A Season With ‘Simpsons’
Don’t have a cow, man! The second season of Fox’s Emmy Award-winning animated series “The Simpsons” is finally out on DVD (Fox, $50). The four-disc set features all 20 episodes from the sophomore year of the Fox series. Among the installments are “Bart Gets an F,” the very first “Treehouse of Horror,” “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” and “The Way We Was.”
Each episode includes wryly amusing commentary from creator Matt Groening, as well as various producers, animators, directors and executive producer James L. Brooks. Bonus material includes the very first Butterfinger commercial featuring Bart as the pitchman, interviews with Groening and Brooks, “Do the Bartman” musical video with commentary, the “Deep Deep Trouble” music video with optional commentary, a foreign language clip and the Simpsons’ appearance on the 1990 Emmy Awards.
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Skateboard enthusiasts are the primary audience for “Dogtown and Z-Boys” (Columbia TriStar, $20 for VHS; $25 for DVD), a fast-paced documentary about a group of teens from Dogtown, a low-income section of Venice, Calif., who applied their aggressive surfing style to skateboarding in the 1970s. The Zephyr Skating Team, which used Jeff Ho & Zephyr Production Surf Shop as their official hangout, made their mark during the national skateboard championship in 1975. They also began skateboarding in empty swimming pools, a prelude to the now-ubiquitous half-pipe of the extreme sports scene. Stacy Peralta, one of the original Z-Boys, directed the film and interviews himself and others about the goings-on that led some of the Z-Boys to success and left others unknown. The DVD includes deleted scenes, extended “raw” skate footage, deleted scenes and commentary from Peralta and editor Paul Crowder.
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Director Nicholas Meyer is always asked the same question about his 1982 film, “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan”: Was that really Ricardo Montalban’s chest? On the exhilarating new double-DVD (Paramount, $25) of the hit film--considered by most Trekkers and critics to be the best of the “Star Trek” flicks--Meyer insists that Montalban’s mighty beefcake pecs were truly his own. The veteran Latino actor devours the screen as the magnetic villain Khan, a role he created on the original series.
This new special edition features a 116-minute director’s cut (four minutes longer than the original). The commentary from Meyer is inspired; he even confesses that he was unfamiliar with the 1966-69 NBC sci-fi series when he got the directing assignment. There’s also a fact-filled and often amusing text commentary from Michael Okuda, the coauthor of the “Star Trek Encyclopedia.”
The second disc features three entertaining documentaries: “The Captain’s Log,” which includes new cast and crew interviews with Meyer, stars William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and Montalban and writer-executive producer Harve Bennett; “Designing Khan,” a comparison between the production, costume and graphic designs of 1979’s “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and “Star Trek II,” which had a modest budget; and “The Visual Effects of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” which explores the then-cutting edge visual effects created by ILM.
Rounding out the disc are 1982-era interviews with Shatner, Nimoy, Montalban and the late DeForest Kelley, interviews with “Star Trek” novelists Julia Ecklar and Greg Cox, the trailer and storyboard archives.
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Meyer is also on hand to offer commentary on the DVD (Warner, $20) for his first feature, the delightful 1979 romantic drama “Time After Time.” Malcolm McDowell, in his first American film and good-guy role, plays famed British novelist H.G. Wells, who travels in his time machine from 19th century London to modern-day San Francisco to track down Jack the Ripper (David Warner). While in pursuit of the Ripper, Wells finds the time to fall in love with a young woman (Mary Steenburgen).
In his comments, McDowell acknowledges that he jumped at the chance to play a nice guy after bringing such nasty characters as Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” to life. He received the script while he was making the X-rated “Caligula” and was sick of that film’s violence and sex scenes and thought this would be a happy change of pace. Not only did the film help change his image, he ending up marrying Steenburgen.
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Also new from Warner is the digital edition of the campy 1981 action-adventure “Clash of the Titans” ($20) starring Harry Hamlin, Maggie Smith and Laurence Olivier as Zeus! The best thing about the film is Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion special effects. The DVD features a new introduction by Harryhausen and a myths and monsters gallery.
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Image Entertainment recently released Luchino Visconti’s 1943 Italian drama “Ossessione” ($25), an early example of the country’s neo-realist cinema. This crackling, sexy adaptation of James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice” stars Clara Calmai as an unhappily married hotel owner who finds herself drawn to a handsome drifter (Massimo Girotti). The two decide to murder her husband, but after they kill him, their lives fall into a downward spiral of deception and lies. The film, which was banned and censored for several years, is presented in its original uncensored director’s cut
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The Broken Lizard comedy troupe stars in and wrote “Super Troopers” (Fox, $27), an infantile comedy about a group of misfit state troopers from Vermont. The excellent Scottish actor Brian Cox, who plays their long-suffering boss, is the only reason to watch this gross-out farce. The DVD includes a “newswrap” of the troupe’s personal appearance tour at colleges; outtakes; 13 extended scenes with optional commentary from director Jay Chandreskhar, who also plays the role of Thorny; an alternate ending with director commentary; and commentary from the comedy troupe.
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“Deuces Wild” came and went from theaters in a flash last May despite a strong cast that includes Stephen Dorff, Brad Renfro, James Franco, Frankie Muniz, Matt Dillon and Fairuza Balk. On the undistinguished DVD (MGM, $27), director Scott Kalvert and editor Michael R. Miller discuss the trials and tribulations of shooting the low-budget action drama set in Brooklyn in 1958 on the Paramount back lot in Hollywood. But Kalvert should get his facts straight. The film is set in 1958, but he says in his commentary that it was 1959.
