 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Mad Men The Complete First Season by David Bianculli Lionsgate's first-season DVD set of Mad Men, AMC's first, fabulous weekly drama series, is out now -- and if there's one thing that will make this long, hot summer of TV doldrums more tolerable, this is it... Mad Men is set at a Madison Avenue advertising agency in 1960 -- when men were chauvinists, women wore bullet bras, and everyone smoked like the chimney tops in Mary Poppins. Three-martini lunches were common. So were office affairs, ambitious jockeying for position, and secrets. Lots of secrets. Matthew Weiner, a talented writer on The Sopranos, created this series, and started out by getting the cast and look exactly right. Jon Hamm stars as Don Draper, a dashing ad exec with a beautiful blonde wife (January Jones as Betty), more than one woman in his peripheral orbit, and some deep, dark secrets in his distant past. He and his new secretary, Elisabeth Moss as Peggy, are at the core of Mad Men, but it's populated by an office full of captivating characters. There's John Slattery from Desperate Housewives as Don's boss, Roger Sterling, and Vincent Kartheiser (the wayward son on Angel) as Don's office nemesis, Pete Campbell. Most arrestingly of all, there's Christina Hendricks as Joan, the woman who rules the office using a variety of ploys and weapons -- sex appeal being no small part of her arsenal. At least a half dozen other actors and characters also shine in this series, which captures, with delicious wit and delightful details, 1960 in all its glory and folly, up to and including the Nixon-Kennedy presidential election. The grace notes, throwaway lines and period-perfect props all add to the fun. If you're old enough, you may gasp with recognition, seeing once again items you'd long forgotten -- aluminum beer cans that you pierce with sharp-pointed openers, IBM electric typewriters with unwieldy plastic covers, plastic transistor radios. And if you're too young to remember them, you're the right age to be amused and fascinated by them. After an overly obvious pilot episode, Mad Men evolves quickly into a brilliant, subtle TV show, a multilayered character study and an incisive social commentary all at once. Weiner has created a wonderful window into the past, and watching Mad Men on DVD is the ultimate way to enjoy it. Mix some martinis, sit back... and wallow. |
 |
Californication The Complete First Season by David Bianculli Showtime's cable and satellite network reaches about 15 million subscribers, which means the vast majority of America hasn't seen its programming firsthand. That's why secondhand, which means DVD releases, is so meaningful -- and why this new DVD release of the first season of Californication is such good news. Californication stars David Duchovny as Hank Moody, a New York writer who encounters both success and failure after moving to Los Angeles -- success by having his novel sold and adapted into a hit movie, and failure by subsequently enduring writer's block and the failure of his long-term romantic relationship. Natascha McElhone co-stars as Karen, the woman who got away, young Madeleine Martin plays their daughter Becca, Madeline Zima plays Mia, a very young woman who seduces Hank with ulterior motives, and Evan Handler from Sex and the City plays Hank's literary agent and best friend. What's delightful about this series, which premiered last year, is how it manages to be so mature and so immature simultaneously. Hank, at the start of the series, is a self-loathing hedonist, going from bed to bed and woman to woman -- but he's capable of true love, because he adores his daughter (it's mutual), and wants nothing more than to get back with Karen. Problem is, she's engaged to another man. Over the course of the first season, Hank's path to redemption, and to rediscover his muse, takes him (and us) on a fairly wild ride. Situations that seem outlandish, presented only for shock value, are built upon so that their repercussions are fully explored. That includes romantic conquests, one-night stands, office flirtations and parental boundaries. Californication is one of the series, like Dexter, that has redefined and reinvigorated Showtime, propelling it out of HBO's shadow and making it a major creative force in its own right.
