PULSE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Profound Kurosawa J-Horror Classic gets Arrow Blu-Ray

Now I'm alone
with my last friend in the world
and I have found happiness.

Pulse/Kairo (2001)
Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring: Kumiko Aso, Haruhiko Kato, Koyuki, Kurume Arisaka, Koji Yakusho

Review By Greg Klymkiw

About 15 years ago I saw Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse. It's stayed with me these many long years. I just finished watching the Arrow Films Blu-ray. I hadn't seen the movie since it scared the living shit out of me first-run on the big screen in 2002 and this recent viewing was like seeing it for the first time. Upon its conclusion and for some time afterwards I continued to shudder and weep. Not only because of the content of the movie, its profundity and deeply moving qualities, but because I felt so grateful that cinema exists to have afforded a genuine artist like Kurosawa the opportunity to unleash it upon us. And of course, when I see a picture this great, it reminds me, yet again, that I love cinema so very, very much. No matter how bad movies are these days, work like this exists and can continue to be made in spite of everything going against the medium now.

Pulse (aka Kairo) is a ghost story, but unlike any ever made. It deals with the notion that there's no more room in that place whereever the spirits of the dead go and now they are crossing over into our world, our living world. As people slowly begin to realize what's happening, it causes mass despair because what the ghosts communicate to the living is that death is eternal loneliness. People in the billions begin to commit suicide.

We follow two people who eventually find each other and realize that the only way they can survive is to be with each other, to never be alone. Of course, it takes some time and plenty of creepy and often downright shocking scares for this to happen.

Michi (Kumiko Aso) works in a plant shop. One of her co-workers has been missing for days. She goes to investigate and what she witnesses is ghastly. Her other co-workers become afflicted with a depressive malaise and she's eventually left to fend for herself.

Kawashima (Haruhiko Katô) is a university student who signs up for the internet (when the film was made, remember these were still relatively early days for the world wide web) and he discovers something online that's both ghoulish and more than a little disturbing. He befriends Harue (Koyuki), a computer science student, to help him get to the bottom of this ominous mystery. What they slowly begin to discover is truly shuddersome.

Yes, Michi and Kawashima's stories converge and as Tokyo's population dwindles to virtually nothing, they find each other. As Tokyo burns, covered with a thick, soupy haze (at one point, a flaming jet crashes into the middle of the city) they flee, pledging to go as far as they can go.

Throughout the film, Kurosawa assails us with moaning, wailing, desperate apparitions. A strange website called "The Forbidden Room" offers curious advice involving red duct tape (never has red duct tape been as hair-raisingly nightmarish as it is here). Recently departed humans turn into grim ectoplasmic black shadows on walls, floors and sidewalks (creepily conjuring images of similar shadows after the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings). At times we hear these shadows crying out, "Help me." All of this is delivered with a slow, macabre pace. dread ever-mounting.

At one point, it's explained:

"Ghosts won't kill people, because that would just make more ghosts. Instead they will try to make people immortal by quietly trapping them in their own loneliness."

This provides little solace to both the viewer and the characters.

Pulse has a truly unique look via cinematographer Junichiro Hayashi (gorgeously captured on the Arrow Films' Blu-Ray). Film grain is readily apparent and dances upon the screen ever-so delectably. The colour palette is made up of greys, pale browns and sickeningly bleached greens. Shadows and darkness run rampant - at times it seems like we can see virtually nothing, but shots will hold long enough to reveal tiny dollops of light and detail.

