THE FILM:

To the world at large, the words “performance art” are probably just as likely to bring to mind images of The Dude’s comically timid, enthusiastic but inept dance-piece-performing neighbor in The Big Lebowski, or perhaps Steve Buscemi’s overrated stand-up comic in Scorsese’s Life Lessons — stereotypes of the pretentious, otherwise failed artist dressing up their inadequacies as “performance” — as they are to conjure an actual performance artist like Yugoslavian-born Marina Abramovic, whose work over the last 40 years has a depth and seriousness to it that rival any painting, sculpture, or video art of the same period. This remarkable woman, now 63, has for decades been conceiving of and performing striking, provocative performance pieces of a rigor and accomplishment that, with every resonant conceptual situation and evocative movement within them, puts paid to the notion that performance artists are merely attention-grabbers who make sloppy, self-aggrandizing “art” to be fobbed off on a bewildered or gullible public. In 2010, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held a retrospective of Abramovic’s work, which involved gathering an ensemble of younger performers to “re-perform” some of her more iconic pieces from over the years, as well as the creation and performance of a new work, “The Artist is Present.” It is this large-scale summing-up event around which documentarian Matthew Akers centers Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, a film portrait of the artist that takes us through her biography, her personal life, her work and its history, and some of the more salient and emotionally charged moments from the performance of the title as it unfolded over three months in the summer of 2010.

Akers starts us off right in the thick of things, falling in with Abramovic — a statuesque figure with a Slavic accent and a physical grace, poise, and confidence perfectly suited to her work — along with her busy assistants and troupe of artists-in-training as they prepare to mount the MoMA retrospective, a fairly massive undertaking in which Abramovic will have instructed and rehearsed her chosen successors to re-enact some of the “classic” performance pieces that brought her to her current, venerated grandmother-of-performance-art status. Through Akers’s camera, we’re witness to the sometimes bizarre rituals Abramovic puts her bemused trainees through after bringing them to her spacious home/studio outside of the city, as they prepare to recreate such visceral, physically imposing works (excerpted here in filmed or videotaped clips) as 1973’s Rhythm 5, wherein the artist lies in the center of a blazing pentagram (Abramovic passed out from the lack of oxygen) and 1975’s Lips of Thomas, in which a nude Abramovic carved a Star of David around her navel; abstract performances including Relation in Space (a man and a woman, both naked, appear to unconsciously “orbit” one another, sometimes passing, sometimes colliding) and Relation in Time, in which a man and a woman sit facing away from one another, their long hair braided together behind them to join the two into one being; and audience-participation conceptions like Imponderabilia, in which two nude performers stand, impassive and statue-still, in either side of a too-narrow doorway between exhibit spaces, forcing patrons to squeeze between them. The Artist is Present, the piece newly created for the 2010 retrospective, sounds simple but, as we see, is emotionally exhausting, both for the artist and for any audience participants: Abramovic sits on one side of a table with an empty chair facing her, and any member of the public who reaches the end of the line may sit across from her, at which point she will look into their face and hold the gaze for as long as they wish. For the three months of the retrospective, Abramovic was present for this “performance” at all times during the museum’s hours of operation. Even at one remove, witnessing only the moments Akers has chosen from the performance’s hundreds of hours, it retains some of its astonishing power; more than a few participants are overwhelmed by the intimacy and end up with tears rolling helplessly down their faces, and we can infer that Abramovic’s difficult concept was successfully executed, packing equal parts simplicity and unfathomable force into its emotional-endurance testing high-wire act.

All of the dual-performer works mentioned above were made by Abramovic in conjunction with her former longtime creative and life partner, the single-monikered “Ulay” (the two split in 1988, via a vast-canvas performance piece in which each walked toward the other from opposite ends of China’s Great Wall to meet in the middle and part permanently), who reunites awkwardly with Abramovic for Akers’s camear and submits to being one of the filmmakers talking heads (others who chime in for interviewsconstitute an array of art-world figures who know and/or work with Abramovic, including art critic Arthur Danto, MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach, Whitney Museum curator Chrissie Iles, and gallerist Sean Kelly, among others). The reuniting-with-Ulay “storyline” is actually relevant in one sense; when Ulay takes a surprise turn as a participant in the The Artist is Present performance, sitting across from the woman whom he loved and with whom he worked, lived, and traveled for over a decade, it actually does create an emotional moment wherein her work and her biographical past intersect in a fascinating and revealing way. But in another sense, this somewhat contrived narrative padding is trivializing and distracting, juicy but not very meaningful, and overall, the film is probably too heavy on such biographical supplementation; Akers too often succumbs to gimmicky editing (fashion photo shoots! sped-up crowds flocking to see the exhibit!), heavy-handed use of music, and a tone of reality-TV excitability about spying on someone famous at home (other famous friends/museum patrons include David Blaine, James Franco, and, for a split second, Orlando Bloom).

That the filmmakers evidently felt the need to jazz things up, somewhat diluting the power of Abramovic’s work, is indicative of what would seem to be an unavoidable, inherent Achilles heel when it comes to making a documentary film about a performance artist — an obstacle that nothing probably would have helped (and Akers’s conventional-skewing editing/music choices definitely doesn’t surmount it): The filmmaker can much more easily let us get to know the artist as a biographical individual — one who chats to the camera throughout and who feels triumphantly vindicated by the MoMA show, which she hopes will take performance art out of the “alternative” ghetto and validate it as a legitimate medium once and for all — than to really show us her work and help us experience and understand it, because you simply can’t “get” performance art on film, at least not in the isolated moments from film and video recordings of Abramovic’s work that Akers intercuts into all the commentary and footage of her hectic, soul-searching, but glamorous life. The performance art method of using the artist’s physical being and presence as their “materials,” their palette, is even less effectively filmable than would be pointing a camera at a theater stage for a single take of a play’s performance (the most notoriously bland and uncinematic way of filming a play): the moment-by-moment “liveness,” the invisible but living, breathing interaction between audience and artist, cannot be recorded or reproduced, and it’s a much more vital, even central, component of performance art than it is even in the theatre.

Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present is thus a cinematically fluent but distinctly un-radical film about an unequivocally radical artist. In its artificially sped-up context, it feels contradictory when one commentator astutely contemplates the playing with time that Abramovic does in “The Artist is Present,” musing ruefully that as the world goes faster and faster, it’s actually the most subversive act of all to do nothing but sit and silently engage with another person, and then another, and then another, for three months straight; quite unlike the documentary on it that we’re watching, Abramovic’s performance is a rebuke to and a balm for our unfulfilling harriedness and amputated attention spans. Still, despite the film being (perhaps necessarily) full of truncations and possessed of a superimposed, incongruous, vaguely rushed and unsatisfying feeling when combining too-brief glances and snippets from Abramovic’s work with the commentary/testimony of its maker and its champions, it still manages to come off as something credible, however flawed — a labor of love whose passion for the artist and her work is evident. Even if what that work really is and how it works is told much more than shown, it still offers as good an introduction as descriptions/explanations are likely to offer. In the end, the film intrigues and leaves you wanting to know more, and so it can be said to work insofar as it attains its goal of boosting the artist, introducing us to her via a somewhat over-slick but still entertaining and reasonably enlightening behind-the-scenes biography of its subject and the way she lives and works. It’s a sort of appetite-whetting teaser or advertisement for, more than a substantial exposure to, the work itself, but the thumbnail introduction it does manage to give us to an artist who deserves the wide exposure is valuable, and Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, for all its limitations, is well worth a look.

THE DVD:

Video:

The 1.78:1 anamorphic-widescreen transfer of Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present is quite good; the suitability of the high-definition video technology on which it was shot for making the transition to digital home-video media is apparent, with all colors, skin tones, and darks looking good, solid, and natural, and with only a bit of edge enhancement here or there in the way of very noticeable compression artifacts.

Sound:

The film’s sound is available on the disc in either Dolby 2.0 Stereo or Dolby 5.1 Surround options, either of which convey very well a remarkably well-mixed sound design (especially considering that it’s sound caught in large part on the fly) and Nathan Halpern’s score in rich, full, clear (and, in 5.1, room-filling) tones with no distortion in the sound or imbalance in the mix discernible at any point.

Extras:

—“Marina at the MoMA,” (10 min.) an unabridged/longer version of the interview with MoMa director/former Abramovic partner Klaus Eisenbach, heavily excerpted throughout the film, in which he discusses Abramovic as an artist, her work’s meaning and reception, the risk of her performances fading away into “urban myth,” and, in specific, their collaboration on and co-conceiving of The Artist is Present.

—“The Audience Creates the Work,” a six-minute outtake with some further commentary from Abramovic’s colleagues who also chime in in the film, but more importantly documenting a large range of audience reactions (from fascinated to perplexed to dismissive), reactions of those who sat across from Abramovic during the The Artist is Present piece, and face time with what can only be described as her fan base, who run the gamut from thoughtful, sincere, passionate admirers to groupies to goofy hangers-on drawn to the fame/celebrity aspect more than the work.

—“Marina: Art vs. Life,” a seven-minute outtake/interview with James Westcott, Abramovic’s British biographer, in which a more objective, contemplative (though still admiring, thoughtful, and respectful) take on the work, the artist, and phenomenon of Marina Abramovic is offered than remains in the main feature.

—“Marina’s Dresses,” a brief (two-minute) interview with designer Stina Gunnarsson, who created Abramovic’s minimalist, solid-colored gowns (which, as we can see from the flurry of images that depict the artist and dressmaker going over colors, fabrics, and fittings, represent a “minimalism” that required a “maximalist” amount of thought and effort to attain).

–“Belgrade Homecoming,” a 10-minute outtake with Abramovic giving us a guided tour of the locales and landmarks of her hometown that remain salient for her, complete with further recollections about her development as an artist and her memories and impressions of creating her work, particularly during her time as a young, developing artist in the former Yugoslovian (now Serbian) capital.

—“A Re-Performer’s Story,” a six-minute piece on Brittany Bailey, one of the troupe of performers re-staging Abramovic’s classic performances for the MoMA retrospective. It’s touching and truly supplements the experience of the feature, giving us a look at the biographical backstory of a young (Bailey is 19) dancer who left her upper-middle-class, supportive home in North Carolina to join the retrospective in New York — a person with a whole life of her own, whom we only know in the film as an ultra-poised hanging nude replicating Abramovic’s sly take on da Vinci’s famous “Vitruvian Man” drawing, Luminosity.

–The film’s theatrical trailer.

–About a dozen still photos from Abramovic’s performance pieces over the decades.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

A souvenir for the many of us who never got to experience her work in person (the way they were meant to be seen), Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present does the most it can to bring the viewer close to the provocative, conceptually bold, and emotionally charged performance art conceived and performed over the decades by the artist of the title (principally focusing on a new piece in which she sits across from museum patrons who have stood in line to be in the artist’s presence, simply looking at them for as long as they wish in the sort of eye-to-eye contact generally avoided among strangers). The film also does neophytes a favor by rounding out the development and performance of the new piece (part of a wide-ranging 2010 Museum of Modern Art retrospective) with much biography, history, and commentary on Abramovic and what she does, as well as some fairly privileged glances into the physically rigorous, mentally draining process a dedicated performance artist must undertake to hone their work and engage the public. On those counts, the film is quite interesting, informative, and valuable (it also has the added benefit of having someone with star power for a subject; one doesn’t get tired of looking at or listening to the striking, charismatic Abramovic, who at 63 looks not a day older than 40 and has the open-minded, youthful spirit to match). After a certain point, though, it serves mainly as a reminder that performance pieces the likes of which Abramovic creates and enacts resemble theater when it comes to documenting them on film: the camera in and of itself dilutes the most basic, important aspect of the experience, which is “live” before it is anything, so what we end up with is something like a faded, incomplete memory of the performances we see — fleeting impressions that bear only traces of their full, original power. Still, it’s better to experience something so bold, provocative, serious, and often profoundly moving secondhand than not at all, and director Matthew Akers has done the public a real, entertaining, enlightening service by putting Abramovic on the radar of many more of us — the millions of interested parties outside the art capital of New York and without direct access to The Museum of Modern Art, where her grand retrospective took place — than will likely ever experience, much less engage with, her in person. Recommended.

