‘Flightplan, ‘The Fog’ top home-video releases
Published 9:00 pm Monday, January 23, 2006
Selected home-video releases:
“Flightplan” – Jodie Foster resumes her “Panic Room” routine, this time at 40,000 feet. Foster plays a widow returning home from Europe with her husband’s body in the cargo hold and her 6-year-old daughter missing in mid-flight aboard a trans-Atlantic jet – with passengers and crew convinced she’s a crazy lady whose kid doesn’t exist.
The DVD’s behind-the-scenes materials for last fall’s hit thriller examine casting, including Peter Sarsgaard as an air marshal, Erika Christensen as a flight attendant and Sean Bean as the plane’s captain, visual effects and the design of the film’s mammoth jetliner. Director Robert Schwentke offers commentary. $29.99. (Disney)
“The Fog” – Producer John Carpenter oversees a remake of his 1980 horror tale about a town tormented by its dark past one night when a fog rolls in from the sea. Tom Welling, Maggie Grace and Selma Blair star in the feeble tale of vengeful ghosts of lepers killed in a shipwreck a century earlier, who pop out of the mist to get payback.
The movie is available in a full-screen edition with the PG-13 theatrical cut or a widescreen unrated version that adds a few minutes of footage. Both DVDs include deleted footage accompanied by commentary from director Rupert Wainwright, who also offers commentary for the full unrated cut of the movie. Other extras include three background features. $28.95. (Sony)
“The Aristocrats” – As one-joke movies go, this may be the best. Comics Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza direct a foul-mouthed romp that gets to the heart of sick humor and why it makes us laugh. Jillette and Provenza capture about 100 of their fellow comedians – among them George Carlin, Drew Carey and Sarah Silverman – discussing and riffing on a legendary filthy backstage joke comics have been sharing with one another for decades.
The DVD offers deleted moments with many of Provenza and Jillette’s interviewees, along with renditions of the joke by amateurs who won a “Be an Aristocrat” promotional contest. Jillette and Provenza also offer commentary. $29.99. (ThinkFilm)
“Oliver Twist” – Roman Polanski picked an empty pocket with the follow-up to his Holocaust saga “The Pianist,” which earned him a best-director Academy Award. Polanski’s take on Charles Dickens’ tale of orphan boy Oliver sumptuously re-creates the physical environs of 19th century London but fails to inject much emotional or dramatic weight to the story. Barney Clark stars as Oliver, an urchin scorned and abused by society, who finds a dubious foster family among the young pickpockets in the gang run by the sinister Fagin (Ben Kingsley). The DVD has three features, one offering reflections on the film by Polanski, one examining the design, music, costumes and other crafts, and the third presenting interviews with the movie’s child stars. $28.95. (Sony)
“The Virgin Spring” – Rape, murder, vicious vengeance, savage paganism contending with the incipient morality of Christianity. This is not your typical Ingmar Bergman film. Based on a 13th century Swedish ballad, the film stars Bergman regular Max von Sydow as patriarch of a Christian farm family bent on revenge over the violation and murder of a daughter by heathens.
An Oscar winner for foreign-language film, the 1960 tale comes to DVD with an introduction by filmmaker Ang Lee and commentary with Bergman scholar Birgitta Steene, along with interviews by two of the film’s lead actresses. The DVD also has an audio recording of a 1975 seminar Bergman conducted at the American Film Institute and an essay by “Virgin Spring” screenwriter Ulla Isaksson. $39.95. (Criterion)
TV on DVD
“Dallas: The Complete Fourth Season” – Year four of the prime-time soap opera solves the mystery of who shot J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), the conniving oil baron who was blasted within an inch of his miserable life in the previous season’s cliffhanger finale. Season four comes in a four-disc set with 23 episodes, plus a 2004 TV special “Dallas Reunion: Return to Southfork.” $39.98. (Warner Bros.)
“The Time Tunnel: Volume One” – Irwin Allen’s 1960s sci-fi series stars Robert Colbert and James Darren as scientists at a top-secret government lab who find themselves caroming from one historical event to another after their time-travel experiment goes haywire. $39.98. (20th Century Fox)
“The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder: Punk &New Wave” – Late-night talk-show host Tom Snyder was scarcely a punk-rock fan, but he welcomed many key players of the 1970s musical revolution to his show. A two-disc set gathers eight episodes featuring interviews and performances by Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, the Ramones, the Jam and others. $29.98. (Shout)
Other new releases
“Thumbsucker” – Sucking your thumb is not just for toddlers anymore. Lou Pucci plays a teenager whose family and his New Age dentist (Keanu Reeves) go to extremes to break the kid of his oral fixation. $26.96. (Sony)
“Educating Rita” – The wistful 1983 comic gem is a modern “Pygmalion” tale starring Michael Caine as a writer and English professor wallowing in disillusionment, who finds himself falling for a working-class spitfire (Julie Walters). $14.94. (Sony)
“Repo Man” – Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton star in Alex Cox’s bizarre 1984 tale about repo men, shadowy government agents, rabble-rousers and a glowing alien presence in a car trunk. $19.98. (Universal)
Some DVD issues may not have corresponding VHS releases. VHS prices vary widely.
Jodie Foster stars in “Flightplan,” out today on DVD.