Kurosawa presents a world of loneliness, disconnection and deep, numbing and increasing pain. To say the film is prescient, would be an understatement. And yes, Pulse moves us to tears. When a character eventually declares:

"Now I'm alone with my last friend in the world and I have found happiness;"

We simply don't believe it. We can't.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *****

Pulse/Kairo is available on a tremendous Special Edition from Arrow Films (this company is truly the Criterion Collection of genre cinema). It includes a High Definition digital transfer on Blu-ray (1080p) and a Standard Definition DVD, the Original 5.1 audio (DTS-HD on the Blu-ray), New optional English subtitle translation, New interview with writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, New interview with cinematographer Junichiro Hayashi, "The Horror of Isolation": a new video appreciation featuring Adam Wingard & Simon Barrett (Blair Witch, You’re Next), an Archival ‘Making of’ documentary, four archival behind-the-scenes featurettes, Premiere footage from the Cannes Film Festival, Cast and crew introductions from opening day screenings in Tokyo, Trailers and TV Spots.

GHOST WORLD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - 2001 Zwigoff & Clowes masterpiece on Criterion

Shirtless Nunchuck Master fortifies with beef jerky.
A sad old man waits for a bus that never comes.
Teenage girls in this GHOST WORLD see it all.

Ghost World (2001)
Dir. Terry Zwigoff
Scr. Daniel Clowes and Zwigoff
Starring: Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Illeana Douglas, Pat Healy, Brad Renfro, Bob Balaban, Teri Garr, Dave Sheridan and Charles C. Stevenson Jr.

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"I used to think about one day, just not telling anyone, and going off to some random place. And I'd just, disappear. And they'd never see me again." - Enid (Thora Birch) in Ghost World

The sad old man in a dark suit and gray tie stares at nothing in particular as he sits on a bench at a long-discontinued transit line, waiting for a bus that will never come. His name is Norman (Charles C. Stevenson Jr.). Though a touch distracted, he seems friendly enough when recent high school grads Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) stop to talk with him, but when they assert that the bus route was cancelled two years ago, he expresses mild annoyance, even outright dismissal when he growls, "You don't know what you're talking about."

On the surface, Ghost World, director Terry (Crumb) Zwigoff's film adaptation of the Daniel Clowes graphic novel seems to be about the gradual drift that occurs between these two longtime girlfriends during their first summer of true freedom after twelve-long-years of school, and yes, so it is - on the surface. In reality, though, the picture seems rooted firmly in the character of Norman, someone who appears only briefly in three scenes.

Norman, you see, has a dream and so does young Enid. It is a dream of longing, a dream of escape - leaving behind the ghosts of a town that's become too small to hold anyone there with the desire for flight, the gnawing need to migrate towards a fresh life and new adventures.

One night, Enid visits Norman at the bus stop with the following confession: "You're the only person in this world I can count on, because no matter what, I know you will always be here."

This is Enid's problem. She can't count on anyone or anything to remain in her life. Oh sure, she's surrounded by a handful of constants. Her bestie Rebecca has long been an appendage. The two have remained super-glued together through a life of quips and wry, cynical observations on everyone and everything that seems so ordinarily below their lofty station - "normal" is a dirty word in their vocabularies. They've shared a dream of getting jobs and rooming together in their very own apartment, but when the reality of settling down creeps into their friendship, Enid turns to the geeky middle-aged 78 collector Seymour (Steve Buscemi) for solace and inspiration.

Enid meets Seymour when she's concocted a nasty little ruse after reading his plea in a "personals" column and she responds to it, pretending to be a potential paramour. Instead, she and Rebecca show up to the prescribed meeting place, a faux-50s-style diner in a strip mall and cruelly sit back and watch him arrive and wait in vain for the date that never shows up. They follow the dejected schlub to his nondescript low-rise apartment dwelling and even patronize his garage sale one Saturday morning.

The first signs of a shift in the girls' friendship is apparent. Rebecca thinks Seymour is a creepy nerd (especially after the girls attend a party in his apartment populated by middle-aged 78/vinyl geeks). Enid however, becomes a woman obsessed. She finally admits that Seymour represents "the exact opposite of everything I hate".

But even Seymour won't remain long in Enid's life - it's partially her own doing. She plays teenage matchmaker and when he finally lands a girlfriend, she jealously attempts to break it up by coming on to the poor schlub and eventually dumps him once she realizes that life with him isn't what she's cut out for.

