The press materials for The Who at Kilburn 1977 describe this DVD as “a holy grail for fans after decades of anticipation,” and that’s no piece of bull dreamed up by somebody in marketing. Die-hard Who fans (a group of which I proudly include myself as a member) have long since obsessed over obtaining audio and/or video from a handful of legendary shows, including, but not limited to:

– London 5/2/69, the premiere of Tommy to the press at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club;

– Newcastle 11/5/73, the sixth night of the Quadrophenia tour, when the band’s backing tapes failed, resulting in Townshend pulling longtime soundman Bobby Pridden across the soundboard, ripping out backing tapes and smashing equipment, all to the disbelief of the rest of the band … and the entire crowd;

– Kilburn 12/15/77, aka the second-to-last Who concert to feature Keith Moon, filmed for inclusion in Jeff Stein’s masterpiece rockumentary The Kids Are Alright but shelved because of a subpar performance by an out-of-practice band (save for the inclusion of “My Wife” on the TKAA soundtrack and a few 15-30 second clips over the years).

Audio from the Kilburn show surfaced on a bootleg in the early part of this decade  (oddly enough, most likely from one of my cassette tapes, but that’s another story) and last week, the full concert, warts and all, was finally released in all its six-camera, 35mm glory, along with a second disc featuring footage from a Tommy show at the London Coliseum.

So now, the questions can be answered: were the ‘oo truly ‘orrible?  Is the Kilburn show nothing but a display of mediocrity?  Were the Who justified in shelving it for all these years?

Hardly.

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Garden Party (Lionsgate, 2008)
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Garden Party, just released on DVD after a brief theatrical run, is one of those indie films that kind of meanders through various scenes that don’t really go anywhere. The limited plot features a group of individuals living in Hollywood, trying to make sense of their lives and connect with other human beings on some level. If it sounds like you’ve heard this plot a thousand times before, you have. Only, it was done 100 times better in films like Grand Canyon and Crash. All of the characters bump into one another at various points throughout the film, as if these moments had some import to the overall plot, but they don’t. Instead, these chance encounters feel like devices to make us think how clever writer/director Jason Freeland is. Unfortunately, it comes off as contrived.

The central storyline involves Sally (Vinessa Shaw), a real estate agent who happens upon Todd (Richard Gunn), an artist who is supposedly a sex addict. The only indication we have that he’s some sort of an addict is that he looks at a lot of online porn. Of course, the only reason I’m calling him a sex addict is because the DVD box markets his character as that. It also markets a good-natured Nebraska boy (played by Alexander Candese) as the “dancer,” even though his character never indicates that he wants to dance, and he only actually dances in one scene in the film (one of the most ridiculously staged moments in a movie I have seen in a long time). Sally once posed for some nude pictures and those pictures have shown up on the Internet. When a chance encounter brings Sally and Todd together, he immediately recognizes her because he’s been infatuated with her for years (of course). She tries to get him to sell his house, he reveals he’s seen her naked, she promises sex acts in return for him tracking down the pictures and, man, you get where this is going.

Meanwhile, a group of twentysomethings wanders from scene to scene, hoping the film will end sometime soon so that they can get on with their careers. They include the aforementioned Candese as Nathan, who works for Sally and house sits her stash of dope, Willa Holland as April, a teenager on her own after leaving her home and a lecherous stepfather, and Erik Smith as Sammy, a talented singer pursuing the American dream by trying to become a pop star.

The production value is low-budget and the script is stretched to fill the required number of minutes to make it a feature film (88, in this case). In fact, the script doesn’t even provide enough material, so we’re stuck with long shots of cars driving, wine being poured, or people mingling at a party with no real purpose. It certainly seems that there wasn’t enough footage available to give Freeland any leeway to edit around the weaker performances in the film and tighten the lagging scenes. Either there were scenes shot that didn’t turn out, or Freeland didn’t think the whole thing through before going to into production. Whatever the case, you come away from Garden Party feeling like you’ve missed half of the story. (more…)

Beautiful Ohio (IFC, 2008)
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Chad Lowe has long suffered being the second banana to his brother and his ex-wife. Even though he won an Emmy for his work on ABC’s Life Goes On, (in which, let’s face it, he was second banana to Corky and Kellie Martin), he’s never gained the attention he deserves as an actor. Perhaps this is why he has stepped behind the camera to direct shorts and episodic television. With the confidence he gained from those endeavors, Lowe moved on to movies and his feature directorial debut, Beautiful Ohio, comes out on DVD November 25th. The coming-of-age drama is a strong effort in which Lowe handles both the big-name stars and the unknown actors who star in the film.

