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Michael Giltz: DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets Darker
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/dvds-mad-men-season-2-get_b_231929.html [7/21/2009 5:40:29 PM]
JULY 21, 2009
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Michael Giltz
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Posted: July 14, 2009 04:08 PM
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DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets
Darker
Read More: Cartoons , Dvds, Friday Night Lights , Garrison
Keillor , Hugh Laurie , Mad Men , Mia Farrow, Movies, Norman Lear , Spike Lee , Stephen
Fry, TV Shows , Entertainment News
With the new season just around the corner in
mid-August, it's a good time to catch up with
Mad Men . Season 2 ($49.98; Lionsgate) was a
little shaky at times: the detour to Los Angeles,
the disintegration of any happiness for almost
anyone on the show, January Jones picking up
strange men in bars, the deeply upsetting rape ofJoan Holloway (a terrific Christina Hendricks) byher vile fiance -- exactly how dark was this show
going to get? Very. I'm most relieved about the
choices the show didn't make: I'm glad career gal
Peggy Olson's (Elizabeth Moss) friendship with a
young priest (Colin Hanks) hasn't become sexual. I'm glad office weasel Pete Campbell (VincentKartheiser) has yet one more chance to be accepted as one of the guys and not become just abackstabber or toady. And I'm glad Don and Betty haven't got divorced (yet). Make themmiserable, but don't let them split up or the show will atomize along with them. The DVD set
comes in a nifty box designed to look like your white business shirt has come back from the dry
cleaners and is ready to go. Extras include copious commentaries on every episode and brieffeaturettes on the changing role of women, fashion and the actual events of the era. Mad Men is
one show that definitely rewards careful rewatching.
DO THE RIGHT THING ($19.98; Universal) -- It would be wrong to ignore the social and
political significance of this movie's accomplishments, but those only matter because it works as a
film. First and foremost, Do The Right Thing is a blisteringly funny movie about the hottest day of
the summer in Brooklyn that creates full-blooded characters both for the customers of a pizzeriaand the bigoted owner (Danny Aiello). No one would care about Spike Lee smashing up the
windows of the joint and what that might mean if we didn't already care about the people in the
movie. The extras include a making of at the time, a look back today, a new commentary track byLee, the original commentary with Lee and DP Ernest Dickerson among others, the press
Pals: Mischa Barton Struggled
with Body Issues
READ MORE
Hailey Glassman Gushes over
Jon Gosselin
READ MORE
Demi Lovato and Trace Cyrus
Split
READ MORE
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Michael Giltz: DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets Darker
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/dvds-mad-men-season-2-get_b_231929.html [7/21/2009 5:40:29 PM]conference from Cannes in 1989 and more. Obviously, one of the best movies of the 1980s. I
always cite the wrenching documentary 4 Little Girls as the best movie Spike Lee ever made but
this is remarkable as well.
PEYTON PLACE PART TWO ($39.99; Shout) -- The Dallas of its day, this is a steamy
primetime soap that made stars of Ryan O'Neal and Mia Farrow as the wholesome heroine at the
heart of the scandalous goings-on of a New England town. Like Dallas , the plotline in Part Two is
circling around a murder mystery, though personally I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for therebellious Farrow to freak out over her stardom and cut off her long flowing hair, launching
headlines and a fashion trend at the same time.
ELDORADO ($24.95; Film Movement) -- Essentially a road movie, this is the shaggy dog story of
a burly middle-aged man Yvan who comes home to find a burglar named Elie ransacking his place.
You immediately know you're in offbeat territory when this tense scene devolves into a comic
standoff, with Yvan insisting the burglar come out of his hiding place and the burglar refusing.
Naturally, of course, he ends up offering the burglar a ride home. "Home" happens to be quite far
away and after initially dropping the kid off at a crossroads, when Yvan finds the kid still stranded
hours later he really takes him home. Thus begins a peripatetic journey involving nudists, swingers,rainy nights out doors and a burgeoning friendship of sorts. Gently amusing but always with anundertone of sadness, this is a sweet little film that ends very well -- hitting just the right note and
avoiding easy resolutions that you might expect. I wouldn't want to oversell it -- it's strictly for
cineastes and adventurous film buffs. But this is the classic "promising" first feature that is pretty
good and might very well be the start of an interesting career for Belgian director Bouli Lanners.
TOM AND JERRY: THE CHUCK JONES COLLECTION ($26.98; Warner Bros.) and TOM
AND JERRY'S GREATEST CHASES Vol, 2 ($14.98; Warner Bros.) -- Hmm, Chuck Jones?
