“I know: the rest of the world thinks Americans are arrogant. And to be fair…f*ck you.”

In its own way…just as enjoyable as the original British series. The BBC, through Warner Home Video, has released Top Gear: The Complete Second Season, a 4-disc, 16-episode collection of the popular History series’ 2011-2012 season. An Americanized version of the international smash hit car show from England, hosted by Tanner Foust, Rutledge Wood, and Adam Ferrara, this U.S. version of Top Gear took a lot of flack from fans of the Beeb’s original (myself included), but once you get into its American context and quit comparing the hosts to their British counterparts, it’s a lot of fun. Over 90 minutes of extras and outtakes are included here in this sparkling widescreen transfers.

When NBC first announced they were going to do an American version of Top Gear in 2008, I couldn’t see how they would duplicate the original’s success, since so much of the appeal of the U.K. version lies in that distinctively British smash-up of its delightfully bickering, insulting hosts James “Captain Slow” May (the marching-to-a-different drummer plodder), Richard “The Hampster” Hammond (the peripatetic tiny person), and Jeremy Clarkson (towering, sneering public school bully git). So when the U.S. version of Top Gear finally wound up on cable in 2010, I made the mistake of tuning in and expecting either a complete overhaul of the format to appeal to U.S. audiences (which the producers slavishly didn’t do), or a reasonable facsimile of the original, right down to the same kind of waspish cum juvenile/destructive humor…which wasn’t there (sophomoric, yes…but too sweet and cuddly initially for my liking–the American version wanted to be liked; the U.K. version said, “Bollocks to you.”). I pretty much checked out of those first two seasons, but my high school son asked me to watch a few of the third season episodes with him, and I found myself, surprisingly, enjoying this American version quite a lot.

Maybe that’s because the third season has dropped some of the more clunky components of the BBC version. They’re still here in this second season–the completely superfluous live audience, the “Big Celebrity in a Small Car” lap trials, and the Stig (at least I don’t think the Stig is on anymore…). By this second go-around, it’s clear that the genial hosts have developed a smoother chemistry together, and the challenges are inventive and well-executed, but the above-mentioned elements seem present merely to ape the original, with no real purpose except to ultimately gum up the works. Who cares if an audience is behind the hosts for their unnecessary segues between sequences Who gives a sh*t how fast some D-lister drives, or what collector car they’re able to buy now, or what project they have coming up (in one episode here, one of those Harold or Kumar douchebags talks about his Prius and U.S. foreign oil dependency. Shut the f*ck up). And if you can’t use the Stig the way he’s used in the British version (a creepy, funny butt of jokes/supernatural entity) …what’s the point of having him show up here All any of this stuff does is take more time away from cars blowing up.

And blow up they do here…and crash, and grind, and smash, and disintegrate. What I like best about the American Top Gear is the emphasis on tinkering, on modifying and engineering the cars into freakish, gimcrack monsters that you know are eventually going to fold up like a cheap suit after inhuman punishment. That celebration of Yankee know-how and can-doism, wedded to the equally quintessential American spirit of making things bigger and badder, permeates the show, and gives it a hands-on feel the British version doesn’t come close to. Add to that the expansive feel of the wild American locales featured, and always the feeling that the hosts are going on some kind of exploration/journey/roadtrip (the heart of the “mother road” American mythology), and the American Top Gear takes on an almost epic feel compared to its more confined and hampered British cousin (they always have to leave manicured, cramped England to get a bit of scale and scope to their challenges).

As for the hosts, they’re an engaging trio, with Foust the cocky-but-well-mannered, non-threatening pro driver, Wood the even more polite, cuddly tech wonk, and Ferrara the goofy Barbarino-Lite of the bunch. If they’re faking mutual frat bro affection, they’re good actors, because they really seem to get along with each other, and that’s key to creating TV-friendly programming that people will want to welcome into their home week after week (my kids love this show, and especially now that they can hear the swearing on the DVDs). If at times the guys sound a tad too scripted here, I blame the producers for keeping Top Gear so relentlessly polished, ultra-smooth and over-produced (and I don’t need the obviously manufactured “accidents,” either). Sure it’s gorgeous to look at (in a processed-food, picture postcard way), and everything from the challenges to the dialogue is designed for maximum flow with minimal hitches. However, I wish they’d just let the hosts go and get a little wild and wooly, a little funky and unstructured in their horseplay and particularly in their bantering (like in the outtakes and extras presented here). If they’d try that, the show might really challenge its better-received British host.

