With two gag reels, ‘Extras’ is hysterical
It’s hard not to break out laughing during the two gag reels on “Extras: The Complete First Season” (HBO, $30), because star, co-creator, writer and director Ricky Gervais has this wonderfully infectious cackle whenever he breaks up.
And he cracks up often, especially in scenes opposite series co-creator, director and writer Stephen Merchant. Equally hysterical are the prolonged takes of Gervais and Patrick Stewart trying to deliver their lines.
“Extras,” which begins its second season on HBO this Sunday, revolves around an out-of-work actor (Gervais) who takes extra roles while waiting for his big break. Gervais and Merchant previously created the original BBC version of “The Office.”
Other extras on “Extras” are an acerbic behind-the-scenes documentary and a chronicle of Gervais’ desperate attempts to get Leonardo DiCaprio to appear as a guest.
The first of two unrelated movies about magicians that came out last year was the surprise indie hit “The Illusionist” (Fox, $30), a handsome period drama that makes its DVD debut today. (The other, “The Prestige,” comes out Feb. 20.)
Edward Norton casts a spell over turn-of-the-century Vienna but runs afoul of a jealous prince (Rufus Sewell) to whom his childhood sweetheart (Jessica Biel) is engaged. The behind-the-scenes featurette is passable, but some of the same material shows up in another mini-documentary, “Jessica Biel on ‘The Illusionist.’ ” Writer-director Neil Burger (“Interview With the Assassin”) supplies succinct commentary.
The extras are more entertaining than the movie “Crank” (Lionsgate, $29), in which Jason Statham (“The Transporter”) plays a Los Angeles-based hit man whom a rival injects with a poison that will kill him unless he keeps his heart rate super-fast. There’s good-humored pop-up-box on-screen commentary from writer-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, Statham among others, as well as behind-the-scenes footage and a clever “family friendly” audio track that is actually the edited TV version of the R-rated film.
It’s too bad that Mike Judge (“Beavis and Butt-Head” and “King of the Hill”) isn’t talking about “Idiocracy” (Fox, $28) because the only extras are deleted scenes.
In the wickedly funny satire, Luke Wilson plays an “average American” working as a librarian for the Army who, along with a hooker (Maya Rudolph), is chosen by the Pentagon for a secret hibernation program. The two rise and shine 500 years in the future and discover that unintelligent people have outbred smart people, garbage is piling up and crops won’t grow. After letting the unreleased movie gather dust for months, the studio dumped it sans publicity into a handful of theaters briefly last fall.
Robin Williams gives a deadly serious performance in the creepy “The Night Listener” (Miramax, $30) as an evening radio talk-show host so impressed by a memoir penned by a teenage boy dying of AIDS that he begins a phone friendship.
But when Williams’ ex-partner suggests that the boy’s voice sounds suspiciously like his foster mother (Toni Collette), he sets out to discover if the kid really exists. The film is adapted by Armistead Maupin from his semiautobiographical novel with his former life partner Terry Anderson. The DVD features a decent production documentary and one deleted scene.
Marshall Curry directed the Oscar-nominated 2005 documentary “Street Fight” (Genius, $25), which chronicles the 2002 Newark, N.J., mayoral campaign when Cory Booker, a Yale-and-Stanford-educated Newark city councilman, tried to unseat longtime incumbent Sharpe James, who ran a well-oiled political machine in the poverty-plagued New Jersey metropolis. The sole extra is a candid interview with Curry, who ran into many problems with James and his political cronies while making the doc.
Also new: “Bandidas” (Fox, $28), “Conversations With Other Women” (Hart Sharp, $25) and “Van Gogh” (Sony, $25).
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