The Show:

A lot of people take a look at Zane Lamprey’s show Drinking Made Easy on the HDNet (now AXS TV) cable network and wonder how a guy could host a drinking show which focuses on various points of the country and their drinking culture. More to the point, when would Lamprey’s liver sue him for nonsupport? But while Drinking Made Easy certainly includes drinking in the foreground, in the background it is also a travelogue of sorts where drinking happens to occur, and I think that proves to make the appeal of the show far more than just one of a half hour weekly bar crawl. Now in its third season, the show’s second season was recently released on video for obvious promotion and enjoyment.

The show’s premise is simple: going from place to place and enjoy the culture and have a beer or a drink every so often. For those longtime viewers of the show, one of the things that changed from Season One to Season Two was the excision of Marc Ryan, who served as a brief departure from the show’s hosts, interviewing a local brewer or distiller about their process and enjoying the product. What Lamprey may have realized is that the show works better with him and his co-host (or mascot as he calls him) Steve McKenna taking the majority of the show to enjoy the locales. Which is good, because the two have a good chemistry that makes you laugh but (with Lamprey’s previous shows also being travel-focused) also informative. The pair also undergo a competition in each area that is locally-focused, with the wager being a six pack of beer in the ‘Six Pack Challenge.’ Lamprey usually wins these challenges because McKenna is the George Constanza of the pairing, if George Constanza’s hair reappeared on his face in the thickest beard you can recall seeing.

The other thing about the show that seems to change from Season One to Season Two is Lamprey and McKenna seem to take an almost upscale approach to the season. Well, ‘upscale’ may not be the word. But where Season One found Zane and Steve drinking and enjoying it, Season Two finds Zane taking the reins a little more as to how a beer or liquor may be made before enjoying said beverage. And this slight evolution in the show makes it better as a result, with much more of a curiosity as to these beverages, many of which may be regional but thanks to the internet, can be bought and shipped as desired.

That’s not to say Zane and Steve forsake the hijinks and laughs in the first season for grown up behavior in the second, the show does not have to reach for the laughs as often because the subject material comes across as interesting, and when the pair do go for silliness, it still works as well as it does in the first season. This is a credit to them, because doing a show about drinking seems like an easy premise, but I think it one that could very well get screwed up. Zane and Steve not only NOT do that, making it fun and educational with two likable guys improves upon it.

And that should be the goal of any television show, whether it is fictional or not. The fact that such an improvement is that noticeable in Drinking Made Easy is welcoming to see, considering how ‘fun’ the show was in Season One. The evolution is great and takes the appreciation of the work to a different level.

The Discs:
The Video:

Drinking Made Easy is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen in what ultimately proves to be a nice standard definition look from what is shot natively in high definition. Colors and fresh tones are reproduced accurately and faithfully, and the many exteriors look superb and are free of image processing issues. The show looks as good as it is going to on standard definition and that is a good thing.

The Sound:

Two-channel Dolby Digital for all of the episodes, which is hardly a surprise considering the nature of the show. You get drinking, dialogue, and light drama in the six pack competitions. There is no use for the rear speakers to provide directional effects or channel panning, and as far as a subwoofer goes, don’t kid yourself. It’s a nice sonic perspective of the show.

Extras:

Lamprey, McKenna, Lamprey’s wife Melissa (who also produces the show) and Josh Dean (a cameraman on the show) combine for a commentary over all 24 episodes that proves to be jovial. The quartet hosts a semi-regular podcast in some combination or another and the rapport is evident, and they even circle back to various episodes of said podcast from time to time on a previous discussion or two during the tracks. Recorded in a functioning office as Lamprey points out and the phone ringing occasionally still reminds us, the group does not hesitate to have a beverage from time to time. They talk about some behind the camera anecdotes and provide additional information on the locations and on the drinks they consumed, and McKenna recounts a story about getting a break on baggage at TSA. The production process from shooting to editing is touched upon also. While there are moments where folks (OK, McKenna) just watch the action, the tracks are solid listening material and are nice complements to the viewing experience.

The other extras are on Disc Four, starting with the “Ultra Premium Imperial Reserve Platinum Especial,” a special with Zane and Steve celebrating the show’s 50th episode. Filled with drinks, good times and a Sinatra family member cameo, it is a nice look at where the show is at the moment with a bunch of unique content to the show. It also includes a commentary that covers a lot of the same veins the episode commentaries did. Some deleted and extended footage follows, but to call it ‘some’ shortchanges it a bit, as there is almost two hours of material here (1:56:08). Some of these are extended sequences or full interviews with a brew master, and others are bloopers such as the McKenna blooper reel, but there is a lot of stuff here worth perusing.

Final Thoughts:

Season Two of Drinking Made Easy takes an entertaining premise from Season One and builds on it, giving it a subtle refined nature that is nice to see for the show. Technically it is decent, but from a bonus material perspective is exhaustive as I can recall seeing on a set of discs. Worth seeing at the very least, with the extras pushing it into an easy buying decision.

Reviewer’s Note: Owing to my own policy here at DVDTalk of watching every episode of any television season I receive (even if that means 36 hours of TV watching in this particular case…), I’m going to break up my take on Bonanza: The Official Fourth Season, Volumes 1 & 2 into two separate reviews. Readers should know, though, that they can purchase both volumes together, at a discounted price, or individually.

The Ponderosa stands tall. CBS DVD and Paramount continue their terrific, extras-filled releases of the 1960’s most successful TV series with Bonanza: The Official Fourth Season, Volume 1, a five-disc, 18-episode collection of the iconic TV Western, starring Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker, Michael Landon, and a host of superlative guest stars. Representing the series’ 1962-1963 season, Bonanza: The Official Fourth Season, Volume 1 continues’ the series’ strong showing in meticulously produced drama, action, and comedy anthology episodes―with writing, direction, and performances this good, no wonder Bonanza ran for 14 highly successful years. CBS and Paramount, not stinting on the bonuses for these beautifully restored transfers, comes up with another load of extras for the fans, including commentary tracks and cool behind-the-scenes stills of the show in action. Absolutely necessary viewing for TV Western and drama anthology fans.