The DVD:

The Video:
The anamorphically-enhanced, 1.78:1 widescreen transfers for Top Gear: The Complete Second Season looks quite crisp, with strong, correctly-valued color, a sharp, sharp image, and little if any compression issues. Nice.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English stereo audio track is healthy, with discreet separation during those burnouts, and a heavy bottom. English subtitles and closed-captions are available.

The Extras:
In addition to the 16 episodes here, you get an additional 90+ minutes of extras, outtakes and deleted scenes that are quite fun (too bad the show can’t be the outtakes and flubs and pissed-off epitaphs at least once…).

Final Thoughts:
Funny, engaging hosts who clearly seem to be having a good time acting like sophomoric asses with each other, consistently entertaining, cleverly engineered challenges, and an American context that emphasizes not just destruction but high-energy, optimistic re-construction, makes the U.S. version of Top Gear a whole lot of fun. I’m highly recommending Top Gear: The Complete Second Season.

Paul Mavis is an internationally published movie and television historian, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of The Espionage Filmography.

 

Loyal readers with way too much time on your hands, gird your loins for the shortest review I’ve ever written….

20th Century-Fox’s Cinema Archives vault of hard-to-find cult and library titles has released 23 Paces to Baker Street, the 1956 British mystery thriller from screenwriter Nigel Balchin and action director Henry Hathaway, starring Van Johnson, Vera Miles, Cecil Parker, Estelle Winwood, and Liam Redwood. Although I’ve never seen it, 23 Paces to Baker Street, shot in CinemaScope on location in London, looks exactly like the kind of movie I enjoy. Too bad I didn’t watch more than two minutes of it, though, because Fox has released this in a grainy, muddy, blown-out, softly-focused 1.33:1 pan-and-scan botch that completely undermines the whole point of their Cinema Archives concept. Whether or not they did this deliberately, or because this is the only print that was available, is beside the point: the era of asking collectors to go along with a pan-and-scan version of a widescreen movie is long over (collectors are the only people buying a title like this; it’s manufactured on-demand, for god’s sake). So no need to review the movie itself. Bad move, Fox. Skip this release of 23 Paces to Baker Street.

 Paul Mavis is an internationally published film and television historian, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of The Espionage Filmography.

 

Director: John Carney
Starring: Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglova

Once in a while a film has an effect on you. It happens. No one is immune. Something about a particular film gets to you in a particular way. Maybe you can’t explain it, maybe you don’t understand it, but you feel it, and that’s enough. Once in a great while one film has that effect on millions of people all at the same time. That’s when you know something special has happened; when so many people, critics, audiences, everyone, feel changed by a film. Once is that movie. It is that feeling. And it’s undefinable. But isn’t that what makes it wonderful

The Movie

A simple love story, simply told. Glen Hansard plays an unnamed Irishman trying to make a living in Dublin. A self proclaimed “broken-hearted Hoover-fixer sucker guy”, he works in a vacuum repair shop with his father part-time while playing guitar on the streets for money. At night he plays his own music, songs he thinks no one wants to hear. But he’s wrong; at least one person in Dublin is interested in his talent. Marketa Irglova plays an unnamed Czech woman, equally poor, equally lonely, and equally in love with music.

The two start a strained relationship, made difficult by his desires (a woman who hurt him but fuels his passion) and her responsibilities (a fatherless child and a meager existence). Music ties them together and brings them closer each day, as they begin to collaborate and combine their talents into something special. When the opportunity arises to work on an album together, a mismatched band is formed and the pair begin a new phase in their professional and possibly romantic relationships.

There are so many different parts to this film that are excellent, it’s difficult to know where to begin. For amateurs, the acting is great. It helps that Glen and Marketa are basically playing themselves; struggling musicians attempting, as we all are, to survive. No other characters really jump out, but that’s actually a good thing in a movie such as this, where the two mains carry the entire story. The dialogue is spot on as well; no forced lines, easy conversation, and a natural chemistry.

All of that is well and good, but the music makes the movie. Not only are the songs phenomenal, but their passion drives the plot and creates that magical feeling that captured so many viewers. Written by the actors, songs like ‘Lies’, ‘If You Want Me’, ‘When Your Mind’s Made Up’, and the main track ‘Falling Slowly’ will haunt you and get stuck in your head until you have got to buy the CD.

