'Flags Of Our Fathers' Out On DVD
All DVDs are scheduled for release Tuesday, but release dates are subject to change.
"Running With Scissors"
Rated R
(Sony)
Critics attacked Ryan Murphy's adaptation of Augusten Burroughs' wrenching childhood memoir for being too campy. At times an accurate gripe, but surreality can be a haven for someone who supposedly had to stare down as much craziness as Burroughs. "Scissors" is scattershot between hard drama and broad comedy, but it's inventively bizarre, with harrowing and hilarious points.
Joseph Cross plays Augusten, whose mother (Annette Bening) left him in the care of her crackpot therapist Dr. Finch (Brian Cox). Not in a psychiatric sense, but as his guardian, where he's left to his own devices with the family (Jill Clayburgh, Gwyneth Paltrow and Evan Rachel Wood).
Behind-the-scenes featurettes are the only extras, one featuring Burroughs talking about his book and the film, one with cast interviews and another about the production designer's methods of creating labyrinths of trash in the Finch home.
"Flags of Our Fathers"
Rated R
(DreamWorks)
Joseph Cross also stars in Clint Eastwood's first of two films from 2006 about the Battle of Iwo Jima. "Letters from Iwo Jima," from a Japanese perspective, slowly rolled out on its way to awards acclaim, while "Flags" got full wide-release treatment and smothering for-your-consideration ads.
The same tone is taken with the movie, a hammering, obvious treatise on our nation's need to make heroes out of ordinary men. Not surprisingly, it's spectacularly filmed and has a handful of effective moments. But Ryan Phillippe and Jesse Bradford barely register and Adam Beach wildly overacts as soldiers picked as figurehead representatives of the American flag raising at Iwo Jima. Ultimately, it feels like three scenes (battle, mental strife, political wheels-and-deals) over and over.
And the movie is all you'll get on the DVD, available in widescreen or fullscreen, for now. A title of this magnitude is bound for a double-dip.
Also next week
"HOLLYWOODLAND" feels like a so-so HBO movie that made it to multiplexes. George Reeves (Ben Affleck) played Superman on 1950s TV before dying from a gunshot that may or may not have been self-inflicted. Adrien Brody plays a gumshoe on the case, and detracts from Affleck's strong work. The DVD, in widescreen or fullscreen, has commentary, featurettes and deleted scenes.
Last year was an awful year for horror, but "THE GRUDGE 2" clawed at the barrel's bottom - no wit, surprises or scares in a sequel where the Japanese curse goes global in totally obvious ways. The DVD is available in its PG-13 theatrical cut (including three featurettes, a montage and deleted scenes) and an unrated edition, six minutes longer and adding producer Sam Raimi's introduction.
"FLICKA," the classic tale of an unruly teenager's bond with a special horse, gets modernized with a girl (Alison Lohman) in the lead. Tim McGraw and Maria Bello co-star. The DVD is presented in widescreen and fullscreen, with a music video, deleted scenes, featurettes and bloopers. Also available next week is "THE FLICKA FAMILY CLASSICS COLLECTION," which features previous Flicka films "MY FRIEND FLICKA," "THUNDERHEAD: SON OF FLICKA" and "THE GREEN GRASS OF WYOMING."
Michel Gondry's "THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP" is a woozy fantasy-comedy about a man (Gael Garcia Bernal) whose internal flights of fancy hide his shyness over romancing the lady across the hall. Extras include commentary, featurettes, a music video and short film.
David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Billy Crudup and Maggie Gyllenhaal star in "TRUST THE MAN" as two couples dealing with different relationship drudgery. Presented in widescreen and fullscreen, the disc has actor-director commentary, deleted scenes with commentary and a featurette.
Romantic comedy knows no age limits in "BOYNTON BEACH CLUB," set in an "active adult" community in Florida and starring Joseph Bologna, Dyan Cannon and Sally Kellerman.
A paroled ex-con (Timothy Olyphant) returns to his stomping grounds and stirs up trouble among friends and enemies in "COASTLINES," co-starring Josh Brolin, Sarah Wynter and Josh Lucas.
Ken Takakura plays an estranged father of a terminal-cancer patient who finishes a Chinese documentary his son has started in "RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES."
