New on Disc: 'Man-Trap' and more …

Man-Trap

Olive, Drama, $24.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Jeffrey Hunter, David Janssen, Stella Stevens.
1961. Well, it’s called Man-Trap and features Stella Stevens at a special time in her career (first starring role, in fact). The title’s meaning can be presumably extended to embrace the perilous limits of male buddy-dom nurtured by mutual combat experience as one talks the other into getting involved in a heist that involves ripping off a Central American dictator in a cheeky airport ambush rationalized by its perpetrators as a half-patriotic scheme. But no, Stevens is the indisputable trap the story is selling in the only picture ever directed solo by actor Edmond O’Brien — the kind of tawdry enterprise (from a John D. MacDonald novel) where you play up the sexual angle because it’s your own production company’s dough invested in the enterprise.
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The Crowd Roars

Available via WBshop.com’s Warner Archive
Warner, Drama, $18.95 DVD-R, NR.
Stars James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak.
1932. In part because Howard Hawks’ early non-film résumé included racecar driving, this pre-FDR mix of “wheels” and (sometimes) hooch has the makings of a prototypically crackling melodrama directed by the auteur Pantheon heavyweight. Instead, as it now stands, it’s only a “might-have-been” with a few crackling scenes because the original 85-minute running time was long ago shorn to 70. As a result, characters who hardly know each other in one scene seem to be chummy in the next, and fleeting intros segue into amorous affection in a blink. This is an endeavor where we have to have to fill in some blanks, though lead James Cagney was explosive in this early part of his career.
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New on Disc: 'End of the Road' and more …

End of the Road

Warner, Drama, $19.97 DVD, ‘R.’
Stars Stacy Keach, James Earl Jones, Harris Yulin, Dorothy Tristan.
1970. The late Aram Avakian’s provocative mess (though possibly a calculated one) of John Barth’s novel has gone all but unseen since its tentative release early in 1970, when it became another of those occasional films featuring real actors to receive an ‘X’ rating. Unlike others in the club that have come to seem relatively tame with the passage of time, Road even now falls into the ‘hard R’ category. 
Extras: The DVD’s accompanying documentary was directed by Steven Soderbergh.
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A New Leaf

Olive, Comedy, $24.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, ‘G.’
Stars Walter Matthau, Elaine May, Jack Weston, James Coco.
1971. Embraced by cult movie fanciers and even some big-name critics at the time, Elaine May’s litigated debut comedy didn’t fare very well with the masses after going over budget and its shooting schedule.
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Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

Universal, Comedy, $14.98 DVD, $26.98 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange.
1948. Universal’s horror legacy is treated with the utmost respect one would hope for in a send-up that does justice to both halves of the cast. Many consider this Abbott and Costello’s best film. Universal has done a very nice job on the Blu-ray (sharp imagery is a key plus when it comes to shadowy horror).
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New on Disc: 'Pursued' and more …

Pursued (Blu-ray Review)

Olive, Western, $19.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Teresa Wright, Robert Mitchum, Judith Anderson, Dean Jagger.
1947. Pursued has a reputation as one of the better movies directed by longtime Hollywood vet Raoul Walsh. The emotions in Walsh’s oft-termed “noir Western” are dominant enough but have been forced under the surface. As witness to horrific events involving his family that he immediately represses, young Jeb (to be played as an adult by Robert Mitchum) is whisked away and adopted by a female stranger. To a great deal the movie works for me because Teresa Wright (top-billed) and Mitchum make an imposing couple — not merely on screen but even in the ad art.
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Lonesome (Blu-ray Review)

Criterion, Drama, $29.95 DVD, $39.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Glenn Tryon, Barbara Kent.
1928. Paul Fejos’ film about the affair of a punch press operator (Glenn Tryon) and a switchboard operator (Barbara Kent) will undoubtedly end up being regarded as one of the home entertainment events of the year.
Extras: The disc includes two Fejos features from 1929: the silent The Last Performance and the mob-backdropped musical talkie Broadway.
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Having a Wild Weekend (DVD Review)