When Enid talks to old Norman at the bus stop, he declares: "I'm leaving town." When a bus mysteriously appears, he boards it and disappears from her life, probably forever. Every anchor in Enid's life continues to dissipate. Even her single dad (Bob Balaban) is planning to get married. They're all dropping like flies. This is a coming-of-age via abandonment, but maybe, just maybe, a bit of self-abandonment is necessary.

New Criterion cover-art by Daniel Clowes.

Zwigoff and Clowes have created one of the most compelling female characters in all of cinema. Enid comes to life in ways that so many characters (no matter what their sex) have ever done. From the opening scene in which the camera tracks along the open windows of an apartment complex, we hear the sounds of a rousing Bollywood tune whilst each window gives us a glimpse into a series of seemingly empty lives: a lone Asian woman staring forlornly into the night, a shirtless dude with a mullet sitting alone in his kitchen, a dinner table bereft of anyone in sight to enjoy the booze, uneaten food and exercise bicycle next to it, a dopey bovine couple watching their stupid kid whack his toys with a plastic baseball bat, and then...

Enid! A raven-haired young beauty in a red kimono-like bathrobe, dancing madly and identically to a woman in a Bollywood video that plays on her television, is revealed to us as someone who is clearly cut of her own unique cloth. (When Enid dyes her hair green and begins sporting period punk-wear, she's even more ravishing and definitely, cooler-than-cool.) Thora Birch attacks the role with a vengeance - as if it were the role of a lifetime, which, it probably will end up being.

The film captures the ennui, the downright melancholy of adolescence with deadpan fervour. The muted colour-pallette created by cinematographer Affonso Beato, the perfection of the movie's cast and an astonishing score comprised of the heartbreaking strains of David Kitay's music and a terrific whack of songs (including the legendary "Devil Got My Woman" by Skip James), all combine to deliver a work that's as riotously funny as it is deeply and profoundly moving.

The film has not dated in the sixteen years since its first release. Though the period details of its late 20th Century never-never-land are omnipresent, the picture's perspective feels downright universal. I was delighted that during my most recent helping of the film, my own 16-year-old daughter was completely blown away by the movie and can't stop watching it - over and over again. We've talked at length about it, but she actually observed something I couldn't have put better myself.

Referring to the haunting final moments of the film, my daughter remarked, "You know, Dad, sometimes we all just need to get on that bus and disappear."

I won't argue with that.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Ghost World is available in a sumptuous Criterion Collection DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION on Blu-Ray/DVD and includes a new, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by Zwigoff, a 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray, a great commentary featuring Zwigoff, Clowes and producer Lianne Halfon, new interviews with actors Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, and Illeana Douglas, an extended excerpt from Gumnaam (1965) featuring the Bollywood number that appears in the movie’s opening title sequence (and with a wonderful commentary about the film itself), some terrific deleted scenes (including alternate takes of the nunchuck wielding madman played by Dave Sheridan), the trailer, an essay by critic Howard Hampton, a 2001 piece by Zwigoff on the film’s soundtrack and reprinted excerpts from Clowes’s comic "Ghost World". The Blu-Ray/DVD includes gorgeous new cover art by Daniel Clowes himself.

MULHOLLAND DRIVE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Criterion Does David Lynch Death Dream

Mulholland Drive (2001)
Dir. David Lynch
Starring: Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller,
Michael J. Anderson, Lafayette (Monty) Montgomery, Robert Forster,
Dan Hedaya, Billy Ray Cyrus, Chad Everett, Lee Grant, Rebekah Del Rio

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The tagline for David Lynch's first feature film Eraserhead was the aptly creepy, "A Dream of Dark and Troubling Things" which, frankly, could be applied to most of his great work. Few filmmakers understand dream logic and even fewer know how to use it within narrative cinema. Lynch is the exception to all rules and he might be the best living example of a filmmaker who brings the properties of nightmare to his drama with the kind of intelligence and aplomb that most can only, if you will, dream of.

