A Christmas Tale

‘A Christmas Tale’ won’t get you in spirit

MATHIEU AMALRIC and Catherine Deneuve in "A Christmas Tale."

A little way into “Un Conte de Noel” (”A Christmas Tale”) I commented outloud, this isn’t any Griswold family Christmas story.
It does take place around Christmas and it does deal with a family.
But there’s nothing funny about it. It conveys no warmth of the season and it certainly lacks any humanity.
But it does have Catherine Deneuve, who at 66 definitely doesn’t look that old. No, she doesn’t look like the Catherine Deneuve of “Belle de Jour: or “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” but she looks pretty good.
In fact, the actor who plays her aging husband, Jean-Paul Roussillon, just doesn’t look like he would be married to someone who looks like Deneuve. Roussillon in reality is 12 years older anyway.
It’s the story of the Vuillard family. Deneuve’s character, Junon, and her husband, Abel, are hosting daughter Elizabeth ( Anne Consigny) and her son, Paull ( Emile Berling) ; another sibling, Henri (Mathieu Amalric) and his girlfriend and wife and sons and a cousin.
Six years before all of this, irresponsbile Henri purchased a theater to produce plays and it quickly went under.
Elizabeth bails him out under the condition they never see each other and have no communication and he cannot visit their parents again.
Oh yes, and another son died at a young age back in the 60s that still impacts everyone and Elizabeth has a son, Paul, 16, who has mental problems and attempted suicide.
So there you have the backdrop. Gives you a nice, warm, holiday feeling, right?
The story centers on Deneuve and a serious illness she acquires. She requires a bone marrow transplant or she will die within months. Paul and Henri are compatible donors.
Directed by Arnaud Desplechin, he makes it clear this is a dysfunctional family with lots of problems, both emotional as well as drugs and booze and everything else.
Only the husband,Roussillon, seems to be stable and have a brain in his head.
Everyone else has a grudge to bear or an addiction or harbors resentment.
There are lots of ugly scenes and selfish people.
And just why Henri is banished from the family for having acquired debts really isn’t made clear.
It is difficult to care about any of the people in this film. Christmas, in better pictures, is almost a character in itself. Not here.
This film really could have taken place at any time of the year.
All of this would have been more tolerable in a shorter film, but this thing is 2 1/2 hours long. Spending that much time with people you don’t like involved in situations you don’t care about means just one thing: You just want the movie to end.
And with no real conclusion to the dilema, the film credits start rolling and we can bid adieu to this mismatched family forever. The Vuillard family will not become a part of the Christmas season as have the Griswolds and Ralphie and his BB gun.

A CHRISTMAS TALE • Directed by Arnaud Desplechin • Story by Desplechin and Emmanuel Bourdieu • Runtime: 150 minutes • In French with subtitles • Not rated but with definite adult content • 11⁄2 stars out of 4

Gone With The Wind

‘GWTW’ Blu-ray set looks gorgeous

CLARK GABLE and Vivien Leigh in "Gone With the Wind."

Video Viper for Dec. 11, 2009

Most of the time, this column reviews movies.

This week is a little different because the movie I’ve chosen is “Gone With the Wind.”

Even if I wanted to, how could I slam “GWTW?” I mean, it’s one of the top 5 films of all time.

I first experience the film as a student at Kent State University and was absolutely mesmerized by the scale and scope of the film.

When I ran a WEEKENDER contest a few years ago, asking people what their favorite movie of all-time was, “GWTW” won, no contest.

That’s not bad for a movie that was released 70 years ago. How many movies that are that old can people even name these days?

My reason for discussing this landmark film is the fact it was just released in Blu-ray in a beautiful 70th anniversary package.

The first disc contains the four-hour film and is breathtakingly beautiful. It is really a step up and being on Blu-ray, it has a higher capacity so the whole film fits on one disc without any compression. It also contains an historical commentary of the film.

Disc 2 has “The Making of a Legend: Gone With the Wind,” an really interesting look at the history of the film. You wonder how it ever got made in the first place. The documentary comes in at 123 minutes.

The disc also includes the 33-minute “Gone With the Wind: The Legend Lives On,” which tells about the film’s legacy.

Another documentary, at 68 minutes, describes what a great year 1939 was for movies.

There’s also a biography of Clark Gable. Another about Vivien Leigh. Reminiscing about the film by survivor Olivia de Havilland is another extra. She describes how Leigh and Gable played Battleship while waiting to do their scenes.

There’s yet another documentary about supporting players and another on film restoration.

There’s also a 97-minute television movie, “Movieola,” with Tony Curtis playing David O. Selznich.

There’s also trailers and other shorter films on the disc.

Disc 3 includes “When the Lion Roars,” a three-part, six-hour documentary hosted by Patrick Stewart about the history of MGM.

Then there’s a CD of Max Steiner’s unforgettable score.

The set includes a recreation of the program movie goers got as their entered the theater to see the film back in 1939-40 and another book of pictures and stories about the film.

A little “GWTW” video history. Back in the early 1980s, VCRs were primarily for adult entertainment, but the powers-that-be realized for the industry to survive, it must move more into mainstream movies.

Movies quickly were released on home video, but not “GWTW.” It was too big of a film to ever be released to the home audience.

The home video industry would not come of age without “GWTW.”

