Author: Robert Greenberger

We have fallen in love with Natalie Portman again and again. Beginning with her debut in [[[The Professional]]], we have seen her take on a wide variety of dramatic roles that demonstrates a young woman with acting gifts. Even in the wretched [[[Star Wars]]] trilogy, she brought a gravity to Princess Amidala that went far beyond the meager scripts.  All of this seems to have prepared her for the Academy Award winning rile in [[[Black Swan]]]. At 29, she has achieved a level of depth in her work that few peers can match.

Most of her work, such as roles in Closer, Cold Mountain, and even V for Vendetta, show a somber side to Portman, almost as cold and controlled as her Nina in this film, now out on disc from 20^th Century Home Entertainment. The Darren Aronofsky-directed film is a visual treat and the psycho-sexual assault on the sense that one comes to expect from him.

Nina is a technically-perfect but emotionally cold ballerina who wins the role of the Swan Queen. Much of the film chronicles Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassell) and his attempts to unlock Nina’s emotions. He does this by seducing her by degrees and telling her to seduce herself. Nina, though, can’t let go, largely because she has been raised by Erica (Barbara Hershey), who stopped dancing when she gave birth to Nina and has lived through her ever since. Nina has had issues in the past that manifest themselves anew as the pressure mounts in the weeks leading up to her premier performance.

She sees threats, she watches her body change in unimaginable ways, and even has a real or imaginary one-night stand with her perceived rival, Lilly (Mila Kunis). Her descent into madness or elevation to a higher plane of existence is masterfully portrayed by Aronofsky.

Portman makes this her signature role and despite the current kerfuffle over how much of the dancing she actually did, that’s secondary to the character she brought to life. Dancing doubles have been a fact of filmmaking for decades and this is just another tempest in a teapot. Jennifer Beals made us believe in [[[Flashdance]]] as Portman does here and that’s really what matters.

The movie looks fabulous in high definition with strong sound, which fits the subject matter. You might notice a grainy quality to some of the film that you may not have noticed on the silver screen. That has to do with Aronofsky’s choice to shoot the movie by blending 16mm Arriflex cameras and two Canon 1080p video-capable DSLRs.  It all meshes quite well, adding to the unusual feel of the story.

The Blu-ray disc is packed with several extras, beginning with “Black Swan Metamorphosis” (48:50) is the detailed production process. Bringing the dancers and characters to life is carefully explained during the three-parts, complete with plenty of interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. You also get “Ten Years in the Making”, a shorter piece on the lengthy development process as told by director and star; along with a useless look at Ballet (2:33), Production Design (4:00). Star and directed each get roughly three minute profiles and short snippets on “Preparing for the Role” and “Dancing with the Camera”. There are also five cast profiles; all culled from featurettes that originally ran on Fox Movie Channel.

The harrowing viewing experience that is at turns titillating, exciting, terrifying, and moving, shows moviemaking at its finest. An original concept, well-handled, can entertain and enlighten. This one is well worth your time and attention whether or not you like ballet.

In 1977, director Richard Donner made us believe a man can fly. It also proved for the first time that comic book heroes could be successfully translated to the silver screen. The subsequent films in the Superman series were of varying quality, getting worse by the film until the series was given a rest. In 2006, the franchise was revived under director Bryan Singer whose slavish attention to Donner’s vision may have compromised the film’s own integrity. And now, Zack Snyder is busily prepping production on a brand new vision of the Man of Steel.

Before that, though, Warner Home Video is finally releasing the five films on Blu-ray in a mammoth collection, in support of June’s Green Lantern release. Here’s a trailer followed by the formal release.

Burbank, Calif. March 31, 2011 –Superman, the cultural icon and quintessential superhero, is back in a big way. In a powerhouse year marked by the theatrical releases of several major superhero films including Warner Bros.’ Green Lantern, his arrival couldn’t be more perfectly timed. Warner Home Video (WHV) is celebrating the year of the superhero with the June 7 release of Superman: The Motion Picture Anthology (1978-2006) on Blu-ray. For the first time, fans will be able to own one super-entertaining Blu-ray collection with all four original theatrical Superman films starring Christopher Reeve (available for the first time in high def), Superman Returns, and the two alternate versions of Superman I and Superman II.

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Someone had to go first.

As computers were getting faster and significantly more sophisticated, some producer was going to be the first to have computers handle the special effects in a movie. As it turns out, Walt Disney, which pioneered feature-length animation, took the plunge in 1982 with [[[Tron]]]. The film, starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, and David Warner, was visually stunning in its day as you felt immersed in the emerging video game world. The mediocre story took a backseat to the imaginative light cycle races and glowing disc battles. Audiences were intrigued, just enough to rake in $33 million at the box office for a $17 million production so it almost made money using the math of the time.

Flashfoward 28 years and as computers have taken control over special effects in all media, the time struck many as right to go back and revisit the world of Tron. Disney moved cautiously, wanting to retain the original look and feel then enhance it. When the test footage was shown at Comic-Con International in 2009, they knew there was a potential blockbuster on their hands. The green light was flashed and production began in earnest.

