced concert pianist Sofia introduces her three grown daughters to her new lover, who just happens to be a woman, all hell breaks loose in this comedy that's highly reminiscent of the best of Almodóvar.
Three movies of gay teenagers are also highly recommended. Prom Queen: the Marc Hall Story ( 2004 ) from Wolfe Video is the true story of a Canadian 'Cinderfella' who just wanted to take his boyfriend to prom. Scott Thompson and Dave Foley support Aaron Ashmore, the blond hunk who takes the lead in this serious but lightly told version of the events. Extras include a small featurette on the real Marc Hall ( that abruptly ends, however ) , a music video and a director's commentary. Much grittier is The Graffiti Artist ( 2004 ) , from Allegro Corporation, the lyrical debut feature from writer-director James Bolton about a homeless tagger-skateboarder and his brief relationship with a kindred spirit. With little dialogue and a beautiful music score, the film ( shot in digital video ) tracks the quick ascent ( and descent ) of the easily fractured friendship. Highly reminiscent of early Gus Van Sant. No extras. Highest praise is reserved, however, for gay director Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation ( 2004 ) , his searing documentary of his attempts to restore his mother to sanity ( and save his own ) . A vivid, alternately funny and sad director's commentary track and a stills gallery are also included. From Wellspring Media.
GAY AND LESBIAN RELATED
Paramount has released a two-disc version of Kinsey ( 2004 ) , gay writer-director Bill Condon's wonderful film biography of the sex researcher and unacknowledged gay and lesbian hero with Liam Neeson in the title role. The second disc includes a comprehensive, hour-long making of feature, 20 deleted scenes, and best, a sex questionnaire courtesy of the Kinsey Institute that's a lot of fun to play with your significant other once the movie's over. A perfect companion piece is PBS's American Experience episode of Kinsey ( 2005 ) , also from Paramount. Not only does it provide additional insight into the controversial researcher's life via his biographers and surviving family and colleagues, but glimpses of early gay and lesbian life via vintage photographs and footage is fascinating.
Segments from both Advise and Consent ( 1962 ) and The Detective ( 1968 ) are part of the documentary history of gays and lesbians in Hollywood, The Celluloid Closet and now both have been released on DVD. Advise, from Warner Bros, is part of their 'Controversial Classics Collection' that features movies focused on 'social problems.' Advise centers on the confirmation of a potential secretary of state but is noteworthy for the subplot that features Don Murray as a closeted homo who's being blackmailed by his ex-lover. Racier still for audiences of the time was a first glimpse at a gay bar! Six years later Frank Sinatra as The Detective, from Fox Home Video, learns that the murdered son of a prominent businessman was gay and fights prejudice against the victim while trying to solve the crime. Includes a scene with William Windom as a self-loathing homo, cruising the Piers in New York. Minimal extras on both discs.
GAY ICONS
One of Bette Midler's biggest hits, Beaches ( 1989 ) , arrives in a Special Edition from Buena Vista. In a decade of massive hits for Bette, this sob fest of sisterhood topped them all. Midler and Barbara Hershey, with her lips infamously injected with collagen for the role, play archetype JAP and WASP princesses who meet as children and form a bond that endures through years of fighting, splitting up and making up. This SE includes the video and the AFI 100 Best Film Song segment for 'The Wing Beneath My Wings,' the film's theme song and Ole Red Hair's biggest hit. Seeing it now makes me miss Sidetrack's hilarious reinterpretation of it in which their resident video genius, Pepe Pena, cut in footage of Crawford and Davis on the beach in What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? The disc has lots of other stuff but nothing new from Midler, which is puzzling. This was her biggest hit. What gives?
