Threes Company

Each of the three CSI shows (thus far) has individuating characteristics. You can see the differences between the shows even in their choice of Who songs over the credits. In the pioneering VEGAS, it's "Who Are You?" — quizzical, tentative, knowlege-oriented. In MIAMI it's "We Won't Get Fooled Again" — suspicious, forewarned, agrieved, angry. (For NY, it's "Baba O'Riley," and the part of the song they picked emphasizes hard work, righteousness, dignity, and other New York "qualities" reflected in the show, and I'd add, also proto-Springsteen attributes.) The original VEGAS is supremely procedural, with occasional lapses into soap opera. The new NY is vaguely liberal, pious, and a tad gloomy. MIAMI is conservative, with David Caruso's Horatio Caine a bullet of justice piercing the armor of "bureaucrazy," timidity, corruption, rules, and regulations. He is so intent on justice for the little guy, or rather little woman, that he has no time for little, casual things, such as smiling. He does so only once that I can observe in CSI MIAMI: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON (Paramount Home Video, 2004-2005, seven single sided discs, $49.95, Tuesday, November 22, 2005).

CSI: MIAMI is also obsessed with kids. You will recall that in the first season it felt as if half the stories were about pederasts, and one concerned a pervert with a body farm of tykes in his back yard. This season opens with two shows in which kids figure prominently, and there is a long season long thread that has to do with the love of Caine's life (and mine), Sofia Milos, who plays Yelina Salas, the widow of Caine's supposedly dead brother, and whose small son figures in a few tales. I'm not sure what this kid obsession means, except that there is something vaguely more female-oriented about MIAMI than the other two shows — it's more sentimental, more noble, more inclined to long unrequited love subplots. A variation on the kids thing is an obsession with mother - son relations, such as in the episode in which Caine works hard to find the thug who put a kid in the hospital ("Speed Kills," on the second disc). This thread, however, has a payoff in the fourth season when the viewer learns more about Caine's past.

The big changes in season three were a new credit sequence, a lusher "look" to the show, the dropping of one character (Speed, played by Rory Cochrane, who apparently wanted out of the show because its lengthy shooting schedule interfered with his movie acting career), the addition of a new CSI (Jonathan Togo, as Ryan Wolf, a very appealing actor who also happens to look a lot like Eric Szmanda over in LAS VEGAS), and the completion of the soap opera story about Caine's undying love for his sister in law.

MIAMI has taken a long time to settle into its groove, to gravitate to the kinds of stories it does well with its mix of actors and writers and viewer interest. But there is still something kind of odd about it. People act kind of edgy in it to each other and it makes you uncomfortable. There are uncomfortable silences and odd medium shots of people just reacting that stick out. Your skin can start to crawl by disc four of this set, partially because it reminds you of real work, where people are edgy, angry, neurotic, passive aggressive, and asocial. Now I realize that most of the show's weird tension resides in Emily Proctor, as the gun expert. She's not a very good actress, more of an ideologue, and in this season she starts to look like an overstuffed sausage that is straining against its skin. It's usually her comments, silences, or medium shots that make you go, "Huh?" On the other hand, season three has some great villains in it, or at least great casting of villains.

Paramount's seven-disc set includes the 24 episodes of the season in beautiful widescreen transfers (1.78:1, enhanced), in DD 5.1, with DD 2.0 in Spanish. Each disc has at least four eps, in six chapters, and six of them have commentary tracks. CSI: MIAMI yak tracks tend to be dry and workmanlike, and a sampling of these shows them to be no exception. They rarely explain basic things, such as in season one why Kim Delaney left, nor here, why Cochrane left (do correct me if I am wrong about that). The yaks are attacked to, on disc one, "Lost Son," with Elizabeth Devine, and "Under the Influence," with writers and director Marc Dube, Corey Miller and Scott Lautanen. Disc two offers "Crime Wave" Devine and director Karen Gaviola. Disc three has "After the Fall" with Marc Dube, Scott Lautanen and Ildy Modrovich and "Shootout" with Corey Miller and Sunil Nayar. Disc six offers "Whacked" with Ann Donahue. Special features are confined otherwise to disc seven, and consist of "C.S.I.: MIAMI Delivering the Goods," "C.S.I.: MIAMI Visualizing Season 3," "C.S.I.: MIAMI Locations: Coast to Coast," "C.S.I.: MIAMI Deep Blue Sea," and the most informative of the lot, the eight part "Medical Examiner School," which explores the sorts of things MEs look for in gunshot wounds, stabbings, asphyxiation, and so forth. Series advisor John Haynes walks the viewer through the real life procedures and assessments that the show mimics.

