Oh joy, it's Troy, the epic Brad Pitt flick that managed to unabashedly turn Homer's Greek classic The Iliad into a bloodthirsty Harlequin romance.
This is the same 2004 movie that English historian Robin Lane Fox called "a travesty, which is one damn thing after another" for its freewheeling take on the ancient world.
Fox, of course, is the learned fellow who advised Oliver Stone on Alexander. That box-office disaster is a lot more historically correct than Wolfgang Petersen's Troy but a lot less fun to watch. Troy, in fact, is a riotous pleasure, an old-time Hollywood extravaganza with up-to-date technology allowing the filmmakers to replicate the "cast of thousands" that made Cecil B. DeMille's Biblical epics so memorable.
Troy came to DVD last week in separate two-disc wide and fullscreen editions. (Coincidentally, Pitt and Jennifer Aniston announced their marriage was as dead as Achilles. This amid rumours that Pitt was the heel for alleged philandering.)
The second disc in the DVD set offers a strong lineup of Trojan extras. Featurettes explore the Greek gods, the battle scenes, the production design (including an admission that the designers overbuilt Troy to make it look more impressive than the historical records indicate), and the special effects.
MEOWWWWW! Oscar winners often make movies so monstrous you wonder if they should give their statuettes back. Welcome to Halle Berry's world. While she looks fabulous in slinky black in Catwoman, the movie still stinks.
The DVD is out tomorrow in separate wide and fullscreen editions. It comes with a decent lineup of extras, but the real treasure is the 30-minute The Many Faces Of Catwoman. Eartha Kitt hosts the doc on Catwoman's history, from her many comic-book guises through her film incarnations.
SHAM MAN: Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's elaborate mystery film world is self-destructing, thanks to his godawful latest effort, The Village. It's out tomorrow on DVD in separate wide and fullscreen editions, each with a generous serving of bonus materials. But don't expect any real insights into the filmmaker's thinking.
In a related but separate DVD release tomorrow, documentary filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn's The Buried Secret Of M. Night Shyamalan, purports to do what the filmmaker won't do for himself -- reveal all. It sounds so promising, but in what plays as a coy, pretentious and overwrought "mystery" film itself, Kahn just makes the whole Shyamalan phenomenon seem ridiculous.
RESURRECTING THE DREAM: The late Paul Winfield scored his career triumph in the 1978 TV mini-series King, a biography of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King. Jr. The DVD release of King arrives tomorrow in a fullscreen-only edition, the proper original TV format. Excellent bonus materials include docs on the historic U.S. Civil Rights movement.
Writer-director Abby Mann's monumental work is powerful because Winfield so magnificently captured the essence of a conflicted human being. We see preacher King evolve from his political awakenings in 1952 to his role as an American hero to his assassination in 1968. Not incidentally, Mann had the guts to show the Kennedys, John F. and Robert, as opportunists, not heroes, for their reluctance to seize the day. The four-and-a-half-hour mini-series remains potent today.
UPSTREAM: Without A Paddle, one of the worst movies of 2004, instantly qualifies as one of the worst DVDs of 2005. The widescreen DVD arrives with a boat-load of extras, tomorrow, including 13 deleted scenes. Only 13? Geez, I would have deleted everything.
BUZZING INSECTS: Mel Gibson got his revenge on celebrity media by producing Paparazzi, starring Cole Hauser as a vengeful star fighting back at criminal photographers. Too bad the movie's so mediocre. The issue was worth exploring. The DVD is out tomorrow with limited extras in an edition offering both wide and fullscreen on flip sides.