I've never been a fan of the Tom and Jerry cartoons, to say the least. Simplistic, dull, repetitive and
tiresome -- I'd call them the poor man's Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner, but I'm not a big fan ofTHOSE cartoons either. (Mind you, they play like witty plays by Oscar Wilde compared to Tom and
Jerry.) But Chuck Jones is one of the giants of animation. Maybe his Tom and Jerry shorts have an
elan and cleverness the others lack. So I popped in the disc and...nope. Apparently, you can haveOrson Welles direct the Ritz Brothers but it would still be the Ritz Brothers and not the Marx
Brothers. The saving grace of the Chuck Jones set -- which contains 34 shorts and no, I most
assuredly did NOT watch them all -- is a delightful, poignant profile of Jones in which he talksabout his childhood, stories that combine on camera interviews and casual, charming animation.It's an Oscar-worthy 26 minute ode to one of the greats. Greatest Chases Vol. 2 contains 14 more
shorts, so clearly the Chuck Jones set is a better bargain for those who care.
SHERLOCK HOLMES ($24.95; Kino) -- As a Sherlock Holmes buff, I was intrigued to finally
see this 1922 silent film version starring John Barrymore. Not only do you get to see Barrymore in
top form, it's the closest I'll get to seeing the exceptionally popular stage play it sprang from. Theresult is intriguing, especially for those already fans of Holmes. We see Holmes as a college student
just developing his ideas about detection when the travails of a fellow Oxfordian bring him face to
face with future arch nemesis Moriarty (played by the cadaverous Gustav von Seyffertitz, who is somorbid you assume his day job is as an undertaker). Seyffertitz is the best thing here -- he plays
Moriarty with a compelling stillness that rivets your attention. But you also get William Powell's
film debut, not to mention gossip queen Hedda Hopper in an early acting role and stalwart Britishfilm presence Reginald Denny. But of course it's Holmes you pay the most attention to here.Barrymore has the angular, inquisitive features that are perfect for the role and his bounding youth
grows quite nicely into the sober detective. It's disconcerting to see Holmes moon over a girl but
how were they to know in 1922 that Holmes always should be a confirmed bachelor? The film isone of four in a John Barrymore boxed set ($59.95; Kino) from the always dependable Kino. Also
included are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Tempest, and the eye-opening (for me) spectacle The
Beloved Rogue, which is the most fun of all. John is where the legend of the Barrymores really
began (sorry, Lionel) and rightly so.
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS THIRD SEASON ($29.98; Universal) -- It's never happened before.
At least in my mind, no TV series has ever started out so critically acclaimed as Friday Night Lights
in season one, collapsed completely on a creative level in season two and then rebounded so
completely and successfully in season three. How did they do it? By pulling a Dallas and essentially
pretending that Season Two never happened. Seriously, you could skip from Season One to Season
Three and not miss a beat. All the bad ideas of Season Two (the murder and cover-up, the
bitterness in the marriage of Coach Taylor and his wife, their daughter dumping sweet quarterback
Matt Saracen, Lyla Garrity's unconvincing conversion to hardcore Christianity, Coach Taylorleaving town for a job at the college level -- all of it, literally all of it, is just ignored or dismissed in
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Michael Giltz: DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets Darker
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/dvds-mad-men-season-2-get_b_231929.html [7/21/2009 5:40:29 PM]seconds. The show may not achieve the heights of Season One (which can be watched very
satisfyingly on its own) but it's a strong show with one of the best casts on TV. And fans can rest
assured the show's creators probably won't screw up again: they've got a guaranteed Season Four
and Five thanks to a deal between NBC and Direct TV. They'll presumably air the 13 episodes foreach season starting in the winter (football's off season) just like everyone was yelling at them to doin the first place and it will come to a nice finale in 2011. Just make sure you skip Season Two.
THE QUEENS OF COUNTRY ($24.98; MPI) -- This bargain set brings together three modest
one hour DVDs that bring together all the TV performances they could get the rights to of three
women who indeed are the queens of country: no-nonsense Loretta Lynn, crossover superstar
Patsy Cline and genius songwriter Dolly Parton. Lynn's tunes are almost exclusively religious innature and Cline always struck me as more reserved on camera than I expect. (You just know shewas a blast offstage.) But Parton's winning personality and delightful voice are charming in any
context. Her tunes come from her short-lived variety show Dolly from the 70s and if anyone can
explain how the numerous attempts to launch a variety show starring Dolly Parton all failed,
they're smarter than me. It STILL seems like a can't miss idea to me.