Disney is once more leading the way, releasing this week a five-disc combo package that contains not only the Blu-ray debut of Tron, but the 3-D Blu-ray release of [[[Tron: Legacy]]] plus offering the movie on Blu-ray, standard DVD, and also a digital copy. Five discs offering something for everyone.

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Kirsten Dunst is a strong actress in need of a breakthrough part to live up to the promise she showed in her earlier work. [[[All Good Things]]] should have been that production, but the troubled film, out on Blu-ray this week from Magnolia Home Entertainment, failed her and the audience thanks to director Andrew Jarecki staying on the surface throughout the story of a marriage gone wrong. Jarecki is a documentarian best known for [[[Capturing the Friedmans]]] and he intended this movie to be based on the true life story of Robert and Kathleen Durst.

Robert Durst was the second son of the powerful Seymour Durst who ran the Durst Organization, which own lucrative, if shady, real estate in Times Square. In fact, the film suggests the Dursts were the reason the center of midtown remained squalid for so long was because they were resistant to change, butting heads with City Hall. Durst married dental hygienist Kathleen when she was just 19 and knew little about her husband’s tortured past. In 1982, she vanished and the manhunt sent Robert running. He has been implicated in several killings and his clear psychological issues made ripe fodder for a storyteller.

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There’s no question that Clint Eastwood is a strong director. He wrings emotion out of character and picks compelling material to use as his canvass. Each of his films becomes events to anticipate and they are usually fare to savor. As a result, [[[Hereafter]]], out last year, proved to be so disappointing. This time his canvass was the great beyond, or what we think Heaven might be like, so that’s a huge starting point with great potential. A man like Eastwood, who acts and directs with economy, probably has some interesting ideas on the concept.

Somehow, though, there’s nothing at all interesting here. Eastwood directs from Peter Morgan’s script and this was a man who made the making of the Frost/Nixon interviews compelling material. He is given a gifted cast headed by Matt Damon, who immediately hooks his audience and is a sympathetic hero. He heads one of three storylines that propels the movie along but nothing concludes or intertwines as you expect and you wind up feeling disappointed by the entire experience.

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[[Batman: The Brave and the Bold]]] is just a fun television series that pays homage not only to the joyful comic books of the 1960s but  crams in both story and characterization with a verve that is all too often missing from animated fare. Out this week is Batman: The Brave and the Bold Season One Part Two featuring episodes 14-26, which ran on the Cartoon Network between March and October 2009.

Clearly, the highlight of the two-disc collection is “[[[Mayhem of the Music Meister]]]!” with Neil Patrick Harris as the singing villain. The music is fun and bouncy and the story fresh. It was so well-regarded by the producers that they rushed out an eight-track CD soundtrack within a week of the episode’s debut.

The show is a romp through the DC Universe with most of the characters recognizable although they have been given some modern-day reimagining so Aquaman is a pompous doofus and Green Arrow is out to one-up his counterpart. My complaints about the show which I aired when the first set was released remain. Batman has too many gimmicks that fit the needs of the script and his cape converts to a jet-pack (I’d sooner have the dreaded Whirly-Bat). These are really quibbles as the show entertains with amazing consistency.

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[[[The Comics: The Complete Collection]]]By Brian Walker
Abrams ComicsArts, 672 pages, $40

Growing up the son of cartoonist Mort Walker, Brian Walker clearly had four-color ink flowing through his veins. Learning at his father’s side, the boy absorbed folklore, myth, and legend; not just about the characters Mort wrote and drew in Hi & Lois or Beetle Bailey, but the creators who preceded his fathers and Brian’s own peers who practiced the craft.

Over the years, Brian used that knowledge to curate museum exhibits around the country and even work with his dad in the short-loved Museum of Cartoon Art. He’s also written extensively about the field, including the noteworthy collections [[[The Comics: Before 1945]]] and[[[The Comics: Since 1945]]]. In April, both volumes will be combined for the mammoth Comics: The Complete Collection.

For those who own the two books already, you won’t need this book. Not a thing has been changed or updated, which is a shame really, since the field has moved further since the second book saw print in 2004. If you don’t have these books, then this edition is for you.

Walker organizes the events by periods of time with an overview that details the evolution of the newspapers that printed the comic strips, the syndicates that grew from the successful strips, the merchandise that flowed from the most popular features and the men and women who executed these daily flights of fancy. Once the overview is done, we move into biographical sketches of the cartoonists, beginning, naturally, with the father of the American comic strip, Richard F. Outcault. After all, it was his Hogan’s Alley, taking advantage of the advent of color printing that gave the world the Yellow Kid, the first recurring newspaper character and a sensation. His success led to not only merchandise but within two years, a collection of strips, which can be argued to be the first graphic novel following the modern definition.