Plus, his work continues to be the epitome of cool. Better yet, it never feels dated. Yes, it can be rooted in whatever time frame its rooted in, but his technique feels timeless, which bodes well for its unending value beyond the mere ephemeral that most contemporary films are hamstrung with.

Mulholland Drive was a film that chilled me to the bone and moved me deeply when I first saw it on a big screen at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2001 (one day before the 9/11 attacks, no less). Subsequent viewings in the next couple of years or so maintained the degrees of richness I'd come to expect with so many of Lynch's films.

Though screenings eventually dropped off my radar, the film itself did not and it continued to haunt me.

And then, the Criterion Collection issued a spanking new, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director David Lynch and director of photography Peter Deming.

No two ways about it, Mulholland Drive is a masterpiece.

I think it's safe to say that like Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive is indeed a cinematic "dream of dark and troubling things". Lynch has, however, chosen a very simple tag line for this creepy, terrifying tale of contemporary Hollywood and billed his picture as "A love story in the city of dreams . . . "

This is clearly appropriate in more ways than one.

Set against the backdrop of the movie business, we follow the story of Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), a small town girl who decides to grab her shot at stardom. She's completely unprepared for the deep horror and secrets beneath the dream factory's veneer. Upon taking possession of a homey suite owned by her aunt, she discovers Rita (Laura Harring), a gorgeous amnesiac passed out in the bedroom.

Betty, being a Canadian missy from Deep River, Ontario (no less) is an especially wide-eyed, kind-hearted star-struck blond naif. She also shares the Jeffrey Beaumont obsession (Kyle McLachlan's character in Blue Velvet) with solving mysteries. Rita has been involved in an especially horrific experience on Mulholland Drive and Betty is determined to assist her new sexy brunette friend.

This not only leads to all manner of delving into hidden corners they shouldn't, but the two gorgeous lassies begin to fall in love and Lynch happily has them diving into each other's respective love pockets.

A juicy, compelling sub-plot which wends its way into the lives of our heroines (and is, in fact mysteriously and inextricably linked to them), involves wunderkind film director Adam (Justin Theroux) who is being given thug-like orders by a raft of agents and executives - all of which seem closer to the edicts of gangsters. He's been clearly used to the business vagaries of the film industry, but his refusal to play ball seems to go deeper than usual as his life starts to spiral out of control. To restore normalcy, he is eventually forced to pay a visit in the deep night to one of Lynch's scariest incarnations, The Cowboy (Lafayette "Monty" Montgomery).

Betty's ascension to stardom seems to be getting more than a few helping hands. At one audition, she plays a love scene with Jimmy Katz (Chad Everett) a cheesy soap opera actor. The assembled slime bags for the audition appear to fetishize the love scene to creepy extremes, but Betty seems naively oblivious to the weirdness of it all. Deep french kissing with Chad Everett (no less) might well have been every gal's dream come true in his TV-star heydays of the 60s/70s, but it seems almost irredeemably sickening here.

And as her detective work on Rita's behalf intensifies, the very identities of both herself and lady love begin to morph into some extremely scary places. One of the more unsettling and moving sequences involves our sapphic couple visiting a strange club where they experience a live performance by an intense blue-haired chanteuse (Rebekah Del Rio) of Roy Orbison's "Crying" in Spanish.

The film swirls deeper into a thick morass which many might find utterly unintelligible, but in actual fact, there is a fairly straightforward narrative buried beneath the layers of mystery. (Lynch provided several cheeky clues for viewers to make note of that are now all over the internet after first being published with the first DVD release, but I think it's going to be a far more rewarding experience to let the film wash over you and keep discovering its secrets on subsequent viewings.)