Other music DVDs just out include John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Live In Toronto '69 ($14.98;
Shout), which is oversold as "the second most important concert" in rock history but is a valued
document for Lennon fans of his desire to stretch just as the Beatles were imploding (and
personally, I love Yoko Ono's work, even if Eric Clapton clearly didn't); and a trilogy of punk andreggae documentaries about the music scene in the UK that are bursting with raw performances byseemingly everyone: the Clash, Madness, the Jam, Boomtown Rats, the Specials, the Pretenders,
Steel Pulse and more. Nothing remarkable on a technical level and the interviews are just filler, but
filmmaker Wolfgang Buld was in the right place at the right time and made the most of it. Punk InLondon and Punk In England are both $19.95 from MVDVisual and run from 90 to 107 minutes
while Reggae in Babylon is slightly cheaper ($16.95) and only 45 minutes. All three should be
bundled together for $24.95, frankly.
THE NORMAN LEAR COLLECTION ($159.95; Sony) -- Everything we watch on TV today --
certainly every sitcom and many dramas -- has been influenced by the remarkable career of
producer Norman Lear, who held sway in the Seventies both commercially and creatively the way
few TV talents ever have before or since. This appropriately massive boxed set collects the entire
first seasons of his biggest hits: All In The Family, Good Times, Maude, The Jeffersons, MaryHartman Mary Hartman, One Day At A Time and Sanford And Son. Socially provocative,
ground-breaking but above all funny, his shows can still take your breath away today with their
audacity. All in the Family is the standard bearer, of course. But Mary Hartman broke ground by
being a syndicated hit, Good Times was one of the first shows that captured the black experience in
America from their perspective (white America could watch it but this was their show) and even
the innocuous One Day At A Time was about a divorced mom when just a few years earlier even
the idea that Mary Tyler Moore could be divorced freaked the network out. The best part of the set
are the substantial new documentaries that profile Lear and make clear his important role in TVhistory. So it's no fun to state that this expensive, coffee book table tome makes no sense. Anyone
who loves these shows will want more than one season of them and probably already has them. So
are people supposed to buy them all over again just to honor Lear? There is literally no audiencefor this set that I can think of. Even if you haven't bought numerous seasons of your favorite show,
you couldn't begin with these because they don't match the boxed sets of the seasons for sale on
their own. So this brings me to a pet peeve of mine: I love how so many shows are available incomplete seasons, but studios really need to make available a substantial greatest hits for their
sitcoms and dramas as well. I Love Lucy deserves a two or three DVD set that contains its 20
greatest shows. So does All in the Family and Maude and Cheers and The Cosby Show and many
other series I could name. Sure, it's great to watch them all in order, but most people won't want todo that with most shows and three episodes on a disc doesn't cut it. A 20 episode collection of
Maude could wake people up a new generation to the talents of Bea Arthur, for example. So all hail
Norman Lear and get smart like him and start packaging TV shows into attractive, price-friendlygreatest hits sets.
ENCHANTED APRIL ($29.99; Miramax) -- The novel it's based on has a modest charm and the
movie itself didn't make my best of the year list for 1992. But there's no denying the appeal of this
gentle comedy about four disparate women who spend the spring in Italy at a rented villa. A
marvelous cast helps, of course, and this one includes Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson, PollyWalker, Alfred Molina and Jim Broadbent. It's not a patch on the similarly themed A Room With A
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Michael Giltz: DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets Darker
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/dvds-mad-men-season-2-get_b_231929.html [7/21/2009 5:40:29 PM]
Sarah Jessica
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Throws Lindsay
Kate Major: Jon
Gosselin's Night OutView (one of the all time greats) but it's a little acknowledged fact that pleasant little movies often
endure better than edgier, bolder fare that gets over-praised on first view and rarely watched
again. Enchanted April is a prime example.
JEEVES & WOOSTER: THE COMPLETE SERIES ($59.95; A&E) -- This nicely compact
collection of all four seasons of the PG Wodehouse characters (a nincompoop of a blueblood withoodles of money and his man servant) has been out for a few weeks but I've just gotten around to
it. That's the beauty of a classic: you don't have to go see it the opening weekend the way you
would with, say, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen to enjoy it. It's always there for you,
waiting. I suppose if you've never seen this British comic series you might want to rent the first
season. But you'll soon find it irresistible and want to enjoy the entire set so you can watch it again
and again. Hugh Laurie is now world famous as the cranky doctor House , so it's a shock to see how
wonderfully dippy he can be. And co-star Stephen Fry as the unflappable Jeeves is officially a
National Treasure in the UK. This series is one key reason why.