Somehow, a version was released on Japanese Laserdisc, but you had to order an expensive import and it had Japanese subtitles. Also, you needed a Laserdisc player, which few people had. (The format died with the advent of DVD, which was a smaller, more compact version of the same thing.)

MGM relented and released a two-disc specialty version of the film on both VHS and Beta at $89..95 in 1989, complete with certificate of authenticity and no discount.

Years later, a scaled-down, two-tape version was released on VHS for $19.95.

The first DVD version was a two-sided disc with no extras and quality not much better than the VHS.

A few years later a feature-filled DVD set was released, but it sort of floats in the middle of the screen of today’s 16:9 ratio high definition televisions.

That’s why I was happy to see the Blu-ray version released.

How many copies of the film have I collected over the years? First off, I recorded off of CBS when it aired it over two nights, cutting the commercials out and fitting the whole thing on one Beta VCR tape in the 80s. Quality: Adequate for its time.

I upgraded to the Beta box set with certificate of authenticity when a wholesale Beta catalog store discounted the set from $89.95 to $7.99. How can you pass that up?

Then I got the two-disc VHS set, followed by the plain vanilla DVD (what was I thinking when I bought that?) to the original DVD set and finally the beautiful Blu-Ray box set.

The set is also available on standard DVD, but last I looked, deepdiscount.com offered Blu-ray for $1.50 LESS than standard definition. Discounted to $45, it is a much better bargain than the original videotape version at $89.

Maybe the next version will be in 3D or super high definition?

Whatever it is, I’ll probably be there with my wallet out.

For tomorrow is another day.

GONE WITH THE WIND

• Directed by Victor Fleming and others

• Written by Margaret Mitchell (novel) and Sidney Howard

• Runtime: 238 minutes

• Rated G for all audiences

• 5 stars out of 5

In Cold Blood

A good time to revisit ‘In Cold Blood’

VIDEO VIPER for Dec. 4, 2009

ROBERT BLAKE (left), John Forsythe and Scott Wilson in "In Cold Blood."

I read the book “In Cold Blood” back in junior high school.

I’ve seen the original 1967 film many times, the most recent being last month.

I was surprised three days later to see an Associated Press story noting it has been 50 years since the shooting of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kan.

“In Cold Blood,” by Truman Capote, is the novelization of the story of the well respected, Christian-based farm family.

Herbert Clutter (played by John McLiam) was the family patriarch. His infirmed wife, Bonnie, was played by Ruth Storey. Daughter Nancy is played by Brenda Currin. Paul Hough played Kenyon Clutter. Currin and Hough were University of Kansas theater department students

This was truly the all-American 1950s family. Daughter’s boyfriend comes over to watch the grainy, reception-challenged black and white television on Saturday night. Plans are made for church the next morning.

The son is experimenting with smoking, despite Dad’s objections.

It’s actually the mundane things families do, but it proves pretty compelling because we already know this is their last night alive.

A parallel story involves two ex-convicts, Perry Smith, played by Robert Black, and Richard Hickock, played by Scott Wilson.

Both appear to be man children. Perry talks about pulling a heist to make enough money to go to Mexico and buy a boat and look for buried treasure.

Richard hears stories from a convict still in prison about a rich farmer named Clutter and the fact he keeps $10,000 in a safe in his house. Easy pickings.

So there are the two stories, Perry and Richard hooking up again and the Clutters spending their last night at home.

Director Richard Brooks does an excellent job of building suspense.

But suddenly the plot shifts. It is the next morning and friends arrive to take daughter to church and are knocking on the door. When nobody answers, they walk in and stumble upon the grisly seen.

Detective Alvin Dewey, played by John Forsythe, is the lead detective.

There are two breaks in the case. One involves a bloody shoe print. The other the prisoner who told Hickock about the Clutters who hears about their massacre and realizes who did it.

The movie was made in 1967, a time when most pictures were filmed in color. The chlling horror that was these two misfits works much nicer in black and white.

It’s almost like we are seeing the world through their distorted eyes.

We learn the details of the murders through Perry’s flashbacks. He tells a detective, “I thought Mr. Cutter was a very nice man. He was a real gentleman. I though so up to the moment I cut his throat.”

The film pulls no punches and you aren’t looking forward to the murder scenes, even though there is little blood and it is black and white.

We follow the two murderers right up until their executions by hanging.

The movie, just like the book did, leaves the viewer grieving for this innocent family. Their sin, they didn’t have a safe full of money.

The movie is so real, so authentic. Blake, an actor dating to childhood as a member of Our Gang, had psychological problems after playing the part.

He was accused in 2001 of murdering his wife but was later acquitted.

This is a tremendous crime movie, well acted, well directed. It is almost like a documentary. If you haven’t seen it for awhile, it’s worth another look.

And by the way, my most recent screening of the film comes from Netflix movie streaming. Netflix has been providing Internet streaming of movies for a few years now, but a big breakthrough came last month with Sony’s Play Station 3 in the picture.

If you have a Netflix subscription, even if just the minimum, you can order a special disc you insert in the player. The first time you do this you get a code you type into your Netflix account on your computer. Suddenly, all movies in your que that are available for streaming are listed and you can watch as many as you have time for. You can pause, you can rewind. It is a real plus The only question is: How long before Netflix charges extra?