The greats and near greats, the well-known and the forgotten turn up here with a bountiful assortment of sample strips, many reproduced in their original colors. The book’s 9.25” x 12.5” size allows the art to be reproduced at a legible sixe, reminding us what it was like back in our parents’ or grandparents’ days when newspaper comic strip merited a sizeable section, letting the art and color breathe.

Paging through the book, you get to watch the artform mature as the gag-a-days added continuity followed by serials. You’re reminded of Blondie’s fast to protest her family refusing to let her marry Dagwood Bumstead, considered beneath her. You watch the dramatic strip arrive followed in 1929 by the dual arrival of [[[Buck Rogers]]] and [[[Tarzan]]] that in many ways set the stage for comic books.

By 1945, the comic strips had become fixtures not only in America but around the world. The Allies beat the Axis and the soldiers came home and the world seemed a brighter place. A new generation of homegrown characters took their place next to the aging greats. As a new era began, so does Walker open volume two which begins with Milt Caniff. He was the popular and influential so his move from [[[Terry and the Pirates]]] to a new strip, [[[Steve Canyon]]], was a good way to show changes in the field. We rocket through the 1950s through the 1990s before the book screeches to a halt with a profile on Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman who are the geniuses behind the delightful Zits. Our current decade gets half a page, ignoring the explosion of web strips, the shrinking of the strips and their gradual demise.  Several of the longest running strips have recently closed shop, such as Brenda Starr filing her last story in January and many of the survivors are showing their age.

While I wish this were repaginated and organized into a single whole rather than two volumes slapped together, the book is a delightful celebration of the comics, their characters, and the creators.

Romantic comedies have become such a formula that filmmakers either follow the dots or strain to find a new spin on the concept. We all now the routine: establish your characters, give them oddball sidekicks, have the couple meet cute, begin to fall in love, have some complication that separates them then reunite them for the finale. Done well, it can be a terrific film-going experience and make for a fine night out with your significant other. Done less well, you feel like you wasted your time and money.

Then, there’s [[[Love and Other Drugs]]], which is out this week on DVD from 20^th Century Fox Home Entertainment. It follows the formula for the most part, but varies it enough to keep you interested but doesn’t give you that uplifting feeling you want. A valiant effort, it fails to transcend the form when the cast and crew’s pedigree led you to expect it.

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A breakthrough performance can be indelibly imprinted in the collective memory but it can also be easily imitated to the point where it becomes parody. Unfortunately, that has happened with strong work by actors portraying the mental disabled. The arrival of [[[Rain Man]]] on Blu-ray reminds us of how good Dustin Hoffman was and how important spotlighting the needs of these people and their impact on families has been in our society.

For those who barely remember, the 1988 movie earned four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Actor.  After Hoffman won, actors were taking similar roles and mocked for it as their bid for an easy Oscar nomination, forgetting that this is a segment of the population without a voice and with a desperate need for understanding and compassion.

You see that from the beginning as Charlie Babbit (Tom Cruise) is anything but a cuddly younger brother, willing to take on his the burden of caring for his afflicted brother Raymond (Hoffman). Being a 1980s film, Cruise is at wonderfully smarmy best, a yuppie without a conscience, until he spends time with Raymond and learns the kind of man he has become and is humbled by the experience. Interestingly, Charlie grew up a spoiled, morally bankrupt man totally unaware of his older brother’s existence. Just as he was broke and desperate, his father died and the bulk of the wealth, the inheritance he salivated for, was left to someone else. As he followed the trail, he found the Walbrook Institution and finally met Raymond. On the one hand, you can’t blame Charlie for being who he is and on the other, you can blame the father for not preparing the younger sibling for his familial obligations.

Along the way, though, the film takes the characters and the audience on a six day road trip as Charlie tries to exploits his brother’s gifts in Las Vegas. We witness all the odd quirks and tics that make Raymond an amusing presence and an irresistible character for an actor. Hoffman wears Raymond’s skin comfortably and you buy the affliction without question.

You watch two incredibly unalike people grow closer and the audience gets to see how similar they truly are. Raymond can’t relate to people but neither can Charlie as witnessed by how cavalierly he deals with others, including his girlfriend Susana (Valeria Golino). Director Barry Levinson does a terrific job with the characters and the glimpse of an America that has since grown a little tarnished.

The video transfer is clean and unspectacular accompanied by good sound. There are a bunch of extras starting with three audio commentaries: Levinson, writer Barry Morrow, and the other writer Ronald Bass.  Together, they would have been incredibly informative; separately, they are a little tedious. “The Journey of Rain Man” (22:07) is the usual making-of featurette spotlight the audio commentators. “Lifting the Fog: A Look at the Mysteries of Autism” (20:13) is a strong, useful look at the affliction. There’s one deleted Scene (2:13) and that’s about it.

Our appreciation of the film may be different today given how many other media portrayals have heightened our overall awareness of autism and its colorful spectrum. Still, the story and performances make this well worth discovering for the first time or watching again with a little more wisdom and experience.