|
 |
Saturday Night Live The Complete Third Season by Diane Werts Buried with a donkey/He's my favorite honky/King Tut. We are twowildandcrazyguys! La Dolce Gilda. Yes, it was a very good year. Saturday Night Live in 1977-78 still had its original troupe intact (if you count Bill Murray replacing Chevy Chase) and still had a certifiably underground sensibility, before it morphed into the corporate "institution" of today. The counterculture kids were still running loose on live TV after the grownups went to bed. The Aykroyd/Belushi/Radner cast axis welcomed such varied guest hosts as Michael Palin, Madeline Kahn, Hugh Hefner and, oh my looking back now, O.J. Simpson. (Not to mention an elderly woman as "anyone can host" contest winner.) True rebellion was embodied by punker Elvis Costello, refusing to perform what he'd been told and defiantly changing song in mid-strum. Aykroyd and Belushi's soulful Blues Brothers broke a sweat in a burst of grassroots cool rather than corporate cashing-in. The show's sketch writers weren't so much trying to impact the zeitgeist then as to amuse themselves, in such delirious flights of fancy as Belushi's ubiquitous grunting samurai ("Samurai Night Fever") and Aykroyd's oily adult TV show exploitation-meister E. Buzz Miller. And The Coneheads? What were those writers smoking? (Tell-all books about those early years do tell.) There's more, much more -- Andy Kaufman, Mr. Bill, Meat Loaf, Ray Charles, Father Guido Sarducci, et al. But you don't wanna read about it here. Go. Watch. |
 |
Hiya Kids! A 50's Saturday Morning Box by Diane Werts How perverse WERE the 1950s? Get a load of these kiddie shows. Hosts whose attitudes would probably get them run through criminal databases today. Shrieking studio audiences of tots clearly mainlining sugar before the show. Unbridled, unapologetic product shillery. The innocent days? They're now, people! These folks were sick. This 4-disc set of 21 vintage children's series is an eye-opening -- and eye-rolling -- time trip back to decidedly un-PC days. And, too often, excruciatingly dull days. Don't get me wrong. I love Shout Factory for lovingly collecting and releasing these relics, which I would not expunge from my DVD library on pain of death. (Or having to watch The Bachelorette. Well, maybe, threatened with that.) In fact, any tubehead worth her or his salt is fairly required to watch all four discs, just to be completely educated on this dark yet strangely giddy era from the tube's early days. Beyond the expected titles -- Howdy Doody, Roy Rogers, Sky King and Kukla, Fran & Ollie -- the set collects some near-forgotten rarities that will in centuries to come be studied as artifacts of an utterly demented culture. It's now clear why '60s hippies did drugs. They were trying to recreate the cosmic visions of these delirious video transmissions from their '50s childhood. Take Andy's Gang, a bizarre amalgam -- nay, hallucinatory kaleidoscope -- of puppetry, book reading, studio audience hysteria and live-action tales filled with pale white folks playing "how" and "wampum" Indians. (We called Native Americans that then.) Host Andy Devine -- the squealy- voiced character actor from hundreds of westerns -- seems to be a sort of disembodied presence, almost a hologram floating in and out of the proceedings, sometimes dancing a jig while a talking orangutan plays harmonica. And then there's the frog-puppet command "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!" Entirely inexplicable. Or The Magic Clown. This is a half-hour studio ad for Bonomo's Turkish Taffy, interrupted by snippets of magic tricks, as the child audience- in-a-box (each wearing a fez) contently munches in the background throughout, to the delight of dentists everywhere. Or The Pinky Lee Show. This organ-accompanied collection of vaudeville sketches featuring the title imp is actually pretty clever, as he interacts engagingly with the kid crowd amid parodies of current shows like Dragnet. Could've done without those blackface marionettes, though. Time for Beany may be the most inspired, sprung from the mind of Warner Bros. cartoonist Bob Clampett and featuring the vocal madness of humorist Stan Freberg and animation voice master Daws Butler. Though it's a simple puppets-before-painted-backdrop staging, its tale of globetrotting adventures stops in locations like Tim Buck Tooth. The MAD magazine crowd felt right at home. Oh, man, there's soooo much more, but who can handle more than three or four of these way-out phantasms at a time? Buy the set. Then ration yourself. We cannot be responsible for what happens to your brain on Hiya, Kids!! shows! |
 |