Indeed, with William Hurt as one of your central characters, any novice director would run the risk of losing control and having Hurt walk away with the movie. But that is not the case in Beautiful Ohio. Hurt slips into the ensemble seamlessly and actually betters the performances of everyone around him.

The film is set in Cleveland, Ohio, circa 1973. The protagonist is William (Brett Davern), a young boy lost in the shadow of his mathematical genius brother, Clive (David Call). As the film opens, Clive has drifted away from his family; the weight of being a genius has begun to bear down on him. For Clive, math is just something he sees does, he does not believe he is amazing. Meanwhile, his parents gloat over him and the neighbors are endlessly impressed. Still, William’s mother (Rita Wilson) does her best to place the spotlight on William as much as possible. I have never seen Wilson perform as nicely as she does in this movie. He face wears the pain she feels for her younger son and the anger she has toward her husband well. And when she speaks, it’s with a quiet reserve. In this film, the mother is the glue holding the family together and Wilson does an excellent job.

William Hurt is the patriarch of the family and in many ways, he’s as lost as Clive and William. A veteran of war (presumably Korea), he has settled on selling insurance for a living. As he sees the world changing around him and feels that his life is standing still, Simon is desperate to feel alive. Whether it’s listening to Clive’s MC5 records, flirting with his gorgeous, younger neighbor (an effective, albeit underutilized Julianna Margulies) or trying dope for the first time, Simon is like a character lifted from an Arthur Miller play and tossed into a 70’s counterculture movie. Despite the anger bubbling under the surface though, Simon still has a great deal of affection for his boys. In particular, the scenes between Simon and William are funny and moving. (more…)

Encounters at the End of the World (2008)
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I had a very odd application.

I had to explain that I was into things like: Is there such a thing as insanity among penguins? And why is it that human beings saddle a horse, and like the Lone Ranger, put on masks in order to disguise their identity and then feel the urge to chase the bad guy? And why is it that certain species of ants keep flocks of wild lice in order to milk them like slaves for droplets of sugar? And why is it that a chimp — clearly a superior creature — does not straddle a goat and ride into the sunset?

So does Werner Herzog explain his motivations for the journey that would spawn Encounters at the End of the World, and if you’ve sat down in front of the crusty director’s latest documentary hoping (or fearing) that you were in for another Discovery Channel-esque look at the wonders of life at the bottom of the planet, prepare to have your expectations knocked off their axis. We’ve had a lot of film crews journey to various bits of frozen tundra over the last decade or so, but nobody combines disdain for humanity with a curious spirit quite like Herzog, and his work here is typically, appropriately iconoclastic.

There are no chimps on goats, but Herzog still manages to take viewers places they’ve never been before — both around Antarctica and into the psyches of the people who live and work there. This latter component is really what makes Encounters tick: Herzog arrived at McMurdo Station curious about what would drive a person to seek employment in such unforgiving environs, and between various excursions, he does a fair amount of probing the histories of his hosts. Given Herzog’s career-long love for the exceptional (or exceptionally strange), you might think Antarctica would be the perfect place for him, and you’d be right — pretty much as soon as he steps off the plane, he’s aiming his lens at a pack of characters positively Lynchian in their penchant for the unusual. (more…)

I’m hooked on Torchwood, the BBC’s latest sci-fi drama (a spinoff from their cult hit, Dr. Who). The entire second season has just been released on a five-disc DVD box set. If you’re a fan of shows like The X-Files, Lost, and Heroes, then you should be watching this well-produced show. With humor, grace, and some very emotional moments, the second season of Torchwood is addictive and outstanding television that deserves a larger audience in the U.S.

