Author: Ric Meyers

Another week, another pair of good examples as to how DVD extras can enhance, deepen, and illuminate a previous viewing experience…especially when the subject matter is show business itself.

First stop, north of the border, and one of Canada’s best television series. For years I’ve been enjoying Slings & Arrows, the tragicomedic travails of a Shakespearean Festival Theatrical Troupe. Created by some of the same folk who made the hit Broadway musical The Drowsy Chaperone, and The Kids in the Hall, it has been consistently engrossing in its three seasons (of six episodes each).

In the first season, we were introduced to the core cast as they tried to get the theater on its feet and mount a memorable production of Hamlet. Season two saw more complications amid the cast and crew as they battled the “Scottish Play (Macbeth).” Arriving on DVD this week is the third (and most say, last) season, in which a production of King Lear is the focal point.

The first two seasons set the bar high in terms of Shakespearean drama and human comedy, but this third season does not disappoint in any way. In fact, it manages to resonate the first two seasons as well as cap off the tales of once-institutionalized artistic director Geoffrey Tennant (Paul Gross), the love of his life Anna Conroy (Susan Coyne), the troupe’s financial director Richard Smith-Jones (former Hall Kid Mark McKinney), and the ghost of the former artistic director Oliver Welles (Stephen Ouimette) … and, yes, you read that right.

In addition, each season features a new cast of actors who play actors who are brought in to star in the season’s featured play, and, if anything, the third time’s the charm. William Hutt, a beloved Canadian actor, stars as Charles Kingman, a beloved Canadian actor who takes on Lear in more ways than one (in fact, Hutt died shortly after completing his role as a dying actor playing a dying King). Playing the actress playing Lear’s honorable daughter is Sarah Polley, the luminous star of such movies as The Sweet Hereafter and director of the recent art house film success Away From Her (she’s also the daughter of Mark Polley, who has been featured in all three seasons of the show as one of the troupe’s supporting players).

Suffice to say that all three box sets of the series are worthwhile. Now, onto the extras on this latest, and reportedly, last season. There’s interviews with star Paul Gross (who you might remember from the Canadian Mountie at large CBS series Due South) and co-writer/co-star Susan Coyne. In addition, there’s bloopers, outtakes, deleted scenes, photo galleries, and even song lyrics, but what makes the extras extra special are uninterrupted, unedited, and extended sequences from the “final” production of King Lear itself, which take on additional dimension once you’ve seen the backstage drama that went into creating them. (more…)

I’’m spoiled already. Seven weeks into this column, and I yawn when I see a DVD with “only” one audio commentary. It wasn’’t even seven weeks when I succumbed to the “Critic’s Disease,”– judging each new entertainment against the one I had seen the day, week, month, or year before.

For the most part, the illness’ symptoms aren’’t as egregious for DVDs as they are for films, since it’’s likely most people see more DVDs than go to the movies, and therefore have touches of the malady themselves. Besides, as I pointed out before, expectations are far lower for films seen on TV than they are in the cinemas.

Even so, some worthy discs (or double discs) can slip through the cracks while I’’m la-di-dahing. Such is the case for Fantastic Four Extended Edition I first mentioned a column or two back. Don’’t get me wrong: the actual film, despite the twenty minutes of reinstated footage, still isn’’t as good as it could or should have been. But in the weeks since reviewing it, my memory keeps going back to the special features.

So now I feel I could have been a bit more adamant about the edition’s charms, especially with this site’s readers. Maybe I should have mentioned that the extras come in two categories: the film, and the comic book. And it is in this latter category where the glory of this version truly lies. There are new, lovingly created docs –each more than an hour long – on the history of the comic from the 1960’s until today, and on co-creator/artist supreme Jack Kirby.

Each features the cream of the comic world’s crop (Stan Lee, Jim Lee, George Perez, Marv Wolfman, Walt Simonson, Len Wein, Alex Ross, and many others) waxing enthusiastically about their writing and artistic contribution to the series (save for John Byrne, whose absence is accusatory, though his input is lauded) as well as the man who inspired them. Remember, grasshoppers, that the climatic locale for the first season of Heroes was called Kirby Plaza for a reason. The docs do a nifty, pleasing job of balancing art images with talking heads, and the overall effect is a warm and fuzzy feeling for a film that wasn’t that rousing to begin with.

The first Fantastic Four film should be so lucky as to be remembered with the same fondness as it’s “fantastic” predecessor, Fantastic Voyage. In addition to sharing an adjective (or is that an adverb?), 20th Century Fox has released special editions of their respective DVDs at the same time. But Voyage, incongruously, is part of Fox’’s “Cinema Classics Collection.” (more…)

Yes, yes, I know. This is the week both the extended versions of the original Fantastic 4 movie and Ghost Rider are in stores. Fine, great, more power to them. And, yes, I realize that this website is called ComicMix, so, by all rights, what follows should be an in-depth, all-inclusive examination of every extra, Easter egg, and digital particle on both these comic book inspired phantasmagoricals.

But I really don’t feel like it. First, because, even to be extremely kind, neither film rates the kind of slavish devotion that the Richard Donner Superman, Tim Burton Batman, or Sam Raimi Spider-Man elicits in me (this, of course, does not include the sequels, except the second Spidey [by no stretch of the imagination, the third!]).

