It's a rare thing indeed for a television miniseries to receive the DVD "Special Edition" treatment. Fortunately, Artisan has lavished John Harrison's adaptation of the Frank Herbert classic Dune with the kind of attention usually reserved for theatrical blockbusters. This director's cut features 30 additional minutes of footage and a whopping commentary led by Harrison, who also wrote the screenplay. He expertly guides the conversation with visual effects supervisor and second unit director Ernest D. Farino, editor Harry Miller, visual effects supervisor Tim McHugh and Greg Nicotero, owner of KNB FX, the group responsible for the Guild navigator and sandworms which burrow beneath the planet Arrakis. They cover every aspect of bringing a sweeping saga to the small screen, revealing many of secrets which allowed them to maximize production values on a minimum budget. There's also a plethora of featurettes covering not only the Dune production, including an essay by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, but also the psychological and theological aspects of the world created by Herbert. There's enough on this three-disc set to occupy someone for a week. In addition, the image and sound quality are first rate. Kudos to Artisan for making this DVD package a true special edition.

Rashomon (1950)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa

"It's just like Rashomon," we all say when something vaguely similar happens in our lives — but what does it mean? Rashomon in the movie actually refers to the gate through which one enters the outer precinct of the castle, or city, walls. Derived from the word "Rajomon" which translates as outer gate, Rashomon in our language has come to define the nebulous vagaries of truth, viewed from a variety of angles. In Kurosawa's film, adapted from a story by Akutagawa, an incident in a forest is remembered and told four times, and on each occasion distinctly differently. The actual truth of the matter is never discovered, or even addressed, but it doesn't matter because the fascination here is the bending and shaping of basic "facts" to suit each person's version. Kurosawa, who broke through internationally on the basis of this film's success, established his artistry and grasp of visual language by his use of triangular setups and resonant, dreamlike compositions. Brilliantly analyzed by Donald Richie on the DVD's commentary track, the historian delivers a master class on Kurosawa's style and technique. Mesmerizing and insightful, this is the standard to which scene-specific audio essays should aspire. Donald Richie, whose book on Kurosawa's movies is a benchmark in the critical field, was the ideal choice for the task and one can only hope he populates many other such tracks. The booklet is very beautiful too, with an impressive collection of stills and eloquent liner notes. Also reprinted are the pair of Akutagawa short stories, "Rashomon" and "In a Grove" which, when combined, form the basis of the movie — both are terrific reads. Additionally, Kurosawa's own reminiscences from Rashomon are excerpted from his autobiography. The disc's transfer is state of the art, culled from a 35mm fine grain master positive, which positively gleams. Rounding out the package is a video introduction by Robert Altman, and a segment from a documentary called The World of Kazuo Miyagawa, who was Rashomon's cinematographer.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season 2
Various directors

Star Trek: The Next Generation was the first — and arguably best — attempt at recapturing the lightning caught in a bottle of the seminal Star Trek series of the 1960s. However, the second year of the Enterprise-D's mission to 'seek out new life and new civilizations' was cut short, not by angry Klingons or a warp core breach, but by the WGA. The Writers' Strike of 1988 delayed the season and caused them to trim four episodes. Still the 22 adventures that Picard, Riker, Data, LaForge, Worf, Troi, Crusher and crew managed to have yielded some of the sharpest episodes of the series and firmly laid the mythology and foundation for better seasons to come. The six-disc collection comes in a clever and attractive package, suitable for any StarFleet Academy cadet's mantle. It also contains over an hour of special featurettes offering behind-the-scenes views of the making of TNG's Season Two, that effectively reverse engineer what it takes to put together an effects-intensive sci-fi series. The disc's only failing is the lack of audio commentary from the directors or director's team members as to what they encountered on their way to making a modern classic. Hopefully that will be rectified on future offerings.

The X-Files: Season 5
Various Directors

Fox Home Entertainment continues to bring us the truth out there with its release of Season 5 of the very successful The X-Files. Like its DVD predecessors, the set is full of extras — a documentary The Truth About Season 5, an F/X special Inside the X-Files, several special effects sequences with commentary by Paul Rabwin and deleted scenes with commentary by series creator Chris Carter. Carter also provides the only director's commentary. "The Post-Modern Prometheus" is a fitting choice for a commentary as it is one of the most interesting episodes of the series. Carter wrote this homage to James Whale's Frankenstein and shot it in black and white to capture the fairy tale quality of the story. He soon discovered it was more difficult working in black and white because of the need for the cinematographer to spend more time on the lighting to capture the grayscales. This led to his first experience with a line producer on the set tapping his watch telling him, "You've got to hurry it up." Carter goes into detail about casting choices, letting the set decorators run wild and working with wide-angle lenses. Most importantly, in a commendably very full DVD package, this commentary really makes you wish there were more.

