Regular readers may recall my agonizing difficulties in viewing THE LIFE AQUATIC one horrible Sunday at a Century 16 theater full of gabbing suburbanites, back when the film first came out. Now, fortunately, we have THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU (The Criterion Collection, No. 300, 2004, $39.95, two discs, Tuesday, May 10, 2005). Anderson has said that he learned how to make movies from Criterion discs, and so it is only right that he should arrange to have Criterion issue his films regardless of the studio making them.

The supplements on this disc are among the most helpful I've encountered for a recent motion picture. From the audio commentary track, conducted in the eatery where Anderson and Baumbach wrote the script, the viewer learns numerous things: that Owen Wilson was imitating actor Will Patton from ARMAGEDDON for the role of Ned, that Anderson has been working on the film for 14 years, and that the scene in which Steve overhears people talking about him was based on something that really happened to actor Chris Eigeman (who got caught bad mouthing an action star), talking about an action star. Anderson sounds a tad like Whit Stillman, and looks like a cross between Tim Burton and Tiny Tim. Disc One also has, in addition to an excellent widescreen transfer (2.35:1, enhanced) and DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, nine deleted scenes, and a 14 minute "Starz on the Set" making of featurette.

Portholes, one now sees, formed the basis for the film's visual design. Throughout the movie, people are peering at others through small oval openings. Even the cutaway side view of the ship, the most elaborate set for a comedy since THE LADIES' MAN, is in its way a "porthole" to what is otherwise impossible to see.

But is AQUATIC really a comedy? Like Gore Vidal's novel TWO SISTERS, it's about a man late in life confronting the fact that he may have a kid. Or may not (on the yak track the filmmakers make it clear that Ned's ancestry is meant to remain unverified). Ned is, within Anderson's films, an unusually good character, but he dies, just as Steve's best friend has died (before the film starts), and just as Steve also loses Cody, the three legged dog he inherited from the pirates, and even his cat Marmalade is killed by a snake. The whole tone of the film is really that of a 1970s existential film like SAVE THE TIGER, or Fellini films such as 8 1/2. The search for what Steve calls the jaguar shark has all the weighted symbolism of MOBY DICK.

Disney advertised AQUATIC as a comedy. In fact, I think that Disney, as usual, over advertised it, spoiling what jokes there were so that you have the feeling you've already seen the film before it starts. The Criterion disc helps cleanse the palate and see the movie for what it is, a meditation on movie making (as Anderson confirms on the commentary track). There are apparently numerous movie in-jokes besides the obvious Wislett-Richardson moniker.

Disc Two offers a wide variety of equally helpful supplements though on a somewhat difficult to navigate menu. "This Is an Adventure" is an hour long making of directed by, of all people, Albert Maysles, along with Antonio Ferrera and Matthew Prinzing. Added on is "Intern Video Journal" (15:00) shot by actor Matthew Gray Gubler, and showing some of the actors getting rather crabby over his intrusive lens. Anderson and Baumbach appeared together on an Italian television program MONDO MONDA (16:00), which is offered up here, and composer Mark Mothersbaugh, late of Devo, discusses his musical score (19:00). In addition there are five making of featurettes: "Creating a Scene" (4:00), "The Look Aquatic" (5:00), "Costumes" (4:00), "Aquatic Life" (7:00), "Ned" (3:00), and "Jane" (3:00), along with image and design galleries, and the full recordings of the 10 David Bowie songs used in the film performed by Seu Jorge in Portuguese.

The fourth STAR TREK TV series, and the third one in the modern era, STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE: SEASON 1 (Paramount, 2001, $133.95, seven discs, Tuesday, May 3, 2005) turns out to be pretty good (I never saw it on real TV). But it does violate a lot of the unofficial rules of what makes a STAR TREK show.

For one thing, it goes backwards instead of forwards, and aren't way to many TREK shows about disruptions in time? In fact, one of the premises of this series is that time and chronology are under threat. Another is that it opens with a theme song, which apparently ST fans found abhorrent, but which grows on you about 22 hours, as does the credit sequence itself, which includes an acknowledgement of the real world of space flight behind the show itself.

But I don't know if they complained about the worst violation of the essence of the show, as decreed by Gene Rodenberry way back in the dawn of TREK, i.e., that the Enterprise is an ambassador of peace, and that members of the Federation are constrained from intervening in the worlds they are in the process of mapping out.

