Moriarty's DVD Shelf Returns For 2005!

BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE

CALIFORNIA SPLIT

My biggest complaint about Columbia Tri-Star Home Video is the way they only release a handful of catalog titles at a time. They’ve got tons of great films in their vault that rarely see the light of day. You can pick on Paramount all day long, but they’ve managed to dig deep into their catalog, and they release dozens of titles per month. If CTHV releases something more than a decade old, it’s practically a reason to celebrate.

Especially when the films are as good as Paul Mazursky’s BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE and Robert Altman’s CALIFORNIA SPLIT.

Released in 1969 and 1974 respectively, the films serve as fascinating bookends on the heyday of Elliott Gould. Looking at him now, it’s hard to believe that he was the biggest movie star on the planet at one point. Highest paid, starred in the biggest hits, got all the best scripts. He was very much the right man for the moment, as both of these comedies prove. He plays very different sides of his eccentric personality in the two films, but he’s used to excellent effect in both.

Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker wrote an amazing script that encapsulated the lifestyle of a certain type of successful Californians at the end of the ‘60s for B&C&T&A. After visiting a retreat called The Institute, Bob (Robert Culp) and Carol (Natalie Wood) return to Los Angeles completely transformed. They try to impart the profundity of the experience to their two best friends, Ted (Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon), who live a considerably more straight-laced existence. Oh, sure, they’ll come over and smoke pot at a dinner party on occasion, but when Carol casually mentions that Bob slept with another woman, it sends Alice into a frigid panic. My favorite scene in the film takes place between Ted and Alice at home as he tries to talk her into sex while she basically has a complete meltdown. It’s obvious that Ted wants the same kind of freedom that Bob has, but he’s afraid it would be the end of everything. Alice, on the other hand, can’t make any sense of the way Carol seems almost energized by her husband’s indiscretions. This is a time capsule of a film, but that doesn’t mean that it’s become irrelevant. Mazursky’s strength as a filmmaker is the way he observes the details of these relationships. Culp’s great in the film, and his reaction when Carol turns the tables on him by sleeping with another man is both honest and hilarious. Natalie Wood is incredibly sexy in the film. She was always one of the most beautiful women in movies, but it’s more than that. She plays Carol as this great wide-open soul, willing to try any experience, determined to share love with all of her friends. Gould’s wound too tight, just looking for an excuse to snap, and Cannon gives him plenty of reason to do so. By the time the film gets around to the moment that inspired the film’s iconic poster (reproduced as the cover of the DVD), Mazursky’s made you feel that anything is possible, and it’s hard to say what you’re rooting for. This one deserves its reputation as a classic.

On the other hand, CALIFORNIA SPLIT deserves a better reputation than it has. This is one of Robert Altman’s most consistently underrated movies, and I think part of the problem has always been availability. Up ‘till now, there’s never been a letterboxed edition of the movie. Like all of Altman’s work from the ‘70s, the film was shot in beautiful scope, and he makes full use of every inch of the frame. If you read the back of the DVD, it sounds like it’s going to be a wacky comedy caper, but that’s not the case. It’s a very quiet character study spiked with the occasional big laugh. More than anything, it’s a portrait of failure set against the world of gambling, and in particular, poker. Now, I’m not talking about poker the way it’s played now. I hate that whole trendy-wannabe-Rat-Rack-isn’t-this-cool-hey-Ben-Affleck-does-it-too poker scene that you see all over basic cable these days. Fuck that. I mean the real deal, the sad and pathetic world of degenerate lifelong gamblers.

Bill (George Segal) and Charlie (Gould) meet over a card game and drift in and out of a series of situations together, always hoping for a bit of good luck. That’s pretty much all the story there is, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is the Altman I like best, aimless and meandering, with scenes so naturalistic they don’t even feel like scenes. In this film, it’s Segal who plays uptight while Gould is the hipster, the one who knows all the angles. The film defies formula right up to its final frames, and the result is a film that has aged beautifully and still retains the power to surprise. For anyone who fell in love with SIDEWAYS this year, check this one out. This is how it’s done.

