Film: DVD Reviews

Pasolini's raw 'Roma' with a side of extras

'Momma Roma'
($39.95, Criterion Collection)
(movie)
(DVD features and extras)

For "Mamma Roma," one of the best and most accessible movies in Pier Paolo Pasolini's erratic body of work, the director labored to prevent legendary Italian star Anna Magnani from imposing her voluptuous theatricality on his pensive critique of the petit bourgeoisie. She liked to move her hands, for one, so he tried to keep them out of the frame. Pasolini wanted to "lead her back to a raw, Mediterranean tragic quality," steering her image into more reserved and realistic directions, says Pasolini biographer Enzo Siciliano in an interview on the typically stuffed Criterion two-disc set.

He failed. For opposite reasons neither the director nor Magnani was happy with her brassy performance, which most viewers embraced. In fact, it's an emotionally forceful display that weds the best aspects of both artists, enriching Pasolini's moving portrait of a former prostitute who returns to raise her abandon son. The boy, played with wounded eyes by pug-faced Ettore Garofolo, is now a difficult teenager. She may be too late.

His second film after 1961's "Accattone," "Roma" is the paradoxical novel-poet-filmmaker's most disciplined, after his masterpiece of calm precision "The Gospel According to St. Matthew." Though his thematic concerns -- a dogged anti-Catholicism and anti-capitalism echoing Buñuel's -- seep through, it is the film's root theme of parenting and family bonds that resonates.

The set's finest extra is Pasolini's church-condemned short "La ricotta," a witty squib about an actor who dies on the cross from (blasphemy!) overeating. Orson Welles, dubbed with a high Italian voice, co-stars.

'Wiseguy: Prey For the City'
($59.99, Ventura Distribution)
(series)
(DVD features and extras)

The main second season story arc for "Wiseguy" had nearly everything that made the '80s series great: an impressive guest-star lineup, brilliant scripts, complex villains and troubled anti-heroes. The only thing missing was the star.

Ken Wahl -- who played OCB special agent Vinnie Terranova -- was laid up for much of Season 2 with a broken leg, an unexpected plot twist worthy of the series itself, necessitating a radical rewrite of the show's main five-episode story arc. In "Prey For the City," Terranova is assigned to bust up corruption in New York's Fashion Avenue, bringing him into the employ of a father and son who are struggling to survive against the stranglehold of local mobster Rick Pinzola (Stanley Tucci). Garment manufacturer Eli Sternberg (a miraculously subdued and effective Jerry Lewis) has labored his whole life to build his business for his son, David (Ron Silver). When Vinnie gets waylaid (conveniently hit by a taxi) in the second episode, enter substitute agent John Henry Ragland (Anthony Denison) to finish out the storyline.

The stressful circumstances brought out the show's best assets. Series co-writer David Burke: "I think the garment district was our best work . . . Ken got hurt in the first episode and we had to scramble to make it work and keep the show on the air. And we did make it work." "Prey" became an audience favorite, and was the series' last great storyline.

In addition to the main story arc, "Wiseguy: Prey For the City" features the season's four-episode arc, "White Supremacy," plus four bonus episodes -- all starring Wahl. (Ray Sharkey fans will savor "White Noise," wherein the late lamented Sonny Steelgrave returns to torture Vinnie via dream sequences.) "Prey For the City" is vintage "Wiseguy," even if the Wahl did come tumbling down.
-- Steve Uhler

'Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Volume 2' and 'Sealab 2021: Season One'
(Warner Home Video, $29.98 each)

Aqua Teen:
(TV show)
(DVD features and extras)

Sealab:
(TV show)
(DVD features and extras)

Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" lineup, a Sunday-night mix of superb post-modern 'toons, has supplanted HBO's Sunday nights as the place for sharp, original comedy on cable TV.

What the cartoons, from "Sealab 2021" and "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" to others such as "Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law" and "Space Ghost: Coast to Coast," have in common is a free-flowing sense of absurdist humor and an endearingly low-budget approach: Many of these cartoons rely on recycled footage (Hanna Barbera's vaults have never been put to better use), but are written as almost dada pastiches of pop culture references and anything-goes silliness.

Two of the best Adult Swim shows, "Sealab 2021" and "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," hit DVD shelves with 13 episodes each of inspired lunacy. "Sealab" is a recycled adventure cartoon turned into a random series of "Catch-22"-like absurdities led by Captain Murphy, brilliantly voiced by the late Harry Goz. Though it flails a bit early in this collection, its second season has proved the show has great ideas when it breaks out of its usual format. Extras, unfortunately, are minimal, though a "Pitch Pilot" shows a rough, early (and much less funny) glimpse of the show.

"Aqua Teen" is weirder, and despite a warming-up curve for new viewers, funnier. A milkshake, wad of meat and container of fries (who are, sort of, superheroes) are supposed to be fighting crime, but mostly they bicker and try to pay the rent. The show has matured nicely as this second season shows, and added features on the DVDs are plentiful. Short live-action and puppet films from creators Dave Willis and Matt Malellaro, as well as commentaries, a bizarre hair-metal music video and a baffling origin featurette called "Future Wolf II" round them out.

"Aqua Teen" is about as random as comedy gets, but like a lot of Adult Swim, the po-mo stew works, at least for those viewers willing to dive in.
-- Omar L. Gallaga

Other new releases: "La Femme Nikita -- The Complete Second Season," "Soap -- The Complete Second Season," "Starsky & Hutch (Widescreen Edition)."