Late-holidays releases good, plentiful

By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service

Will Ferrell plays a 1970s TV newsman in the humorous satire "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," out on DVD this week. Gannett News Service

That may be the case for many fans of "Sex and the City," which concluded with the eight episodes of "Season Six — Part Two" (HBO), reflecting the fact that the series' last hurrah was divided into two cycles. In the Goodbye Girls' countdown, dangling plot threads are tied or snipped; hopes and dreams are realized or abandoned, and Miranda and Charlotte are finally settled, while Carrie and Samantha continue to create drama that may never be solved or satisfied.

The concluding DVD collection is more accessorized than its predecessors and includes all the various endings that were filmed to keep snoopy Internet and media people from blowing the official finale. It also includes a one-hour seminar/tribute with cast members and writers filmed at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival this year and commentary by executive producer Michael Patrick King on four episodes. Less essential are two farewell tributes that might have felt more appropriate with a few years of perspective.

'Garden State'

It will be interesting to see how "Garden State" (Fox), which is turning out to be a "Graduate"-style touchstone film for Gen Y, performs against the Gen X nostalgia-satire "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" (DreamWorks).

The former is directed by Zach Braff, who also stars as antidepressant-suppressed, would-be actor Andrew Largeman, who returns to New Jersey for his mom's funeral and has to deal with his physician-heal-thyself dad (Ian Holm), not to mention his old high school pals who wish things were different for them. Natalie Portman shines.

"Anchorman," meanwhile, is potentially more entertaining than its execution, though it's exceedingly easy to kick back and laugh at the spot-on re-creations of local TV cheesiness from the '70s (which, truth be told, doesn't look all that different from local TV in 2004). Will Ferrell is the big-kahuna news reader in the plaid sports jacket whose swinging macho empire is invaded by ambitious reporter Christina Applegate.

The plot is as formatted as the "if-it-bleeds-it-leads" philosophy that has prevailed on the tube for decades, but there are some sweet asides, the best of which may be Burgundy showing his soft/creative side as a jazz flutist. There's an hour's worth of deleted scenes, bloopers and other fillers, the best of which is a faux A&E Biography of the mustachioed Ron.

Even more loaded — and locked — is "Resident Evil: Apocalypse/Special Edition" (Columbia TriStar), in which Milla Jovovich breaks out the Game Boy once again to take on devil dogs, zombies and something known as Nemesis. It's all action, with no slippage and no point, but it ranks three commentaries (one by Jovovich and other cast members; another by writer-producer Paul W.S. Anderson; a third by director Alexander Witt), 20 deleted scenes and a six-part making-of doc. There is also a piece assuring the viewer that the film's ubiquitous Umbrella Corp. is not all that different from, oh, some international companies we won't name, but the DVD does.

More cartoon mayhem is to be had in "The Ghost In the Shell: Innocence" (Universal/DreamWorks), but this time at least it's in a real cartoon, or more specifically anime. This sequel to the 1995 Japanese cult film to which the term "cyberpunk" was first applied has android cop Batou teamed with a new human partner to investigate a string of murders seemingly attributable to gynoids, robots built specifically to provide sexual pleasure. Obviously, not for kids.

British TV Great

Moving to more genteel entertainments, we finally see a box of "Rumpole of the Bailey: The Complete Seasons One and Two" (A&E), collecting the original 12 cases starring the late Leo McKern as the barrister Horace Rumpole, one of British television's all-time great characters. A blend of Perry Mason, Columbo and Al Capp, Rumpole is forever at odds with those who would deny justice to the downtrodden and with his upwardly mobile wife, Hilda, who wishes he would quit the drinking and the cheap cigars. A box collecting seasons three and four is also available for the same price, but wasn't sent for review.

At the other end of quality British television is "Sapphire and Steel: The Complete Series" (A&E), six discs containing all 34 case episodes of this exceedingly odd sci-fi mystery. It predates "X-Files" in sending two paranormal investigators, played by "Man from U.N.C.L.E" David McCallum and "New Avengers" Joanna Lumley to look for so-called "time ruptures" or supernatural anomalies allowing earthly entree to assorted creepy-crawlies. The twist is that the investigators are not on Earth's payroll: They're from somewhere else, working on behalf of something else.

Best non-Hollywood

Facets, the Chicago-based video rental company that pioneered the concept of sending the non-Hollywood movies you can never find at Blockbuster to your home, has its own DVD imprint, and shows off the range of its far-fetched interests with three very different discs.

"Daughters of the Sun," made in 2000 but shown in U.S. theaters this year, is a drama about a teenage girl in Iran who masquerades as a boy to find work to help her impoverished family.

"Un Chien Andalou," is the first commercial DVD release of the most famous experimental film in history, the 17-minute, 1929 collaboration of surrealists Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel, whose series of disturbing and allegorical images begins with the sequence in which a human eye is apparently sliced by a razor blade. Context and insight are provided in a commentary track by historian Stephen Barber, a short documentary titled "A Slice of Bunuel" that contains an interview with the filmmaker's son Juan-Luis, and storyboard sketches for the film.

Films that were once privately passed around from one open-minded or dirty-minded fellow to the next, to be shown in back rooms where bed sheets could be hung above the poker table, are now collected, for historical purposes only mind you, in "The Subject is Sex." Selected by collector Stephen Parr from his Oddball Film and Video Collection, the films range from early stag films like "On the Beach" from the 1920s and the 1930s cartoon "Buried Treasure" to nudist-camp and burlesque shorts from the 1950s. If you can't find Facets in stores, visit its Web site at www.facets.org.

Bali 'documentary'

Historical specialist Milestone has issued a newly restored "Legong: Dance of the Virgins," Henri de la Falaise's 1935 pseudo-documentary exploring the culture, natural beauty and exotic rituals of northern Bali, then being touted as a paradise on Earth. Shot in two-strip Technicolor, the film was widely seen, but usually in a version butchered by censors who objected to those bare-breasted Bali dancers. To order, go to www.milestonefilms.com.