Fill
The Void
(2012/Sony DVD)/From
Here To Eternity
(1953/Columbia/Sony Blu-ray)/Love
Is A Racket (1932/First
National/Warner Archive DVD)/Shadow
Dancer (2012/Magnolia
Blu-ray)/Simon Killer
(2012/MPI/IFC DVD)/War Of
The Buttons
(2011/Weinstein/Anchor Bay DVD)
Picture:
C+/B/C+/B-/C/C+ Sound: C+/B-/C+/B-/C+/C+ Extras:
C+/B/C-/C/C/C Films: C+/B/C+/C/C/C
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Love
Is A Racket
DVD is only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive
series and can be ordered from the links below.
Now
for some drama releases, including a classic and underseen pre-Code
Hollywood film...
Rama
Burshtein's Fill The Void
(2012) takes us into the world of Hasidic Jewry in a tale about a
young woman (Hadas Yaron) who has to chose between two men to get
married to, not that she is ready for either and may be too young for
either, but it is either going with a man she likes that will take
her to another country or with a good man who will keep her in her
community when her sister dies in childbirth. The baby lives, but it
puts her in a problematic, yet familiar circumstance.
Unfortunately,
we have seen this tale in all kinds of settings before in endless
melodramas, so the only advantage this one has is a look inside the
most closed and strict of Jewish worlds. The film does this well and
I bet I missed a few subtleties not knowing the religion and
especially this one, well. The film also conveys the richness and
density of this closed world and the actors are more than convincing,
but I wanted more and at only 90 minutes, it was not able to add
more.
Extras
include Writer's Bloc Q&A with Writer/Director Rama Burshtein and
a feature length audio commentary track with Burshtein and star
Yaron.
Fred
Zinnemann's From
Here To Eternity
(1953) has been issued on Blu-ray for the first time and the result
makes obsolete all previous versions (even any Superbit DVDs) in a
tale married woman Deborah Keer has an affair with military official
Burt Lancaster, despite having a good soldier husband in Montgomery
Cliff around, but he is being taken advantage of in a few ways and
his buddy Maggio (Frank Sinatra in his comeback role) is doing what
he can to be supportive, but it is near December 7, 1941 and Pearl
Harbor will be attacked unbeknownst to them (or any of the other
characters, but not necessarily to no one, an issue the film would
never begin to address).
The
film has a healthy suspicion of military integrity without being
against the institution and this was one of the films that helped to
slowly transform Columbia Pictures into a major studio after so many
decades of being a “little sister” and it holds up as a
great film on its 60th Anniversary. When you look at its
pace, energy, writing, chemistry of its cast and how it never wastes
a moment of its time or ours, you can see why it continues to be an
enduring classic. The sexy scene of Keer and Lancaster on the beach
remains very erotic and additional turns by Donna Reed, Ernest
Borgnine, Jack Warden, Philip Ober, Mickey Shaughnessy and uncredited
Claude Akins and George Reeves (which surprise some) make this a fun
watch too. A gold standard of all war dramas, any serious film fan
must consider this a must-see work.
Extras
include a Blu-ray exclusive Eternal History: Graphics-In-Picture
Track, plus a Making Of featurette, excerpt from the documentary
Fred Zinnemann: As I See It and feature length audio commentary track
by Tim Zinnemann and Alvin Sargent.
William
A. Wellman's Love
Is A Racket
(1932) is a drama as well, made before the Hollywood Production Code
(which From
Here To Eternity
slowly started to challenge) is a surprisingly interesting drama with
some passive adult comedy starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as a
reporter who gets involved with two women and some dirty mobsters.
Made by First National Pictures as Warner Bros. Was buying them up,
it is not consistently written and runs a mere 71 minutes, but you
can see why Fairbanks was a star, Ann Dvorak was about to become one
and how Wellman became one of the town's great journeyman directors.
Frances
Dee plays his girlfriend, but when she gets involved with bad
gangster types, our friendly neighborhood reporter gets into more
trouble and entanglements than even most of his scoop stories have
led him to. Lee Tracy and Lyle Talbot also stat in this well-paced
film that is definitely worth a look.
A
trailer is the only extra.
James
Marsh's Shadow
Dancer
(2012) is yet another thriller about terrorism and betrayal in the
spy world with Clive Owen as a British agent who confronts a mother
(Andrea Riseborough) arrested for an IRA bombing attack to either
start spying on her family back in Ireland or go to prison.