I much prefer the big hint in Lynch's tagline for the film. He makes it clear that our film is set in the "city of dreams" and with elements of film noir coursing throughout the picture, Mulholland Drive might be as savage an excoriation of said dream factory as Nathanael West's classic 1939 novel "The Day of the Locust" (and its flawed, but worthy John Schlesinger 1975 screen adaptation).

In that great book, its "hero" is a production design storyboard artist who has been working on a sequence entitled "The Burning of Los Angeles" and one which terrifyingly comes to life in the book's shocking climactic moments. The portrait West paints of the film business is one of greed, exploitation and misogyny. Eventually, the only way to exorcise the evil is for total destruction.

Alas, Los Angeles, or rather, Hollywood, has not really burned. In Lynch's film, the greed, exploitation and misogyny West evoked has become more further entrenched than ever. It is a world of crime and corruption - a dream factory of nightmares. One of the orders director Adam receives is to utter the simple words "This is the girl" at an audition. At one point, Betty's alter-ego (yes, her personality does morph into someone else's) utters the same words.

"This is the girl," she says.

These words could belong to any "girl" for any reason. Using elements of dream logic to tell her dark story reveals how tenuous the thread between reality, dream and waking dream actually is. In many ways this dream of dark and troubling things in the city of dreams is not unlike a death dream and death, might well be what the dream factory is ultimately all about.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

In addition to the new restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director David Lynch and director of photography Peter Deming, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray, the Criterion Collection version of Mulholland Drive contains new interviews with Lynch; Deming; actors Naomi Watts, Justin Theroux, and Laura Harring; composer Angelo Badalamenti; production designer Jack Fisk; and casting director Johanna Ray, on-set footage, a deleted scene, the trailer and a booklet featuring an interview with Lynch from the 2005 edition of filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley’s book "Lynch on Lynch".

PARAMOUNT GAME NIGHT COLLECTION - Baseball Films Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw: FEAR STRIKES OUT & Original BAD NEWS BEARS Homeruns, BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY & MAJOR LEAGUE Ball Fours, HARD BALL, BAD NEWS BEARS sequels & remake all Strikeout.

It's the middle of a cold, dark winter.

Hockey is in full swing.

Baseball is a dim memory.

It seems as good an excuse as any to haul out the old Paramount Home Video nine-movie DVD box set entitled the Game Night Collection as a cinematic post-coital cigarette and pillow talk to the main event which occurred, it seems, so long ago.

Rating of Collection: **1/2
Ratings of Individual Films:
Fear Strikes Out (1957) dir. Robert Mulligan ****
Major League (1989) dir. David S. Ward **1/2
Hardball (2001) dir. Brian Robbins *
Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) dir. John D. Hancock **
Bad News Bears (1976) dir. Michael Ritchie ***1/2
Bad News Bears (2005) dir. Richard Linklater *1/2
Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977) dir. Michael Pressman *
Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978) dir. John Berry *1/2

Review by Greg Klymkiw

As someone who has virtually no interest in sports I'm still a sucker for great American sports pictures since the addition of story, character, mise en scene and on occasion, pure big-screen hokum become a perfect substitute for watching the thing itself. It's a genre that can delve into that one area of sports I actually find fascinating - the WORLD of sports – that is, everything about and around the sport rather than the sport itself.

American cinema is, of course, overflowing with sporting activities as a backdrop, but it's probably safe to say that baseball and football are – by far – the most popular activities to Uncle Sam's worshippers. In the movies, if football is analogous to war as it so often is (think Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday as a great example), baseball occupies a somewhat loftier, though gentler metaphorical position than football – that of LIFE itself. Winning is nice, but how you play the game is just as, if not MORE important.

When this box set presented itself to me a few years ago, I was pretty excited since I had seen many of these films when I was a child and had fond memories of them. I was also looking forward to catching up with a few of the newer titles I had heretofore missed and to take a new look at a couple of the more recent offerings. Ploughing through the whole box, my initial hopes weren’t necessarily dashed, but the collection turned out to be a pretty mixed bag.