The production of the film was surprising good. Scenes were flawlessly tied together with music, they fit together nicely, they never dragged or felt forced. The movie is only 85 minutes long, short for a modern movie, but it had a nice pace and didn’t need to be any longer. I can’t think of much that would improve Once, and it seems as if critics and audiences both agree. It is an excellent film, one that is worth a watch by movie buffs, music lovers, Irishman, it doesn’t matter. Good movies speak for themselves, and this one speaks loud and clear.

The DVD

Video: At an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, the entire film was shot on a single Sony HVR-Z1. To put that into perspective, Inception was filmed using 8 different cameras and 13 different lens series’. Video quality was poor, but intentionally so. It added to the raw feeling of the movie, and brought you closer to the action.
Audio: Using Dolby SR, viewers can hear the film using either English Dolby Surround or Spanish Dolby Surround. Subtitles can be chosen in English, Spanish, or French. Sound quality is excellent, as it, not the camera work, quickly becomes the focal point of the film.
Extras: There are two types of commentary to compliment the story: a typical commentary with Carney, Hansard, and Irglova, or a musical commentary, in which they discuss each song as it makes its first appearance in the film. “Making a Modern Day Musical” takes viewers through the making of the film. “More Guy, More Girl” explains a little of the motivation behind the scenes and the story. You can watch a hand drawn comedic bit in “Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy”, and you can download the song ‘Falling Slowly’ if your computer has a DVD-rom drive. There are also four trailers available: “Amazing Grace Trailer”, “The Commitments”, “Blind Dating”, and “2 Days in Paris”.

Final Thoughts:

Highly recommended. The movie is excellent. It has a vibe, a sound, a feeling, that most films can’t even begin to grasp. The story, the music, and even the acting are exactly what you should find when you go searching for a high-impact film. The DVD is good. It has unpolished camera work, but it is to add to the film, not detract from it. Sound quality is great, and the DVD extras are interesting, if not exemplary. All in all, a movie I have seen and would see over and over again.

Olie Coen
111 Archer Avenue
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Robin Hardy’s name will be familiar to horror fans, thanks to the 1973 classic The Wicker Man. The protagonist of that film, Sgt. Howie, enters an unsettling community made up of people who are totally disconnected from reality, and quickly begins to lose his patience trying to communicate with them. Having since seen The Wicker Tree, that film’s atrocious sequel, and now The Fantasist, Hardy’s 1983 follow-up, it seems as if The Wicker Man was not a fleeting glimpse of genius, but a coincidental case of Hardy’s very specific talents lining up with a project.

Patricia Teeling (Moira Harris) is a farm girl by upbringing, but thirsts for a taste of the so-called real world. Shortly after getting her degree, her uncle offers to let her move in at his ranch with an eye toward taking over when he kicks the bucket, but she asks for a year in the big city, exercising her skills as a teacher, before settling into a long-term gig. In addition to new scenery, she’s also looking for a beau, and finds several unusual men, including Robert Foxley (John Kavanagh), a fellow teacher with fetishes that include balloons and rubbing other people’s bellies, and neighbor Danny Sullivan (Timothy Bottoms), a would-be author who has anger issues, and who hits the nightclubs pretending to be an Albanian osteopath in order to pick up women who are not his wife. She’s also being stalked by a serial killer, whose M.O. is to call local girls pretending to be a secret admirer. He’s being tracked by Inspector McMyler (Christopher Cazenove), a disabled detective trying to ensure that Patricia isn’t next.

In the same way that Sgt. Howie is an increasingly frustrated voice of sanity in a city full of crazy people, a viewer of The Fantasist will quickly lose patience with the characters, who are all completely unhinged. How else to explain the scene where Foxley explains to Patricia that the idea of rubbing people’s bellies appeals to him because his mother often did it to soothe his gas problem as a child Or the scene where Danny uses a dowsing rod to locate Patricia’s bladder, then asks her to undress in order to help inspire him to write his novel, only to have Patricia furiously flash her panties at him when she catches him verbally abusing someone over the phone in his fake Austrian voice Even Patricia herself seems strange, thanks to Harris’ curiously stiff line readings.