Authorities are lucky they caught her, but he starts to suspect
something else is wrong despite the information they get from her
helping to stop another plot.
With
mixed writing and more predictability on a subject that is played out
narratively, I thought this mighty offer something more or different,
but we are in a cycle of these “lone terrorists who might
change” films that tend to trivialize the subject or water down
the real thing. This one is at least trying initially to work and
Gillian Anderson even shows up in some scenes (not enough for me or
the storyline) to make this better than the usual such release, but
the makers just did not get the most out of the material and should
have added or thought of more. Nice try, though.
Extras
include Cast/Crew Interview section, a Behind the Scenes featurette
and AXS-TV look at the film.
Antonio
Campos' Simon
Killer
(2012) stars Brady Corbet as a college grad who has just gone through
a bad breakup and needs to do something to change his life for the
better. On the rebound, he goes to live in Paris and see if he can
rebuild. There, he meets a young, pretty woman who happens to be a
hooker who uses her unusual beauty, et al, to service upscale
clients. He tells her he does not mind this, but then turns aroudn
and starts blackmailing her clients to make the new couple happy,
unbeknownst to her.
Then
things start to get more complicated and the story gos from there to
sometimes offer us some interesting asides, but it can never
capitalize on it and the twists later are not much of any kind of a
surprise (how about a better title guys?) so the result is uneven and
does not add up to what it should have or could have. The locales,
actors and some ideas are interesting, though.
Extras
include a Poster Gallery, Conversations With Moms featurette,
Behind The Scenes featurette, Original Theatrical Trailer and Antonio
Campos & The Case Of The Conscious Camera, which tries to
explain (or convince us) his technique, approach and how that makes
his films artistic. He has talent, but I was not convinced by what
this bit had to say.
Finally
we have Christophe Barratier's War
Of The Buttons
(2011) which offers two groups of young kids fighting with each other
in France during WWII, but oblivious at first to anti-Semitism, other
things going on and this includes first crushes and puppy love. Well
cast and acted, the film sometimes resembles a passive Lord
Of The Flies
remake and a few moments do work, but the implications of what is
really going on is sometimes not realized as seriously, fully or
darkly as it needs to be, like it was in del Toro's Devil's
Backbone
(reviewed on Criterion Blu-ray elsewhere on this site), despite that
being about a Civil War. These children and the script are sometimes
too happy for their own good, so we also get a mixed finished from a
mixes script when all is said and done. At least they were trying,
but Cinema
Paradiso
this is not.
Extras
include Bloopers, Deleted Scenes and a Making Of featurette.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black and white digital High Definition image transfer
on Eternity may be the second oldest film on the list and the
grain of the monochrome stocks of the time can show the age of the
materials used, Sony has spent much money on cleaning up, saving and
fixing the film, resulting in the best presentation I have seen of
the film in eons and easily its best home video appearance ever.
Director of Photography Burnett Guffey (Bonnie & Clyde,
All The King's Men (1949), King Rat, The Birdman Of
Alcatraz (1962), Homicidal) delivered some of the most
iconic work of his long career and this show show great black and
white film can look once again, especially when transferred
correctly.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Dancer
should have been the visual champ here, but once again, the
presentation has been styled down to be darker and cliched in ways
that effect its depth, detail and consistency.
That
leaves our four DVDs with Racket
the oldest film here shown in a 1.33 X 1 black and white that looks
better for its age than expected despite the flaws and picture
limits, allowing it to compete with the other DVDs, all of which are
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 presentations. While Void
and Buttons
look good despite some softness, Killer
is the softest, most overstylized presentation on the list, though I
wondered if the format was to blame and not the transfer. Guess
we'll have to see an HD or film version to compare.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on Dancer
and Eternity
have the warmest presentations here, but both are too much in the
front channels, though Eternity
was issued in a rare 3-track stereo configuration in its original
theatrical release on better 35mm film prints. The lossy Dolby
Digital 5.1 mixes on the Void,
Killer
and Buttons
DVDs have the same soundfield issue, but are not as warm, so the
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Racket
is a big surprise by sounding about as good and maybe even a little
better than its image looks.
To
order Love
Is A Racket
from Warner Archive, go to this link for it and many more great
web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