Created by Russell T. Davies (Queer as Folk, Dr. Who), Torchwood¸ derives its name from the fictional Torchwood Institute in Cardiff, Wales. Working outside the boundaries of the government, this mostly top secret agency’s job is to track down extraterrestrials roaming loose on Earth. See, there is an intergalactic rift in the universe, allowing alien creatures from the far reaches of the universe to slip through time and space and end up in Wales. While this set up may sound a bit preposterous (shades of the Sci Fi Channel came to mind), Davies and company wisely chose to have one of the show’s main characters serve as the eyes of the viewer. She is Gwen, played by Eve Myles (pictured). In season one she joined the Torchwood team and had her eyes opened to the craziness out there in space. In season two, she continues to have a few of those “this can’t be real” moments. However she is also engaged and eventually reveals the secrets of Torchwood to her fiancé, Rhys (Kai Owen). Rhys has taken over the role of the person who most often exclaims “what the hell is that?”

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Get Smart (2008)
Starring: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin
Director: Peter Segal
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In the ’90s, the direct-to-video market was the realm of ex-stars like Corey Feldman, making indirect sequels to forgotten franchises like License to Drive and Meatballs, but the increasing affordability of kickass home-theater systems, and the seemingly infinite possibilities of hi-def formats — not to mention a widening gulf between movie ticket prices and what they actually deliver — have helped level the playing field between the box office and the rumpus room. This year, more than one studio has announced plans to ramp up their direct-to-video output; in the short term, this means you can expect to see sequels to horrible movies like Without a Paddle on the shelves at Best Buy, but in the long run, it just might lead to more stars making moderate-to-big-budget movies for the home market.

Which brings us to Get Smart, which was released to theaters over the summer — and did well, grossing over $100 million — but is a perfect rental if there ever was one.

This isn’t to say Get Smart is a bad movie; actually, I enjoyed it quite a bit more than I thought I would, and laughed often. It’s an endearingly stupid film, which makes perfect sense, given that Steve Carell has built a career out of playing endearingly stupid men, and it’s an update on a television series based on the premise that even an incompetent blowhard can be a superspy. Basically, what it does is take Michael Scott from The Office, give him the skills of an assassin, and set him loose in the Russian countryside with Anne Hathaway. More often than not, it’s a lot of fun. (more…)

The Gospel of Bob

I’ve known some pretty serious Bob Dylan fans. They’ll talk at length about the merits of underappreciated albums like Street Legal and Self Portrait. They’ll travel fair distances to see the man perform live. They’ll defend the integrity of Renaldo and Clara. For an artist like Bob Dylan with such a great and varied body of work, such fandom is understandable.

Then there are fans like Joel Gilbert, who actually “plays” Dylan as part of a tribute act called Highway 61 Revisited, and cranks out unauthorized Dylan documentaries the way some fans make mix tapes of Desire outtakes.

Inside Bob Dylan’s Jesus Years: Busy Being Born…Again is his latest, and it’s an exhausting two-hour look at Bob Dylan’s brief stint as born again evangelical christian and Jews for Jesus poster boy in the late 1970s.

Gilbert himself appears in the documentary, shaggy-haired, wearing a western-styled shirt, driving around the American south, waving to locals, and engaging producer Jerry Wexler, session singer Regina McCrary, Dylan keyboardist Spooner Oldham, music writer Joel Selvin and others in long, rambling interviews. It’s great hearing the late Jerry Wexler talk at length about the recording of Dylan’s gospel-inflected late ’70s output, but there’s not a single note to be heard of the actual music being discussed. (All the music on the “soundtrack” is provided by Highway 61 Revisited.)

Getting through this was excruciating. 30 minutes of Vineyard Church pastor Bill Dwyer (and others) talking about the born again “experience” is way too long for even the most hardcore Bob Dylan fan to sit through. When Al Kasha (it’s cool, I didn’t know either) talks about kneeling before his television set and placing his hand on the screen to become a reformed, born-again Jew, I actually felt a little uneasy. (more…)

30 Rock - Season Two (Universal, 2008)
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I know a lot of you aren’t watching this show, and I understand — I skipped out on it for most of its first season. I had two reasons for this: One, I stopped watching Saturday Night Live after Will Ferrell left, thrust into a deep funk by the prospect of no more Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches or George W. Bush impressions, and thus miissed most of Tina Fey’s best work on the show; and two, I decided I only had room in my life for one series devoted to the behind-the-scenes goings-on at a sketch comedy show, and opted to follow Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip instead.

