The Host With the Most
Awesome Korean monster movie gets awesome DVD treatment; also, a Woo, a Tarkovsky, a Minnelli, and a pecker.
Glenn Kenny's "The Discophile"
(posted 7/24/2007)
Feisty indie studio Magnolia obviously expects big things from its DVD release of the spectacular 2006 monster movie The Host; it's releasing a standard one-disc edition, an extras-packed double disc edition, and HD disc and Blu Ray versions of the picture (the latter two containing all the extras of the double-disc set) all on the same day.
The company has good reason to expect a warm reception for the disc. This critical/cult fave from Korea, directed by the inventive young filmmaker Bong Joon Ho, is everything its champions say it is: genuinely fright-filled, funny, and moving. It's also a movie that rewards repeat viewings — aspiring filmmakers will be freeze-framing and slo-mo-ing like crazy to discern just how, for instance, Bong got the most special-effects bang for his minimal bucks. Of course, the extras reveal a lot, too, including storyboard and behind-the-scenes stuff. (This is definitely a case where springing for the two-disc edition — in the event that you're not high-def yet — is definitely the way to go.) It's an indication of how disciplined a filmmaker Bong is that the 20-minute reel of deleted scenes consists of ten clips of mostly short duration. More insider knowledge can be gleaned via the commentary, wherein Bong — whose English is much-improved since I interviewed him last fall — is joined by expert critic Tony Rayns, who helps shed light on, among other things, the specifically satirical aspects of Bong's film.
Hardboiled
Fans of The Host already deem it a classic; another Asian picture that's proven itself to withstand the test of time — funny how it slips away — is John Woo's 1992 Hardboiled, which comes out today courtesy of the Weinstein brothers' Dragon Dynasty DVD line. After a few pics valorizing hitmen and such, Woo thought maybe he'd like to make a film about a hero cop, so he cast stalwart Chow Yun-Fat as the soulful Tequila. Opening with a shootout in a teahouse so spectacular it makes the viewer wonder how in the hell the movie's going to top that in its remaining two hours (and yet, it does!), Hardboiled is for many the quintessential Woo policier, and this is a fabulous version of it. The commentary by Bey Logan is extraordinarily well-prepared and detailed — his discussion of the varied studios during the opening credits alone is a mini-education in Hong Kong cinema history — and the second disc is equally chock-a-block, including a guide to the locations in the film (many of which are no longer extant). This immediately supplants the Fox Lorber 2000 release of the picture and is an incredibly welcome release.
Ivan's Childhood
Also most welcome and long-awaited is Criterion's disc of Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky's debut feature Ivan's Childhood. The conventional wisdom about this 1962 picture is that it's Tarkovsky's most accessible. And indeed, at 95 minutes (Tarkovsky's subsequent features — he made only seven total — all stretched past the two-hour mark, and his magnificent second feature Andrei Rublev is four hours), it's more than manageable for most viewers, and its structure is largely linear. It's the story of a boy whose age is used as a cover for spying activities on the Russian side in WWII. As the young fellow grown up way too fast, then almost-15-year-old Nikolai Burlaev (who is interviewed for one of the disc's extras) is grungy and hell-bent on convincing his elders of his toughness; in the movie's beautiful dream sequences, he's a bright, cheerful boy again. While the picture presents little overt "difficulty" in terms of length or structure, it is possibly the most emotionally shattering film Tarkovsky ever made; its impact is more direct, and troubling, than anything he did after. So in that respect it's a tough picture, but a great one. The film looks beautiful, and the extras are sensitive and thorough.
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