Available via WBshop.com’s Warner Archive
Warner, Comedy, $17.95 DVD-R, NR.
Stars Lanny Davidson, Dave Clark, Barbara Ferris.
1965. The first feature of cult director John Boorman was released in home-based England as Catch Us If You Can — the same title as a major hit recorded by its featured stars The Dave Clark Five.
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New on Disc: 'Airport' and more …

Airport

Universal, Drama, $14.98 DVD, $19.98 Blu-ray, ‘G.’
Stars Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Helen Hayes, Maureen
Stapleton, Jacqueline Bisset.
1970. Though perhaps best known today for launching one of filmdom’s cheesiest franchises — and for being one of the most famously undeserving Best Picture Oscar nominees of the past 40 or so years — writer-director George Seaton’s blockbuster adaptation of Arthur Hailey’s bestseller helped Universal take its first great stride as a modern-era commercial force. Producer Ross Hunter’s shrewdly assembled button-pusher was for moviegoers whose idea of cinema was the equivalent of a beach-read, and Airport juggled stories that included blizzard-ish flying conditions, busting-up marriages for both of its male protagonists (Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin) and a financially desperate passenger trying to blow up the plane so his wife can collect the insurance. All this plus Alfred Newman’s last big-screen score (though it’s very atypical and not one of his most distinguished). The result is better when the personal stories get momentarily jettisoned so that the movie can concentrate on the mechanics of getting a crippled plane to land. Of course, the critics were never going to dig Airport, which still suffers from comedy relief that plays to the third balcony (a nun swigging hooch, an obnoxious know-it-all kid passenger and a priest only half-accidentally belting an obnoxious big-mouth across the puss).
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The Dark Mirror

Olive, Mystery, $24.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Olivia de Havilland, Lew Ayres, Thomas Mitchell.
1946. If Dark Mirror does (arguably) bring up the relative rear of the heyday of the career of Robert Siodmak, who directed a string of noir thrillers in the 1940s, the movie is excellent in one major regard: Olivia de Havilland plays twin sisters (one a sweetheart, the other psychotic) and does a smashing job.  One of the sisters likely has murdered a doctor for what we much later learn is a credible, though hardly justifiable, reason. But though legal duplicity doesn’t seem too consistent with the “nice” persona exhibited by the innocent one (whichever sis she is), both siblings engage in those games twins sometimes play where they temporarily switch identities for fun. This doesn’t go down too well with the frustrated flatfoot (Thomas Mitchell) who seeks professional help in cracking the case. As a psychiatrist and murder-victim acquaintance who script-conveniently specializes in “twins,” co-star Lew Ayres is pretty well forced into a clinical all-business role — though Siodmak does manage to reap some reasonable suspense out of mechanical markings and swerves on lie-detector graph paper.
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Big Leaguer

Available via WBshop.com’s Warner Archive
Warner, Comedy, $17.95 DVD-R, NR.
Stars Edward G. Robinson, Vera-Ellen, Jeff Richards.
1953. No one will ever mistake Robert Aldrich’s screen debut for an example of auteur antics, but just the mental image of Edward G. Robinson in a jockstrap (which director Aldrich mercifully spares us) gives the movie’s 70 minutes a certain level of fascination if baseball is part of your makeup. As the script has it, Robinson’s continued employment as the New York Giants manager may be contingent on his winning a game between his team’s farmhands and the Brooklyn Dodgers farmhands.
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New on Disc: 'Bye Bye Birdie' on Blu-ray and more …

Bye Bye Birdie (Blu-ray)

