Stuck for a gift? DVDs easy, popular choice
By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service
According to consumer polls, the most popular gifts for less than $20 are now DVDs, surpassing CDs for the first time.
It doesn't take someone who can set their VCR clock to figure this out: While even the best-intended CD could be a bomb in the bad sense — like, Christina was so last Christmas — a favorite movie, star or genre is fairly easy to ascertain.
Plus, you have one of those great opportunities to turn people on to something unexpected but fairly safe: A friend watches "Boogie Nights" weekly? Give him Paul Thomas Anderson's little-seen but excellent first film, "Hard Eight."
Example: If you need a gift for that starry-eyed, would-be sailor who loved "Master and Commander," turn him on to the fine made-for-TV adaptations of the "Horatio Hornblower" series. The latest, "The New Adventures" (A&E), is a two-DVD set containing "Loyalty" and "Duty," which had their U.S. premieres recently.
Ladies should not feel excluded: Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, who plays the dashing and principled captain, has become the thinking woman's historical heartthrob, and unlike "Master," female characters show up regularly on his rounds.
For the fan you know will buy the newest "Dawson's Creek" box when it's released, you should feel safe catching "Firefly — The Complete Series" (Fox). In this handsomely produced and short-lived show created by Joss Whedon, the sparks fly and comets collide when a lot of good-looking young people go into space on a salvage ship called Serenity in the middle of an intergalactic civil war.
It's safe to say that anyone who liked 1995's "Bad Boys," the R-rated action-comedy that paired Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as mismatched Florida cops, will also like "Bad Boys II" (Columbia TriStar), the summer sequel made with all the restraint that director Michael Bay could muster — which is to say, none. The usual evil drug dealer plot is trotted out yet again to justify comic banter, explosions and chases. Gabrielle Union and Joe Pantoliano provide sex appeal and comic relief, respectively.
If you somehow got Katie Couric or someone like her in your secret Santa drawing, you could do worse than "Assassination Tango" (MGM), considering cutie Katie's much expressed desire to go cheek-to-cheek with Robert Duvall, who directed and starred in this obvious labor of love.
He's a family man-hitman who gets sent to Argentina on a job, but instead becomes focused on the dance of love, not to mention the woman he hires to teach him — who happens to be Duvall's real-life partner, Luciana Pedraza. The dance sequences and obvious heat between the dancers compensate for a silly script.
As for the younger fan who had the time of his or her life to 1987's "Dirty Dancing," you can remake the memories with the new "Dirty Dancing: Ultimate Edition" (Artisan), a two-disc upgrade that has been digitally remastered and remixed for 5.1 surround. It has an option that allows you to watch the romance between Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze from multiple angles.
There's also commentary from choreographers and designers, interviews with cast members, and a preview of next year's much-belated sequel "Havana Nights," set during the Cuban revolution with Swayze in a cameo.
That old-timer who misses the Cold War because it put intelligence gatherers out of work may already own "The Ipcress File" or "Funeral in Berlin," but a 1970 adaptation of "The Looking Glass War" (Columbia TriStar) is nearly as good and every bit as understated. It stars where-is-he-now Christopher Jones as a Polish seaman recruited by spooks Ralph Richardson and Paul Rogers to check out suspected Soviet missile sites.
The DVD box prominently features Anthony Hopkins, with hair, but while he's relegated to a supporting role as junior agent, he plays a senior role as the story unravels.
That Simpsons fan who never goes near the Cartoon Network has probably missed "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" starring a '60s-era Hanna-Barbera hero now reduced to hosting, fairly inadequately, a late-night chatfest. Sixteen of the original 22 episodes are compiled on the two-disc set Volume 1 (Warner).
The discerning Fellini fan probably already owns the excellent Criterion Collection remasters of "8 1/2" and "Juliet of the Spirits," but I assure you Criterion's new Special Edition of "La Strada" will be a holiday highlight for any lover of classic foreign film.
Per usual for Criterion, the 1956 foreign-language Academy Award winner about a belligerent circus strongman (Anthony Quinn), his virtual slave of an assistant (Giulietta Masina) and his renewed rivalry with a former enemy (Richard Basehart) has been immaculately remastered and restored with the musical score especially improved. It receives well-chosen supplements, including an intro by Martin Scorsese, a commentary by a Fellini scholar, the Italian documentary "Federico Fellini's Autobiography" and an optional English soundtrack recorded for its original U.S. release.
Finally, for the masochist who has everything: "Gigli" (Columbia TriStar). The Ben-Lo movie is so awful it must be seen to be believed, but I do not recommend that. A small comfort is there is a not a single extra to extend the gruesome experience.