 It’s the late 1850s, and gold and silver fever are sweeping through the hills and valleys of the celebrated Comstock Load. Virginia City, Nevada, sitting right on top of those millions of dollars’ worth of ore, is bustling with miners, settlers, businessmen, rustlers, con artists, and killers. And butting right up against Virginia City is the massive Ponderosa ranch, a thousand-square mile New World Eden filled to the brim with pine and beef. Overseeing this operation is voice-of-God Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene), the thrice-widowed land baron who watches over his spread as fiercely―and as tenderly―as he does his three grown sons. Eldest, Adam Cartwright (Pernell Roberts), is the most serious of the three siblings, and the one who works most directly under Ben in running the Ponderosa. His mother the daughter of a New England sea captain, Adam was schooled back East as an architect and engineer. Middle son Eric “Hoss” Cartwright (Dan Blocker) gets his massive physique from his mother, a six-foot tall Swede who reportedly could punch like a mule. Hoss, who may seem rather dim or naïve at times when he’s not killing a bear with only his hands or knocking down a tree, is in reality quite sensitive to his surroundings and to the sufferings of others. Finally, Little Joe Cartwright (Michael Landon), the youngest son, gets his smoldering dark looks and equally tempestuous nature from his beautiful half-Creole mother, whom Ben met during a trip to New Orleans’ French Quarter. Little Joe is certainly the most reckless of the clan, relying on his charm and his fast fists to both get him into trouble, and out of it again…especially if there’s a lady involved. Constantly patrolling their land to keep opportunists at bay, the Cartwrights inevitably get involved week after week in the troubles of others, who look to the Cartwrights as one of the few stabilizing forces in the wild and wooly excesses of the Old West.

 In my four reviews for Bonanza‘s first two seasons (I unfortunately wasn’t assigned the third season), I wrote extensively about the series’ inception, its production, and the aesthetic and thematic framework underpinning the show’s construction. So I’ll try not to cover the same ground in this review…although it’s next to impossible not to when Bonanza‘s forte―compelling drama anthology stories within a Western framework, expertly produced and performed―is so consistently, even routinely, on display here, week after week, season after season. It’s interesting, then, that producer David Dortort would risk altering the show’s successful formula by introducing a major potential shake-up in the season opener: The First Born. Ranch hand and gambler Clay Stafford (Barry Coe) is new to the Ponderosa…but he seems to already know Little Joe…who turns out to be Clay’s younger half-brother. The storyline again shows Dortort’s gradual realignment of the Cartwrights from the violent, protective landowners of the first season, to the almost-patrician, calm, cool, civilizing agents aiding an untamed West (Ben tells fast-killing Clay his values aren’t theirs…but that he hopes living with the Cartwrights will change Clay’s behavior). Did Dortort introduce Barry Coe to genuinely add dimension to the Cartwright clan…or was it his way of shaking up his now-famous (and increasingly demanding) cast, putting them on notice that they could be replaced, should they prove stubborn come contract time? Hard to say, but you can certainly see why reports of the cast being suspicious of Coe might be true―he’s terrific here, coming off as more handsome and more attractively mysterious than either Roberts or Landon. Too bad Dortort didn’t keep him around.

 Certainly the writers and directors gave the individual cast members opportunities to shine in their own specialty episodes this season. Landon, perhaps relieved at Coe’s departure, is in good form in the following episode, The Quest, where Little Joe, angry at the world (is it because his older half-brother has just left?), wants to break free of the Ponderosa’s stifling influence and become his own self-made man (good large-scale action in this nicely-tuned episode, with Landon hitting just the right note as maturing Little Joe). Blocker, excellent by contrast when his massive frame is inserted in a tender love story, scores in Knight Errant, where a terrific Judi Meredith falls for the big lug (what a pity the talented Meredith’s career wasn’t more prominent). Roberts in The Way Station (basically a reworking of The Petrified Forest) gets a chance to do his best Adam Cartwright turn: deeply cynical, slightly bemused, and always watching, waiting. And Greene gets a showy turn in The Deadly Ones, where he matches wits with Will Kuluva as a Juarez general, and killer henchman, Leo Gordon (the single creepiest set of too-small, ice-blue eyes you’ll ever see in movies).

 Along with these Cartwright-centric episodes, other familiar, recurring Bonanza themes pop up during this fourth outing. A fairly basic Western theme―the local townspeople as suspicious, violent mob, ready to take justice into their own hands―crops up in several episodes, including the opener, The First Born (the cowardly town folk beat up Little Joe in an effort to pressure killer Clay), A Hot Day for a Hanging (where Hoss is almost hanged by a vengeful town, helped by a cynical opportunist sheriff, Denver Pyle, who’s willing to aid his town financially by letting innocent Hoss die), and The Jury, where Hoss (the perfect “innocent” when the distrustful townspeople are on the loose) is pressured after being the lone jury hold-out in a murder trial. The notion that the men of the Ponderosa being uniquely qualified―better educated, more refined culturally, more democratic and fair-minded than others in the West―to help desperate people in need comes through in The Artist (Ben’s sensitivity is greater than blind, angry painter Dan O’Herlihy’s), The Decision (even with Hoss dying of a punctured lung, Ben has time to help doctor DeForest Kelley redeem his own soul before the hangman ends his, and therefore Hoss’, life), and the appropriately titled The Good Samaritan, where Hoss’ supernatural kindness goes beyond all notions of Western hospitality in not only getting drunk friend Don Collier on his feet, but fixing him up with lonely, abandoned widow Jeanne Cooper and her child. The notion that the Ponderosa, and by extension, the Cartwrights who live there, is an island unto itself, too big and powerful to be pulled down into “ordinary conflicts,” is turned on its head in The War Comes to Washoe, where Ben, adamant that the Cartwrights “straddle” the Civil War, must finally chose a side…much to the anger of Little Joe, who has fallen for a pretty Southern belle.