Available via www.ScreenArchives.com
Twilight Time, Musical, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Janet Leigh, Dick Van Dyke, Ann-Margret, Bobby Rydell.
1963. According to Julie Kirgo’s typically ace liner notes, smitten director George Sidney spent $40,000 out of his own pocket to film the famous opening where Ann-Margret (against a seriously true-blue backdrop) more or less comes out of a dream to belt a title tune that was not in the Broadway original. Ann-Margaret’s seminal role cast her as a storybook teen in Central Ohio selected from thousands to receive a ceremonial last kiss from an Elvis-parody of a rock star (Jesse Pearson as Conrad Birdie) just before his own drafting. And, this smooch is set to take place on “The Ed Sullivan Show” (with Ed, by the way, having what looks to be a grand old time playing himself here). Birdie may be the liveliest of Sidney’s stage-hit bunch — and may be the best musical of his very up-and-down career next to Judy Garland’s The Harvey Girls. For this, we can credit a good score with at least one standard (“A Lot of Livin’ To Do”), spirited casting (including Birdie stage vet Dick Van Dyke in his big-screen debut) and the bang-bang combo of Onna White choreography with brassy Johnny Green scoring.
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Fidel

Cinema Libre, Documentary, $19.95 DVD, NR.
1969. As documentaries on despots go, Saul Landaus’s Fidel isn’t up to the gold standard of General Idi Amin Dada, the 1974 Barbet Schroeder portrait that did, after all, provide shots of the former Ugandan president’s uncountable children by uncountable wives, hungry crocodiles observing peaceful river cruises from the sidelines and the hilarious scene where Amin cheats in a swim race (very much in the Sacha Baron Cohen mode). Still, Landau’s achievement does make a rather fascinating view and deserves more praise than what it merits for simply existing. I can’t imagine any political junkie who wouldn’t want to see it. Landau and his crew spent a week in 1968 with Cuban president Fidel Castro in the kind of great outdoors that is likely akin to where he lived and plotted his Cuban revolution — all as the dictator turned on charm that, at least superficially, seems a lot more natural than what we see from a lot of American politicians. We even see Castro in a pickup baseball game that’s worth the price of admission. There’s even a section on political dissidents, some of whom have been imprisoned and some who are seen preparing a move to Miami. This release, which includes a 23-minute featurette (“Cuba and Fidel”) and lots of illuminating newsreel footage in the main event, is still a remarkable surprise.
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Young Cassidy

Available via WBshop.com’s Warner Archive
Warner, Comedy, $17.95 DVD-R, NR.
Stars Rod Taylor, Maggie Smith, Julie Christie, Michael Redgrave.
1965. John Ford directing Julie Christie sounds like one of those couldn’t-be miracles of ’60s cinema, but, in fact, it did happen. Though billed as “A John Ford Production,” MGM’s biopic of Irish playwright Sean O’Casey (called John Cassidy here) was an unfortunately timed project for Ford. Alcoholic Ford only managed to direct about 10 minutes of Young Cassidy’s 110 before leaving the picture for health reasons. But these include the early and (for Ford) quite sexy scene between lead Rod Taylor and euphemistically termed showgirl played by Christie. The Ford replacement who got solo on-screen credit was Jack Cardiff, an absolute contender to be called the greatest cinematographer ever.
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New on Disc: 'Johnny Guitar' and more …

Johnny Guitar

Olive, Western, $24.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Scott Brady, Mercedes McCambridge.
1954. If you’re a fan of middle-aged Joan Crawford, a cultist for director Nicholas Ray, a feminist of either sex, gay, a student of anti-
McCarthy allegories, or love Victor Young, Peggy Lee and the kind of expressionistic color that drives Martin Scorsese crazy in the good way, you may understand why few movies ever have given me the degree of sustained pleasure as this one. Crawford plays a gambling saloon owner who squares off against a local land baron for the rights to New Mexico real estate that may increase in value by a railroad expansion. 
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High Time (Blu-ray)