The transfers on both films are okay, but unexceptional. They’re both letterboxed to the proper ratios, but there’s a lot of grain in the image. It’s hard to tell if that’s just the way they were filmed, but in general the colors are soft and the image seems muted. Both films have commentaries, a welcome surprise, and B&C&T&A has a featurette where the cast is reunited at the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why they have such a random approach to subtitling, offering only Japanese and English on both discs. Still, it’s a minor gripe. I’m just pleased to finally have these films as part of my collection.

THE ALAMO

THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE

THE PUNISHER

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

MAN ON FIRE

WALKING TALL

BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES Volume One

Revenge is a powerful dramatic tool. It can motivate characters to the most amazing extremes. These seven discs are all radically different, but they’re united by the fact that they deal with revenge on different scales.

THE ALAMO may be disguised as a historical war epic, but don’t be fooled. Thanks to the way Leslie Boehm and Stephen Gaghan and John Lee Hancock structured the script, this is a revenge film, pure and simple. I understand the choice, too. They wanted to get to the point in the film where people could yell, “Remember the Alamo!” just before a charge. You can’t just end a film about the Alamo with the slaughter at the fort. Well, you could, but you’d have to have the balls to make it a full-tilt WILD BUNCH style tragedy, and that’s certainly not this film. Hancock struggles as a director to make things dramatically interesting during the build-up to the siege, but it just never comes to life. Dennis Quaid, Jason Patric, Patrick Wilson, and Billy Bob Thornton all do the best they can with their roles, but again... they’re limited by the material. I’m not convinced this was a movie that needed to be made, a story that demanded to be told. Sure, it’s a famous incident, but it takes more than that to create truly compelling drama. At 137 minutes, the film overstays its welcome, and the PG-13 means that even when it finally gets to the big moment, it all seems fairly muted and tame. Disney packed the DVD with featurettes about the historical facts and the making of the film, and the transfer is quite nice for both sound and picture, but I just wish the movie was worth all the effort.

Don May is awesome, one of the great do-it-yourself stories in home video right now. Synapse Films may not put out the same number of discs as other specialty labels like Blue Underground or Anchor Bay, but he packs every single release with a whole lot of TLC, and he genuinely cares about all the oddball little titles he tracks down. His biggest coup last year was finally tracking down the rights to the infamous THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE, also known as either THEY CALL ME ONE-EYE or HOOKER’S REVENGE, which may be the greatest title ever. If you’re a KILL BILL fan, then you’ve probably heard how Daryl Hannah’s Elle Driver was based on the main character from this film. Tarantino’s got a one-sheet for the movie hanging in his private theater, and called it the “roughest revenge film ever made.” Notorious for mixing hardcore porn and graphic violence, the reason to track it down is to see if it lives up to its reputation. There’s always that moment for me right before I put one of these films in the player where I wonder if this is finally going to be the one that is too much to take, too transgressive to watch. That’s part of the kick.

THRILLER isn’t actually all that violent, which is a let-down in some ways. There’s only one great gore shot (the title THEY CALL ME ONE-EYE should clue you in), so if you’re squeamish about violence, don’t worry. The porn in the film is more nauseating, perhaps the least erotic sex I can imagine watching on film. As far as the story itself, there’s a surreal lack of logic and narrative convention to the way it unfolds. Basically, a young girl is sexually traumatized, rendering her mute. She grows up to be a lovely woman (played by the intensely sexy Christina Lindberg) who still never speaks. She’s abducted one day, then drugged, blinded in one eye, forcibly hooked on smack, then turned into a prostitute. As she deals with the daily numbing horror of her life, she trains to be able to take her revenge, which plays out as a strange slow-motion riot. Despite the crudity of the storytelling, there is a certain hypnotic power to the thing, and it builds to a fascinatingly brutal conclusion. May’s packed the disc with tons of extras, and anyone who wants to understand how complicated and irritating it can be to try and restore these films should definitely watch the featurette THRILLER: A CRUEL LAB MISTAKE. Overall, this is one of the best releases so far from Synapse, a true act of twisted love.