I realized something about two discs into THAT 70S SHOW: SEASON THREE (Fox Home Video, 2000-2001, four single sided discs, $49.95, Tuesday, November 15, 2005): the show isn't really all that funny. I laughed a little bit, but not with the wracking spasms and eye-rolling admiration that I do with ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT or CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM. The humor, such as it is, confines itself to the characters "burning" each other, or instantly contradicting or betraying themselves.

But I also realized that that's not important. I only watch the series for Donna anyway. And in any case, all the characters are very pleasant to be around so you don't care if they are funny in the conventional sitcom manner. And throughout its seven seasons so far has had very little attrition, losing only the Forman family daughter, then the squeaky voiced Tanya Roberts.

Until this year, that is, when the show's ostensible lead, Topher Grace, decided to step down. But Grace's departure this year only highlights what has been true at least since the third season, that Hyde (Danny Masterson) is the real star of the show. Season three opens with Hyde having been busted for pot (which really belonged to his future girlfriend, Jackie), and the season opener devolves into a witty parody of REEFER MADNESS. The Halloween episode offers parodies of various Hitchcock films, and the season ends with Donna and Eric breaking up (temporarily, anyway).

Fox's season three compendium contains all 25 episodes, in good full frame transfers, with DD stereo surround, which is good for a rockin' score (the show continues to have one of the best theme songs and opening credit sequences). Most of the episodes have an optional intro by one of the cast members, and an optional replaying of the show's promo. There are several audio commentary tracks. Disc one has commentaries by series director David Trainer and producer Patrick Kienlen on "Too Old to Trick or Treat, Too Young To Die" and on "Eric's Panties." Disc two has an audio commentary by Trainer and producer Kienlen on "Dine & Dash." Disc three has Trainer on "Radio Daze." Disc four has Trainer yaking on "Eric's Drunken Tatoo" and "The Promise Ring." Finally, there is a 20-minute making of called "A Look Back At Season Three" on disc one, achingly lacking comments from Laura Pepron, but also Grace.

CHARMED really struggles to charm. With its third season, gathered together in CHARMED: SEASON THREE (Paramount Home Video, 2001, six single sided discs, $49.95, Tuesday, November 15, 2005), the show's soap opera elements (will Piper finally marry Leo?) and suspense were raised, but it also lost one of its founding stars, Shannen Doherty (to be replaced by the equally sexy Rose McGowan the following year), and one sees a gradual decrease in the special effects budget as the WB Television Network appeared to abandon it.

All the women in CHARMED are attractive and funny, and I love Alyssa Milano, but I don't know if they benefit from close ups in this show. Or maybe it's just the way it's shot. These are very attractive women but they seem to be abandoned, unsupervised, allowed to dress, be made up or be shot in hideous ways.

The third season set from Paramount also seems to abandon them. There are no extras. The full frame transfers struck me as somewhat dark and muddy, but maybe that's the way the show is photographed. The 22 eps are offered up full frame, with DD stereo in English and French.

No Shame (or is it NoShame?) is one of several new DVD companies that are doing exciting things. Another is Panik House, and a third is Grindhouse Releasing. Each has its specialty, and No Shame's is Italian film. All manner of Italian film. I have the company's excellent two-disc release of Antonioni's first feature film, CHRONICLE OF A LOVE, and now I have in hand three discs from the other end of the commercial and aesthetic spectrum.