Available via ScreenArchives.com
Twilight Time, Comedy, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Bing Crosby, Fabian, Tuesday Weld, Nicole Maurey, Richard Beymer.
1960. On paper any day of the week, I’ll take the concept of Blake Edwards directing Bing Crosby and Fabian (now, there’s a battle of the bands) as college roomies — even without Tuesday Weld hanging around the dorm and frat house in and with an array of costumes and men.
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They Made Me a Fugitive (Blu-ray)

Kino Lorber, Drama, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Sally Gray, Trevor Howard, Griffith Jones.
1947. Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, this is a very tough movie for its day. Amid the noir glisten (the restoration has snap), the narrative keeps renewing itself, all the way to an ending that is not sugar-coated.
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New on Disc: 'A Separation' and more …

A Separation

Street 8/21/12
Sony Pictures, Drama, B.O. $7.1 million, $30.99 DVD, $35.99 Blu-ray, ‘PG-13’ for mature thematic material.
In Persian with English subtitles.
Stars Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini.
2011. Given its Oscar, 99% RottenTomatoes.com rating (yeah, there’s always some out there person who …) and best foreign-language-release citations from London critics, the Cesar folks and virtually every U.S. voting band — pause here for a huff-puff — Iran’s brilliantly constructed domestic drama doesn’t need any piling on in the good way from me. But it revs me up to do it, so I will. For me last year, A Separation was in the pantheon with Hugo, The Tree of Life, Margaret and Alex Gibney’s ESPN documentary Catching Hell. And it comes closer to perfection than a couple of those.

Repeat again: domestic drama. That it takes place in an Islamic Republic absolutely informs and affects what happens on screen, but this is an achievement more casual moviegoers can’t get away with sloughing off because he or she doesn’t want to deal with a “heavy” political drama. Ultimately, we’re in divorce court, and what could be more American than that? Even as the story opens, Simin (Leila Hatami) and Nader (Peyman Moadi) have hit the wall, martially speaking. She has steadfastly elected to go live in the West with their pre-adolescent daughter sooner than her husband would like, due to the Alzheimer’s incapacitation of his father. The fate of the child (played by the real-life daughter of the film’s writer/director Asghar Farhadi) is in the fate of a judge who’d probably rather be doing just about anything else than rendering the decision. The set-up, to make a somewhat gonzo Hollywood comparison, makes me think a little of Judy Holliday and Aldo Ray in the tragicomic Garson Kanin/Ruth Gordon/George Cukor The Marrying Kind, where both participants invite sympathy. The treatment here is obviously more solemn, which suits the material.

Still, we do understand the motivations of both parties in Farhadi’s remarkably even-keeled treatment — an attitude that still prevails when the story kicks into second gear once Nader is forced to hire a caretaker on the sly (or at least her sly) to care for dad when everyone (and Simin now permanently) is away from the premises for work or school. This is perhaps the closest the movie comes to dramatizing a culture whose twain can’t be expected to meet for some international audiences. Complicating matters for Western eyes isn’t the influence of an oppressive government but basic religion. At least some of the awful things that end up prevailing might have been averted if the hired hand (her woes already endless) didn’t have to conceal from her husband that she is laboring exclusively in male company (their young daughter’s being along doesn’t count). Just as before, Farhadi is sympathetic to all parties even including the domestic’s hothead husband (though his tendency to toss fire on the flames definitely presses it). As a result of this precise story construction, the film’s running time is a tad over two hours, but we never feel it. The proof here is that the screenplay got a lot of year-end acclaim, just by itself.

Extras: Sony’s release includes a 30-minute Q&A on stage with Farhadi, an interviewer and a translator. Interestingly, he seems to understand fully the interviewer’s questions but answers in his own language, leaving it to the translator to make certain the fine print gets over to the audience. There’s also a short featurette about Farhadi’s background that features clips from previous works that look interesting, though slightly (from what we see) lighter in tone. And yet, A Separation is about as accessible as movies get — and really makes me wonder about a typical Internet goon whose comment I was reading several months ago that was along the lines of: “How can such tripe be earning critical praise? These people are trying to kill us.” Not the poor schmo in divorce court, buddy, though there really are a lot of Americans spouting off on the Web who’d be comfortable in an oppressive political regime themselves.