RENEGADE

As with any genre, the definition of what is a Western can be remarkably elastic. This is exemplified by two recent releases that approach the conventions of the genre in totally different ways.

You’ve got to hand it to Paramount. They don’t just put out the catalog titles that you’d expect. They seem to release similarly themed titles in waves, giving them an excuse to put out some great films that might otherwise never see the light of day. In this case, ACE HIGH is the gem out of their most recent batch of Western titles. It’s a spaghetti Western written and directed by Giuseppe Colizzi, starring the team from the successful TRINITY films. Terence Hill is sort of the poor man’s Clint Eastwood, but what makes it work is the addition of big bruiser Bud Spencer and their sense of humor as a team. Their films are far more overtly funny than the work of, say, Sergio Leone. The comparison is unavoidable in this case because of the presence of Eli Wallach as a co-star in this film, who is at his most charming here. Basically, Hill and Spencer walk into a small town and strong-arm $300,000 out of someone. Almost as soon as they get out of town, Wallach steals the money from them.

When they go after him, their attempts to track him down are stymied by the fact that he’s been incredibly generous to everyone he’s encountered on the way. I don’t want to reveal any of what happens once they do catch up to him, but the film’s got plenty of narrative twists up its sleeve. By the time it reaches the big climactic shootout, it’s become a really fun and unconventional ride, and any fan of Western films will enjoy the hell out of this one. It’s a bare-bones edition, but it’s well worth checking out.

”Unconventional” just barely begins to describe Jan Kounen’s RENEGADE. Actually, the film is called BLUEBERRY, but for some reason, Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment decided to sneak the film onto home video in the US with a dull cover that doesn’t even show the face of Vincent Cassel, the film’s star, and using this sad, generic title. RENEGADE. It says absolutely nothing about the film, and I’m not sure what they thought they were going to accomplish. If they’re hoping to fool action fans into renting the film, all they’re going to do is piss off and confuse people, and anyone who was actually interested in seeing an adaptation of Jean “Moebius” Giraud’s BLUEBERRY comic strips by the same lunatic who made DOBERMANN is going to have no idea it’s been released. No matter how you look at it, this seems like a total botch job.

On the other hand, the film is fascinating. It’s not a great film by any means, but it’s a beautiful mess, a truly psychedelic spin on the genre. Mike Blueberry is sent to stay with his uncle, a sickly boy who sees the old west as a chance to make himself stronger. He finds trouble right away, though, when he crosses paths with a hardened killer played by Michael Madsen. Blueberry’s left for dead, haunted by the face of the whore he was with when Madsen broke in, and he ends up being raised by Indians. When he reaches adulthood, he becomes the Marshal in town. A search for treasure brings Madsen back into his life, along with eccentric characters played by Eddie Izzard and Djimon Hounsou. Whatever you think you’re going to see, though, trust me... Kounen’s got something totally different in mind. When the film concludes with two guys having a battle of drug-induced hallucinogenic visions instead of having a gunfight, you know you’re watching something truly unique.

THE IRON GIANT: SPECIAL EDITION

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION: 10th Anniversary Edition

In general, I’m annoyed by the double-dipping that has become such standard practice in the industry. Most of the time, it’s an excuse to slightly upgrade a transfer and make more money off the consumer. When it’s a genuine step up, though, and there’s an effort made to guarantee that a special edition really is special, it makes it hard to be upset. Especially when you’re talking about films as great as THE IRON GIANT and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION.