Barbra Streisand fans, on the other hand, should be content with Meet the Fockers ( 2004 ) from Universal. If this physical comedy comes anywhere close to its predecessor, Meet the Parents, it's because of the shrewd casting of Barbra and Dustin Hoffman as Ben Stiller's parents, Bernie and Roz Focker. Streisand enthusiasts will instantly recognize the homage to The Main Event when Roz is introduced here. The disc includes an extended version that mostly ups the gross comedy and a healthy dose of deleted scenes and bloopers. Other extras include a nice little mini segment with Barbra talking about her character and a fun segment hosted by Matt Lauer that mostly focuses on she and Hoffman.
MGM has at last released The Trip to Bountiful ( 1985 ) on DVD which contains Geraldine Page's Best Actress Oscar-winning performance. For certain gay audiences ( include me in ) , Page is right up there in the pantheon next to Barbra and Bette and her performance here as Carrie Watts, the elderly lady determined to see her home in rural Texas just once more before dying, offers definitive proof. The disc includes a nice 'Return to Bountiful' documentary that has new interviews with most of the principals and their memories of working with the fabulous Page, who died not long after winning the Oscar. The disc comes dual-sided with both full frame and wide screen editions.
The Grass Harp ( 1996 ) from New Line is based on the novella by Gay Icon author Truman Capote. The delicate story, a thinly disguised version of Capote's Depression-era childhood years being raised by two spinster sisters in the eccentric south, is a hymn to outsiders and independent types of all stripes. Though Edward Furlong in the title role is wanting, he is ably supported by a marvelous surrounding cast that includes Roddy McDowell, Walter Matthau, and Mary Steenburgen. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, re-teamed 20 years after their brilliant mother-daughter roles in the horror film Carrie, this time as the feuding sisters, top the list. Includes the movie trailer.
RECENT THEATRICAL RELEASES
Those bad South Park boys are at it again with their naughty, bawdy and filled to the brim with gay references Team America: World Police ( 2004 ) from Paramount. This 'Thunderbirds Are Go' homage, with its intricate sets and all-puppet cast arrives in an Uncensored and Unrated edition that has lots of extras but is going to fly off shelves if only for the puppet sex scene that would be classed as porn if shot with humans. Funny and audacious but not for the faint of heart.
The Criterion Collection does their usual masterful job with the two-disc edition of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou ( 2004 ) , the latest Wes Anderson oddball comedy with Bill Murray. Though Anderson's patented, highly idiosyncratic characters are starting to lose their charm, the movie ( and this exhaustive collection ) still has much to recommend. Just two highlights for me were the 10 David Bowie songs performed by Brazilian recording artist Seu Jorge and Albert Maysles' Making of Documentary.
Disney had a surprise hit with their adventure quest action picture, National Treasure. But the movie, with Nicholas Cage and company, came at the right time and this home edition, with its intricate puzzles that unlock special features, is also a lot of fun. A nice waste of time.
Director Pedro Almodóvar's latest, Bad Education ( 2004 ) from Columbia Tristar, is a Hitchcockian tale of intrigue and murder with a gay romance at its core. A subplot involves sexual abuse from an obsessed priest and Almodóvar's usual assortment of drag queens and fictitious movie stars. I missed the theatrical run of this terrific, emotionally complex film and was thrilled with the sexy, unrated DVD version that doesn't leave much to the gay imagination. In Spanish with a nice assortment of extras.
My favorite documentary last year was The Corporation ( 2004 ) , just out from Zeitgeist Video in a spectacular, exhaustingly detailed two-disc set. The film tackles the seemingly ungainly subject of the corporation itself but the movie's never boring. The first disc, in addition to the film, includes everything from the usual deleted scenes to a segment on the grassroots marketing of the film and multiple television interviews with the directors while disc two includes a whopping FIVE hours of additional interview footage with the film's numerous talking heads. Scary but riveting.
The best thing about Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events ( 2004 ) was the movie's breathtaking look. The attention poured into the film's art direction, set direction, costumes, make up, and music paid off and the movie's an instant classic on that score alone. Paramount's two-disc special edition is one of the most creatively assembled since the Lord of the Rings sets. A great deal of attention was given to every aspect of making the movie, which eschewed digital effects whenever possible and did it the old-fashioned way, and the extras detail that. The movie is a stunning example of old-fashioned Hollywood movie magic as this edition attests.
