The holiday buying season has entered its final lap, with most of the year's significant DVDs already having entered the marketplace. Even at this late hour, though, more than 400 new titles are scheduled for liftoff before the dawn of 2004.
If you haven't already guessed, there are few things I enjoy more than introducing people to movies they might not have known even existed, unless they popped up here. Most won't ever become available at the local Blockbuster, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve some attention, anyway.
Catch a Rising Star
One of my favorite films of the last 12 months was Lynn Ramsay's unnerving working-class drama, Morvern Callar, in which Samantha Morton delivered a performance unequalled by any of last year's Oscar candidates. Even so, the film and her acting went mostly unseen in theaters.
Set in Glasgow, Callar is a party-hardy sales clerk who awakens one Christmas morning at the side of her boyfriend who'd committed suicide while she slept. In a brief note left on his computer, he wrote, "I love you. Be brave. … It just seemed like the right thing to do," and instructions on what to do with his just-completed novel and bank account. More befuddled than grief-stricken, Callar sends the manuscript off to several publishers, but not before substituting her name for that of her boyfriend.
What transpires provides a remarkable study in self-awareness and personal growth, though it comes at no small price. It isn't until Morvern is on vacation in Spain, with her best friend (a terrific Kathleen McDermott), that she's told "her" book will be published, and suddenly, this news changes all the colors and textures of her choked existence.
Announced as director of the much-anticipated adaptation of The Lovely Bones, Ramsay is a filmmaker whose star emphatically is on the rise. Don't miss Morvern Callar, and her sensational 1999 drama, Ratcatcher, about an impoverished child who comes of age during a garbage strike in Glasgow (Europe's answer to the Black Hole of Calcutta), or Morton's great performance in In America.
Documentary Diamonds
Not a week goes by that I don't receive at least one terrific documentary or film about music. Having grown up during a time when the main venues for nonfiction movies were PBS and the college library—whose scratched 16mm prints were practically unwatchable—I'm constantly amazed at the huge number of wonderfully entertaining and enlightening documentaries now surfacing on DVD. For instance, I just finished 200 Cadillacs (Image Entertainment), in which producer-director Dan Griffin focuses on Elvis' propensity to give away expensive cars, horses and jewelry to friends, acquaintances and passing strangers, for no other reason than it's what he wanted to do.
Cinemania (Wellspring) examines the obsessive behavior of a group of New Yorkers whose passion for film borders on the psychotic.
Agnes Varda's tribute to her late husband, The World of Jacques Demy, examines the influential director's effect on international cinema, through the eyes and memories of such stars as Catherine Deneuve, Anouk Aimee, Michel Piccoli, Harrison Ford and composer Michel Legrand, his collaborator on The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Wellspring has also released pristine versions of Demy classics Lola and Bay of Angels.
Listen To, and Watch, the Music
Ten years ago this month, composer-guitarist-filmmaker Frank Zappa died of cancer in his Laurel Canyon home. In a business where the word "genius" generally is applied to anyone who can top the charts more than two weeks in a row, Zappa truly was one. Moreover, he was an artist whose music was as stimulating as it was fun to hear, live or recorded. Eagle Eye Media has just released his spectacularly entertaining 1979 film, Baby Snakes, which combines copious amounts of concert footage with Bruce Bickford's experiments in claymation and some goofy backstage repartee.
My current favorite DVD about music is Out of Ireland: From a Whisper to a Scream, which covers the island's rock scene from the '50s through such breakout artists as Van Morrison, the Pogues, U2 and Sinead O'Connor. Other new titles include the surprisingly entertaining Punk: The Early Years; Kut U Up: Riding in Vans With Boys, which goes on the road with Blink-182, Green Day and Jimmy Eat World; and the equally anarchic concert film, Nashville Pussy, with a rendition of "Gonna Hitchhike Down to Cincinnati and Kick the Shit Outta Your Drunk Daddy."
One Last Laugh
Krazy Cat comics predated Mickey Mouse and Looney Tunes by nearly two decades, and, in 1962, the strip was adapted for television in cartoon form. Koch recently compiled more than three hours of the original episodes, plus two "lost" cartoons, into the wonderful two-disc set, The Krazy Kat Kartoon Kollection.