Bound

Olive, Drama, $19.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, ‘R’ for strong sexuality, violence and language. Unrated version also included.
Stars Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon, Joe Pantoliano, John P. Ryan, Christopher Meloni.
1996. In this jumpstart revitalization of the familiar double-cross/caper genre, the Wachowskis’ screen debut, a glorified dim-bulb who launders money for the mob (the greatest big-screen Joe Pantoliano ever) is slow to figure that his apartment mate of five years (Jennifer Tilly) has gay hots for the plumber/handywoman (Gina Gershon) who has just moved in upstairs. Together, the two women plot to “lift” the nearly $2 million that’s hanging like laundry in the Pantoliano/Tilly apartment. The movie, now and then, is a little like what the Coen Brothers did with their own debut launch, Blood Simple. Both films are kind of a case of, “give us a few actors, a little money and a worn but bedrock genre — and we’ll supply all the attitude you’ll need.”
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The Hanging Tree

Available via WBshop.com’s Warner Archive
Warner, Drama, $17.95 DVD-R, NR.
Stars Gary Cooper, Maria Schell, Karl Malden, George C. Scott.
1959. The Hanging Tree has its share of angry characters, starting with the alternately warm and dictatorial physician Gary Cooper plays — one with a mysterious past. Based on a novel by Dorothy M. Johnson, who also wrote a short story that eventually led to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the yarn deals with this mining camp newcomer/doc and an attractive Swiss immigrant (Maria Schell) whom he nurses back to health after she is injured in a stagecoach robbery. George C. Scott makes his screen debut as a disapproving preacher. It’s good to see this Technicolor release in its proper 1.85:1 aspect ratio.
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New on Disc: 'Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines' and more …

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (Blu-ray)

Available via ScreenArchives.com
Twilight Time, Comedy, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Stuart Whitman, Sarah Miles, James Fox, Terry-Thomas.
1965. Director-co-writer Ken Annakin’s real-life love for aviation permeates every frame of Machines, and the movie is beautiful to look at. Though not the ultimate in star power, Stuart Whitman, Sarah Miles and James Fox are easy to take as the three points of a love triangle.
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Rio Grande

Olive, Western, $19.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Victor McLaglen, Ben Johnson.
1950. Overall, Rio Grande is the loosey-goosiest of director John Ford’s famed Cavalry trilogy, which began with Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.  Olive’s is a solid Blu-ray job, threading the needle between too much grain and not enough.
Extras: The Leonard Maltin making-of featurette carries over from the old DVD version.
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There’s No Business Like Show Business (Blu-ray)

Fox, Musical, $24.99 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Ethel Merman, Donald O’Connor, Marilyn Monroe, Dan Dailey.
1954. Marilyn Monroe is kind of an appendage here to a showbiz family that manages to keep performing with humongous production budgets even after vaudeville dies. Yet her “Heat Wave” number was such a conversation piece at the time that you can see why Fox Entertainment has also included Business on its new $99.98 Forever Marilyn Blu-ray box of seven Monroe features.
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New on Disc: 'Force of Evil' and more …

