This Christmas/Chanukah/Kwaanza/ Festivus, there are tons of extravagant ways to put a big fat smile on the face of that special movie lover in your life. Lavish, multi-disc box sets like The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection, That's Entertainment, Gone With the Wind, the Star Wars trilogy and George Romero's original Dawn of the Dead will surely have just about any movie fan foaming happily at the mouth. Ditto for those collectible DVD editions of just about every episode of every TV show ever made, from Star Trek to Pee-Wee's Playhouse. On the other hand, there are lots of digital gift ideas every bit as soul-satisfying as those mammoth and often pricey box sets, without being quite such obvious choices (or forcing you to take out a second mortgage on the house). A DVD is the gift that keeps on giving, and here are a few choice ideas to get you and yours into the holiday spirit.
FESTIVAL EXPRESS
In 1970, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, The Band and an assortment of other legendary musicians spent the better part of a week traveling aboard a train that transported them to a series of big rock festivals taking place across Canada. The festivals were pretty remarkable events in and of themselves, but the real show took place on the train itself, a traveling 24/7 party where the famous, the talented and the simply enthusiastic could kick back, get happily stoned and jam. Festival Express is essentially a home movie of that party, and it offers a rare and very intimate look at some of classic rock's biggest icons caught with their guards waaay down. Needless to say, there's a bit of less-than-essential noodling going on here too, but some of the exchanges (both musical and personal) between the performers are absolutely priceless, and a couple of Joplin's performances are as good as we'll ever get. We get even more of Janis in New Line's two-disc set of Festival Express, which pairs the movie (looking a bit soft but basically very nice for 35-year-old footage) with some extremely entertaining interviews with the surviving musicians, a solid making-of feature and, best of all, an additional 50 minutes of previously unseen performance footage, including an intensely emotional Tears of Rage by the Band, and Joplin's positively sizzling rendition of Move Over. It's a lovely little time capsule permeated with peace, love and enough good musical vibes to make you forgive the fact that Sha Na Na is also along for the ride.
SHORT CUTS
Here's one that's a little bittersweet, but just the sort of satisfying slice o' life the holidays seem to demand. Robert Altman's 1993 Short Cuts is an exhila-rating tour-de-force of cinematic artifice and honesty, brilliantly synthesizing the exotic fantasy-landscapes of the director's Three Women and Brewster McCloud with the unblinking naturalism of just about everything else he did in between MASH and Popeye. Based on the writings of Raymond Carver, Short Cuts distills some 22 characters into a sprawling, elegantly edited three-hour opus that recalls the best of Altman's anarchic outbursts from his remarkable '70s period. The film employs a spidery, snowballing narrative that steadily draws into our field of vision an assortment of mostly bruised, blue-collar lives — Carver-esque cops, waitresses, lounge singers, limo drivers — and even when those lives are at their lowest points, they're depicted with humor, affection, insight and even wisdom. Altman juggles the multiple characters and storylines masterfully, shaping the chaos and inviting the audience to piece together the connections as the movie zigs and zags from one character to another, and from absurdist comedy to high drama and back again. Along the way we're treated to generous helpings of Altman's trademark improvisations, overlapping dialogue and attention to small but resonant details.
The Criterion Collection's gorgeous-looking DVD of Short Cuts doesn't carry over the most intriguing feature of the old laserdisc edition — a function allowing the viewer to de-scramble the film's fragmented narrative and play each story strand sequentially — but it does contain a wealth of fabulous extras. Carver fans will thrill to To Write and Keep Find, an excellent PBS documentary on the writer's life, and a one-hour audio interview with Carver from 1983. Then there's the feature length Love, Trust and Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country — possibly one of the best making-of documentaries you'll ever see — as well as a BBC-produced feature tracing the screenplay's development, a selection of original demo recordings performed by Dr. John, a look at the film's marketing, deleted scenes, and some revealing taped conversations between Altman and actor Tim Robbins. It's a handsomely put together package, right down to the companion book of Carver short stories included in the set. Like virtually everything released by Criterion, this is pretty much a perfect gift for that certain cinephile in your life.
THE RAPTURE
A lot has changed since Michael Tolkin released this uncompromising take on God, group sex and The End of Times way back in 1991. Tokin's film divided audiences right down the middle back then; in our current climate of faith-based feverishness, The Rapture might just inspire mass chaos, burning and looting, and/or dancing in the streets.All of which is entirely appropriate, since The Rapture is about all of those things and, most of all, it's about taking a stand in times of confusion. Mimi Rogers gives the best performance of her career as an L.A. telephone operator by day, kinky party girl by night, who becomes drawn into a series of small but increasingly bizarre mysteries that culminate with her complete religious transformation. The film takes us through a succession of thoroughly unexpected and often gut-wrenching twists and turns, each of which reveals a whole new level of moral complexity. The characters are confronted with a number of ethical dilemmas and escalating tragedies, and the decisions they make take on a significance that eventually assumes cosmic proportions.
Tolkin (who also wrote Altman's The Player and the vastly underrated The New Age) handles this charged material in a seductive but curiously restrained manner that never resorts to lurid clichés. Through finely controlled performances, elegant cinematography, an evocative score and, most of all, a remarkable script, The Rapture is a stunning examination of the essence of faith. The film communicates both the allure and the alienating effect of the material world, as well as the power and the problems inherent in the urge to replace nihilism with meaning. The Rapture is finally available on DVD, complete with a lustrous widescreen transfer and a fascinating (and, believe it or not, surprisingly funny) commentary track from Tokin, Rogers and co-star David Duchovny. If you're looking for a film about spirituality that's also smart, sincere and profoundly mysterious in a way that befits its subject, look no further. Mel Gibson, eat your heart out.
THE UP SERIES
OK, I know I said no big ol' box sets on this list, but this one screams out for an exception. Michael Apted's Up Series is one of the great, semi-neglected films of our time. Inspired by the Jesuit maxim "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man," the six (and counting) Up films chronicle the life trajectories of a group of individuals from various locations around England and from a wide range of backgrounds. Apted and his collaborators began the series in 1964, conducting interviews with a small group of 7-year-old children in 7 Up, and have returned every seven years to chart the progression of their lives in 7 Plus Seven, 21 Up, 28 Up, 35 Up and 42 Up. Another installment should be upon us any moment now and, happily, there is no end in sight.The first film works as a relatively simple and often amusing look at that most alien of species, children (so like us and yet so not!), some from privileged circumstances and others from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. Even at this early stage, though, we see the world beginning to have its way with these young innocents, as time and again we hear the sins of the fathers imperfectly parroted from the mouths of babes. From there, as the Up Series progress and the children grow older, the material begins to take on the dramatic dimensions of a really good soap opera or the most riveting reality TV, even as the films begin to individually and collectively reveal themselves as something far more poetic and even monumental — a time capsule for our age.
We become intimately acquainted with the Up-ers as we follow them from childhood, through their teen years (a uniformly bad time for all), into early adulthood, middle-life and, eventually, beyond. Some go from promising beginnings to utter despair. Others rise above their limitations and find unexpected success, fulfillment and more. Dreams are dreamed and dashed, confidences ebb and flow, marriages and children come and go, situations are enriched and undone. First Run Feature's box set of The Up Series allows us to spend over nine-and-a-half hours immersing ourselves in nothing less than the stuff of life itself, complete with triumphs, tragedies and everything in between. You'll find DVDs out there with better image quality and nicer extras (the only notable bonus here is Apted's illuminating scene-specific commentary on 42 Up), but you won't find one that means more than this one.
lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Dec 1-7, 2004.