BEAU GESTE ($19.98; Universal) -- This Gary Cooper adventure is a faithful retelling of the oft-
told story of brothers serving in the French Foreign Legion. It might be remembered more fondly if
it hadn't come out in 1939, the greatest year for movies in Hollywood history and thus beingovershadowed in our memories by out and out classics like Stagecoach and Mr. Smith Goes To
Washington. It's one of four not-bad movies out on Universal for $19.98. The other three are the
flimsy fantasy Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944), Fred MacMurray and Henry Fonda in theoutdoors melodrama The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine (1936) and oddball entry Lonely Are The
Brave from 1962 with Kirk Douglas as an escaped con.
GARRISON KEILLOR: THE MAN ON THE RADIO IN THE RED SHOES ($26.95;
Docurama) -- This modest documentary accomplishes what Robert Altman's over-praised last filmA Prairie Home Companion (2006) could not: it gives us a glimpse into the making of Keillor's
beloved radio show and thus a glimpse into the private Keillor himself. One thing is clear: with the
hoopla surrounding the wildly popular show having receded with time -- to his suspension of theshow for a few years -- Keillor looks pleased as punch to be doing what he loves. Is there anymedium like radio for letting someone remain both out of the spotlight and yet at the center of
attention. I don't think so.
PEANUTS 1960S COLLECTION ($29.98; Warner Bros.) -- They've been packaged and
repackaged time and time again but if for some reason you DON'T own any of the Peanuts TV
specials, certainly the six shows from the 1960s are the most beloved with of course A Charlie
Brown Christmas and It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown being the only two you really need.
The new obligatory extra here is a piece on composer Vince Guaraldi.
NEW YORK YANKEES PERFECT GAMES AND NO HITTERS ($49.95; A&E) -- As the
Yankee season looks iffy to me (we may get to the post-season but we don't have the pitching to
prevail), I can take comfort in some of the best Yankee pitching of all time. The poor Mets don'teven have a no-hitter yet while the Yankees need an entire boxed set to contain their three perfect
games and three no-hitters and it doesn't even contain ALL of the no-hitters. I was at the David
Wells perfect game (it was Beanie Baby Day at the stadium and I had to sit in the left-fieldbleachers), but sadly you won't catch a glimpse of me during the game. I was on the street andheaded to the David Cone no-hitter but my dad and my brother Chris out-voted me and my brother
David because they were in no mood to sit in the drizzling rain. I've forgiven them, sort of. But the
greatest pitching performance of all time has to be Don Larsen's perfect game IN THE WORLDSERIES. It still boggles my mind that such a thing could happen. You get six complete games and
the Larsen DVD even includes the entire radio broadcast by Bob Wolff. Since the TV broadcast
begins in the middle of the second inning, that makes the radio broadcast all the more welcome.But frankly, it's a treat on its own. I would listen to the entire game that way and not even bother
with the scratchy old video that's available.
THE TRANSFORMERS: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON 25TH ANNIVERSARY
($29.99; Shout) -- A beautifully packaged collection of the mechanical superheroes and
supervillains who battle it out for supremacy using Earth as their ThunderDome. If it'll help mefigure out which robot is which in the nonsensical movies, then I'm glad to have it in hand. The
series looks spiffy and extras include commercials for the toys and a short about the Transformers
phenomenon.