I'm not sure if Rick Berman is to blame. After all, rooted in the seedbed of classic TREK are many instances of violence and warfare between Kirk and others. But the whole idea perhaps really disintegrated when the Enterprises was turned into a war ship in DEEP SPACE 9.

The clever premise of ENTERPRISE is that, since it takes place a couple of hundred years before classic TREK, nothing works quite right. Say "beam me up" and you may find yourself scrambled. The characters drool over warp speeds that Picard would laugh at. It's all very funny, but can it sustain a show?

I think, yes, and here is why: it's not so much about conflict as about inner conflict (and with luck it will stay a show somewhere; as I write this the fate of ENTERPRISE is still up in the air). In this firs season, the Vulcan's still aren't sure if human beings have the stuff to be ambassadors of deep space exploration. And they may be right, as the captain (played by Scott Bakula in a slightly off parody of a manly Rock Hudson) wrestles with his anger, and his right hand man, Malcolm Reed, also finds himself prone to the much-despised irrationality.

All 26 eps of the first season are available on Paramount's typically masterly boxed set, from two-part pilot "Broken Bow" to cliffhanger "Shockwave." Shot but not aired in high definition widescreen (1.78:1, enhanced), the series looks great, and the Dolby Digital 5.1 is excellent.

Supplements begin with an audio commentary from producers and co-creators Rick Berman and Brandon Braga over "Broken Bow," in which they acknowledge some of the fan-based dissent but don't really try to start another argument.

I'm not sure just exactly who most TV show making of supplements are made for. Those present here do not deviate from the standard formula; informative at times, but also achingly uninteresting. "Creating Enterprise" is a "making of" that lays out the essence of the show, while "O Captain, My Captain!" is a thin profile of Scott Bakula.

"Cast Impressions" is exactly what it sounds like, and "Shuttlepod One," as per usual Paramount practice, focuses on one specific episode. "Star Trek Time Travel: Temporal Cold Wars and Beyond" looks briefly at the running subplot of ENTERPRISE. "Enterprise Secrets" is a thin glance at some of the show's sets. "Admiral Forrest Takes Center Stage" is a character featurette that starts off with a cringe-inducing song dedicated to the recent women of "Trek". The extras, mostly on the 7th disc, close out with outtakes and a commercial for a "Borg Invasion" ride. Deleted scenes are associated with the specific episodes they come from, and Michael and Denise Okuda offer informative optional subtitle text commentary for three episodes. I would also add that the menus here are much easier to use than their equivalents on DEEP SPACE 9.

If you are still in a science fiction mood you might like to add QUATERMASS (A&E, 1979, $39.95, two discs, Tuesday, April 26, 2005) to your collection. It's a late 1970s addition to the mythology about the British scientist who often finds himself solving puzzles that threaten the existence of life on earth. Written by Nigel Kneale, who had conceived of the character way back in the 1950s, it more or less wraps up the Quatermass series, and on an ambiguous note. A parodic portrait of the times (though even then out of date) it pits apocalyptic hippies against a world declining into post-punk brutality as a treat from outer space makes the disputes between the west and the Soviet Union pale in comparison. It also pits old versus young, as Quatermass (the late John Mills) seems weakly grandfatherly as he searches for his granddaughter, who has been absorbed into the hippie cult.

I love the Quatermass series, but love even more its loving recreation in Tobe Hooper's LIFEFORCE, an elaborate homage to the Quatermass series penned by Dan O'Bannon and others from a novel by Colin Wilson. QUATERMASS is a lot tamer, but again it is one of those stiff upper lip British exercises in which appalled scientist cry out "Good god, man," to brutal soldiers.

A&E has honored the dwindling Quatermass fans by gathering onto this set both the original four hour mini series, directed by Piers Haggard, and the 90-minute theatrical release, which cuts out a sizable amount of deadwood from the mini-series. It's an interesting contrast of a full show with what can or has to be done with it for a movie time frame, and illustrates some of the hard choices involved. The transfers are probably as good as can be expected, with the theatrical version a full frame, unenhanced version. There is also a documentary about the "enduring mystery" of Stonehenge, made for the History channel, and that's about it for extras.

