Turok: Son of Stanley Kramer, by Ric Meyers
What a relief! Fellow audio-blogging ComicMixer Mike Raub put it in perspective for me as soon the credits ended on Cloverfield: “What ever happened to science?” he asked. “Remember the good old days when movie characters would actually think about why something was happening rather than immediately whip out the heavy artillery?”
Well, Mike, my friend, I do, I really do, because this week I got two new, colorized, long-delayed, two-disc special editions from the “Ray Harryhausen Presents” line: It Came From Beneath the Sea and, especially, Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers. In the latter film, particularly, smart people do courageous things to foil an attack from the stars, and the literate, logical, talk – so absent in Cloverfield – would do Mr. Spock proud.
But first things first. It Came from Beneath the Sea arrived first, in 1955, with a Godzilla-esque tale of a nuclear-radiated giant octosquid attacking San Francisco. The following year saw the release of Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, which was succinct and accurate in its title. Both are being re-released on DVD now because Ray supervised their colorization, and Sony has done a nice job of presenting them in both their original B&W as well as colorized forms, with a “ChromaChoice” toggle so you can go from one to the other with ease.
Only one problem with Ray supervising the coloring: the monsters look great … but the people often also look like they’re made of clay … or used a scoonch too much liquid tanner. All in all, however, it’s one of the more successful colorization jobs, and rarely too distracting. Besides, what with Ray’s Dynamationalized characters, the whole thing has a nice sheen of artificiality anyway, which the colorization folds nicely into.
Welcome to the January doldrums, where, even if the Writers Guild of America wasn’t on strike, there’d still be precious little good new product, since this is the season where studios dump their loss leaders … I mean, this is the month where studios allow their most challenging productions to find their audience.
Actually, both estimations are true, and the titles considered in this column will reflect that. But since I also have a little breathing space, I want to take the opportunity to toast the year of the bummer. If the movies produced at the end of 2007 are any evidence, we’re all feeling really bad. How else do you comprehend a holiday when the most lauded films share a p.o.v. so bleak and unremittingly tragic that the bitter ending of Gone With The Wind seems positively giddy?
No Country for Old Men, Sweeney Todd, There Will Be Blood, and Atonement – all … to quote George Harrison in A Hard Day’s Night: “a drag, a well-known drag.” In fact, Atonement not only shoves your face chin-deep into misery, but holds out a small, shiny piece of possible happiness, only to take great pleasure in then ramming it into your eye socket so it can shatter against your brain. Not to say that these aren’t great films, but to quote John Cleese in the fine farce Clockwise: “It’s not the despair. The despair I can handle. It’s the hope…!”
This is where the HBO Comedy Special DVD Dave Attell: Captain Miserable comes in. I’ve been a fan of this “functionally alcoholic” comedian since the days (or should I say nights) of his Comedy Central series Insomniac, where he’d go out after his act and see what the town he was playing in had going on in the wee hours. This is his first HBO special, following in the footsteps of George Carlin, Robert Klein, and Chris Rock, among others.
If you happen to have three hundred and twenty-five smackaroos lying around, you can secure a DVD-lover’s dream. Because that’s about how much it’ll cost you to give yourself — or others — my top DVD picks for this season’s gift-giving.
Oh sure, you could simply go back amongst my previous columns and cherry pick my favorites, but what’s the fun of that? Wouldn’t it be, oh, so much better to lay on your chosen a mass media item that they’ll never forget? Imagine the joy and confusion on your preferred holiday morning when they receive not only a mass o’discs but a handy attaché case as well?
Yes, there are not one, but two special editions available just in time for ho-ho-ho-ing that come in a super nifty briefcase. The first, and most hefty, is the long-awaited The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Collection, available only from Time Life Video (until the autumn of ’08). Although it comes with a hefty pricetag to match ($250) it includes 41 discs, so that’s really only about six bucks each.