Called either "poliziesco" or "poliziotteschi" (unless those are two separate categories), urban crime films made from the mid-1960s through the 1970s that usually focused on specific cities such as Milan or Naples as mob-ridden battlefields where sex and violence fell to the strongest. No Shame has lovingly released a trio of titles from this sub-genre, with enough subsidiary accoutrements to help the neophyte understand what he's gotten himself into.

Chronologically, the earliest is EMERGENCY SQUAD (No Shame, 1974, $19.95, Tuesday, November 15, 2005), A.K.A., SQUADRA VOLANTE, starring hunk Tomas Milian and directed by DP turned director, the late Stelvio Massi. It's a simple tale of a cop, or ex-cop, Tommaso Ravelli, always on the lookout for the reckless robber who killed Ravelli's innocent bystander wife during a shootout. The killer turns out to be a character called Marseilles (Gastone Moschin, from THE CONFORMIST, and who played Don Fanucci in THE GODFATHER PART II). Marseilles is on the run, like a character from a Don Siegel or Peckinpah film, and scrubbing accomplices as he goes, until the final showdown between him and Ravelli, who chews a cigar not unlike Eastwood in his Leone phase.

EMERGENCY SQUAD is made with a lot of verve within an obviously small budget, but I enjoyed getting familiar with the genre, thanks to the abundant extras on the disc. There is an interview with the director (who also does an intro to the movie), and a video interview with star Milian, who is not shy about quoting Lee Strasberg on the great virtues of Tomas Milian (Milian is still working, and can be seen in films as diverse as TRAFFIC and JFK). Milian also makes the point that these films were essentially westerns transposed to urban blight. There is also the original Italian trailer, and a still and poster gallery. The box comes with a 12-page insert that includes stills and poster art, plus essays on the film and on Massi, by Chris D., on Milian, and on actor ray Lovecock, by VIDEO WATCHDOG regular Richard Harlan Smith. There has been some chatter on the message boards debating the value of No Shame's transfers, which appear to be derived in some cases from Italian Region 2 discs, and which some say suffer from the PAL - NTSC conflict. I'm no technical expert and the transfer here and on the other discs was fine for my humble purposes, but experts should probably look more carefully into the matter. EMERGENCY SQUAD comes in a widescreen transfer (1.85:1, enhanced), with DD mono.

I got much more of a kick out of THE LAST ROUND (No Shame, 1976, two single sided discs, $19.95, Tuesday, November 15, 2005), or IL CONTO E CHIUSO, also directed by Massi, and which is a shameless ripoff of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, which means that it is a brazen adaptation of Kurosawa's YOJIMBO, which means in turn that ultimately it is an unabashed ripoff of Hammett's RED HARVEST.

It tells of a hitchhiker Marco Russo (Carlos Monzon, a boxer who has the sensual looks of someone out of a Pasolini film) with a mysterious past, who stumbles into a situation in which he save the victim of some mob pressure, he impresses the hell out of boss Rico Manzetti (model handsome French actor Luc Merenda), who hires him onto his team. But it turns out that Russo knows precisely who Manzetti is, and goes about pitting Manzetti against his toughest competitor. Manzetti, it turns out, did something dastardly way back when, and like Harmonica in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, is hunting down the perp. As in all its progenitors, LAST ROUND has its hero found out, punished and injured, then crawling off to be succored by newfound friends, only to return for final bloody revenge.

LAST ROUND is an excellent revenge film, tough and cynical, yet also romantic and passionate, with a political edge, too, as writer Jeff Stafford points out in an essay in the package's 12-page insert. Other essays include Chris D., on Massi's career (the same text from the previous box), and Smith again on the careers of Merenda and Monzon. Supplements on the disc include "Enter the Merenda," in which the actor is visited in his Paris antique shop, where he talks more about Chinese art than cinema, a poster and still gallery, and the original Italian and English theatrical trailer. The second disc is a CD of a band called Entropia doing the music from this and numerous other Italian police dramas. The movie comes in 12-chapter scene selection, and in a widescreen transfer (1.85:1, enhanced), wit DD mono.