 0Only when Bonanza looks at the touchy issues involving Indians and the encroaching White civilization in this season does the series stumble―not for lack of trying, but as dictated by the network standards and expectation of the time that for the most part, demanded neat, tidy conclusions that left moral quandaries patly solved within the hour. The Deserter features a complex, ambiguous set-up involving Army Colonel Claude Akins hunting down the deserter who tried to warn-off the Indian village Akins was set to slaughter, the deserter turning out to be his son. However, this triple-layered drama (the deserter has personal ties to the Indian chief…who wants the son dead for the father’s crimes), is wrapped up in ridiculous fashion when the Indians are satisfied with Akins going to Washington to confess his crimes. The Beginning makes the same mistake, giving the viewer an intriguing storyline of White Carl Reindel, having been captured and raised by Indians, unable to acclimate himself to confusing “civilized” White culture. Again, however, the story is wrapped up too neatly when it’s suggested that good-intentioned, murdering Reindel will escape the hangman’s knot. The otherwise delightful Half a Rogue largely ignores its Indian/White subplot: mountain man Slim Pickens makes noise about the discrimination he’s encountered as a “half breed,” but the episode focuses more on his scuffles with Blocker.

1 2While almost all the episodes featured in this season of Bonanza rank with the best offerings on any of the network schedules during the 1962-1963 season, a few stand out as Bonanza series best outings. Elegy for a Hangman is another Bonanza take on the potential for corruption among the West’s civilizing forces (this time a judge who lets an innocent man die in the name of the territory’s progress), and the resulting vengeance from the man’s son (veteran Otto Kruger and newcomer Keir Dullea are both excellent in this well-written entry). In The Colonel, the familiar theme of a former hero-turned-lying-failure is rejuvenated by scripter Preston Wood and director Lewis Allen, and by an excellent turn from John Larkin as a former veteran who soldiered with Ben Cartwright, and who has now become a threadbare traveling salesman (listen to series composer David Rose’s unsettling, wheezy, out-of-tune cue for Larkin’s character, suggesting past glories corrupted by the present day’s dire circumstances―a sophisticated filmmaking technique not at all the norm during this time of network programming). Gallagher’s Sons, scripted by Dick Nelson and directed with cool calculation by Christian Nybe, is a beautifully tempoed action piece, featuring Blocker chaperoning two little girls across the desert…with villain Robert Strauss in hot pursuit. A tricky script (little Larrian Gillespie’s character is no dummy), excellent performances, and an editing rhythm that’s damn-near perfect, Gallagher’s Sons would stand up well against any of the best big-screen “B” Westerns you can name. And finally, Song in the Dark, another Bonanza foray into outright fable (much like season two’s spin-off pilot, Sam Hill) from scripters Judith and George George, and director Don McDougall, is a remarkably potent little fantasy that has troubadour Gregory Walcott riding a white horse at night, singing Under the Red Rock Rim, while religious zealot Edward Andrews tries to frame him for murder. An overwrought, sometimes downright hysterical (in tone, not humor) episode, Song in the Dark is gorgeously, evocatively shot by series vet Haskell Boggs, creating a sinister, velvety picture-book visual that’s entirely consistent with the episode’s overt message (blind religious fervor is bad) and its weird undertone (just who exactly is Walcott’s character? Jesus? Death?). It’s a considerable achievement, showing the flexibility of the Bonanza format to accommodate stories and treatments outside the usual Western conventions.

3 4Bonanza dropped a bit in the ratings for this 1962-1963 season, going from the second to the fourth most-watched network show in the country. Firmly entrenched in its Sunday 9:00pm timeslot, Bonanza‘s lead-ins, the new flop Ensign Pulver, followed by slightly dropping Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color and faded Car 54, Where Are You? helped a little…but classy, low-rated lead-out DuPont Show of the Week may have been a bit of a drag against powerhouse Candid Camera over on CBS. Bonanza‘s direct competition, The Real McCoys on CBS, took a big hit against the Ponderosa, going from 14th the previous seaon to out of the Nielsen Top 30 altogether, while The ABC Sunday Night Movie was years away from being its usual solid ratings winner. Bonanza would bounce back in a big way over the next four years….

The DVD:The Video:
Excellent. The full-screen, 1.33:1 color transfers for Bonanza: The Official Fourth Season, Volumes 1 & 2 look amazing, with rich, deep color, minimal grain and picture noise, and a sharp, sharp image. I know these look better than they ever did back when they were first broadcast.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English split mono audio tracks have been cleaned up and re-corded with little if any hiss and at a vigorous level. English subtitles are available.

The Extras:
No other long-running TV series on DVD (in my memory, at least) has sustained the level of buyer-enticing extras as have these CBS/Paramount Bonanza releases. On disc one, photo galleries (with helpful text) are included for every episode except A Hot Day for a Hanging, with NBC bumpers and logos for the first two episodes. A highlight of the set is the inclusion of the Chevrolet’s Ponderosa Party extended commercial, originally broadcast at the end of commercial-free The Quest. Featuring the casts of Chevrolet’s three network-sponsored shows (Route 66, My Three Sons, and Bonanza), Chevrolet’s Ponderosa Party has Don Grady saying, “Man! This is turbulent!” for the new Corvair; William Frawley making fun of Victor Sen Yung’s inability to say “Rs” (“Light, Mr. Frawley?” “Light!”); and Fred MacMurray and Lorne Greene, both taking a break from their rugs by wearing hats, taking a nice drive together in the latest “jet-smooth” Chevy (“Right, Lorne?” “Right, Fred!”). And all through it, Dan Blocker stays in character, eating and eating (that should have been a big, red typecasting flag to the talented Blocker). This is the kind of stuff that vintage TV lovers absolutely die over, and Paramount and CBS DVD, and the producers of these sets, should be commended for including them here.