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Michael Giltz: DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets Darker
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Michael Giltz: DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets Darker
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/dvds-mad-men-season-2-get_b_231929.html [7/21/2009 5:40:29 PM]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/dvds-mad-men-season-2-get_b_231929.html [7/21/2009 5:40:29 PM]
JULY 21, 2009
HOME POLITICS MEDIA BUSINESS ENTERTAINMENT LIVING STYLE GREEN WORLD COMEDY 23/6
NEW YORK CHICAGO VIDEO BLOGGER INDEX ARCHIVE
Make HuffPost Your HomePage
Get Email Alerts
Michael Giltz
Freelance writer and raconteur
Posted: July 14, 2009 04:08 PM
BIO
Become a
Fan
Get EmailAlerts
Bloggers'Index
DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets
Darker
Read More: Cartoons , Dvds, Friday Night Lights , Garrison
Keillor , Hugh Laurie , Mad Men , Mia Farrow, Movies, Norman Lear , Spike Lee , Stephen
Fry, TV Shows , Entertainment News
With the new season just around the corner in
mid-August, it's a good time to catch up with
Mad Men . Season 2 ($49.98; Lionsgate) was a
little shaky at times: the detour to Los Angeles,
the disintegration of any happiness for almost
anyone on the show, January Jones picking up
strange men in bars, the deeply upsetting rape ofJoan Holloway (a terrific Christina Hendricks) byher vile fiance -- exactly how dark was this show
going to get? Very. I'm most relieved about the
choices the show didn't make: I'm glad career gal
Peggy Olson's (Elizabeth Moss) friendship with a
young priest (Colin Hanks) hasn't become sexual. I'm glad office weasel Pete Campbell (VincentKartheiser) has yet one more chance to be accepted as one of the guys and not become just abackstabber or toady. And I'm glad Don and Betty haven't got divorced (yet). Make themmiserable, but don't let them split up or the show will atomize along with them. The DVD set
comes in a nifty box designed to look like your white business shirt has come back from the dry
cleaners and is ready to go. Extras include copious commentaries on every episode and brieffeaturettes on the changing role of women, fashion and the actual events of the era. Mad Men is
one show that definitely rewards careful rewatching.
DO THE RIGHT THING ($19.98; Universal) -- It would be wrong to ignore the social and
political significance of this movie's accomplishments, but those only matter because it works as a
film. First and foremost, Do The Right Thing is a blisteringly funny movie about the hottest day of
the summer in Brooklyn that creates full-blooded characters both for the customers of a pizzeriaand the bigoted owner (Danny Aiello). No one would care about Spike Lee smashing up the
windows of the joint and what that might mean if we didn't already care about the people in the
movie. The extras include a making of at the time, a look back today, a new commentary track byLee, the original commentary with Lee and DP Ernest Dickerson among others, the press
Pals: Mischa Barton Struggled
with Body Issues
READ MORE
Hailey Glassman Gushes over
Jon Gosselin
READ MORE
Demi Lovato and Trace Cyrus
Split
READ MORE
More Celebrity News at People.com
Popular Stories on HuffPost
Nude In NY: Where
To Strut With No
Stuff (NSFW
PHOTOS, POLL)
Believe it or not getting
nude in NY isn't such a
hard feat. There are...
UPDATE: 'Sprite Oral
Sex Ad' Was
Unauthorized(VIDEO)
UPDATE 5:00 PM ET Thedirector of the fake Sprite
ad, Max Issacson, has
sent...BIG NEWS : Michael Jackson | Jon & Kate Plus 8 | Sports | Farrah Fawcett | More...
LOG IN | SIGN UP
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This Story to Digg
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Michael Giltz: DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets Darker
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/dvds-mad-men-season-2-get_b_231929.html [7/21/2009 5:40:29 PM]conference from Cannes in 1989 and more. Obviously, one of the best movies of the 1980s. I
always cite the wrenching documentary 4 Little Girls as the best movie Spike Lee ever made but
this is remarkable as well.
PEYTON PLACE PART TWO ($39.99; Shout) -- The Dallas of its day, this is a steamy
primetime soap that made stars of Ryan O'Neal and Mia Farrow as the wholesome heroine at the
heart of the scandalous goings-on of a New England town. Like Dallas , the plotline in Part Two is
circling around a murder mystery, though personally I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for therebellious Farrow to freak out over her stardom and cut off her long flowing hair, launching
headlines and a fashion trend at the same time.
ELDORADO ($24.95; Film Movement) -- Essentially a road movie, this is the shaggy dog story of
a burly middle-aged man Yvan who comes home to find a burglar named Elie ransacking his place.
You immediately know you're in offbeat territory when this tense scene devolves into a comic
standoff, with Yvan insisting the burglar come out of his hiding place and the burglar refusing.
Naturally, of course, he ends up offering the burglar a ride home. "Home" happens to be quite far
away and after initially dropping the kid off at a crossroads, when Yvan finds the kid still stranded
hours later he really takes him home. Thus begins a peripatetic journey involving nudists, swingers,rainy nights out doors and a burgeoning friendship of sorts. Gently amusing but always with anundertone of sadness, this is a sweet little film that ends very well -- hitting just the right note and
avoiding easy resolutions that you might expect. I wouldn't want to oversell it -- it's strictly for
cineastes and adventurous film buffs. But this is the classic "promising" first feature that is pretty
good and might very well be the start of an interesting career for Belgian director Bouli Lanners.