The final film in the package is A MAN CALLED MAGNUM (No Shame, 1977, $19.95, Tuesday, November 15, 2005), otherwise known as NAPOLI SI RIBELLA, and is an example of a small, vibrant trend of films about "violent" cities. Others in the unofficial series include NAPOLI SPARA and ROMA VIOLENTE.

The film opens with cop Dario Mauri (Luc Merenda, on the other side of the law) arriving in Naples and soon stumbling upon a bank robbery, not unlike the sequence in the opening of DIRTY HARRY. A lengthy car chase ensues, and Mauri and his goofy police contact end up trying to crack a drug ring led by one "Dogheart." At one point Mauri rescues a sex slave (there is a lot of nudity in these films as well) who can spill too much about Dogheart, and a little girl figures in the plot as a snitch, the film climaxing with a chase scene in which Mauri tries to run down Dogheart.

MAGNUM is an efficient, essentially coherent tale that is a tad on the dull side, and with an uneasy blend of severe, judgmental American vigilante cop films and broad Italian humor (director Michele Massimo Tarantini did a lot more comedies than cop films). Its affect is more like a porno film than anything else, with its "filmed in the streets" quality (as opposed to "filmed on location"), and the tuneless funk score that overrides everything without sense of the cinematic moment. Action scenes, especially those involving cars can be a bit clumsy, with careful editing eliding the fact that the film is not racing full boar.

Though I didn't get as into this film as the others, it is still educational. For one thing it has an audio commentary with director Tarantini (in Italian with English subtitles), plus another interview with star Luc Merenda, that is focused more on the film career. Also on hand is a poster and still gallery, but most important is another 12-page insert that includes Smith's "See Italy and Die: A Tourist's Guide to Poliziotteschi," that summarizes the genre with authority. This is another widescreen transfer (1.85:1, enhanced), with Italian Dolby Digital 5.1, as well as Italian and English Mono.

Tartan, in its Asia Extreme series is helping us catch up with the work of Koran director Chan-Wook Park, whose OLDBOY is a masterpiece of cruelty. SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE (Asia Extreme/Tartan, 2002, $24.95, Tuesday, November 22, 2005). In this film, we see the beginning of his trilogy of vengeance, that ends with SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE, just opening in New York.

SYMPATHY is little more opaque than its successor. It's about a deaf mute trying to get his sick sister a new kidney. Because the bureaucracy is Byzantine and expansive, he goes to a blackmarket group who turn out to be ripoff artists and take him for all his dough. His girlfriend, who is a faux radical, convinces him to kidnap the daughter of his ex-boss. They do, but the kidnapping goes awry, and the girl dies. The industrialist affirms he will find the people who did this, and does, and crafts a cunning revenge. In a subplot, the industrialist attempts to find a liver for another one of his employees, and the kidney in question figures in the deaf mute's revenge on the blackmarketeers.

The movie is in two parts, like HIGH AND LOW. The first have is about the kid, the second about the adult. There are numerous surprises in store if you have been paying attention, specifically about the girlfriend, but also about the nexus between the blackmarketeers and the two vengeance seekers. If this were a novel instead of a movie, critics would be creaming themselves over the "irony" of the film's last 15 minutes.

Tartan offers up an excellent widescreen transfer (2.35:1, enhanced), with DD 5.1, English and Spanish subtitles, and with an audio commentary track with Park, being interviewed by someone else, in Korean, with subtitles. There is also the original trailer, a photo gallery, a brief making of, and a version of a trailer for LADY VENGEANCE.

Media Notes From All Over

I was delighted to have my suspicious about J. T. LeRoy unofficially confirmed by, first, a long article in NEW YORK magazine, and then by a follow up in the WASHINGTON POST. The long, 11-year long charade, one that has fooled everyone from Gus Van Sant to Winona Ryder, may finally have come to an end. When the media guardians realized that the articles attributed to J. T. LeRoy are, rather than autobiographical tales of hardship, but the imaginings of a 40-year old housewife and aspiring rock musician from Brooklyn named Laura Albert, and that her tales of transvestism, truck stop prostitution, repressive religious families, and San Francisco street hustling have the authenticity of a NEW YORKER writer descending among the masses to get some local color, then they began to pull the plug on stories lined up in the already troubled NEW YORK TIMES, and elsewhere. According to the articles, Albert is always seen in the presence of Leroy, going under the name Speedie, and walking a few concubinal steps behind whatever relative she's hired that week to play "LeRoy."