Force of Evil

Olive, Drama, $19.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars John Garfield, Beatrice Pearson, Thomas Gomez, Marie Windsor.
1948. Though it’s something you can effortlessly intuit all by yourself, Martin Scorsese has long acknowledged the profound influence of this superlative film noir toughie on Mean Streets, Goodfellas and (in its treatment of moral responsibility between cantankerous brothers) Raging Bull. And the director does so here as well in a short intro carried over from a long-ago Republic VHS release, though this snappy new transfer has nothing remotely “VHS” about it. Like Olive’s concurrent release of Body and Soul, Force of Evil is a model of how urban-oriented black-and-white ought to look. Launched by a most effective voiceover by lead John Garfield, the subject is the numbers racket. Garfield plays a shady New York attorney whose associates are planning to rig it so that the back-store “banks” that have taken the wagers will go bankrupt, and the string-pulling vultures will come in for the plucking and an immediate takeover. But the blueprint doesn’t quite work as constructed. In addition to featuring one of the definitive John Garfield performances, Evil was the first of only two movies to feature the ethereal Beatrice Pearson (the other is the following year’s Lost Boundaries).
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Mean Streets

Warner, Drama, $19.98 Blu-ray, ‘R.’
Stars Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, Amy Robinson, Richard Romanus.
1973. Martin Scorsese’s career-maker set in New York City’s Little Italy section is a movie with a look that has always been a partial product of its low budget and a preponderance of darkly-lit sequences that take place in a neighborhood bar. Anyone who was paying attention just knew that when the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” hit the Mean Streets soundtrack just after the Warner logo, a good musical ride was in store. It may be hard for younger viewers to appreciate just how exciting and unpredictable Robert De Niro was in the early days. I can’t recall a more chilling mix of goofiness and tinderbox sociopathic behavior than his portrayal of Streets’ Johnny Boy, a notorious neighborhood deadbeat and welcher of (sometimes high-interest) debts.
Extras: There’s been some disappointment voiced that Warner didn’t follow the lead of France’s Region-B Mean Streets Blu-ray release by loading up this edition with extras beyond carrying over the DVD’s commentary and a promotional featurette.
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Margaret (Extended Cut)

Fox, Drama, $39.99 BD/DVD combo, NR.
Stars Anna Paquin, J. Smith-Cameron, Jean Reno, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon.
2012. Writer-director Kenneth Lonergan’s cause célèbre must be the most written-about and least seen contemporary movie of the modern age, but the inclusion of its significantly superior “long version” as part of Fox’s Blu-ray/DVD combo will likely give the rolling ball an extra kick. In the old days, it could take decades for an ignored movie to pick up a cult rep, but there are simply too many venues for criticism these says for anything to languish in obscurity for very long. Especially since audiences crawl on their hands and knees across the desert each year like Gibson Gowland at the end of Stroheim’s Greed, looking for grown-up entertainment with actors they’ve heard of for the first 46 weeks of every year. And especially since you now cannot conceivably construct a list of greatest movies devoted to late-adolescent angst without including Lonergan’s one-of-a-kind.

The playwright made his screen debut with 2000’s You Can Count on Me, an almost perfect “little” movie that got Oscar nominations for his script and for lead Laura Linney (though amazingly, not for Mark Ruffalo, who at least got put on the map by the film). Even in its short 150-minute version, Margaret is not little; it’s one of the few full-scale screen epics I know about New York City apartment living, which is definitely “cramped” subject matter to anyone not living outside of such a provincial existence. Though Margaret barely got even a token release late last year (and got dumped for its sole local engagement at one dinky auditorium in my city just this past May), it was filmed in 2005 before becoming embroiled into such an extended legal imbroglio over its final cut that even Martin Scorsese came in to help with the editing. Thus, the movie has a disorienting 9/11 sensibility whose added power would have been something to experience with a proper release date.

Right off the bat, before the tragic incident that propels the rest, we see in a classroom political argument stemming in part from 9/11 that Anna Paquin’s “Lisa” (not a Margaret; the movie’s title comes from a poem) is not only tightly wired but tightly wired and smart. This is a combination that, if not all-out deadly, can be a real pain in the behind, and there are a few times in this movie when you want to take the James Cagney grapefruit and let her have it. But soon, there’s the horrific incident that to a great degree Lisa unintentionally perpetrates, and Lonergan wallows in its gore because we have to see how it informs almost everything Lisa does for the rest of the movie.