TOM AND JERRY: THE CHUCK JONES COLLECTION ($26.98; Warner Bros.) and TOM
AND JERRY'S GREATEST CHASES Vol, 2 ($14.98; Warner Bros.) -- Hmm, Chuck Jones?
I've never been a fan of the Tom and Jerry cartoons, to say the least. Simplistic, dull, repetitive and
tiresome -- I'd call them the poor man's Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner, but I'm not a big fan ofTHOSE cartoons either. (Mind you, they play like witty plays by Oscar Wilde compared to Tom and
Jerry.) But Chuck Jones is one of the giants of animation. Maybe his Tom and Jerry shorts have an
elan and cleverness the others lack. So I popped in the disc and...nope. Apparently, you can haveOrson Welles direct the Ritz Brothers but it would still be the Ritz Brothers and not the Marx
Brothers. The saving grace of the Chuck Jones set -- which contains 34 shorts and no, I most
assuredly did NOT watch them all -- is a delightful, poignant profile of Jones in which he talksabout his childhood, stories that combine on camera interviews and casual, charming animation.It's an Oscar-worthy 26 minute ode to one of the greats. Greatest Chases Vol. 2 contains 14 more
shorts, so clearly the Chuck Jones set is a better bargain for those who care.
SHERLOCK HOLMES ($24.95; Kino) -- As a Sherlock Holmes buff, I was intrigued to finally
see this 1922 silent film version starring John Barrymore. Not only do you get to see Barrymore in
top form, it's the closest I'll get to seeing the exceptionally popular stage play it sprang from. Theresult is intriguing, especially for those already fans of Holmes. We see Holmes as a college student
just developing his ideas about detection when the travails of a fellow Oxfordian bring him face to
face with future arch nemesis Moriarty (played by the cadaverous Gustav von Seyffertitz, who is somorbid you assume his day job is as an undertaker). Seyffertitz is the best thing here -- he plays
Moriarty with a compelling stillness that rivets your attention. But you also get William Powell's
film debut, not to mention gossip queen Hedda Hopper in an early acting role and stalwart Britishfilm presence Reginald Denny. But of course it's Holmes you pay the most attention to here.Barrymore has the angular, inquisitive features that are perfect for the role and his bounding youth
grows quite nicely into the sober detective. It's disconcerting to see Holmes moon over a girl but
how were they to know in 1922 that Holmes always should be a confirmed bachelor? The film isone of four in a John Barrymore boxed set ($59.95; Kino) from the always dependable Kino. Also
included are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Tempest, and the eye-opening (for me) spectacle The
Beloved Rogue, which is the most fun of all. John is where the legend of the Barrymores really
began (sorry, Lionel) and rightly so.
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS THIRD SEASON ($29.98; Universal) -- It's never happened before.
At least in my mind, no TV series has ever started out so critically acclaimed as Friday Night Lights
in season one, collapsed completely on a creative level in season two and then rebounded so
completely and successfully in season three. How did they do it? By pulling a Dallas and essentially
pretending that Season Two never happened. Seriously, you could skip from Season One to Season
Three and not miss a beat. All the bad ideas of Season Two (the murder and cover-up, the
bitterness in the marriage of Coach Taylor and his wife, their daughter dumping sweet quarterback
Matt Saracen, Lyla Garrity's unconvincing conversion to hardcore Christianity, Coach Taylorleaving town for a job at the college level -- all of it, literally all of it, is just ignored or dismissed in
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Michael Giltz: DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets Darker
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/dvds-mad-men-season-2-get_b_231929.html [7/21/2009 5:40:29 PM]seconds. The show may not achieve the heights of Season One (which can be watched very
satisfyingly on its own) but it's a strong show with one of the best casts on TV. And fans can rest
assured the show's creators probably won't screw up again: they've got a guaranteed Season Four
and Five thanks to a deal between NBC and Direct TV. They'll presumably air the 13 episodes foreach season starting in the winter (football's off season) just like everyone was yelling at them to doin the first place and it will come to a nice finale in 2011. Just make sure you skip Season Two.
THE QUEENS OF COUNTRY ($24.98; MPI) -- This bargain set brings together three modest
one hour DVDs that bring together all the TV performances they could get the rights to of three
women who indeed are the queens of country: no-nonsense Loretta Lynn, crossover superstar
Patsy Cline and genius songwriter Dolly Parton. Lynn's tunes are almost exclusively religious innature and Cline always struck me as more reserved on camera than I expect. (You just know shewas a blast offstage.) But Parton's winning personality and delightful voice are charming in any
context. Her tunes come from her short-lived variety show Dolly from the 70s and if anyone can
explain how the numerous attempts to launch a variety show starring Dolly Parton all failed,
they're smarter than me. It STILL seems like a can't miss idea to me.