PETER GABRIEL: PLAY

I was fifteen years old when Live Aid happened, and it seemed like a huge deal at the time. MTV was still a fairly young network, and I didn’t have it in the house yet. Even so, one of the local UHF channels carried part of the broadcast, a network did a prime-time simulcast, and the entire thing was also carried on one of the local radio stations. It was pretty hard to miss at least some part of Live Aid that day. I’m sure that even for the people who were there in Wembley Stadium in London or JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, no one would argue that this was the same kind of event as Woodstock. There was a spontaneous quality to the way Woodstock became the flashpoint for one generation of rock fans. Live Aid was more carefully packaged and constructed, a giant instant media event broadcast live around the world. That’s not to accuse Live Aid of being fake, because I still think this is one of the great moments of sincerity in rock’n’roll, Bob Geldof’s big crazy dream come true. There will never be a complete home video reconstruction of the event, unfortunately. The tapes just don’t exist. Geldof didn’t even want the concert to be recorded, since he felt it was a moment that you needed to be there for, not something to be sold and resold later. What Warner Home Video has done here is to reconstruct the event as much as possible with BBC tapes, MTV b-roll, or from some of the bands’ own personal archives. There are performances here that weren’t originally broadcast in the US or the UK, and there are performances that were never shot at all that we won’t ever have a chance to see. The quality of the material is okay at best, stuff dumped from spotty satellite feeds or PAL footage converted to NTSC or just plain damaged tape. The sound quality is better in much of the BBC footage, but none of it is great. So... all technical gripes and historical context provided... how was the show?

Honestly? Pretty darn good.

Over the space of 4 DVDs and around 10 hours of music, there are any number of high points. U2 is in fine form on “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” but their performance of “Bad” is damn near definitive, a great version of one of my favorite songs. Elvis Costello does a wonderful “All You Need Is Love,” making me wish even more that the remaining Beatles could have played together for the event. Disc Two’s packed with great sets by Dire Straits, Queen, Simple Minds, David Bowie, and The Who, even if we do only get two of the four songs they performed. Disc Three closes out the London show and features more Americans, with Paul McCartney, Tom Petty, Black Sabbath, Neil Young, and Eric Clapton doing great work. On the final disc, the extras are where you’ll find the best performances, including B.B. King, Ashford & Simpson and Teddy Pendergrass together on a joyous “Reach Out And Touch,” a kick-ass Run D.M.C. jam on “King Of Rock,” and a documentary called “Food and Trucks and Rock’n’Roll” that does a nice job of summing up the entire event and its impact. Overall, this is a tremendous gift for any music fan who lived through the era, and it was amazing to dig through it all. Took me right back to July 13, 1985.

MICKEY’S TWICE UPON A CHRISTMAS

I’m well aware of the current thinking that conventional 2-D animation is “dead,” that kids today only want computer animation. That’s lazy thinking, and I don’t believe it’s true, but there’s no denying that for now, the animation industry has gone this way wholeheartedly. As a result, we see the owners of these classic characters struggling to update them with modern technology in an effort to keep them relevant, with varying degrees of success.

I think Disney makes a noble effort to bring Mickey and Donald and Goofy and all the rest of their signature characters to new life in the fully CG MICKEY’S TWICE UPON A CHRISTMAS, a collection of shorts, and there are moments that are quite strikingly rendered. There’s an ice ballet featuring Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck that makes good use of the crocodiles and hippos from FANTASIA. Overall, though, there’s something plastic and cold about the endeavor. It doesn’t help that I watched this the same day as the new WALT DISNEY TREASURES collection of old Mickey black-and-white shorts, which I’ll review next time. The 3D models feel like something you’d buy in a gift shop at the Magic Kingdom, not something with a pulse.

On the other hand, I get the feeling that the makers of POPEYE’S VOYAGE: THE QUEST FOR PAPPY have a real sense of what was special about the original Segar comic strips or the Fleischer cartoons, and Mainframe Entertainment and Nuance Productions did a pretty good job of preserving all the eccentric charm that has made Popeye such an enduring creation. Billy West is the voice of Popeye here, always a good sign, and he does it well. This isn’t going to blow anyone’s mind or spark some renaissance for the character, but it works. It’s lower-budget than the Disney film, and it looks lower-budget, but it’s pretty in its own way, and all the characters look good. It’s a low-key charmer, and if you have any affinity for the world of Popeye, it should make you smile.

THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON

GREG THE BUNNY

TAXI: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON

DREAM ON: THE FIRST TWO SEASONS

THE OFFICE: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION

SEINFELD: SEASONS ONE AND TWO

SEINFELD: SEASON THREE

Is there an art to crafting a great sitcom?