The longer 186-minute version, which this combo release includes on standard DVD only, has such a different sound mix from what played theatrically; at first, I thought my theater’s speakers simply had not been up to the task a couple months earlier. This long version’s track is far more aggressive and changes the entire movie’s emphasis, allowing us to overhear conversations of neighbors and restaurant patrons. The emphasis is to re-enforce what an unlikable character played brilliantly by Jeannie Berlin eventually tells Lisa in white-hot anger: that the latter can be depended upon to make everything that happens about her. It’s now great to be able to say that Berlin (Oscar-nominated for her all-timer in 1972’s The Heartbreak Kid) is no longer a one-movie-wonder.

Margaret is many things, including a mother-daughter drama in which (real-life Lonergan spouse) J. Smith-Cameron plays an actress and single mom striving to raise two children (troubled daughter included), while simultaneously delivering upon the first huge break of her professional career. The long version’s added 36 minutes strengthen the subplot about mom’s unlikely courtship by a computer software maven (Jean Reno). But the big difference comes late when we learn definitively that a second traumatic experience for Lisa (yeah, she really needed another one) really did happen — and that a mere reference to it in the shorter version wasn’t just a showboating assertion to make an impression on one of her teachers (Matt Damon). By the way, the classroom scenes here are very pointed — taking place in a fairly permissive high school for upscale Jews (as opposed to, say, one of those authoritarian joints as in How Green Was My Valley where the schoolmaster whacks on the wrists with a flogging cane). It is unusual to see this type of learning venue portrayed on screen — though most of us, alas, have had a by-the-book teacher like the one Matthew Broderick plays with pinpoint precision.

In a just society, the long version of Margaret will eventually become the standard version (paging Criterion, paging Criterion), but you never know; Barry Levinson’s eventual DVD re-edit of The Natural was incomparably superior to what played theaters in 1984, but when Sony put out the Blu-ray, it was of the original rush job the studio had to have because the picture was going to launch Tri-Star. Of course, in a just society, Lonergan’s unwieldy flirtation with greatness would have seen the light at some point a lot closer to 2005 (when it was filmed) than the barely peek-a-boo spotting it rated late last year. As it stands now, Paquin’s is probably the greatest unseen performance of the past quarter century, and I have to believe that with a normal release somewhere along the way, the critics’ organizations would have given her achievement some serious love in year-end voting. To me, it could and should have (which is different than “would have”) been the Oscar pick — and an easy one at that — in a lot of modern-era best actress contests.
 

New on Disc: 'Body and Soul' and more …

Body and Soul

Street 7/31
Olive, Drama, $19.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars John Garfield, Lilli Palmer, Hazel Brookes, William Conrad, Anne Revere, Canada Lee.
1947. The new Blu-ray of Hollywood’s first truly grown-up boxing movie is so pristine that the images suggest moving versions of what we might see in a glossy coffee table book devoted to the great cinematographers.
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Singin’ in the Rain: 60th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition

Warner, Musical, $14.96 two-DVD set, $19.98 Blu-ray, $84.99 BD/DVD boxed set, NR.
Stars Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen.
1952. Warner Home Entertainment has given this MGM release the full deluxe treatment, with sterling sound recording (taking the film’s 60 years into consideration) and a visual presentation that isn’t many notches down from the best vintage Technicolor treatments we’ve seen on Blu-ray. 
Extras: Even the bargain $20 Blu-ray includes a new 50-minute tribute documentary. The combo collector’s edition offers a few unique features: a 48-page booklet, miniaturized lobby art from the day and an umbrella.
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The Last Days of Disco (Blu-ray)

Criterion, Comedy, $39.95 Blu-ray, ‘R’ for some elements involving sexuality and drugs.
Stars Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale.
1998. A clean and colorful Blu-ray upgrade of what I now think is one of the most engaging movies of its year, with commentary and extras carried over from the DVD.
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