I even know somebody who worked on the set of THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS. I asked this person, "So, did you ever actually see LeRoy?" The spy replied, "Oh, yeah, sure, he was on the set all the time." Hmmm, I thought, maybe LeRoy is real after all, and then forgot about it, especially when I got the Criterion DVD of MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, which has a colloquy between Van Sant, LeRoy, and the director of TARNATION. Even when, finally hearing LeRoy's "voice," I said to myself, "Boy, that guy has a vocabulary that's pretty big for a kid with no formal education and who spent all his time on the street." The two articles in tandem make it pretty clear that LeRoy is an elaborate hoax, perhaps the most successful hoax in literary history, and for that very reason alone, Albert should be praised for her real artistic masterpiece, which, rather than the three or four meager books and articles she has written under her pseudonym, is the elaborate, LaButtian empty social construct she created around it.

It seems like every time I go into a bookstore I find yet another brand new book on at least one of my three favorite film subjects, Hitchcock, Kubrick, and film noir. I would also like to buy food, but that is out of the question with these pricey university press or McFarland - Scarecrow books piling up. This week brought no less than two new Kubrick books, Matthew Modine's FULL METAL JACKET DIARY (Rugged Land, 294 pages, $29.95, ISBN 1 59071 049 9), and STANLEY KUBRICK: DRAMA AND SHADOWS (PHOTOGRAPHS 1945 - 1950) (Phaidon, 256 pages, $70, ISBN 0 7148 4438 1), compiled by Rainer Crone.

Appearing in a "limited" edition of 20, 000 (mine is No. 2, 531), DIARY is a squat, heavy book that blends Modine's diary, printed in courier, along contemporary notes, and scads of pix he took during the shoot. It also has a literal full metal jacket, aluminum covers on hinges, with a plastic sheath that peals off (intentionally or not). Modine's book isn't the only memoir from someone who worked on FULL METAL JACKET; the credited screenwriter, Michael Herr, also published a small book, not long after Kubrick's death. This one comes from the trenches, however, by a guy who, as the lead character, was there for virtually the entire shooting process.

Entries are titled "Observational Diary," with Subject, Date, and Location noted, followed by Modine's thoughts at the time, and sometimes by contemporaneous reflections on what was happening. Dialogue is presented in traditional screenplay style. It becomes clear soon enough that, as much as Modine respected Kubrick, he didn't act overawed by him; in fact, he gave him a lot of shit. Look, for one example, on page 241 to 242, in which Modine argues with Kubrick over an aspect of the scene in which the soldiers stand over the dying sniper they've shot.

Being a diary, the book encompasses both Modine's on set time and his off set, "real" life, in this case as a husband whose wife is expecting a child (Kubrick was a tad miffed that Modine wanted to leave the set to witness the birth). However, Modine is a serious actor and brought to his observations of Kubrick the intensity of a Kubrick himself, noting down all the nuances of the man as he tried to figure out what made the director tick. Pages 264 to 268 give a great example of Kubrick directing, conferring with his lead actor. Kubrick: What was that? Modine: What? Kubrick: You did it different that time. Modine: Yeah. Kubrick: Why? Modine: Because you wanted to do another take. So I thought I'd try something different. Kubrick: Oh. That's what actors call "a choice." Modine: Yeah, I made a choice. Kubrick: OK, let's do it again. Modine then adds this gloss" "It's not that my choice was wrong. It's that he was looking for something else. I have no idea what. And I don't think he knows what. It's not a thing. It's an intangible feeling. But I think that's what it is, having no idea what. Not thinking. That by repetition, I might find myself hypnotized into being and not acting. That the whole process of acting is a journey toward being. Choices can't be right if you are making them. Choices are conscious. Stanley's actors have to react as unconsciously as an eye blinks. As uncontrollable as a heartbeat. This takes time. When Stanley told me he did a lot of takes because actors didn't know their lines, he wasn't talking about words." This is a fantastic book, a mouth wateringly close view of the God of Cinema in action. I look forward to reading other reviews of it to see if others find it as riveting as I do, or if they find fault with Modine's tone or observations.