I think that at some point in the future when someone writes a book about the genre we will realize that at the other end of his career, after almost inventing film noir Orson Welles also invented the personal, essayistic documentary in F FOR FAKE (The Criterion Collection, No. 288, 1974, $39.95, two discs, Tuesday, April 26, 2005). I suppose that F FOR FAKE is probably for Welles fanatics only. I can't imagine anyone else but them, or students of documentary, or fans of frauds or Howard Hughes getting much out of it, but for those who do get it the film is a witty and even revolutionary work.

Because he was more or less an outsider artist in his later years, Welles made a dramatic shift in his style. Normally a master of the long take and the tracking shot, which is usually a luxury of the studio system and its wealth of resources, Welles in the poverty of his outsider status resorted to editing as his visual signature. He was assembling bits and pieces, and so he evolved, or devolved from Ophuls and Von Sternberg to Eisenstein.

This is most clearly seen in what may be the most significant moment on Criterion's two disc set, an excerpt from one of Welles's unreleased films, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, which appears near the end of the 1995 documentary ORSON WELLES: THE ONE-MAN BAND. The excerpt shows Oja Kodar having sex in a moving car at night in the rain. Not only does the sequence show late Welles's montage style at its height (fast cutting, but always with clarity), but also it is a rare, perhaps even unique moment of sexual passion in Welles's films. Like many of the top directors, such as Ford and Hawks, but also including younger directors such as Scorsese and Tarantino, who could, Welles was surprisingly modest on screen. I'm not sure why. I think that it is because Welles had a secret, or a secret life that has only been hinted at in even the most recent biographies of the filmmaker.

Is there another director who so radically changed his style? I can't think of one off the top of my head (maybe Eisenstein himself, who went the other way, from choppy editing to long takes with theatrical stagings). I think it is a remarkable story and its reasons are heartbreaking. It has yet to be told, but it could be, because most of Welles's collaborators in his later years are still alive to describe his day-to-day workings.

Such are the thoughts evoked by this marvelous two disc sets. The first Welles DVD from the company, Criterion's transfer of F FOR FAKE is a splendid widescreen image (1.66:1, enhanced) with a good Dolby Digital mono track. Extras on Disc One include an edited commentary track by Kodar and director of photography Gary Graver. Peter Bogdanovich also offers a brief optional video intro to the film. Supplements on Disc Two include the fascinating and exhaustive 88 minute long ORSON WELLES: ONE-MAN BAND. This film more or less comes from the Kodar side of the battleground over Welles estate and legacy, the other side of this windy warfare led by Beatrice Welles, his daughter, who has no presence on the disc. Equally important, at least to F FOR FAKE, is the hour long ALMOST TRUE: THE NOBLE ART OF FORGERY, a TV documentary about art forger Elmyr de Hory which shares footage with F FOR FAKE, and which makes explicit what was only hinted at in Welles's film. Finally, there is a 60 MINUTES segment with Clifford Irving that looks back on his scandal, and excerpts from the 1972 Howard Hughes audio press conference about Irving's bio. Inside the box is a 16-page insert containing an essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum, stills images and frame enlargements, cast and credits, transfer information, and chapter titles.

In one of those coincidences that make movies so magical and which F FOR FAKE celebrates, Welles's film appears within the orbit of THE AVIATOR, itself about to come out on DVD, both films having at their heart the mysterious industrialist Howard Hughes. If your appetite for Hughes is still puckish, then HOWARD HUGHES: THE MAN AND THE MADNESS (MPI, 1999, $14.98, Tuesday, April 26, 2005) fills in the gaps of both films. It follows two other DVD docs about HH, released last year around the time THE AVIATOR came out, and while each of them has something to offer, this one is probably the most comprehensive (although all of them fall short of the sort of gossipy revelations found in Charles Higham's bio of the aviator).

This doc, directed by Greg Newman, surveys Hughes's whole life, with comments from both former friends and associates and the writers of a massive bio of the man. Personally, I don't get the Hughes fascination, however. He was an incompetent lout who crashed nearly every plane he invented, was reckless on his movie sets, became a rabid anti-commie during the blacklist, and has some mysterious connection with the Watergate scandal. To me he seems to be just another dumb, ordinary executive; perhaps the fascination is that such an idiot could rise so far in America's media aristocracy. Oh, maybe that is the fascination for everyone else, too.

In any case, MPI's disc comes with several supplements beyond the film itself, basically five bits of newsreel footage of Hughes at various stages of his career, some covered in THE AVIATOR, some not.