Happily, in all such sets, there’s usually one Crown Jewel in the mix and this box is no exception.

While I’ve always had happy halcyonic thoughts about Fear Strikes Out, this most recent viewing yielded one of those rare experiences wherein the benefits of age (mine and the film’s) allowed for a whole new appreciation of this masterpiece of the 1950s. The inspiring true story of Jimmy Piersall (Anthony Perkins), a star hitter, shortstop and outfielder for the Boston Red Sox who made it to the top with his insanely demanding, driven father (Karl Malden) goading him on, resulted in a highly public nervous breakdown. It's the stuff movies are made of and Fear Strikes Out delivers big-time.

The relationship between father and son often provides highly-charged drama, but as portrayed in this extraordinary movie, it chills to the bone with its portrait of a father pushing his son out of both love and selfishness to dizzying heights of fame on the surface, while deep-down, shoving his son into a deep, dark closet mired in fear and intimidation.

Karl Malden as Dad and Anthony Perkins as Jimmy electrify the screen with their searing, staggering performances. As horrendous as Dad is, Malden still infuses the character with a warmth and humanity that makes the character all the more recognizable to anyone who has experienced that special love-hate tug with their own father. Perkins, in a role pre-dating his turn as the nut-job in Hitchcock’s Psycho is equally extraordinary – careening wildly from the shy romantic young man with a dream to the psychologically battered and drained vegetable in a straight-jacket.

Fear Strikes Out is also noteworthy as one of seven terrific pictures from one of the great producer-director relationships in American cinema. As a team, Producer Alan J. Pakula and director Robert Mulligan always dared to take us on journeys few mainstream pictures were willing to take in the late 1950s to early 1960s. They tackled a wide variety of important social issues with taste, intelligence and most importantly, a fabulous sense of showmanship. The pictures they made together were as supremely entertaining as they were thought-provoking. If the team had only made Fear Strikes Out and their timeless adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, that would surely have been enough to secure them a place in motion picture history, but they kept on delivering.

It’s also interesting to mention how this creative relationship really points to the importance of producers with vision. Once this team split up, Mulligan kept directing pictures, but they were all a pale imitation of his collaborations with Pakula. Pakula, on the other hand began directing his own pictures during Mulligan’s decline. Pakula kept delivering and continued the legacy of creating masterworks (Klute, The Parallax View and All The President’s Men to name just a few) while Mulligan barfed up such celluloid chunks as Summer of ‘42, The Other, Same Time Next Year and sadly, those pieces of crap were his “watchable” pictures – try sitting through Mulligan's coat-hanger abortion upon Jason Miller's The Nickel Ride sometime. Sadly, the Fear Strikes Out DVD has absolutely no extra features, but it’s a solid transfer of a gorgeous-looking black and white picture and happily enhanced anamorphically. It's a movie worth owning and within the context of this box set, it shares (thankfully on a separate disc) a slim-line case with Bang The Drum Slowly.

The latter title, directed by the painfully bland John Hancock, is rendered TV-movie-style (visually) and the muted drama pretty much makes mincemeat out of Mark Harris’s lovely novel and screenplay. A young Robert DeNiro as a doomed simpleton ball player works hard to charm and touch us whilst Michael Moriarty as the pal who takes pity on him is equally moving.

Both actors make the film worth seeing, but the picture moves lugubriously, looks ugly, has little feel for capturing the joy of the ball fields, dugouts and dressing rooms and is saddled with a grating musical score.

There are no extras with Bang The Drum Slowly, but none are really required. As a point of comparison though, this set might have benefitted from including the live television adaptation from the 50s wherein scriptwriter Arnold (Tucker: The Man and His Dream) Schulman and director Daniel (A Raisin in the Sun, Fort Apache – The Bronx) Petrie blended the techniques of radio drama with live theatre and cinema (along with those of live television itself), thus rendering a perfect example of cusp-period artistic expression during the dawn of television as a medium that was worth extending far longer than it lived. Their challenge was to translate a tale that spanned two baseball seasons, numerous locations (including dugout action) and a huge cast during one live hour of drama. Ultimately, it’s handled with the kind of originality and efficiency that Hancock's 70s film version can't even begin to hold a candle to.