DRAMA AND SHADOWS is essentially the exhibition catalog of a show featuring Kubrick's photos for LOOK magazine, a job he got while still in high school, and which served as a sort of visual transition into movies, which he started in the form of newsreels before making some feature films independently in the early 1950s.

The book divides the photos into four large groups: Metropolitan Life (life in the subway, inside a paddy wagon, a day in the life of a shoeshine boy, and others), Entertainment (a family circus, Dixieland jazz, a day in the life of a shop girl, a day in the life of the Aqueduct racetrack, among them), Celebrities (Leonard Bernstein, Montgomery Clift, and the Kube's famous pix of boxer Walter Cartier [where the Kube "discovered" overhead lighting], to name three), and Human Behavior (people at the zoo, people and their pets, a baby, streetlife, and so on). The first and last sound like each other, and the middle two seem interchangeable as well. The book begins abruptly with a "prologue" by Jeff Wall, which takes something of an anti-photography stance, fashionable these days, followed by a forward and opening remarks by Crone, a Berlin based art egghead who wrote the first monograph on Warhol back in the 1970s. His intro consists of sentences such as, "Kubrick's unique photographic perspective presents the viewer with a defamiliarizing or alienating process that helps to access the narratological construction of the image as a parable for the present." In other words, Kubrick's style helps you see how he's telling his stories as he tells them. Each suite of pix comes with a contextualizing essay by Crone. The book ends with two additional essays on Kubrick and photography, by Petrus Schaesberg and Alexandra von Stosch, and then notes, a filmography (mostly plot summaries and skimpy on credits), the index, and author acknowledgements.

I couldn't bear to read much of the hyper-intellectual text beyond the first few 'grafs, so I don't know if they make this obvious point, but Kubrick was obviously raring to tell stories in images and found himself confined by the "single image tells all" ethos. His photographic essays are like mini movies, especially the day in the life of the shoeshine boy, which puts you in mind of THE RED BALLOON in style. His day at aqueduct is a precursor of the racetrack scenes in THE KILLING. Some of the images feel staged (such as the couple hugging while a body lies on the floor of the subway next to them, under dramatic backlight). Others have the aspect of neorealism. I don't know if Kubrick was "searching for a style" as much as he was exploring all that a camera could do. His portraits of Clift and the boxers, wildly different from each other — the Clift pix are realistic, while the boxer shots seem like poses — are beautiful in their own way. The only thing missing from the book is the original LOOK magazine layouts, which could have been reproduced in tiny page spread images in the back, and the original LOOK text, which, if it came first in a given spread, might explain the "choices" Kubrick made.

It's almost Xmas shopping season and so, three months before the end of the year, the video guides started coming out. Do they all just make up things about Peter Jackson's KING KONG, or Spielberg's MUNICH? Jackson's KING KONG doesn't make it into the new VIDEOHOUND'S GOLDEN MOVIE RETRIEVER 2006 (Thomson-Gale Publishing, 1692 pages, $24.95, ISBN 0 8103 9404 9), the latest massive tome in what must be the most popular of the video guides outside of Leonard Maltin's equally early mass market paperback, but that's because it is a video guide, and therefore the manufacturers must think that the DVD release year is more or less over by August. Maybe they're right.