Other music DVDs just out include John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Live In Toronto '69 ($14.98;
Shout), which is oversold as "the second most important concert" in rock history but is a valued
document for Lennon fans of his desire to stretch just as the Beatles were imploding (and
personally, I love Yoko Ono's work, even if Eric Clapton clearly didn't); and a trilogy of punk andreggae documentaries about the music scene in the UK that are bursting with raw performances byseemingly everyone: the Clash, Madness, the Jam, Boomtown Rats, the Specials, the Pretenders,
Steel Pulse and more. Nothing remarkable on a technical level and the interviews are just filler, but
filmmaker Wolfgang Buld was in the right place at the right time and made the most of it. Punk InLondon and Punk In England are both $19.95 from MVDVisual and run from 90 to 107 minutes
while Reggae in Babylon is slightly cheaper ($16.95) and only 45 minutes. All three should be
bundled together for $24.95, frankly.
THE NORMAN LEAR COLLECTION ($159.95; Sony) -- Everything we watch on TV today --
certainly every sitcom and many dramas -- has been influenced by the remarkable career of
producer Norman Lear, who held sway in the Seventies both commercially and creatively the way
few TV talents ever have before or since. This appropriately massive boxed set collects the entire
first seasons of his biggest hits: All In The Family, Good Times, Maude, The Jeffersons, MaryHartman Mary Hartman, One Day At A Time and Sanford And Son. Socially provocative,
ground-breaking but above all funny, his shows can still take your breath away today with their
audacity. All in the Family is the standard bearer, of course. But Mary Hartman broke ground by
being a syndicated hit, Good Times was one of the first shows that captured the black experience in
America from their perspective (white America could watch it but this was their show) and even
the innocuous One Day At A Time was about a divorced mom when just a few years earlier even
the idea that Mary Tyler Moore could be divorced freaked the network out. The best part of the set
are the substantial new documentaries that profile Lear and make clear his important role in TVhistory. So it's no fun to state that this expensive, coffee book table tome makes no sense. Anyone
who loves these shows will want more than one season of them and probably already has them. So
are people supposed to buy them all over again just to honor Lear? There is literally no audiencefor this set that I can think of. Even if you haven't bought numerous seasons of your favorite show,
you couldn't begin with these because they don't match the boxed sets of the seasons for sale on
their own. So this brings me to a pet peeve of mine: I love how so many shows are available incomplete seasons, but studios really need to make available a substantial greatest hits for their
sitcoms and dramas as well. I Love Lucy deserves a two or three DVD set that contains its 20
greatest shows. So does All in the Family and Maude and Cheers and The Cosby Show and many
other series I could name. Sure, it's great to watch them all in order, but most people won't want todo that with most shows and three episodes on a disc doesn't cut it. A 20 episode collection of
Maude could wake people up a new generation to the talents of Bea Arthur, for example. So all hail
Norman Lear and get smart like him and start packaging TV shows into attractive, price-friendlygreatest hits sets.
ENCHANTED APRIL ($29.99; Miramax) -- The novel it's based on has a modest charm and the
movie itself didn't make my best of the year list for 1992. But there's no denying the appeal of this
gentle comedy about four disparate women who spend the spring in Italy at a rented villa. A
marvelous cast helps, of course, and this one includes Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson, PollyWalker, Alfred Molina and Jim Broadbent. It's not a patch on the similarly themed A Room With A
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Michael Giltz: DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets Darker
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/dvds-mad-men-season-2-get_b_231929.html [7/21/2009 5:40:29 PM]
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Gosselin's Night OutView (one of the all time greats) but it's a little acknowledged fact that pleasant little movies often
endure better than edgier, bolder fare that gets over-praised on first view and rarely watched
again. Enchanted April is a prime example.
JEEVES & WOOSTER: THE COMPLETE SERIES ($59.95; A&E) -- This nicely compact
collection of all four seasons of the PG Wodehouse characters (a nincompoop of a blueblood withoodles of money and his man servant) has been out for a few weeks but I've just gotten around to
it. That's the beauty of a classic: you don't have to go see it the opening weekend the way you
would with, say, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen to enjoy it. It's always there for you,
waiting. I suppose if you've never seen this British comic series you might want to rent the first
season. But you'll soon find it irresistible and want to enjoy the entire set so you can watch it again
and again. Hugh Laurie is now world famous as the cranky doctor House , so it's a shock to see how
wonderfully dippy he can be. And co-star Stephen Fry as the unflappable Jeeves is officially a
National Treasure in the UK. This series is one key reason why.