The other piece of bad news in this box set is a double-trouble double-header. Two separate discs sharing another slim line case are a pair of what might be the worst baseball pictures ever made: Hardball, a bile-inducing story of loser Keanu Reeves finding his inner-self while coaching a ragtag group of deprived inner-city kids to little league victory and Talent for the Dame, a dull-as-dishwater picture directed by the once talented (Alambrista, Short Eyes) Robert M. Young, who turned-into-no-talent-sell-out-hack. Starring an earnest ('nuff said) Edward James Olmos (‘nuff said) as a baseball scout who turns a small town simpleton ('nuff said) into a major leaguer ('nuff said), it's virtually unwatchable. Lorraine Bracco ('nuff said) is in it too. Christ, she has an annoying voice. Watching her in this picture, I’m absolutely stumped how Scorsese turned her into the beyond-palatable Henry Hill moll in Goodfellas. Here, she sounds like a frog with a firecracker going off in its butt. Talent For The Game, as it should be, has no extra features, but Hardball is inexplicably jam-packed with extra features including a pretty useless commentary track with the purported writer-director and a mess of glorified EPK junk.

Getting its own slimline case, the single disc of writer-director David S. Ward’s Major League, dubbed the “Wild Thing Edition”, is loaded with a variety of extra features including an okay commentary with Ward. If you liked George Roy Hill’s Slap Shot (and I most certainly do), you’ll probably manage to enjoy this raucous baseball version sans Hill’s directorial panache and Nancy Dowd’s brilliant dialogue. That said, Major League made me laugh quite a bit when I first saw it and coming back to the picture was like putting on a comfy old pair of slippers, managing quite ably to deliver the well-worn goods.

Rounding out the set are four different titles with the Bad News Bears. Sharing one slim-line case are two separate discs of the original Michael Ritchie comedy classic and the recent Richard Linklater remake. Ritchie’s picture from Bill Lancaster’s terrific script holds up so marvelously that one wonders why the remake was necessary – especially since it really doesn’t try to move into new territory like some good remakes actually can. (I like citing the first three versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an example of how this can work beautifully.) Ritchie’s original, stars the inimitable hang-dog schlub Walter Matthau as the drunken foul-mouthed lout who manages to coach an equally foul-mouthed group of kids to ball-diamond glory with the help of a foul-mouthed tweener, pitcher Tatum O’Neal and foul-mouthed little criminal on a motorcycle, a very young Jackie Earle Haley. It’s a wonderful picture – both funny and moving. Linklater’s remake is not only necessary, but thanks to Lancaster’s script (which remains largely intact) and Billy Bob Thornton who is surprisingly good in Matthau’s role, it’s kind of watchable, but why bother when the original rocks big time and in its own way, hasn't really dated. Sadly, Ritchie’s classic has zero extras and Linklater’s ho-hum remake is jam-packed with extras.

The final offerings in this box are the 70s sequels to Ritchie’s original. On two separate discs in the same slim-line plastic case, you'll first find Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, a horrendously unfunny followup with few of the original cast on board and an utterly unappetizing William Devane making a poor replacement for Matthau. The other sequel, Bad News Bears Go To Japan, has a few laughs as the misfits find themselves in the land of the rising sun. Paramount wisely secured Bill Lancaster to write the script and they cast a very entertaining Tony Curtis in the coach role. Is it good? Not exactly, but it’s an okay time-waster and has a good number of ludicrous American-styled Japanophobic gags.