I suppose that there are still several million Americans out there who don't have access to the Internet. For them, home video guidebooks are probably of some value as primary references. And each of them does something slightly different. Each, also, is flawed in individual ways. Maltin adds all the new movies but also takes away some older titles. He is also not too trustworthy on four-star movies; a bit better on three stars. And his taste is skewed. Have you ever actually read what he has to say about TAXI DRIVER or BADLANDS? Intense film buffs tend to skip the movies they already know about to read the listings of the unknown quantities. Stray into your own private list much-beloved films and Maltin (or his quick fingered minions) suddenly appears to be nuts.

The VIDEO HOUND book is no doubt the most comprehensive of these guidebooks. It's bigger and announces 27, 000 titles listed over Maltin's 19, 000. But it is only excellent within its limitations. You must never confuse it with a comprehensive encyclopedia, and I think that people tend to do so. A director's films are listed in the index only if they are in the book, i.e., on home video. And VH continues to "mis-order" its information. A typical listing starts with the synopsis matter, rather than the credits (which are at the bottom of the listing). So a listing begins "Altman travels to Paris blah blah blah" and if you don't happen to know who or which Altman they are talking about, you have to stop, survey the credits, and then return to what you were just reading. Would it be all that hard to readjust the template? Is this kind of confusion more important to them than being accused of looking too much like Maltin's book?

The best feature of the book, edited by Jim Crawdock, and the one that I use the most, is the "category" or theme dictionary at the back, the first of 10 appendices (the other nine are alphabetical listings are a series listing, awards, cast, director, writer, DP, and composer indexes, plus excellent guides to where to find videos and DVDs and web site guide (MoviePoopShoot.com is listed under the General Entertainment heading). The category guide is a fantastic feature, alone worth the price of the book, but you really, really, really have to be imaginative, or have a lot of patience, for the actual titles of the categories are ofttimes counter intuitive.

For example, here is my recent adventure in the wilds of film retrieval. Someone called and wanted a list of movies about fishing. Stupidly taking time from my ever so busy schedule to hunt down some titles (the only two I could think of off the top of my head were Hawks's MAN'S FAVORITE SPORT?, and Redford's A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT), I naturally enough turned to the Fs in the back of the GOLDEN MOVIE RETRIEVE in search of "Fishing" as a category. But no dice. So next I tried "Outdoors." Didn't exist. I flipped backwards to find "Nature" but it wasn't there. Trying to be a little creative I tried "Great Outdoors." No. Then I looked up MAN'S FAVORITE SPORT?, in the front of the book, but the movie listings don't include any of the categories they might fall into. So I tried "Sea." No. "Wilderness." No. "Hunting." No. Then I fell upon it by accident. "Go Fish." There I found about 60 titles of movies with some kind of connection with fishing, and was able to impress the hell out of my friend. But still. "GO" FUCKING "FISH"?!!! As a guy with very little patience, my gripe, both with the MOVIE RETRIEVER as in computer hardware and names of digital files, is, Why can't they just call the thing what it is? By too often titling their categories counter intuitively, they are ruining the one feature that makes their book stand out. That complaint aside, however, VH GOLDEN MOVIE RETRIEVER is the best size and most comprehensive list, making it the best buy if you could only have one film guidebook in your library.

And incidentally, if you are interested in KILL BILL, you might find my new book, KILL BILL: AN UNOFFICIAL CASEBOOK useful. It is now available in fine bookstores everywhere, or from Amazon.

Not only that, I've got a new book coming out in November (fingers crossed) on an aspect of film noir I call film soleil, titled simply FILM SOLEIL. It is sure to alter film criticism as we know it to its very core. Order it now!

And if you are interested in what I sound like, I can be heard on KBOO radio (90.7 FM) the second and the fourth Wednesday of the month, at 9 AM in the morning (Pacific Standard Time) on Ed Goldberg's show MOVIE TALK along with Dawn Taylor. It's available via streaming audio (in 20 Kbps Stereo). The next broadcast is Wednesday, November 23, at 9 AM.

COMING SOON:SAW II, the 3rd Annual DVD Tray of Terror, FLIGHTPLAN and REDEYE, DEAD AND BREAKFAST, REMINGTON STEEL and other TV mystery shows, many STAR TREKS, and more!

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