The West Wing Complete 7th Season

Coming to DVD Nov 7, 2006

Buy it from Amazon

It would be difficult for me to truly describe the wonderful shock that is The West Wing's final season. I, like so many, had given up on The West Wing when Aaron Sorkin left, wished the show cancelled during its atrocious 5th season, and, honestly, found the show an irritating fantasy during the Sorkin-helmed 4th season anyway. Something astonishing happens during "The Ticket," the season's first episode - you feel, in its incredible pacing, structure, and emotional understatement - that Aaron Sorkin has not only returned but has regained all of his abilities as a writer. That he is not at all involved with the show means that writers like Eli Attie and Deborah Cahn have finally gotten their work as writers to both revive the lightning-quick trademarks of The West Wing while also justifying the often-unswallowable plot maneuvers of its previous two seasons. It occurred to me during "Message of the Week," a nimble and thrilling episode, that campaign-trail politics had never been so accurately represented, if they'd truly ever been attempted at all. That means The West Wing had found a reason to exist again, and that sense invigorated all the stories it surrounded - the White House's "leak" story, or the regional conflict between Kazhakstan and China. And, in a winning surprise, it also revived its still extraordinary cast - Bradley Whitford especially turns the stress of campaigning into a frayed study of stress and exhaustion, and with Janeane Garofalo at his side, he finds a sparring partner of incredible energy. The two's chemistry makes the workplace seem as vital a beast as this White House ever seemed in its prime.

The DaVinci Code

Coming to DVD Nov 14, 2006

Buy it from Amazon

Critics and controversy aside, The Da Vinci Code is a verifiable blockbuster. Combine the film's huge worldwide box-office take with over 100 million copies of Dan Brown's book sold, and The Da Vinci Code has clearly made the leap from pop-culture hit to a certifiable franchise. The leap for any story making the move from book to big screen, however, is always more perilous. In the case of The Da Vinci Code, the plot is concocted of such a preposterous formula of elements that you wouldn’t envy screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, the man tasked with making this story filmable. The script follows Dan Brown’s book as closely as possible while incorporating a few needed changes, including a better ending. And if you’re like most of the world, by now you’ve read the book and know how it goes: while lecturing in Paris, noted Harvard Professor of Symbology Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is summoned to the Louvre by French police to help decipher a bizarre series of clues left at the scene of the murder of the chief curator. Enter Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), gifted cryptologist. Neveu and Langdon team up to solve the mystery, and from there the story is propelled across Europe, ballooning into a modern-day mini-quest for the Holy Grail, where secret societies are discovered, codes are broken, and murderous albino monks are thwarted… oh, and alternative theories about the life of Christ and the beginnings of Christianity are presented too, of course. It’s not the typical formula for a stock Hollywood thriller. In fact, taken solely as a mystery, the movie almost works--despite some gaping holes--mostly just because it keeps moving. Brown’s greatest trick was to have the entire story take place in one day, so the action is forced to keep moving, despite some necessary pauses for exposition. As a screen couple, Hanks and Tautou are just fine together but not exactly memorable; meanwhile Sir Ian McKellen’s scenery-chewing as pivotal character Sir Leigh Teabing is just what the film needed to keep it from taking itself too seriously. The whole thing is like a good roller-coaster ride: try not to think too much about it--just sit back and enjoy the trip.

Over the Hedge (2006)

Coming to DVD Oct 17, 2006

Buy it from Amazon

The manicured lawns and overstuffed garbage cans of suburbia become a buffet for woodland creatures in Over the Hedge. A self-centered raccoon named RJ (voiced by Bruce Willis, Die Hard) steals and accidentally destroys the hoard of an angry bear (Nick Nolte, 48 Hours), who gives the raccoon a week to replace it. RJ despairs--until he meets an odd gang of foragers, ranging from a turtle named Verne (Garry Shandling, The Larry Sanders Show), a father/daughter duo of opossums (the bizarre pairing of William Shatner and pop singer Avril Lavigne), a family of porcupines (with A Mighty Wind's Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara as the parents), and a hyperactive squirrel named Hammy (Steve Carell, The 40 Year Old Virgin). By convincing these friendly beasts that the suburban homesteads on the other side of a recently erected hedge are a mother-lode of cast-off food, RJ hopes to dupe them into doing his gathering. But when the suburban residents realize they've been invaded by woodland pests, an exterminator is called to take care of the problem. The overarching storyline of Over the Hedge is pure formula--your basic "family matters more than anything" lesson--but moment to moment, the movie is delightfully crisp and clever. The animation is topnotch, the acting is excellent (other voices include those of Allison Janney, The West Wing, and Thomas Haden Church, Sideways), and the satirical jabs at consumerism are actually funny. An above-average animated movie.