There is one real good reason to watch LICENSE TO DRIVE: SPECIAL EDITION (Anchor Bay [of a Fox film], 1988, $19.98, Tuesday, May 3, 2005) again, or catch up with it for the first time. It's not the cult around the two Coreys, which, if cult there really be, has always baffled me; nor is it the retro fashions of pastel colors, big hair, suit coats shoved up to the elbows, and linen; nor, finally, is it the American love affair with the car, since despite the title cars are not really the center of attention here. No, the reason to watch the film is simple: Heather Graham.

The actress chose not to participate in this special edition. Not hard to see why. But she sure is discussed a lot. It is her first film, and she seems to have emerged out of nowhere. Corey Haim notes that she was a little fussy about kissing him when it became known that he was suffering from mono, but otherwise everyone has nothing but good to say about her. If director Greg Beeman and his casting director live on in memory for nothing else it will be for discovering Heather Graham.

But did they? How do these actors and actresses manage to come "out of nowhere," to become famous overnight? Is it really years of hard work in anonymity? Not in the case of Sylvester Stallone, who was very visible in bit parts in movies for many years before exploding in ROCKY. And Graham appears to have done nothing prior to LICENSE, no modeling, no acting, nothing. How did she get a female lead in a movie?

The answer is simple. Satanism. Like John Cassavetes in ROSEMARY'S BABY, these actors have all sold their souls to the devil for a place on the escalator to the big screen. Only Satan can advance careers with such ease. Only Satan has the time and patience to pick and choose among millions of beautiful men and women and select only a few for worldwide fame. And only Satan can come up with the punishments that inevitably assail those actors and actresses who transgress His rules, as chronicled in the weekly gossip tabloids.

Aside from Graham and Satanism, LICENSE TO DRIVE holds very little interest except to students of 1980s culture and fashions. It does, however, come with a panoply of supplements, as if it, too, were THE AVIATOR. There is a witty, self-deprecating audio commentary track by Beeman and writer Neil Tolkin (who get into a running fight over whether Beeman made Graham wear stockings for a glamour shot), video interviews with Haim (who looks like Chris Penn now, and who admits to regretting his slack-jawed, carp-like approach to acting), and Feldman, plus a deleted, or rather expanded scene, trailers, TV spots, and the whole script on DVD-ROM.

Males of a certain age may recall a program aired on Showtime back in the early days of cable television, at least as it was experienced on the west coast, called AEROBICISE. The show consisted of nothing but women on a slowly spinning dais exercising, as the camera tracked around them counterclockwise. Usually garbed in tight red leotards, the self-absorbed women (and later, after complaints, a few men) were helpless against the intrusive, zooming almost penetrating camera as it peered down cleavage that just "happened" to spin into its plane, and at flexing crotches, the girls doing a doggy style leg thrusting exercise. The show was probably the savior of many a marriage and not because housewives grew fitter.

Fond memories of AEROBICISE were evoked for me by CARMEN ELECTRA'S ADVANCED AEROBIC STRIPTEASE and CARMEN ELECTRA'S LAP DANCE AND HIP-HOP (Paramount, 2003, two discs each set [eight in all], $49.95, Tuesday, April 19, 2005), both being part of CARMEN ELECTRA'S AEROBIC STRIPTEASE COLLECTION. It's another example of a show whose makers can swear seven ways from Sunday is a sincere effort at teaching its viewers about the intricacies of exercise and fitness (and a happy marriage) but which probably has a negligible viewership among actual women. Like AEROBICISE, these videos featuring Carmen Electra (real name, Tara Patrick) strutting, swinging her legs, jutting out her chest and thrusting her buttocks, are really for male viewers, who will apparently take anything even the most remotely sexy even without nudity as long as it has a famous figure (in both senses of the word) at its center.

I'm sure that if there is an athletic housewife out there who really does want to spice up her marriage with a hip hop strip tease, this might be the place to go, and surely safer than visiting an actual lap dance palace. The videos are directed by famed cinematographer Ed Lachman (THE LIMEY, as well as, curiously, a documentary early in his career called STRIPER) without a trace of leering or sniggering winking, so that housewives really could, if they wished, comfortably mimic Carmen's various moves in the privacy of her living room.

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.

NEXT TIME: THE GIRL FROM MONDAY, more Asian action films, movies on music, several STAR TREKS, and more!

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