Let’s get one thing straight: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is to James Bond what The Monkees are to The Beatles. But plenty people like The Monkees, myself included, so that’s okay. When the 1960’s TV networks saw how well 007 was doing, they scrambled to get a piece of the action. MGM and NBC’s answer was to go to the source: James Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, who took a minor mobster character from Goldfinger, and turned him into Napoleon Solo, the man from the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Sam Rolfe, a veteran writer/producer (Twilight Zone, Have Gun Will Travel) took the idea and ran with it.
I have a special relationship with Jason Bourne. But, before I elaborate on my entirely self-manufactured rapport, let’s establish something at the outset. Bourne (and/or 24’s Jack Bauer, for that matter) literally wouldn’t exist without James Bond. You don’t think that all their initials being “J.B.” is a coincidence, do you? In fact, the late author Robert Ludlum created the Bourne book series with the brilliantly simple and engaging high concept of “what if 007 got amnesia?”
So, perhaps I should rephrase my declaration: I have a special “bond” with Jason Bourne. Dr. No was the first “adult” film I ever saw. The Bourne Identity is the most recent movie I saw with my brother at a cinema. I saw its sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, on Christmas Eve, the last day of my first tenure as Santa Claus at the Danbury (CT) Fair Mall. Sitting alone in a dark hotel room as the snow fell outside, watching director Paul Greengrass’ frenetic, yet somehow followable, chases on a hotel’s small TV screen – prior to heading out for a Christmas celebration with my family – created an evocative memory.
Now there’s The Bourne Ultimatum, out this coming Tuesday as a single, non-special edition DVD. I originally saw the film at its New York screening, but truly appreciated seeing it again on an HDTV, since the DVD remote control allowed me to slow down the frenzied editing so I could truly enjoy the jigsaw-designed chases and hand-to-hand battles (especially a frantic fight in a cramped apartment where Bourne proves that the book is mightier than the knife).
Although it remains one of the worthiest second sequels in film history, I still found the DVD lacking for two small reasons. First, despite truly fascinating featurettes on the action sequences – “Rooftop Pursuit,” “Planning the Punches,” “Driving School,” and “New York Chase” – character building “deleted scenes,” which were excised when Greengrass decided that he was making a “violent ballet” rather than a character-driven drama, and a doc called “Man on the Move: Jason Bourne,” none (or all) of them really don’t communicate how agonizing the film’s production actually was.
The third of my favorite summer ‘007 films, Superbad, is arriving as a “2-Disc Unrated Extended Edition” this coming Tuesday, with too many special features for its own good. The best of the many extras are the ones which share the raunchy, soft-centered, spirit of the film itself. The ones I could’ve done without are the ones which feign outrage, anger, or disgust.
This “unrated” DVD edition allowed director Greg Mottola to return the trims he originally needed to satisfy the ratings board’s “R”. So the unrated Superbad is about four minutes longer, with some gestures and expletives returned to their original positions of glory. Naturally this film — along with the growing oeuvre of producer/writer/director Judd Apatow’s Apatow Company (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Knocked Up, Walk Hard, etc.) — has plenty to play with, since all his movies use their garrulous scripts as a jumping off point for their casts of expert improv-ers. That allows the filmmakers to cherry pick their favorite, funniest, takes, and leave the rest for the DVD extras.
So, in addition to some deleted and extended scenes, there’s also a legitimately funny gag reel, followed by what they’re calling a “Line-O-Rama” – which shows the various, different, improvised retorts the actors used on subsequent takes of the same scene. The first of admittedly interesting, although totally superfluous, features, is “Cop Car Confessions,” where the filmmakers put a variety of guest stars (from Saturday Night Live, The Office, Live Free or Die Hard, and the Upright Citizen’s Brigade, among others) in the back seat of a police cruiser driven by Superbad’s cop characters (co-writer/producer Seth Rogan and SNL’s Bill Hader) and let everybody riff.