Joan Rivers: Don’t Start With Me (2012/E1 DVD)/Nature
Calls (2012/Magnolia/MagNet Blu-ray)/Twenty
Twelve: The Complete Series (2012/BBC DVDs)
Picture: C+/B-/C+ Sound: C+/B-/C+ Extras: D/D/C Main Programs: B/D/C
Now for
some new comedy releases, including the return of a legend to true form…
Joan Rivers: Don’t Start With Me (2012) is 69 minutes (is that an
unintended joke too?) by the now 70+ year old comedienne back in her most
potently offensive and politically incorrect work in decades. She goes after everyone, including herself,
insults anyone she can including celebrities, attacks minorities, the
handicapped, Jewishness (she is Jewish) and (in something more than a few will
not like) even does what you could call Holocaust jokes, but it is a show that
pushes the boundaries of free speech in stand up today like no on else is or
dare would be or even be able too.
Some of
the comments are to undermine the audiences moral code, one of her classic
moves and she does this often, though even I could say she had gone too far a
few times, but she is “joking” as it were and give or take a few moments you
might not be able to handle or find funny, this is a remarkable show. She may be hated, maligned, vicious,
obnoxious or any other word you want to use to describe her, but she is also
bold, daring, intense and once she gets started, no one can stop her.
I liked
more than enough of this to recommend this, but it was also a reminder of how
great she used to be (I don’t remember her going this far back in the day,
though) and she can still go a few rounds with any stand up comic today.
There are
no extras, but for more on Rivers,
try this link for her early talk show:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11455/That+Show+with+Joan+Rivers,+Volu
An
absolutely unfunny disaster, Todd Rohal’s Nature
Calls (2012; he also wrote this mess) is a toilet-joke filled comedy where
precious kids and idiot adults mix it up going camping, but this is lightyears
from better such films from the late 1970s/early 1980s and is never funny for
one moment. Patton Oswald, Johnny Knoxville
and Maura Tierney are among the few known names here just collecting a paycheck
and at only 79 minutes seems much, much, much longer. Skip this one!
Extras
include BD Live interactive functions, Outtakes, AXS-TV look at the release, an
Original Theatrical Trailer and a Behind
The Scenes look at how they made this one.
Twenty Twelve: The Complete Series (2012) is a British sitcom about
bureaucrats trying to set things up for the London 2012 Olympics to go
smoothly, but it is only so amusing despite a good cast that includes Hugh
Bonneville and though the humor is not of the opaque British type, I think the
unique form of anxiety shown in its shaky camerawork and on-the-spot problems
just might be. I simply did not find
this funny, nor did I in previous series that took the same approach.
The show
lasted only two seasons and each one is on one of the two DVDs. You might find this mildly amusing, but it
does not go anywhere fast and between the real event working out so much better
and the idiocy of one-time presidential candidate (nit wit) Mitt Romney going
over to the U.K. and questioning the security at a time of heightened terrorism
concerns, the show has a hard time competing against reality. Now you can see for yourself.
Cast
& Crew Interviews are the only extras.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on the two DVDs have some softness and
motion blur, but are not bad for their format, but the 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital
High Definition image transfer on Nature
with the same issues still just manages to look a little better. None of these are visual champs, but the Rivers disc has the advantage of being
on one stage and I would like to see a Blu-ray version.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on Rivers is
well recorded, but does not offer much sonically as is typical of stand-up
comedy releases, so the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Twelve is its equal and the badly recorded DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
5.1 lossless mix on Nature is really
not much better with sound too much towards the front speakers, sometimes too
much in the center channel and a somewhat inept mix overall.
- Nicholas Sheffo