If you don’t own Fear Strikes Out, Major League and the original Bad News Bears and want to own all three of them, then it’s probably your best bet economically to pick up the box set. That said, I do hope Paramount Home Video gets its act together and issues some extras-loaded Blu-Rays of Fear Strikes Out and Ritchie’s Bad News Bears. That would be manna from Heaven.

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SPIRITED AWAY - BY JULIA KLYMKIW - TIFF Bell Lightbox presents a great series entitled "Spirited Away: The Films of Studio Ghibli" until April 13. Junior Cub Reporter, 11-year-old Julia Klymkiw, fills in for Dad today and reviews Miyazaki's masterpiece.

The Toronto International Film Festival TIFF Bell Lightbox is presenting a wonderful series entitled "Spirited Away: The Films of Studio Ghibli" until April 13. Junior Cub Reporter, 11-year-old Julia Klymkiw is filling in for her Dad today with a review of the Academy Award winning animated feature film, "Spirited Away".

"Spirited Away" is showing at Sunday March 25 at 7:00 PM, Sunday April 1 at 7:00 PM and Saturday April 7 at 1:00 PM. Tickets can be purchased online HERE.

Spirited Away***** (2001)
dir. Hayao Miyazaki

Review By Julia Klymkiw
The Film Corner's
Junior Cub Reporter

When I was lots younger I saw Spirited Away on DVD and I loved it. I loved it so much I watched it again and again.

Now that I’m older I had a chance to see it on film. I was amazed when I saw one of the most magical and beautiful movies I’ve ever seen on a big screen in a theatre. An actual real film, not a DVD. My Dad took me to see the movie at the Lightbox Theatre.

We sat in the back row and before the movie started. Dad showed me the projectors through the windows and I saw the big rolls of film. Dad says there are separate pictures called frames that move very quickly in front of the light bulb. The frames go so fast they make a picture that moves and it shows on the big screen down at the bottom of the room through the projector lens, which is kind of like a magnifying glass.

Spirited Away is an animated cartoon fairytale about a family moving to a new home. They drive onto the wrong road and find a tunnel that leads to a small strange town instead of their house. When the father smells food, he and his family walk towards it. The mother and father find the food, There is a whole bunch of it, like the Mandarin buffet, but nobody is around. The mother and father stuff their faces into the food like pigs, but the little girl is not so sure this is a good idea. After wandering around the town she comes back and is shocked to see that her parents are transformed into animals.

Running in fear she meets a boy, a very nice boy who will help her. Curled up and hiding near a bush, she realizes something very strange is happening to her, something just as scary as what happened to her Mom and Dad, but worse. That mysterious boy gives her a magic berry and she goes back to normal. Pulling her up, they run through the town and she sees spirits and ghosts wandering around and eating the same food her parents were eating. The boy sneaks her into a big building and gives her instructions where to go and what to do to survive in this weird world and to be able to save her Mom and Dad.

She goes to the place the boy told her about. She stares in terror at the steep stairs. She doesn’t want to go down, but soon she starts creeping down slowly, one more step at a time until she slips and tumbles so far down we think she will die. Luckily, she slams into a wall and is okay.

As great as all this sounds, this is just the beginning, the beginning of a great adventure, the beginning of Spirited Away.

Things get crazier and scarier. There are huge ghosts and slimy monsters and a nasty old lady who looks like a witch. To save her parents is going to be very difficult and dangerous.

Will the little girl succeed? You have to see the movie to find out.

It sure is cool seeing the movie for real in a theatre. The colours are way nicer than at home and this is the first time I watched the movie in Japanese. When I saw it on DVD, it was in English. I didn't know the movie was made in Japan the first time. Later on I did because my Dad told me that it was a movie made from this guy in Japan who is like Walt Disney. Even when I was little the movie wasn't like a lot of the other movies I watched. Seeing it in Japanese, now I know why.

It's okay if you can't speak Japanese. There are titles at the bottom to tell you what the people are saying. Even if you have seen this movie like I did on DVD, it is way cooler to see it in a real movie theatre in the language of the country it is from.