As you may have already guessed, I started having second thoughts about halfway through Studio 60’s only season, and sometime around John Goodman’s arrival as a loquacious small-town sheriff, I decided it would probably be a good idea to see what was happening on the SNL-inspired series that stood a snowball’s chance in hell of making it to Season Two. I had reservations — aside from a few insane outbursts during “Brian Fellow” sketches, I’d never found Tracy Morgan the least bit funny, and since suffering through The Shadow, I’d made a habit of studiously avoiding anything involving Alec Baldwin.

Surprise, surprise — Morgan and Baldwin are the two best parts of 30 Rock, as evidenced by the following clip from Season Two, a comedic tour de force for Baldwin: (more…)

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song
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You need to see this movie.

He’s happily existed on the outskirts of the pop culture landscape for the last few decades, but Pete Seeger’s influence is still deeply felt — and his music still resonates. Jim Brown’s excellent 2007 documentary, now reaching DVD for the first time, offers a wonderfully comprehensive overview of Seeger’s long career without sacrificing focus or momentum; even without prior knowledge of Seeger’s recorded output, anyone with a soul should find The Power of Song instantly absorbing.

Of course, even if you don’t know you’ve heard Seeger’s stuff, you probably have; his voluminous catalog includes a wide array of standards, both those he’s popularized and those he’s written (the latter category includes “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, “If I Had a Hammer,” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!”). He’s one of the most beloved living folksingers in the world — which must be particularly sweet for Seeger, seeing as how he was blacklisted for nearly 20 years after having the guts to stand up to Joe McCarthy at the HUAC hearings — and censored by CBS for daring to perform “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Yes, America, long before there was such a thing as a Dixie Chick, suits in boardrooms were terrified of a man with a banjo.

The Power of Song makes its case for Seeger with a stack of archival footage, some from Seeger’s own collection, and a series of interviews with artists he’s inspired, including Dylan, Springsteen, Peter, Paul & Mary, Bonnie Raitt, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, and — of course — Natalie Maines. But Brown is careful to avoid didacticism; the movie is as inspirational and entertaining as it is informative, anchored throughout by appearances from Seeger himself, filmed as he wanders the grounds of the upstate New York property he purchased in 1949, where he and his wife of 65 years still reside. (more…)

The Office: Season Four
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This is the best comedy on television, but it finished its fourth season languishing at #77 in the Nielsens, while Two and a Half Men ended inside the Top 20. You see, people? This is why According to Jim was just renewed for an eighth season — whenever the networks give you a chance to prove you’re smart enough to handle real comedy, you pass it by in favor of cheap yuks. For shame.

Luckily, thanks to the magic of DVD, it’s never too late to repent, and Tuesday brings the arrival of The Office: Season Four in deluxe shiny disc edition — so set aside $31 of your paycheck for the set, and prepare to be very glad you did. Though the writers’ strike left this season with an abbreviated 14-episode run, five of them are hourlong episodes, and Universal has stuffed the package with a wide array of bonus material. There are only four commentary tracks this time around, but you also get roughly two hours of deleted scenes, a very lengthy blooper reel, a featurette from the Office convention held in Scranton, a fake rabies PSA, and — if you get your set before supplies run out — a 40-page replica of the script for “The Dinner Party” episode.

A surprising number of people had problems with the direction this season took, whether it was because they felt the hourlong episodes were poorly paced, or they were unhappy that Jim and Pam were finally together, or they felt the show had crossed the boundary from hysterically painful to just dark and uncomfortable. These people are all stupid. This run of episodes includes some of the series’ finest, funniest moments, including two classics of squirm comedy, “Dinner Party” and “The Deposition.” (Just try to hold back tears of laughter during the scene where the stenographer is forced to read back the confusion that results from a lame “that’s what she said” gag.)

Does the season have its frustrating moments? Sure. But to me, the show’s appeal lies in the brilliant way it exploits the tension between expectations and reality, both in the characters’ storyline arcs and their wincingly inappropriate actions. Often, you can see what’s coming from a mile away, and as much as you dread what you know is about to unfold, you can’t help watching — and laughing. Especially laughing. If only for the finale alone — which packs the apparent departure of two characters, an unexpected engagement, and a horribly funny running gag about mental retardation — it deserves a place in your collection.

Of course, if you’re a fan of the show, you’ve probably had this on pre-order for awhile already. But if you’re one of the unwashed masses who’s still passing up The Office, purchase this (or, better yet, the Seasons 1-4 Box Set) immediately. Do it now.

(That’s what she said.)