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Category:    Home > Reviews > Biography > Entertainment Industry > Autobiography > Romance > Gay > TV Situation Comedy > Family > Come > Behind The Candelabra (2013/HBO DVD)/Call Me Fitz: The Complete Third Season (2012/E1 DVDs)/Petunia (2013/Wolfe DVD)/Sincerely Yours (1955/Warner Archive DVD)

Behind The Candelabra (2013/HBO DVD)/Call Me Fitz: The Complete Third Season (2012/E1 DVDs)/Petunia (2013/Wolfe DVD)/Sincerely Yours (1955/Warner Archive DVD)

 

Picture: C/C+/C/C+     Sound: C+/C+/C/C+     Extras: C/C/C/D     Main Programs: B/C/C/C

 

 

PLEASE NOTE: Sincerely Yours is only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.

 

 

Here are a set of titles tied by comedy, music and themes…

 

 

Rejected for U.S. theatrical release by every major studio and top distributor around, Steven Soderbergh’s Behind The Candelabra (2013) is one of the year’s best motion pictures and is getting released theatrically abroad.  HBO smartly picked up the autobiographical story of Scott Thorson (played here starting at 17 years old (!) by Matt Damon in a remarkable performance), a young man who works on movies with animals and also happens to be bi-sexual at a time (the late 1970s) when this was not much discussed.

 

His life is not bad when one night, his gay boss (Scott Bakula in one of his best-ever roles) takes him to see the legendary pianist Liberace (Michael Douglas in a haunting performance) and is stunned that he can play, that he is gay and no one really gets that he is gay.  They meet and at first, it just seems like a business associate encounter, but Liberace becomes slowly enthralled with Scott and hires him for his act as a fantasy chauffer for his record-length fur coat!

 

However, they start to get more involved despite the age difference and have a love affair that stays secret the whole time until it sees its end and the script (based on Thorson’s book, adapted here by Richard LaGravenese) does an ace of a job of capturing the people, the time period, era and status of the situation throughout.  There are also some great turns by Debbie Reynolds as Liberace’s mother, Dan Ackroyd as his loyal agent, Nicky Katt, Paul Reiser and Rob Lowe as a plastic surgeon that rounds out Soderbergh’s best film in years.  Too bad he is about to retire.

 

The story never is never shy about gay sexuality, yet is never exploitive on the matter and this ultimately is a character study of the time, our society and an untold story of show business and media long overdue so good that you feel like you are spying on the real thing happening.  Amazing.

 

The only extra is a Making Of featurette that should be seen after seeing the movie.

 

 

Also obsessed with the gaudy Las Vegas show business world in its own explicit way is Call Me Fitz: The Complete Third Season (2012) with Jason Priestley as the title businessman, womanizer and manipulator with more than a few fans and enemies alike.  Priestley’s best work to date, we have covered the previous seasons at these links:

 

One

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11199/Bored+To+Death+%E2%80%93+The

 

Two

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11519/Bob:+The+Complete+Series+(1992

 

This time out, the cast is still funny, energetic, has kept their comic timing and keep the pace up, but the teleplays are starting to stumble (much like Girls recently) and the show sit running out of ideas and losing whatever edge it had.  Now the storyline is becoming obvious, the show is repeating itself and the weekly TV grind is pushing the show into a corner.  Still, it could be worse, but I had hoped the show would build on its potential and this time out at least, it did not.

 

Extras include a Season Three featurette, three other featurettes (World Of Fitz, Inside Call Me Fitz, Meet Melody Gray) and a Sizzle Reel.

 

 

Ash Christian’s Petunia (2013) is about the title family and its dysfunctional affairs including a married couple (Christine Lahti and David Rasche) who hate each other as one daughter (Thora Birch) is married and another son (Tobias Segal) starts to deal with his homosexuality.

 

Unfortunately, this is done more as a cartoon than a comedy with any edge or substance, which is made worse by the fact that the makers have a really good cast here.  This is just too slap-happy for its own good and rarely rings true, not to mention how predictable it becomes.  Some of the dialogue is also lame, but it is at least consistent if not great.  Brittany Snow and Eddie Kaye Thomas also star.

 

Extras in this great slipcase packaging include a radio interview with Birch, Lahti & Urie, a feature length audio commentary track with Christian, Co-Writer/Co-Producer Bennett & Producer Jordan Levine and an Original Theatrical Trailer.

 

 

 

Finally we have Gordon Douglas’ Sincerely Yours (1955), a melodrama that features the real Liberace as a pianist who is starting to have problems with his career via a devastation hearting problem and potential affairs with two women (Dorothy Malone, Joanna Dru) that are as laughable for all the wrong reasons as they are outright campy.

 

A dud when it was issued, then reissued, often without Liberace having top billing, its commercial failure killed his dreams of being a big movie star and later reissues even under-1billed him, but the film is worth seeing for the time period and especially for his amazing piano playing.  It shows up referenced in Behind The Candelabra and should be in print just the same.

 

There are no extras.

 

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Fitz and anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 on Yours are flawed, but the best presentations here and despite detail and definition issues, have color and some warmth that put them ahead of the softer-than-expected 1.78 X 1 images on Behind and Petunia, which look too soft =for their own good, though Behind has a Blu-ray that was annou8nced at the last minute and that would be the preferred way of seeing it.

 

The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Behind, Fitz and Petunia should tie for the best releases here sonically, but Petunia is badly mixed, poorly recorded and the sound is too much towards the front channels more than usual for when I encounter this kind of thing and all have this issue.  I guess a lossless presentation might help Behind (on Blu-ray as noted) and Fitz, but Petunia would need reworked, so the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Yours is surprisingly good and equal to any of the releases on this list, though you’ll wish the music was in stereo every time Liberace plays.

 

 

To order Sincerely Yours, go to this link for it and many more great web-exclusive releases at:

 

http://www.warnerarchive.com/

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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