Direction-wise, Hardy isn’t up to much. Aside from an early POV sequence to hide the killer’s identity as he toys with a victim, the staging of the scenes is fairly straightforward, aside from his apparent lack of understanding of rational human behavior. The film approaches nearly everything in such a bland way that the viewer is left dangling for a minute wondering if Foxley gargling the wine on a dinner date is meant to be off-putting or endearing. Information will be included in the frame without explanation, such as a police car visible as Patricia and Danny walk through the park, talking about rats. It eventually drives close enough that the characters really ought to comment on it, given they’re in a place that cars probably don’t often drive through, much less with flashing lights on, but they ignore it as it rolls right by them. Scenes begin and end abruptly, including a completely random snippet of McMyler in an unidentified room, addressing unidentified, off-camera people, about the mysterious stalker.

Then again, the irony is that without these inexplicable eccentricities (and many more which I’m dying to bring up, but can’t without giving away the ending), The Fantasist would probably a completely forgettable slasher / thriller. Anyone who’s ever seen one of these before will immediately get a sense of who to rule out as a suspect, and the screenplay (by Hardy himself) doesn’t have much thematic depth, although it seems to want to try and explore female sexuality in an intriguing way (Patricia’s roommate is a virgin also looking for a man, and the two share some interesting conversations about their suitors). The mysterious mixture of good and bad performances, strange characters and stranger scenes that Hardy has concocted here may not constitute a good movie, but it’s certainly a unique one.

The DVD, Video, and Audio
DVDTalk was sent a check disc of The Fantasist, so no definitive comment can be made about the technical merits of the disc or the packaging, although the final product should be approximately 1.66:1 pillarboxed with anamorphic enhancement and Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. Should the check disc be accurate, the image here is limited, looking soft and faintly VHS-like during the daytime scenes, and overly noisy during the nighttime scenes. No subtitles appear to be included.

The Extras
The Fantasist is one of Scorpion’s “Katarina’s Nightmare Theater” titles, featuring hosting segments by Katarina Leigh Waters. Much like her bookend segments on Savage Strets, the first half of the introduction is basically a goofy sketch, and the second half is basically Waters reading from the actors’ IMDb pages. One of the clips included also basically spoils the ending.

Trailers for Death Ship, Mortuary, Nothing But the Night, The Devil Within Her, Double Exposure, The Hearse, Terror (possibly a direct inspiration for Edgar Wright’s Don’t!), The Survivor, and Satan’s Slave are accessible from the menu. No trailer for The Fantasist is included.

Conclusion
Fans of weird cinema might enjoy The Fantasist as a curiosity piece, but anyone who chooses to skip it isn’t missing anything.

Please check out my other DVDTalk DVD, Blu-Ray and theatrical reviews and/or follow me on Twitter.

As much outrageous fun as DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, at half the length. Paramount has released Samson and Delilah, the blockbuster 1949 religious epic directed by master showman Cecil B. DeMille, and starring Hedy Lamarr, Victor Mature, George Sanders, Angela Lansbury, and Henry Wilcoxon. Deliciously overripe and gaudily produced, Samson and Delilah is the kind of marvelously obvious storytelling that people laugh at for all kinds of reasons―then and now―but which is undeniably, insistently entertaining. No extras for this superior-looking full-screen transfer.

In the village of Zorah in the region of Dan, former Nazirite disciple Samson (Victor Mature, damp and fetid and hilarious when he delivers lines like, “You…daughter of Hell!”) has rejected his early religious teachings and gone over to his Hebrew people’s pagan masters, the Philistines, carousing and gambling and wenching with those who oppress his people. To top off his transgressions, he plans on marrying slinky, blonde Philistine warrior goddess Semadar (Angela Lansbury, looking dishy), horrifying his disapproving mother Hazeleponit (Fay Holden), who wishes he would marry good Jewish girl Miriam (Olive Deering). A foolish bet involving a riddle by the proud, arrogant Samson on his wedding night goads fellow Semadar suitor Ahtur (Henry Wilcoxon), the military general of Dan, into teaming up with Semadar’s jealous sister, Delilah (Hedy Lamarr, gorgeous and delightfully grotesque in her posing), to trick Semadar into revealing the riddle’s answer. When Samson learns of her betrayal, he leaves to settle the bet, only to discover later that Semadar instead married Ahtur that night. Destroying Semadar’s house in the ensuing fight with his sneering, snickering Philistine wedding guests, Samson vows revenge on the Philistines when Semadar is accidentally killed. However, the Saran of Gaza (George Sanders) finds it impossible to rope in the wild ox Samson, who possesses super-human strength and who is wreaking havoc on the Saran’s troops…that is, until the spurned, vengeful Delilah offers her services in capturing her beloved.