On disc 2, photo galleries are available for every episode. On disc 3, there’s a commentary track with co-star Larrian Gillespie, moderated by Andrew J. Klyde. She’s well-spoken, with lots of good background info on her episode’s production (Gallagher’s Sons), while Klyde, as usual, is terrific as a moderator. Disc 4 has a photo gallery on The Colonel, while a special gallery shows the cast posing with David Rose’s soundtrack album. On disc 5, Song in the Dark has a commentary track with star Gregory Walcott. He’s wonderful, giving some fun stories about the series, and even crooning his episode song a bit to prove he’s really singing it in the original (and beautifully he does, too, in that haunting, amazing episode). For Elegy for a Hangman, a photo gallery is included, along with a commentary track with star Keir Dullea. He’s also excellent here in his commentary, giving some good historical background to his entry (it was filmed at the height of the Cuban missile crisis), along with some tips for acting on camera.

Again, for vintage television DVD sets, which usually have one or two extras for their first season’s sets (to entice the buyers), before abandoning them altogether, this continued inclusion of heavyweight extras for the Bonanza sets is remarkable…and most welcome.

Final Thoughts:
It ran that long for a reason: it was one of the best drama anthologies of the 1960s. Bonanza: The Official Fourth Season, Volumes 1 & 2‘s first volume is filled with winners (and even a few series’ best offerings), while the extras put this over into the “2012’s best TV DVD releases” category. I’m giving Bonanza: The Official Fourth Season, Volumes 1 & 2 our highest ranking here at DVDTalk: the DVD Talk Collector Series award.

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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Four years before Irwin Allen brought a team of space explorers to a planet inhabited by giants in Land of the Giants, Doctor Who covered the same territory in Planet of the Giants.  Similar in a lot of ways to the US series that would come later, this story that opened the second season of the long-running BBC show featured the first Doctor, William Hartnell and his companions only an inch tall, and the only witnesses to a murder.  While it’s not the best installment, it’s not particularly bad either.  The original four episode story was shorted to three (after all four had been shot) and while the end is a little rushed, it is still a solid example of the show from its early years. After witnessing the arrest of Robespierre in 18th Century Paris (in the previous story, The Reign of Terror scheduled for release next year), The Doctor and his companions take off in the TARDIS but something goes wrong.  The doors open in mid-flight, something they’re never supposed to do.  Ian, Susan, and Barbara close them and The Doctor lands.  No one seems to be the worse for wear, which surprises The Doctor, so they decide to explore their new surroundings.  They find themselves on a planet with a rocky landscape and enormous creatures.  The Doctor and Barbara find what looks like a snake at first, but it turns out to be a giant earthworm that’s luckily deceased.  Similarly Ian and Susan find some giant ants, which are also dead.  After some discussion, The Doctor and Susan come to the same conclusion:  they are back on Earth, but they’ve been reduced in size to approximately one inch. No sooner has this sunk in than Ian, having climbed into a box of matches, gets accidently taken by a full sized man.  The other go and look for him, and while he’s only yards away it seems like miles to the diminutive explorers. While this is going on, the narrative (and scale) switches to the man who unknowingly has Ian, a government scientist named Farrow.  He’s been examining a new pesticide, DN6, which an industrialist, Forester, and a scientist, Smithers, are developing.  They need government approval before they can go into large scale production, but unfortunately Farrow has discovered that the compound works too well.  Not it kills all insect life that it comes into contact with, not just the harmful pests. Forester has all of his money tied up in DN6, and when Farrow refuses to listen to his pleads, he kills him.  He then pulls Smithers into his plot to hide the body and falsify the Farrow’s report so they can go ahead with production. Ian, escaping from the matchbox, discovers Farrow’s body and easily figures out that he’s been shot dead and shows the rest of the group catch up with him.  Of course they can’t let a murderer go free, and The Doctor is quite interested in what has kill all of the insect life in the area, so they sneak into the lab, a make some interesting discoveries. As I mentioned earlier, this played out a lot like an episode of Planet of the Giants.  The ‘little people’ had to bring a criminal to justice despite their small size, as well as use every day object that had suddenly grown to enormous size (from their point of view) in order to escape some traps, like being stuck in a sink.  It was a fun show with some nice touches.  I particularly liked the fact that normal-sized people couldn’t hear them, which makes sense since their lungs would be moving a miniscule amount of air. It is a bit of an odd story in some respects however.  They’re left on their own for the most part, never directly interacting with the regular-sized humans.  As a matter of fact, the murderers never even see them.  On top of that, no one really seems all that worried that they’re only an inch tall.  They’re much to intent on exploring than solving their dilemma.  The criminals are pretty stupid too, and though The Doctor helps in bringing them to justice, it’s Foresters inane stupidity that really does them in. Aside from that, it’s a pretty solid installment of the show. It has a good amount of action and even some comic relief from a switchboard operator and her constable husband. If fans rarely bring up this story when they get together and discuss the early years it’s because it’s neither exceedingly good, nor exceedingly bad. Just a solid, decent example of the program.The DVD:
Audio:

This show comes with the original mono soundtrack that fits the show just fine.  The dynamic range is nothing to write home about, but the dialog is generally crisp and clear and there is no background noise, tape hiss, distortion or dropouts.  There are optional subtitles in English.

Video: The Restoration Team has worked their magic once more and the full frame B&W image looks very good.  I was really impressed with the sharp and clear picture.  The level of detail is excellent, the blacks are deep, and the image is stable.  This is one of the best looking black and white episodes of Doctor Who to be released.  You’ll be pleased.Extras:

There was a bit of a problem with the extras for this story:  There’s hardly anyone left alive who was connected with it. Yes, William Russell and Carole Ann Ford are thankfully still with us, but they hardly remember anything about this story.  As one person put it in one of the extras, it was just four weeks of work 40 years ago.  It was all done in the studio so there are no locations to visit today either.  That didn’t stop Ed Stradling, the person who put together the bonus features for this disc.  He came up with some nice solutions to the problem and created a nice pack of extras.
For the commentary track some people you don’t hear from very often were brought in, namely sound designer Brian Hodgson, makeup supervisor Sonia Markham, vision mixer Clive Doig and floor assistant David Tilley who were joined by moderator Mark Ayres.  They talk about the episode, but also spend a fair amount of time reminiscing about their time on the show in general.  It was surprisingly entertaining, especially since I didn’t go in with high expectations.