BEAU GESTE ($19.98; Universal) -- This Gary Cooper adventure is a faithful retelling of the oft-
told story of brothers serving in the French Foreign Legion. It might be remembered more fondly if
it hadn't come out in 1939, the greatest year for movies in Hollywood history and thus beingovershadowed in our memories by out and out classics like Stagecoach and Mr. Smith Goes To
Washington. It's one of four not-bad movies out on Universal for $19.98. The other three are the
flimsy fantasy Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944), Fred MacMurray and Henry Fonda in theoutdoors melodrama The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine (1936) and oddball entry Lonely Are The
Brave from 1962 with Kirk Douglas as an escaped con.
GARRISON KEILLOR: THE MAN ON THE RADIO IN THE RED SHOES ($26.95;
Docurama) -- This modest documentary accomplishes what Robert Altman's over-praised last filmA Prairie Home Companion (2006) could not: it gives us a glimpse into the making of Keillor's
beloved radio show and thus a glimpse into the private Keillor himself. One thing is clear: with the
hoopla surrounding the wildly popular show having receded with time -- to his suspension of theshow for a few years -- Keillor looks pleased as punch to be doing what he loves. Is there anymedium like radio for letting someone remain both out of the spotlight and yet at the center of
attention. I don't think so.
PEANUTS 1960S COLLECTION ($29.98; Warner Bros.) -- They've been packaged and
repackaged time and time again but if for some reason you DON'T own any of the Peanuts TV
specials, certainly the six shows from the 1960s are the most beloved with of course A Charlie
Brown Christmas and It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown being the only two you really need.
The new obligatory extra here is a piece on composer Vince Guaraldi.
NEW YORK YANKEES PERFECT GAMES AND NO HITTERS ($49.95; A&E) -- As the
Yankee season looks iffy to me (we may get to the post-season but we don't have the pitching to
prevail), I can take comfort in some of the best Yankee pitching of all time. The poor Mets don'teven have a no-hitter yet while the Yankees need an entire boxed set to contain their three perfect
games and three no-hitters and it doesn't even contain ALL of the no-hitters. I was at the David
Wells perfect game (it was Beanie Baby Day at the stadium and I had to sit in the left-fieldbleachers), but sadly you won't catch a glimpse of me during the game. I was on the street andheaded to the David Cone no-hitter but my dad and my brother Chris out-voted me and my brother
David because they were in no mood to sit in the drizzling rain. I've forgiven them, sort of. But the
greatest pitching performance of all time has to be Don Larsen's perfect game IN THE WORLDSERIES. It still boggles my mind that such a thing could happen. You get six complete games and
the Larsen DVD even includes the entire radio broadcast by Bob Wolff. Since the TV broadcast
begins in the middle of the second inning, that makes the radio broadcast all the more welcome.But frankly, it's a treat on its own. I would listen to the entire game that way and not even bother
with the scratchy old video that's available.
THE TRANSFORMERS: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON 25TH ANNIVERSARY
($29.99; Shout) -- A beautifully packaged collection of the mechanical superheroes and
supervillains who battle it out for supremacy using Earth as their ThunderDome. If it'll help mefigure out which robot is which in the nonsensical movies, then I'm glad to have it in hand. The
series looks spiffy and extras include commercials for the toys and a short about the Transformers
phenomenon.
More in Entertainment...
Michael Giltz: DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets Darker
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/dvds-mad-men-season-2-get_b_231929.html [7/21/2009 5:40:29 PM]
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HeevenSteven I'm a Fan of HeevenSteven permalink
I'm a Mad Man!
tjmooney I'm a Fan of tjmooney permalink
It must be said that even though Bonnie Franklin's One Day At A Time character is almost always cited
as television's first divorced single mom, I'm pretty sure tv's first divorced single mom was VivianVance's Vivian Bagley on The Lucy Show.
Michael Giltz - Huffpost Blogger I'm a Fan of Michael Giltz permalink
I can't find any earlier divorced person as a regular on TV thanVance's. Thanks for the info.
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Michael Giltz: DVDs: "Mad Men Season 2" Gets Darker
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/dvds-mad-men-season-2-get_b_231929.html [7/21/2009 5:40:29 PM]