Paul Giamatti was robbed of an Oscar for his complex performance in the critically hailed Sideways ( 2004 ) , out from Fox. This bittersweet comedy that tracks two old friends through a misbegotten tour of northern California vineyards is greatly helped by the presence of Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh. The disc includes deleted scenes that are very carefully explained by writer-director Alexander Payne and a behind-the-scenes featurette, but I'd like to have had a commentary track by the women, not just the men.
CLASSICS
Fox keeps adding more great titles to their Studio Classics Series on a regular basis and added three intriguing titles to the series in May. First up, Joan Crawford blows away the cast of nice new girls as the nasty book editor in the secretarial drama The Best of Everything ( 1959 ) . Ten years before Yul Brynner won an Oscar for The King and I, Rex Harrison took on the role in Anna and the King of Siam ( 1946 ) , a first, non-musical version of the film in which the lovely, nearly forgotten Irene Dunne holds her own with the bombastic Harrison. Finally, Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney and Anne Baxter as the tragic Sophie bring Somerset Maugham's sprawling The Razor's Edge ( 1946 ) to life in this lush adaptation. Baxter still haunts in her Oscar-winning performance. All the discs have vintage extras and/or expert commentaries.
Drums Along the Mohawk ( 1939 ) , another recent release from Fox, is the inspiring story of early American settlers Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert, who expertly head a cast ( that includes the crusty, Oscar-nominated Edna May Oliver ) in John Ford's sweeping saga. Beautifully acted, directed and shot ( in early Technicolor ) , this is another of 1939's masterpieces. The disc includes a film restoration comparison and the movie's trailer.
Where is the career achievement Oscar for Doris Day? If the criteria for the award is longevity and diversity, than the Academy need look no further than the whopping eight films that constitute Warner Brothers wonderful new boxed set, Doris Day Collection. The films span Day's career from one of her first, Young Man With a Horn in 1950 to The Glass Bottom Boat in 1966. In the former, Day is a band singer caught in a love triangle between jazz trumpeter Kirk Douglas and best friend Amy ( the sumptuous Lauren Bacall ) , who seems to be suffering from a bad case of latent lesbianism. The latter is a mistaken identity spy farce co-starring hunky Rod Taylor. Paul Lynde heads an expert supporting cast as a nosy security agent, appearing in full blue satin drag regalia in one scene that is very funny. Day is sexy and warm and matches up well with Taylor.
One of Day's personal favorites is the musical Calamity Jane ( 1953 ) , which contains the closeted gay and lesbian anthem, 'Secret Love' and features spunky Doris strutting around in buckskin fringe and cowboy boots, out sharp shooting the guys and once in a while exclaiming to the young saloon girlies, 'Gosh, you sure are purty.' Please Don't Eat the Daisies ( 1960 ) , one of my favorites, has Day as the harried housewife of a New York drama critic played by fuss budget deluxe David Niven. The plot ( years before Desperate Housewives ) focuses on Day coping with four bratty sons while trying to please her increasingly egotistical husband. Janis Paige has one of her best film roles as a seductress.
The collection is rounded out with Day's Oscar-nominated performance in Love Me or Leave Me ( 1955 ) , Lullaby of Broadway ( 1951 ) , The Pajama Game ( 1958 ) and Billy Rose's Jumbo ( 1962 ) . Many of the discs have vintage extras ( the one featuring the Maid of Cotton winner modeling Day's costumes from Glass Bottom Boat is particularly camp ) and trailers to boot.