There’s also an odd bonus that not many people will find useful, and that’s the original Arabic dub of the story.  Way back when the BBC sold copies of Doctor Who all over the world and by some miracle the Arabic track survived all these years.  It’s a quirky bonus that’s kind of fun to have, though I’m sure I’ll never sit through all of it.

The video extras start off with a reconstruction of episodes three and four. The story was originally scripted, and filmed, as four episodes. When BBC Head of Drama Sydney Newman screened the story, he found that it dragged at the end and was to ‘talkie.’ He ordered that the last two episodes be cut down into one, and that’s the way it originally aired. While the original edits to episodes three and four are long gone, the scripts still survive. So Ed Stradling decided to reconstruct the original episodes. To re-recorded the audio to the missing segments he brought in William Russell and Carole Ann Ford to reprise their roles and hired some very good mimics to play the other characters. For the video, he used some careful editing (zooming in on a frame so it looks different than the previous time it was used for example) and some CGI to make up the rest of the missing 25 minutes. It worked moderately well. It’s easy to tell the new parts from the segments lifted from the aired version of episode three, and I found myself being pulled out of the show every time they switched, but overall it works more than it fails. The new episodes do have more than a little dialog and it’s easy to see why the Head of Drama wanted it cut, but the story worked a little better, filling in moments and fleshing out the story. It’s well worth watching.Rediscovering The Urge to Live is an 8-minute look at the reconstruction of the final to episodes and has William Russell and Carole Ann Ford remembering what they can about the show (not much).  It features a peak in on the recording of the audio and discusses why the decision was made to remake two episodes rather than have a making-of featurette on the original story.  Next up are a pair of interviews with Carole Ann Ford and the late Verity Lambert originally recorded in 2003 for The Story of Doctor Who.  These were nice discussions of their time with the show, though I wish Verity’s had been a bit longer and went more in depth.

In addition there is a pop-up informational text option which is very informative as always.   It does give some dry statistics, like how many people viewed each episode, but there are also some interesting notes such as script changes that were made and background information on the supporting characters.  The extras are rounded off with, a couple of photo galleries, and the listings from the Radio Times in .pdf format.

Final Thoughts:

A solid example of the show from the early years, Planet of the Giants is a good installment of the long-running SF program.  The reconstruction of episodes 3 and 4 (they were originally scripted and filmed but then merged into a single final episode) is a nice treat for Hartnell fans and gives a good indication of what the story was originally intended to look like.  Recommended.

The TV Series

The multi-disc set Disasters Deconstructed: A History of Architectural Disasters counts as yet another of the History channel’s entertaining, somewhat random packagings of various shows from their bursting library (Frozen World, which I reviewed earlier this year, is another one). The contents of these six discs include the full run of a recent, short-lived series that perhaps should have been given a better shot, a grab-bag of documentaries on the Hindenburg and Titanic disasters dating back to the mid-’90s (back when the channel’s name actually described what it was), and eight installments of the long-running Modern Marvels dedicated to Engineering Disasters.

While we’re kickin’ it back really Old School, let’s take a look at what constitutes each disc of Disasters Deconstructed:

DISC 1: Inspector America (2011; 3 episodes)
America’s Wake Up Call (Minneapolis/St. Paul); A Bridge Too Old (Los Angeles); Shaky Foundations (Seattle).

DISC 2: Inspector America (2011; 3 episodes)
Gold Rush Sewer (San Francisco); Dam This City (Las Vegas); Abandoned (Detroit).

Hosted by construction safety specialist Timothy Galarnyk, Inspector America takes a long, hard look at the crumbling infrastructure in several major American cities. With a pick in hand and a chip on his shoulder, the blustery Galarnyk journeys to a different city in each episode, explaining his main thesis that America can simply no longer avoid adequately maintaining the roads, bridges, water, sewer and other utilities that its populace depends upon. Once one gets past the fact that its bombastic host might be more at home on a typical news channel chatfest than a more straightforward show like this, Inspector America delves into some hard-hitting topics which aren’t normally seen on the basic cable front. Clearly Galarnyk has a passion for this stuff, and it’s hard not to be moved when he visits places like low-income neighborhood in the Las Vegas suburbs where the city’s rampant water usage has rendered the soil into a sandy, unstable mess. The show deals with a few real-life disasters (such as the deadly Mississippi River I-35W bridge collapse in 2007), keeping with this set’s theme, but it’s the potential for disaster lurking in every corner that keeps it watchable.

These two discs contain every episode of Inspector America – although History has never officially announced the show’s cancellation, no new episodes have been forthcoming since the initial six installments were aired in the Spring of 2011. Sadly, the show’s underwhelming performance proved that there isn’t a lot of room in the lineup for material that doesn’t fit within the channel’s current “he-man adventure club” thing. Inspector America deserved the chance to visit more cities.

DISC 3: Titanic’s Achilles Heel (2007; 90 minutes)

The well-mounted if familiar Titanic’s Achilles Heel delves into an intriguing theory surrounding the iconic maritime disaster – what if it was not the iceberg but an ill-conceived design flaw in the ship itself that caused it to sink? Initially thinking this might be a little on the dull side, the show actually uncovers a few lesser-known tidbits about that disaster and presents it in an elegant way. In the film, newer footage of researchers exploring this theory gets interwoven with a nicely researched accounting of the sensational trial of several Titanic survivors in the months following the accident. The too-long contemporary segments consists of discussions, planning, and ultimately a diving team expedition off the coast of Greece to explore the wreckage of Titanic‘s sister ship, the Brittania. The diving serves as an effort to gain insight as to whether a faulty expansion joint caused the Titanic to split apart and ultimately sink, but it ultimately winds up being not as interesting as the 1912 trial segments. The producers went the distance and dug up a lot of previously unseen archival images and newspaper graphics for this one. Additionally, having narration by actor Edward Herrmann, a.k.a. King Of The History Channel, helps its luster appreciably.