At its worst, the sitcom form can be numbing, an endless rehash of stock types and pat situations, and they are more familiar than funny. But on occasion, shows stand out by innovating or by having an excellent cast or because they simply do it better. Sampling whole seasons of a show is a great way to enjoy some of the very best examples of this oft-maligned genre.

There’s no easier way to see how much things have changed in the sitcom world than to spend a day alternating episodes from Paramount’s THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON and Fox’s ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: SEASON ONE. I grew up watching ANDY GRIFFITH, and there will always be a soft spot in my heart for the citizens of Mayberry. This collection of 32 episodes is particularly great, the black-and-white days before the eccentric supporting cast took the show away from Andy Taylor (Griffith), who works as both sheriff and Justice of the Peace. In these early days, the show was primarily about Andy’s efforts to raise his son, Opie, played by l’il Ronnie Howard, the cutest damn TV kid in the history of cute TV kids. Andy, a widower, invites his Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier) to live with them, their family rounded out by Andy’s cousin, Barney Fife, who also works as Andy’s deputy. If I had to use only two words to describe my love of this show, those two words would be “Don Motherfucking Knotts.” There’s a reason he won 52 consecutive Emmy awards (or so).

On a short list of the top ten characters in the history of TV, Barney Fife would take two or three spots at least. I love his checklist of insecurities, his one bullet tucked safely into his shirt pocket, his determination to become not just good but great at his chosen vocation. Barney Fife is a great character as written, but as played by Knotts, it’s more than just a character. Like Hank Kingsley... like David Brent... like Burt Campbell... like Tony Soprano... this is a person, a completely persuasive dramatic creation.

Put simply, THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW is comfort food, and Paramount did a lovely job of putting these 32 episodes on four discs, each packaged in a thin slipcase inside a larger cardboard sleeve. There are no extras to speak of. I watched the first three discs and loved every second. I’m going to save that last disc, though, and savor it, make it last until we get season two. I love finally seeing the chronology of the show after decades of watching them in jumbled syndication free-fall. Did you know there was another Floyd the Barber before Howard McNear stepped in to play him? Do you remember Andy’s original girlfriend on the show, played by Elinor Donahue fresh off of her run on FATHER KNOWS BEST? Do you remember when Aunt Bee actually came to live with them? All those moments and more are packed onto these discs.

L’il Ronnie Howard, of course, grew up to be Ron Howard, Oscar-winner, actor and director and producer. His company Imagine is the producer, and he serves as the voice of the narrator on ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, one of the most exciting things to happen to the sitcom in quite a while. Mitchell Hurwitz basically created the new SOAP, a smart and silly show about a family of breathtakingly broken people, moral nitwits, retarded emotionally (or maybe literally, if you include Buster) and totally unredeemable. It started strong, and it just keeps getting better. I watched the show while it was on the air, then rewatched the entire season with my co-writer, who had never seen an episode. Now he’s hooked, and I’m convinced there is a mad sort of genius (and more than a little luck) at work on this one. The entire cast is dazzling, but every show needs a center, and this one’s got a complete winner. Whoever had the idea to hire Jason Bateman in the first place deserves a raise and a promotion and a bonus and another raise. It’s that good a decision.

As a kid, he was always a professional, but as an adult, he’s found this great comic rhythm that’s all his own. He may be the only member of the Bluth family to even understand that there are such things as morals. Portia Di Rossi never demonstrated any of this kind of pitch-perfect self parody on ALLY MCBEAL or in SIRENS. Will Arnett is one of those guys who looks familiar the first time you see him, but is he? Has he been on anything else? David Cross is a very funny man, and sure, his work on MR. SHOW is great, but there’s always been a sort of ironic hipster detachment to David’s acting work in stuff like SMALL SOLDIERS or MEN IN BLACK 2, like he knew he was too cool for the room. Tobias Funke gives him his first truly great character to play, and he tears it up. His constant struggles with his marriage and his career and his sexuality are hilarious and painful at the same time. Jeffrey Tambor is lucky enough to have already starred on one great sitcom, and now he can put this show on his resume right there next to THE ROPERS. Er... I’m sorry. I meant THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW. TO be a major player on two shows this good... that’s like winning the actor’s lottery.

