'Scarface' makes life of crime look hip

By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service

"Scarface" has become to hip-hoppers what "The Godfather" films are to the Sopranos: While it may be a cautionary tale, it sure makes crime look cool, and Al Pacino's Cuban gangster Tony Montana has become an icon of excess.

The movie, nicely spruced up from its earlier DVD version and remixed into 5.1 Surround, has been released as a special edition, two-disc affair that also contains a 30-minute Def Jam documentary exploring how the film took hold in gangsta culture — "New Jack City" played a large role — as well as docs about Pacino's over-the-top performance and how director Brian De Palma and credited writer Oliver Stone reshaped the 1932 Howard Hawks classic for contemporary consumption.

'Warner Legends' launches

With the holidays a-comin', the March of the Box Sets begins, and getting the jump on the much-awaited "Indiana Jones" collection, due Oct. 21, is the first in what we can assume will be a series of "Warner Legends" collections (Warner). The collection contains 2-DVD special editions of three of the finest from the studio's vaunted catalog:

• 1938's "The Adventures of Robin Hood," with Errol Flynn, and Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian, which still stands as one of the greatest adventure movies ever made.
• 1942's "Yankee Doodle Dandy," with Jimmy Cagney as the irrepressible George M. Cohan.
• 1948's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," with Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston, father of director John, creating two of the most indelible characters in motion picture history as prospectors searching for gold.

Each title is laden with extras, including commentaries, newly produced making-of documentaries, outtakes and ephemera. Each two-disc set is available individually, but if you opt for the box you get an additional disc, "Here's Looking at You, Warner Brothers," a concise history of the studio that is packed with clips, screen tests and production footage.

Mr. Bean a droll treat

There are some fans of Mr. Bean —Ê the permanently befuddled and ridiculously hopeless little Brit created and played by Rowan Atkinson — who claim that the animated series of his misadventures are funnier than the live-action shorts.

I wouldn't go that far, but the two-DVD collection of all 18 episodes (A&E), most written by Robin Driscoll, who also worked on the live-action films, is a droll, delicious treat.

The great British actor Christopher Lee, whose contributions to "The Lord of the Rings" films has been unduly underappreciated, is duly honored in "The Christopher Lee Collection" (Blue Underground, a limited edition box with 7,500 copies) that includes four Lee films: 1968's "The Blood of Fu Manchu," the fourth in a series in which he played the brilliant Oriental fiend, seen here in color for the first time; 1970's unfortunate "The Castle of Fu Manchu," the unfitting end to the series, originally released here as "Assignment: Istanbul"; 1967's "Circus of Fear," previously seen here only in a chopped-up version retitled "Psycho-Circus," in which Lee plays a disfigured lion tamer; and "The Bloody Judge," a 1970 drama based on the real-life exploits of the British jurist-turned-witch-hunter George Jeffreys, never released in U.S. theaters.

Crowd-pleasing 'Beckham'

The week's crop of recent theatrical releases is headed by "Bend It Like Beckham" (20th Century-Fox), the crowd-pleaser about two girls who disappoint their very different parents by pursuing their dream of playing soccer; "2 Fast 2 Furious" (Universal), a disappointingly stupid sequel to the trashy but fun 2001 hot rod movie; and "Dreamcatcher" (Warner), Lawrence Kasdan's adaptation of a minor Stephen King novel about really nasty tapeworms from outer space.