 A gargantuan, contrasting cocktail of overblown, frequently ridiculous romance, faux-pious religiosity and Hollywood spectacle, Samson and Delilah is the kind of showboating blockbuster moviemaking that pleases the masses right down to the bone…while driving self-serious critics nuts. DeMille’s reputation has always been in question, with critics either vilifying him for his excesses and blatant calculations…or vilifying him for his excesses and blatant calculations while giving him begrudging respect for creating compulsively watchable entertainment. I’ve never seen a reason to deplore those qualities in his work, however; what DeMille is able to accomplish here is as viable as “art” (whatever that term really means) as anything showing up on the screen by more critically “acceptable” directors of his time―and it’s a hell of a lot more fun.

 DeMille’s “campiness,” if you will (I dislike the term, but it fits for lack of a better one) is evident from the start of Samson and Delilah, with the director narrating his own self-serious, voice of doom narration/bromides about “human dignity perishing on the alter of idolatry” and such stuff. What his critics never seem to get (because so many of them like to think they’ve just discovered this carny’s trickery) is that DeMille was fully aware of the overwrought tone of his work. His deliberately obvious, presentational, populist melodrama was calculated as hell, and yet critics hated him for his refusal to disavow this nonsense’s faux-serious concerns and themes. His machinations, particularly his religious epics where scenes of balderdash praying was the price we paid for all that delicious sinning, were deliberate and coarse, and audiences loved it (the critics hated that, too).

 What I particularly enjoyed about Samson and Delilah is its playfulness―an often neglected hallmark of DeMille’s work, and one that is present, but less often, in DeMille’s more famous religious epic, the massive remake of The Ten Commandments (Anne Baxter’s entire performance could be considered an inside joke by DeMille). Whether it’s Hedy Lamar wickedly flicking a plum pit to get some man’s attention, or a beefy Victor Mature throwing out his arm in the grandest of theatrical gestures as he vaults over a wall, or just about every snide, bored expression on George Sanders’ face, DeMille is having a marvelous time here playing broad to the spectators in the back row. Every detail of his blocking and framing is perfectly ridiculous (and, with all its whips, chains, straps and ropes, hyper-sexualized). The best example here is Mature’s fight with the lion (famously careful Mature, to DeMille’s disgust, refused to even be shot in the same frame with the tamest of Hollywood lions). Badly intercut with footage of a stuntman, Mature’s scenes show him grimacing with abandon as the arms of the lion costume crinkle and wrinkle, before he vanquishes the beast. Enter Lamarr, heaving and panting in renewed sexual frenzy as she paws Mature, who laughingly demurs, “Hey! One cat at a time!” If this isn’t enough, DeMille tops the scene by having Sanders enter the movie, looking every inch the snot he was, before he rides off again on a chariot, his one hand flamboyantly thrust on his hip (the spectacular temple destruction at the finale is played straight, and it’s a highlight of early disaster movie filmmaking). This is storytelling as florid comic book come to breathing, hilarious life, and it’s wonderfully funny and energetic.

 The DVD:

The Video:
Although it doesn’t say so on the disc case (you’d think they’d tout that somewhere as a selling point), somebody did something right here because Samson and Delilah looks fantastic (I read a 4k transfer was involved, but no word on what original elements were used). I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t present this full-screen, 1.37:1 transfer on an anamorphic platform, windowboxing it…however, it still looks terrific, with deep, oversaturated colors, a quite sharp image, minimal grain and blacks that are reasonably deep. The best I’ve ever seen this title (and I would imagine the Blu-ray is even better).

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English split mono audio track sounds quite clean, with little if any hiss and a decent re-recording level. French and Spanish monos are also available, as are English, French, and Spanish subtitles.

The Extras:
No extras, unfortunately.

Final Thoughts:
Storytelling at a hyper-melodramatic level, calculated for maximum camp value. Samson and Delilah is can’t-miss classic entertainment, and perfect viewing for this Easter season…and not for any so-called religious content. I’m highly, highly recommending Samson and Delilah.

Paul Mavis is an internationally published film and television historian, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of The Espionage Filmography.

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