If that's not enough Doris Day for you, Paramount has another comedy from the actress, Teacher's Pet ( 1958 ) in which she co-stars with an aging Clark Gable as a grizzled newspaper man who eschews school over experience until he enrolls in Day's classroom. The casting sounds awkward but as usual both stars are able to make even the slightest of scripts work and there is ample support from Gig Young. No extras but a nice widescreen transfer.
Li'l Abner ( 1959 ) from Paramount is the colorful film adaptation of the hit stage musical about the cartoon folks of Dogpatch. The material is hopelessly dated but features hunkalicious Peter Palmer in the title role and a group of fellow body builders that were surely subjects for legendary beefcake photographer Bob Mizer at some point. Billie Hayes, who went on to infamy as Witchie Poo in the children's show, H.R. Pufnstuf, plays Mammy Yokum while stunning Julie 'Catwoman' Newmar radiates ( literally ) sensuality as Stupefyin' Jones. No extras.
GUILTY PLEASURES
As if the recent Doris Day collection wasn't enough sugar in my DVD player, Paramount released With Six You Get Eggroll ( 1968 ) in May. This pre-Brady Bunch wacky comedy has Day hooking up with hunky Brian Keith and trying to keep their kids ( including a pre-Collagen injected Barbara Hershey of Beaches fame ) from killing each other. I can't get enough of the swingin' 'oh behave' '60s music, sets and fashions.
An instant camp classic sorta: Rupert Everett playing butch to brunette Sharon Stone, illicit lovers ( complete with Everett drizzling champagne into Stone's mouth ) in a true story of spies and espionage, A Different Loyalty ( 2004 ) . Skip the earnest but unengaging story and keep replaying those daffy love scenes. A hoot.
The latest visitor to the 100-Acre Woods is the little elephant with the British accent in Disney's utterly charming Pooh's Heffalump Movie ( 2005 ) . I grew up with Pooh and have screened this sweet movie ( with songs by Carly Simon ) for my niece and nephew, who have both given it the thumbs up. Little do they know that I'd already given it my own before the little darlings came to visit. Lots of the usual game stuff for the kids on the disc as well.
TV ON DVD
May brought with it TV's funniest ladies. First up, Queen of the '50s, Lucille Ball ( along with Ethel and company ) in I Love Lucy—the Complete Fourth Season ( 30 episodes on five discs ) from Paramount. This is my favorite season of the show—which centers on Lucy and Desi in Hollywood ( at last! ) . A slew of trivia-based extras round out the set.
Next up, also from Paramount, Queen of the '60s Carol Burnett, reminisces with cast members in a very funny CBS special, Let's Bump Up The Lights, that is packed with clips and patented Burnett moments.
Finally, Buena Vista brings us more of the Queens of the '80s, Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty, The Golden Girls—Season Two ( 26 episodes packed into three discs ) . The gals welcome Nancy Walker, George Clooney and Burt Reynolds to Miami.
From the '80s comes another Golden Couple ( on TV at least ) : Maddie and David aka Cybill Sheperd and Bruce Willis seen in Moonlighting—Seasons 1 and 2 ( 22 episodes on six discs ) . This beautifully packaged set from Lions Gate includes a lot of extras and my all-time favorite episode, the black and white, film noir take-off 'The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice' that features Sheperd singing 'I Told You I Love You, Now Get Out' ( also the closing night theme for Sidetrack's Showtune nights ) .
At last! The '80s best soap opera, the luxurious saga of the super wealthy but super messed up Carringtons, is beginning to roll out on DVD. All 13 episodes of Dynasty: Season 1 are finally here from Fox via a four-disc boxed set. When the show debuted in 1981, a gay character on primetime TV, in the person of Steven Carrington, was revelatory and though the series' true star turned out to be Joan Collins ( who wouldn't appear until the second season—though there's a hint of her here ) , I rued the show's quick retreat from the gay plotline as the series progressed. Extras include an insightful feature on the show's creation and commentary tracks on a few of the episodes. Dynasty remains a great, dishy, guilty pleasure supreme—and this set brings it all back.
