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TOP TEN DVDS FOR 2008 By Glenn Andreiev

Ah, 2008! The year of Barack Obama, Bail-outs, Hannah Montana, and Joe the Plumber. We also had some choice goodies to fill our DVD shelves. Here are my choices for the ten best DVD’s released in 2008.

THE HOTTIE AND THE NOTTIE (Genius Products (TVN) / Liberation Entertainment)

With a $9 million dollar budget and $27,000 box office return, this movie may be the world’s most expensive self-made photo album. That somebody is Paris Hilton, the star and executive producer of this jaw-droppingly awful romantic “comedy”. A New England shlub travels to L.A to meet the most beautiful woman on the West Coast. Guess who that is?! Hear Paris spew relationship wisdom with that tinny voice sounding like Karloff’s Frankenstein sucking helium! This film is really, really self-indulgent. Paris is photographed in awesome pink splendor, most other cast members are all misfit types. Remember the film of “Salome” Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) wanted to make in SUNSET BLVD? Where she goes “They want to see me, me! Norma Desmond!”. Well, dear reader, HOTTIE/NOTTIE is that version of “Salome” finally realized. A camp cult classic that will soon rank up (or down) there with BOOM! and SKIDOO!

SCANDAL (Criterion)

Part of Criterion’s Eclipse Box Set of “Postwar Kurosawa”, which features several early films by the great director (not one is a samurai picture!). SCANDAL is a 1950 melodrama that follows two Japanese celebrities (A beautiful actress, and youthful Toshiro Mifune as a two-fisted landscape artist) dealing with made-up rumors about themselves in the Tokyo tabloids. Fast paced thrills in a film that could very well be talking about TMZ or Supermarket Fanzines.

THE LODGER (MGM)

Until Fox came out with the Hitchcock Premiere Collection this Fall, Sir Alfred’s 1927 debut suspense thriller was only available in murky public domain copies. Here, this silent classic about the hunt for a sexual serial killer in foggy London now looks sharp, with fine attention to production value by the 27-year old suspense master. Nice feeling of dread throughout and an edgy chase at the end. THE LODGER disc has some fascinating extras, my favorite being HITCHCOCK 101.

THE GEORGES MELIES COLLECTION (Kino Video)

Kino Video has put out the definitive box set of the works of Georges Melies, the French pioneer of science fiction and fantasy movies. His work pre-dates World War I, and his signature image, of course, is the bullet-shaped rocket smacking into the moon’s eyeball from his TRIP TO THE MOON, a film now 106 years old! The box set comes with some great extras. On one of them we learn that Melies, who was financially ruined after making these ground-breaking special effects films, almost had his films destroyed, but his brother, Gaston, in America, persuaded Georges to give him the films. Gaston worked at Vitagraph Studios, which was bought up by Warner Brothers. Melies films sat in Jack Warner’s vault, beginning to rot when Looney Tunes creator Leon Schlesinger rescued them. (Another side note, TRIP TO THE MOON was shown at a high school class a few months ago, and the kids of 2008 loved it, saying “Wow, sleeping bags on the moon!” “Those moon aliens rock my socks!” and “Oh, the moon got it in the eye! Poor moon!” )

MISSION TO MISSISSIPPI (Singa Home Entertainment)

A lot of attention is given to the broken levees, and how FEMA reacted to the horrific devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Here is a story that tells of nature’s fury and man’s kindness. This amazing documentary is about a church group from New York volunteering to go to storm-ravished Mississippi and help rebuild destroyed homes and lives. Worth checking out by all means.

GENEVIEVE (ITV DVD)

This warm-hearted 1953 comedy is part of a box set of films starring Kenneth More, a talented British actor who excelled in both drama and in comedy. About a cross-country race by obsessed antique auto restorers, it was written by William and Tania Rose, the couple who later penned IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD. GENEVIEVE is a gentler, sometimes funnier version of Stanley Kramer’s cross-country auto chase (Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of Kramer’s solo comedy.) Teamed with very funny Kenneth More is trumpet-playing Kay Kendall, that classy, beautiful and witty Lady of British Cinema. (Who died at age 32, a few years after this film was made) Sadly, this British box set is not available in the USA. Bah!

AMERICAN GANGSTER (Universal Studios Home Entertainment)

Ridley Scott scores again big time with this film, an ode to 1970’s pre Rudy Giuliani New York, and an examination of the heroin trade being treated as a regular business. Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) restores order to the Harlem drug trade while dedicated cop Richie Roberts (Scott regular Russell Crowe) closes in. This 2007 film recalls the great 70’s NYC-based crime classics like THE FRENCH CONNECTION, SERPICO and REPORT TO THE COMMISONER.

THREE ON A MATCH (Warner Home Video)

Made in 1932 by Mervyn LeRoy, an overlooked film artist of the studio system. This is a cynical, firsthand look at survival during the Great Depression. Three little girls grow to become troubled young women. One of them is a college-aged Bette Davis, another is Ann Dvorak, whose descent into drug abuse and gangster-ism has some startling results. A 63-minute film that comes to one helluva crash ending. LeRoy’s editing of the last few minutes is simply revolutionary. Part of Volume Two of “Forbidden Hollywood- Films of the Pre-Code Era”.

THE DARK KNIGHT (Warner Home Video)

Despite all the IMAX big screen action and buzz about the late Heath Ledger’s amazing performance as The Joker, this is also a beautifully written, directed and designed work of comic book-cinema art! So much of the film reminds me of the more brutal film noirs of the 1950’s. There are scenes here right out of KISS ME DEADLY and THE BIG HEAT! It’s really Heath Ledger’s film. His uber-deranged, dangerous and very funny Joker is far and away one of the best villains in film history. When I heard Ledger based his performance on Jack Lemmon, I watched it and thought “Oh, God! Yes!” He gets fantastic support by Christian Bale, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine, Eric Roberts, Morgan Freeman, director Christopher Nolan, and a Vermont Senator! Buy this one, don’t rent!

CAROSELLO NAPOLETANO (Lions Gate)

Grab some pasta and vino, sit back and enjoy! The history of Naples played out in song and dance! The wild, colorful, happy musical numbers here resemble Rogers and Hammerstein and the great movie musicals by Michael Powell (like THE RED SHOES and TALES OF HOFFMANN). Italian movie musicals don’t come around that often, but this one is constantly dizzying, and wonderfully off the hook. (Some great fantasy moments straight out of WIZARD OF OZ) The 1954 gem features, in a small role, a youthful Sophia Loren as a dancer/actress who receives some tragic news in the middle of a cabaret number. Part of a box set of Sophia Loren films.

Favorite Moment in Cinema for 2008:

HORTON HEARS A WHO… which was, as I remember as a tot, a pleasant Dr. Seuss fable teaching young readers to respect even the smallest, meekest creatures/people amongst us. The 2008 film version, with voices by Steve Carell and Jim Carrey, is just okay, but what a premiere it had at Mann’s Chinese Theatre in LA – crashed by anti-abortion protestors who made the film’s tagline, “a person is a person no matter how small…” their own. After the movie, the protestors chanted back to the screen, stood up and posed with duct tape over their mouths. Basically they ticked off and further entertained most of the theatre audience. Is HORTON going to wind up as a new Rocky Horror styled participation film?

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Continue to Bryan Layne’s and Victoria Alexander’s picks…

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