DISC 4: Three Hindenburg Documentaries
The Hindenburg (1996; 95 minutes); What Went Down: Hindenburg (2008; 44 minutes); Tech Effect: The Hindenburg (2004; 22 minutes).

A substantial slab of old-style History Channel goodness, The Hindenburg presents a comprehensive overview of the history of dirigibles and their one-time prominence as a vehicle for warfare and civilian travel. Archival footage and interviews from people who worked on them (Americans and Germans) punctuate this tale of airships used for commerce and war. The story builds, inevitably, to the destruction of the Hindenburg in 1937. Interviews and analysis provide insight into the cause of the crash; however, much more research has been done on the cause since this documentary, so many of their conclusions are no longer accepted as accurate. Faults aside, it presents the disaster in an even-handed, sensation-free manner. The unforgettable documentary footage of the accident gets a thorough going-through here, along with Herbert Morrison’s emotional audio reportage (which was recorded onto a transcription disc – not live – and not united with the filmed footage until decades after the accident occurred).

Compared with the main attraction, the other two Hindenburg documentaries on this disc are somewhat redundant. The padded-out What Went Down follows several filmmakers as they research and produce a (lame) recreation of the explosion as experienced by crew members in the dirigible’s tail section. The brisk, glossy Tech Effect goes into surprisingly thorough detail on the mechanical components of the explosion, including the Hindenburg engine and even the cameras and recording equipment used on the ground to capture that moment for posterity. Both of these programs are individual episodes of two of History’s shorter-lived series.

DISC 5: Engineering Disasters (Modern Marvels installments, 2003-2004; 4 episodes)
Engineering Disasters 4 – MGM Grand Fire, Design Failures, Bridges Collapse, The Corvair and Pinto, The Comet
Engineering Disasters 5 – KVLY Antenna tower Collapse, Oils Spills and Containment, Freeways and Earthquakes, Buffalo Creek Flood, Jefferson Island Salt Mine
Engineering Disasters 6 – Deadly Harrier Aircraft, The Piper Alpha Disaster, Collapse at Pleasants Power Stations, False Nuclear Alarms, High Speed Train Crash
Engineering Disasters 7 – Flutter, Baldwin Hills Dam, Vessel Collision, Northridge, Mine Fire

DISC 6: Engineering Disasters (Modern Marvels installments, 2004; 4 episodes)
Engineering Disasters 8 – PEPCON Explosion, Mianus River Bridge Collapse, Ocean Ranger Tragedy, Great Flood of 1889, Crash of Learjet 35
Engineering Disasters 9 – Dust Explosion, Scour, “Bright Field” Crash, “R-101,” Roof Failure
Engineering Disasters 10 – Yaggy Storage Field, Tanker Explosion, Tropicana Garage, White Sea Canal, Bhopal Disaster
Engineering Disasters 11 – LNG, Hyatt Walkway Collapse, Sink Holes, Yangtze Flood, Asbestos

The History Channel series Modern Marvels premiered in 1993. Each season had episodes on the building of something big or monumental — like the Golden Gate Bridge, pyramids, or Las Vegas. In 1999, they included an episode called Engineering Disasters. It was probably not planned to happen, but this episode turned into a backdoor pilot that led to a successful sub-series that continues to this day.

Discs five and six in Disasters Deconstructed: A History of Architectural Disasters each contain four episodes of the Engineering Disasters installments, which were originally broadcast in 2003-04. The disasters covered range widely in size and scope, but each one is an addictive curiosity. They are all fascinating, whether looking at why the world’s first jet, the Comet, had a series of fatal in-flight failures (square windows leading to cracks in the fuselage); how a German high-speed train jumped its tracks (part of a metal wheel peeled off); or how a hotel walkway could collapse (more people standing on it than it was engineered for). Filled with archival footage (sometimes of the actual disaster), interviews with people involved and historians, these episodes are often the last word on what happened and why. Many episodes include historic information about how a disaster could have been averted — for example, the law behind the Alaska Pipeline said all oil tankers were to be double-hulled. They weren’t, of course, which is how the Exxon Valdez spilled a massive amount of oil after running aground on a reef.

The DVD:

History’s Disasters Deconstructed: A History of Architectural Disasters comes packaged in three dual-DVD clear plastic slim-width cases housed in a paperboard slipcase.

Video

Inconsistent. The History channel has always been somewhat spotty on the visuals for their DVDs, and this one is no exception. Some programs are presented in softened Full Frame 4×3 (Engineering Disasters, The Hindenburg and Tech Effect: The Hindenburg), others have their 16×9 image letterboxed in Full Frame (What Went Down: Hindenburg and Titanic’s Achilles Heel). Although Inspector America‘s photography is often too bright and overly sharpened, it counts as the only thing on this set presented in good 16×9 anamorphic widescreen. Image-wise, Titanic’s Achilles Heel boasts the nicest quality picture (pity that it isn’t widescreen-format).

Audio

These are all presented in modest, nicely balanced stereo mixes that are pleasant and non-showy. Dialogue and music are fine. Subtitles and alternate audio options are not available on any of the discs.

Extras

None.

Final Thoughts:

History’s six-disc Disasters Deconstructed: A History of Architectural Disasters set is something of a random hodgepodge of programs, although fans of the channel’s more informative, not so “he-man adventure” side will likely get a lot out of it. The $49.95 MSRP on this tidy collection might be a tad high (yes, you can safely wait for this to go on sale), but the contents include a few good docs, several nicely done Modern Marvels episodes, and the entire run of the bombastic but fascinating Inspector America. Recommended.

Matt Hinrichs is a designer, artist and sometime writer who lives in sunny (and usually too hot) Phoenix, Arizona. Among his loves are oranges, going barefoot and blonde 1930s movie comedienne Joyce Compton. Since 2000, he has been scribbling away at Pop Culture weblog Scrubbles.net. One can also follow him on Twitter @scrubbles.