The Best of The Colbert Report Okay so maybe Stephen Colbert is not going to run for President after all. But at least we have this single-disc "Best of" sampler to imagine what might have been. The star of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report is in fine, funny form here, and the selections - culled from various episodes, cherrypicked to present concentrated doses of Colbert's cleverly skewed comedy and commentary. It's great to watch the opening of the very first show, for example, and realize in retrospect how fully realized his vision was from the start. Show #1 introduced the word "truthiness," which actually entered the vernacular as a result. And if nothing else, this disc includes some very memorable guest appearances, including a Ben & Jerry's ice-cream duel between Colbert and Willie Nelson (both of whom had flavors named after them), and a post-Emmys show in which Colbert is angry at Barry Manilow for "stealing" his award. Before those segments are over, Colbert sings with them both. The most outrageous guest on the package, though, is an unlikely one: Jane Fonda, featured in a pair of appearances. In the first, she's there, along with fellow feminist Gloria Steinem, to promote a radio network for women. In the second, she's there to promote her movie, Georgia Rules. In the first, Colbert undercuts the seriousness of the interview by moving it to a kitchen set, for a segment called "Cooking with Feminists." Wearing a "Kiss the Cook" apron, he chats to Fonda and Steinem while getting them to help him prepare an apple pie. Fonda, though, takes the upper hand, and flusters Colbert visibly, by taking the advice of his apron and kissing him, more than once. Then, on her second, solo appearance, Fonda takes charge again, by moving from her side of the table as Colbert begins the interview. She sits on his lap, plants a big kiss on him, and begins nuzzling his ear and talking about his soft lips. If that's not worth the price of a DVD, I don't know what is. |
 |
Seinfeld - The Complete Series If you've bought all the individual seasons of Seinfeld to this point, getting the stand-alone ninth-season set, to complete the collection, makes a lot more sense. What you'll be missing, basically: a beautiful, exclusive coffee-table Seinfeld book (it doesn't unfold into a coffee table, but it's still impressive), and the new jewel in the crown: a one-hour chat reuniting all four series stars with Seinfeld co-creator Larry David. A sampler of the conversation is included in the season nine set, but only Seinfeld - The Complete Series has the complete reunion chat. It's lots of fun, more like eavesdropping than watching an in-studio filmed conversation - and Jerry Seinfeld sets up the whole thing with a monologue, about Seinfeld, that proves the guy still knows how to write, and deliver, a monologue. What this set is about, really, however, is the show itself. All 180 episodes are here, from the Seinfeld Chronicles pilot (which began with Seinfeld's Jerry and Jason Alexander's George arguing about the proper placement of shirt buttons) to the hugely popular finale (which ended with Jerry and George arguing about... the proper placement of shirt buttons). No hugging, no learning, all the way to the end. Seinfeld is one of the best, most influential sitcoms ever made. It holds up extremely well to repeated viewings, and appeals to a wide range of viewers and ages. Home libraries have only so much room for mega-DVD sets such as this one, and price is at least as major a consideration - though hefty discounts are easy to find. But really: If you're only going to collect, or give as gifts, the very best, Seinfeld - The Complete Series belongs way up there on that list. |
 |
The Singing Detective The idea of "Classics to Consider" is to suggest TV shows that have been out on DVD for a while, but may have escaped your notice - and are perfect to seek out for those "nothing-to-watch" rainy days (or, if you don't have cable, summers). In that spirit, the very first, and best, such buried treasure to offer here is Dennis Potter's 1986 BBC masterpiece, The Singing Detective. Over the years, from the quickly failed Cop Rock to the instantly failed Viva Laughlin, TV shows have tried to emulate Potter's success at mounting a "drama with music," as he called it. None has come close, not even remotely. Potter came closest, with his own previous Pennies from Heaven miniseries. Please don't confuse the long-form TV versions of Pennies, or Detective, with their pallid big-screen counterparts. The movies don't work; the TV shows never miss. That's because, like novels, they take full advantage of the time and space given to explore themes and characters. But unlike a novel, The Singing Detective plays with image, music, and so many other tricks that it's a pure television creation. It weaves a handful of story threads into one twisting, turning, amazing arc, like a double-helix DNA strand, only tripled. Michael Gambon stars as pulp novelist and hospital patient Philip Marlow, and... well, see for yourself. Please. My enthusiasm for The Singing Detective is so great that I wrote the liner notes for the DVD - and no, I don't make any money off any sale, not unless you click and order it here. I just feel like everyone who cares about quality TV should see this masterpiece. Amazingly, it has never been televised in the United States on any national network - neither on PBS nor on cable - and was shown, back in 1987 and 1988 and repeated a few years later, only by public TV stations on an ad hoc mini-network. If you go to the FRESH AIR FAVORITES page, you can find and hear my original Fresh Air review of The Singing Detective. Or you can just trust me and order it now. As I wrote in the DVD liner notes: "If this is your first exposure to The Singing Detective, prepare to be blown away." |
| <-- Previous |