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World Cinema Roundup

Appropriately kicking off our column this issue is Istvan Szabo's Lovefilm (1970), a touching Hungarian story that intricately combines the following sentiment expressed by the film's leading lady: "Love is only half of our happiness, the other half is what we do."

Szabo's love of film is plainly evident in every frame as we follow the journey of Kata and Jansci from children to grown-up lovers. Starting in the late 30s, their joint odyssey and separation spans WWII and the post-war occupation. Seen through Jansci's eyes, his rejection of communism and enforced exile in France encapsulates the displaced longing of all expatriates. Szabo who later made Mephisto, Colonel Redl and Sunshine among others, brings a felt sense of humanity to his work that qualifies it as art. Kino Video's new DVD transfer is lovely and highly recommended.

From the Criterion Collection comes a pair of Russian classics, both set against the backdrop of WWII. First up is The Cranes Are Flying (1957), directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, a stunningly photographed study of young love ripped asunder by the calamitous intrusion of conflict. As Boris is sent to the front lines and all but disappears, his lover Veronica is left lonely and torn and at the mercy of those that would prey on her. Through meticulously constructed compositions, this serious story achieves a dazzling poetry amidst the dark, dramatic turmoil. Ballad of a Soldier (1959), directed by Grigori Chukrai, reverses the dynamic of Cranes by having a young soldier be given unexpected leave after a bit of inadvertent heroism. Turning down a medal, he prefers some time off to fix his mother's leaking roof. His long journey home allows him to witness firsthand the strife that war has inflicted on his country, but the respite reunites him with his mother, and a girl with whom he can enjoy the possibility of love. Both of these films, part of the Russian "thaw" movement that came in the post-Stalinist era, draw the viewer into a unique Russian world — perhaps no more real than the Russia of vintage stereotype — but one that is surprisingly, almost daringly, human. Again, Criterion is to be congratulated for reissuing two practically forgotten works of cinema.

Kino Video's release of Siberian Lady MacBeth (1962, a.k.a. Fury Is a Woman) draws us insistently into the bleak world of early Andrzej Wajda. Set in a peasant community, this retelling of Shakespeare's masterpiece harshly delineates the phobic passions of a young woman prepared to stop at nothing. Dazzlingly visualized in black and white scope, Wajda's version unfolds in a series of chilling set pieces. Not widely known in the West, this Siberian lady is well worth checking out.

While we're on the subject of furious women, Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment has released two classics by director/producer William Castle — Strait-Jacket (1964) and Homicidal (1961). Castle was a master at packing the public into movie theaters and drive-ins with his marketing gimmicks. In Strait-Jacket, Joan Crawford literally has an axe to grind over her husband's infidelity. When she's released from an insane asylum years later, heads start rolling, again, but is it really Joan on the loose? Homicidal features a crazed female killer on the loose in peaceful little Solvang. Both of these discs feature extras. On Strait-Jacket is a mini-doc, Battle-Axe: The Making of Strait-Jacket. Homicidal features William Castle and Homicidal as well as its "Fright Break" wherein Castle interrupts the film, just before the "shocking climax," allowing a nervous audience member to receive his money back providing he stand in the "Coward's Corner" until the film ends. These are fascinating glimpses into what used to bring us into the theater.

Image Entertainment brings us another real curio in The Saragossa Manuscript (1965), a three-hour oddity now restored to its original length. Starring Zbigniew Cybulski (who was once billed as the Polish James Dean from his performance in Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds before he died in 1967), Saragossa is a phantasmagoric journey across a Spanish dreamscape populated with ghosts, demons and otherwise lost and departed souls. Cybulski approaches each revelation with a mixture of apprehension and charming befuddlement. The director, Wojciech Has, toiled for more than 40 years in Poland, but he has never gained much Western recognition. Image Entertainment's packaging is misleading, identifying the film as being in 2:1 ratio, but in fact the "Dyaliscope" frame is closer to 2:35.1. The score by Krzysztof Penderecki, whose strange, atonal sounds have graced many films including The Exorcist and The Shining, is both isolated on its own track, and tremendously effective within the context of the film.

Bob Le Flambeur (1956), directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, is an extremely well-rendered caper movie, a style which is of course currently back in vogue. In this beautifully constructed, dappled, noir universe, gangsters, molls, pimps and financiers swirl around glittering casino interiors like elegant insects — their netherworld of sinister duplicity humorously exposed. Melville's cinema is oddly galvanizing, a low-key panoply of rhythmic interplay, simultaneously harmonious and discordant. Criterion's superb new transfer offers sharp detail in the rich blacks and whites, and includes an interesting archival radio interview with Melville himself.

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