In a way, both of these shows confound the definition of the “situation comedy,” since the situation isn’t really what’s important; it’s character, first and foremost. What happens on a show like this, when it works, is that we become fascinated by the characters. Whether we like or dislike them is unimportant. What matters is that we are compelled to watch them do anything they do. Maybe that’s the misnomer of the entire genre. I can’t think of a single sitcom where it’s the situation that keeps me watching. When it’s all about the setting, the show typically doesn’t work. Or at least, it doesn’t endure. The behind-the-scenes material on the ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT set suggests that the producers know full well what they’ve got, and it seems like a show that’s built to last. I’m already excited about getting the inevitable Season Two box set next summer.

An example of a show that almost works would be Fox’s GREG THE BUNNY. Greg Levitan, hot from the success of JUST SHOOT ME at the time, had a deal at Fox that gave him pretty much free reign to create and air anything for 13 episodes. I find it hard to believe that JUST SHOOT ME earned anyone that kind of freedom, but... well... there you are.

Levitan co-created this series with Spencer Chinoy & Dan Milano, based on their earlier short Greg The Bunny spots on IFC. It’s basically ROGER RABBIT for puppets, a more audience-friendly version of MEET THE FEEBLES. The cast is full of genuinely funny people like Seth Green, Eugene Levy, Sarah Silverman, Dina Waters, and Bob Gunton, and there is a lot of funny material involving the puppets. The problem is that the show tries too hard. It’s almost aggressively wacky, practically humping your leg with a desperate smile. Towards the end of their initial order, the show started to evolve a bit and find its voice and calm down. If it had lasted, it may well have turned into something worthwhile.

The same thing was true on HBO’s DREAM ON, which Universal has released to disc. The show went on the air at the start of the ‘90’s, and much of the early press on the show focused on the fact that the show featured frequent nudity from female guest stars and unfettered swearing. No other show used a bellowed “FUCK!” as a punchline with greater accuracy or frequency. There was also a gimmick, the access the show’s producers had to the entire Universal TV library. They used clips to punctuate jokes, as a sort of Greek chorus for Martin Tupper, played by series star Brian “Can You Believe I’m Married To Superhottie Madeline Stowe?” Benben. Seriously... the guy’s three feet tall. He’s a charming sumbitch, though, and even though these first two seasons of the series are uneven, overly clever, and occasionally too silly, you can see it getting better as it goes. Kevin Bright and Marta Kaufman were playwrights when the show began, and by the time the end of its run, they were confident enough about TV to turn around and create FRIENDS. DREAM ON isn’t a classic. It’s not one of HBO’s high watermarks. But it’s fascinating to look back at HBO’s earlier attempts to bend the sitcom to the particular demands of cable.

You want to see a great example of a learning curve? Check out Paramount’s excellent release of TAXI: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON. It was a strong ensemble in the first season, and the show featured strong writing from the very start. I mean, Stan Daniels, David Davis, and James L. Brooks were all white-hot after their time on THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, so it made sense for the network to give them free reign for the first season, and it allowed them the room to fine-tune while they were on the air. Some of the characters showed up fully-formed in the first episode. Watch the way they introduce Louie De Palma, Danny De Vito’s character. For the first half of that first episode, he’s in the cage, snarling at everyone and generally acting like a holy terror. It’s not until they’ve established his personality that they finally have him storm out for the visual punchline. Latka Gravas also seems to be 100% Latka from the first moment we see him. If there’s anything that saddens me about TAXI, it’s realizing that this show is pretty much the sum total of Andy Kaufman’s work on film, aside from the unwatchable-but-fascinating HEARTBEEPS and some documentaries. I know that Kaufman just took TAXI to pay the bills and he wasn’t especially proud of his work on the show. Doesn’t matter. The guy was a genius, and the notion of taking his Foreign Man character and dropping him into the middle of a ‘70’s sitcom was a masterstroke. Latka is gold. Every single time he shows up or there’s an episode focused on him, it’s a genuine pleasure.