Second, even these films’ most devoted proponents would have to accept that the extended versions of these adventures aren’’t what one could call revelatory. While rumors remain that the original FF film was disemboweled to create the anti-climatic one seen in theaters, there’’s no hint of that in the ultimately unnecessary extra scenes regrafted here.

I’ll admit, however, that there are hardly two films that benefit more from DVD performance. Both flix, in fact, are more enjoyable to watch on TV. There, according to film expert Chris Gore (and I agree), there aren’’t as many expectations as there are in the theater. What may have been annoying, even intolerable, on the big screen become humorously camp and acceptable on the small.

These two-disc DVD sets’ other extras — audio commentary, behind-the-scenes, making-of, and a nifty character history for Ghost Rider; three audio commentaries, scads of featurettes (including one on comic artist Jack Kirby), loads of concept art, and even more stuff like that there for FF  are squeaky clean and informative, but don’t make these pics resonate the way the two-disc Pan’s Labyrinth DVD did. To paraphrase Monty Python, these discs wouldn’t resonate if you put 5000 volts through them.

So, if you’’re wondering whether to get the single disc or double disc editions of either of these fine, though hardly spectacularly great, films, take to your heart the DVD Xtra Rules of Purchase: Always Widescreen, Always Subtitled, Always, Always, ALWAYS the Special Platinum Collectors Extended Ultimate Edition. If you’’re going to buy, buy the best. Otherwise, Netflix.

So what shall we talk about now? Well, the Rider and FF bring to mind a particularly beloved aspect of DVD collecting and/or watching. That which does not start out great can become great with a judicious use of extras (as evidenced by last column’’s Frankenstein Conquers the World). That which was shaky in production becomes illuminating in retrospect. Nowhere is this more true than in the next new release under scrutiny: the Dr. Who New Beginnings box set. (more…)

Poor Cynthia Rothrock. She’’s the first “gweilo (white devil)” woman to become a major star in the golden age of the Hong Kong kung-fu film, then gets relegated to such sad junk as the China O’’Brien and Lady Dragon series in America. But for anybody who wants to know what the fuss was about, and those, like me, who want to see Cynthia regain her rightful place in the top echelon of action stars, the two newest Dragon Dynasty DVDs are the ones for you.

Dragon Dynasty is the new home for the many martial art movies the Weinstein Company has been hoarding for years. They’’re finally releasing these amazing, literally unmatchable, adventures with enough worthy whistles and beguiling bells to make them worthwhile for even a pioneering kung-fu flick fan such as myself. Still, some of their decisions and missteps are indicative of the seeming disdain they previously displayed for these bogarted milestones.

Take, for example, Above the Law, Rothrock’s’ second HK film (following the classic Yes Madam, which also introduced Michelle Yeoh to an awed Chinese audience) and Dragon Dynasty’’s ninth DVD release. What, say you, I don’’t remember Cynthia Rothrock in that fine, first, 1988, Steven Seagal movie!?  That’s because Cynthia was in the 1986 like-named Hong Kong film, which was more generally known as Righting Wrongs, which would have made a much less confusing, more easily ordered, title for this new DVD.

Under any name, this combination of Death Wish and Enter the Dragon adds to its list of firsts, in that it’s the first major action starring vehicle for the impressive Yuen Baio away from his “big brothers,” directors, and co-stars Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung (late of CBS-TV’s Martial Law series). But rather than showcase Baio’’s sweet, lovable, easy-going nature, director Corey Yuen Kwai (who went on to choreograph the action in Jet Li’s’ Kiss of the Dragon, among others) decided to make Righting Wrong a monument to paranoia, fear, brutality and some of the most savage kung-fu ever put on celluloid.

The return of Hong Kong to China’’s rule was more than a decade away at the time, but action directors such as Corey were already reflecting their concerns with films that featured corruption as a murderous way of life. Baio plays a lawyer who moonlights as a vigilante after his beloved mentor is mown down. Rothrock is the Interpol agent sent to arrest him, while everyone around them is unleashing assassins to kill everyone they can get their hands, knives, guns, construction tools, planes, garrotes, and bombs on.

The fights Corey crams this movie with are boldly conceived, incredibly played, and well worth watching, even studying, repeatedly, which is a good thing since clips of them are shown repeatedly during the interesting “Special Feature” interviews with Rothrock, Baio, and Canadian kickboxing champ Peter “Sugarfoot” Cunningham (who co-stars as one of the many killers). The packaging copy isn’t through with you at just the confusing title, however. The good news is that the disc also features alternate scenes (although not one Rothrock mentions in her interview) and endings, which aren’’t listed on the box. The bad news is that, while the copy maintains that the film is letterboxed widescreen, it ain’’t.

Which is a shame, because Dragon Dynasty’‘s tenth release, and the next piece of Rothrock proof, is Shanghai Express, which is beautifully restored and letterboxed, capturing every millimeter of the astonishing stunts and scintillating fights director/star Sammo Hung piles on his international cast-of-hundreds. Like Righting Wrongs/Above the Law before it, this DVD features a pandering alternate title for a film that is better known (even on the opening credits) as The Millionaires’’ Express. (more…)