A woman adrift in a sea of anonymous sexual encounters and her transsexual neighbor bond in "SOAP."
A live-action sequel to "Hellboy" is coming, but Ron Perlman, Selma Blair and Doug Jones lent their voices to "HELLBOY: SWORD OF STORMS," an animated full-length film. Extras include commentary, four featurettes, scene analyses, storyboards, trailers and more. The first 300,000 DVDs will include an exclusive 32-page comic book from "Hellboy" creator Mike Mignola.
It's a long way from Taradise for Tara Reid as a college student stranded in a factory with a deranged killer and a coma patient encapsulated in glass in "INCUBUS," an unrated horror film.
Lenore fronts an L.A. rock band and is targeted by a gruesome killer, in "THE RAVEN," which transplants Edgar Allen Poe's poem of lost love to the present day. A commentary is included.
If you thought "Team America: World Police" would have benefited from the voices of Motley Crue, consider "DISASTER! THE MOVIE" - a marionette spoof of disaster films - your personal production. It's available in R and unrated editions, the latter adding bawdy animated short films.
A wizard and "THE LAST UNICORN" team up to battle an evil king in a 25th-anniversary re-release of the cult-classic animated fantasy film with the voices of Jeff Bridges, Mia Farrow and Christopher Lee and music from the band America. Extras include a featurette and set-top game.
"ROMEO & JULIET: THE MUSIC EDITION" adds tune-oriented extras to Baz Luhrmann's take on Shakespeare's tale with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Composer commentaries and music-related documentaries and featurettes are added to existing features and a DTS 5.1 Surround track.
Before fat suits and talking donkeys, Eddie Murphy's legacy was language as blue as his leather outfit was red. "EDDIE MURPHY: DELIRIOUS," his blistering stand-up special from 1983, hits DVD.
Ultimate editions of "FOR YOUR EYES ONLY," "GOLDENEYE," "GOLDFINGER," "LICENCE TO KILL," "THE SPY WHO LOVED ME" and "THUNDERBALL," previously available in James Bond collections, get separate releases. Other catalog titles next week include George Segal in "BLUME IN LOVE" and Amy Irving in the sweet romance "CROSSING DELANCEY."
"Universal Cinema Classics" compiles four of its titles from the 1930s and '40s, available separately - "ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT" (1930), "ARABIAN NIGHTS" (1942), "GOING MY WAY" and "THE HEIRESS" (1949). Other classic titles next week include: Judy Garland and Robert Walker in "THE CLOCK"; Claude Rains in "HERE COMES MR. JORDAN"; Jane Wyman in "MIRACLE IN THE RAIN"; and get to humming with the theme from "A SUMMER PLACE."
Disney's straight-to-DVD sequel "CINDERELLA III: A TWIST IN TIME" - in which Cinderella's stepsister Anastasia alters time to make the glass slipper fit her foot - includes interactive games and a DTS 5.1 Surround track. Other children's titles next week include: "THE BACKYARDIGANS: LEGEND OF THE VOLCANO SISTERS"; "BOB THE BUILDER: NEW TO THE CREW"; volume three of "CHARLIE & LOLA: MY LITTLE TOWN"; two installments of "DORA THE EXPLORER" with "PIRATE ADVENTURE" and "COWGIRL DORA"; "ELMO'S WORLD: WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY?"; "MAX & RUBY: AFTERNOONS & PARTY TIME"; "MY LITTLE PONY: A VERY PONY PLACE"; "TEEN TITANS: TROUBLE IN TOKYO"; and two installments of "SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS" in "SPONGE FOR HIRE" and "SEASCAPE."
Before Richard Lewis' cancer became a pivotal plot point on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," he starred in the ABC sitcom "ANYTHING BUT LOVE" with Jamie Lee Curtis. Volume one of that show comes to DVD next week. Other TV titles include: the complete first season of "BEN 10"; the third seasons of "BAYWATCH" and "MAD ABOUT YOU"; the seventh season of "CHARMED"; "JOHN LANDIS' FAMILY," a title from the second season of Showtime's "MASTERS OF HORROR"; and "WETBACK: THE UNDOCUMENTED DOCUMENTARY," from National Geographic.