TAXI isn’t a show about driving a cab. It’s a show about the type of people who do end up driving cabs while they’re waiting to do what they “really” do. It’s a show about dreamers that frequently features endings where the main characters get their dreams crushed one little bit at a time. There’s a real question about whether or not these people are good enough to actually succeed. Tony (Tony Danza) loses most of his fights. Bobby (Jeff Conaway) goes on a hell of a lot of auditions without getting any work. Elaine (Marilu Henner) seems good at her job, but she is stretched too thin between both jobs and raising her kids alone. The main character of the show is also the character that brings this theme into sharp focus. Alex Reiger (Judd Hirsch) is the one cabbie who doesn’t have a dream. He doesn’t have another goal. He is a cab driver, pure and simple. That’s his career, and he’s damn good at it, pretty much the best driver Louie’s got. He and Louie serve as the angel and the devil on the shoulders of the other cabbies as they struggle with their failures. Alex is always willing to help everyone get closer to their dreams, while Louie’s equally delighted to kick them when they’re down. Alex is Eternal Hope, and Louie is Harsh Truth.

Pretty well built, don’t you think? The producers had it all laid out from day one, and then they added one character too many in the form of John (Randall Carver), who just wasn’t interesting. They seemed to realize their mistake fairly early, and they tried to give him something to do, but they tried too hard, writing him zany. He meets and marries a girl in one night, then actually stays married to her for the rest of the season, a storyline that never fails to stop the show cold. Both Carver and the actress playing his wife are pleasant but bland, and they were a real drag whenever they were the focus of an episode. Still, all they had to do was trim the fat and the show became the classic that we’ll see when I review the second season. For now, enjoy these 22 episodes, which include such gems as “Blind Date,” “Paper Marriage,” “Mama Gravas,” and “Louie Sees The Light.” For Kaufman fans, the one worth paying close attention to doesn’t actually feature Kaufman at all, oddly enough. “A Full House For Christmas” is the episode that was supposed to guest-star Tony Clifton, his alter-ego, which turned into a surreal series of backstage events that have been detailed in Bob Zmuda’s book and in MAN ON THE MOON. Watch it and imagine Clifton playing Louie’s brother. It would have been glorious.

Three seasons would be a lot to digest of any show at one time, but the first two SEINFELD seasons were shorter than average. No one was sure about the show, so they kept ordering these short seasons to test the water. Watching the first season, I can see why NBC was puzzled. The five episodes are okay, but they hadn’t figured it out yet. I don’t think there’s a recognizable SEINFELD until season two, show two, “The Pony Remark.” Eventually, this became a show about casual monsters, a quartet of genuinely rotten people spreading misery and horror to everyone they came into contact with, which is exactly why it was funny. It was an anti-sitcom. They started to figure that out in earnest in season two with episodes like “The Jacket,” “The Statue,” “The Revenge,” and the landmark “The Chinese Restaurant.” Disc four of season two features the “How It Began” documentary, which is pretty great. This is a comprehensive set, to say the least. The most exhaustive feature is the “Notes About Nothing,” a text commentary for every episode that really does seem to lay out every trivia fact anyone would ever want to know. The audio commentaries, only featured on select episodes, are entertaining, but the “Inside Looks” that come with most of the episodes manage to steal the show. It’s great stuff, well done. There are also some “Tonight Show” appearances on the disc along with deleted scenes and bloopers.

Season Three was their first full 22 episode season, and they finally hit their stride. From the moment George (Jason Alexander) announced that “it moved” in “The Note,” this season got it right. “The Library,” “The Pen,” “The Parking Garage,” “The Red Dot,” “The Pez Dispenser,” “The Parking Space”... these are all hilarious, beautifully written, and there was a sense that they finally trusted that the audience would follow them anywhere. I remember the exact moment where I went from being an occasional SEINFELD viewer to being a fan. It was during “The Good Samaritan.” As the DVD sleeve copy puts it, “Mary Hart’s voice causes Kramer to have convulsions.” I had a few convulsions of my own the first time I saw this onscreen. The entire third season is as jam-packed with extras as the first two seasons. For any fan of the show, this is pretty much as nice a package as you could have ever hoped for. I’m just curious how aggressive the release schedule is going to be for the rest of the series.

THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS

HOW TO DRAW A BUNNY

Three very different documentary approaches to examining how media can be used to both communicate and obfuscate to equal degree, these films are all worth your time.

I avoided many of the overtly politically themed documentaries released in 2004 because, frankly, I don’t trust them. It’s too easy, especially when the stakes are as high as they are during an election year, to manipulate or massage your message, and the same piece of footage, shown in two different contexts, can sometimes prove two totally different points. THE CONTROL ROOM wanted to be a film that comments on the way new can be spun without being a spin job itself, and I think it’s partially successful. There’s still that whole “context” issue to consider, and the filmmakers dodge it for the most part by simply showing you footage without telling you what to think about it. For the most part, the film is a canny look at war in the modern satellite news age, and it puts you at ground zero for the ongoing conflict between the Western and the Arab worlds. Simply put, this is a film about Al Jazeera, the Fox News of the Arab world. If that description bothers you, ask yourself why. Do you consider Al Jazeera some sort of unimpeachable source with saintly motives, so you’re offended that I would besmirch it with the Fox comparison? Or do you consider Al Jazeera a thinly-veiled terrorist network so that it irritates you to see Fox’s good name slandered? I think the truth about both networks... and most news gathering organizations around the world at this point, for that matter... is that every bit of information we are given is filtered through someone’s agenda. All you can ever do is try to understand the agenda of a reporting source. Director Jehane Noujaim trains an unblinking eye on Al Jazeera and, in particular, their relationship with the U.S. armed forces that are stationed in the Middle East. It’s enlightening, and I don’t think it’s a particularly flattering portrait of anyone. I do think it’s a fairly honest one, though, and these days, that counts more. The film should be required viewing for anyone in any broadcast journalism school in the world.

Likewise, I think THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS should be shown to every first year film student in the world. Maybe it would scare some of the weaker-willed away right up front. Every filmmaker has that moment while working on a project where you encounter some insurmountable barrier that means your film absolutely, positively won’t get made. Great filmmakers have their nervous breakdowns, then get on with the business of making their movies anyway. Lars Von Trier decided to try an experiment using his friend and idol, Jorgan Leth, who made a short film in 1967 called “The Perfect Human.” Von Trier set up a diabolical game in which Leth has to remake his film five times, five different ways, each time with his hands tied by certain restrictions put in place by Vo Trier. It’s fiendish, and Von Trier seems to relish the opportunity to torture this filmmaker. He wants to see what it will take to back Leth into a corner enough that he ends up making a bad film.

Does he? Well, ultimately, that’s up to the viewer to decide. What’s quite clear is that he causes Leth a great many sleepless nights, but in the end, Leth always finds something within the restrictions that reinvigorates him and makes him excited about the possibilities all over again. Even when Von Trier orders him to make a cartoon, something both men profess to hate, Leth finds a way to be excited. More than anything I can think of recently, this film clearly communicates the joy and the agony inherent to filmmaking, and Koch Lorber’s done a great job with the disc overall.

HOW TO DRAW A BUNNY is a harder film to love, if only because the subject of the film, an artist named Ray Johnson, was evidently a hard man to love. Or even to know, for that matter. Johnson was well known in the art world but virtually unheard of by the general public, so when he died in 1995, it made no impression on most people. To the artists and the museum curators and the others who knew him, though, his passing was the end of an era. This documentary by John Walter and Andrew Moore makes the case for Johnson’s place in modern art history, but it’s also an absorbing film about how impossible it is to know an artist as a person just because you know their work. Johnson remained a mystery to everyone in his life, sharing very little of himself, and he didn’t leave behind some grand Rosetta Stone that allows us to piece him together now. If this film is the sum total of what he leaves behind, it’s intriguing but incomplete. Credit the filmmakers with doing an awesome job of tracking all of this down and trying to make sense of it. They get as close as it seems like anyone ever will, and it’s absorbing and intelligent work.

And that’s it for this time. Like I said at the start of the column, expect a lot more of these a lot more frequently, at least until I start to catch up. I’m already getting swamped with screeners, and there’s some great stuff to cover in the weeks ahead.