"Le beau Serge" (Criterion) and "Les cousins" (Criterion), the first two films from Claude Chabrol, mark the official birth of the French nouvelle vague. The two confident, mature dramas don't have the stylistic flash or narrative invention of the more famous works by Godard and Truffaut that followed, but that was always the way with Chabrol, the classicist of the "Cahiers du Cinema" crowd.

 

Where Truffaut added autobiography, enthusiasm and a palpable love of the very act of filmmaking to his films, and Godard deconstructed the act of filmmaking, storytelling and expectations in his films, Chabrol used his camera like a microscope to study the psychology under the surface of human behavior in  the Petri dish of social definitions and relationships. It all begins with these two features which predated Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" by mere months. True to form, they quietly established the arrival of a new talent, while Truffaut and then Godard, with "Breathless," created a seismic shift.

 

The two films are like a match set of city mouse/country mouse tales, the first in the dying community of a rural village (Sardent, Chabrol's own hometown), the second in a decadent bohemian society of Paris, with Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy as the provincial and the sophisticate (respectively) in both films.

 

In "Le beau Serge" (1958), Brialy is François, the young man who escaped the village and returns as a sickly, almost foppish sophisticate recovering from tuberculosis. He finds that his one-time best friend Serge (Blain) has slipped into the role of town drunk, a sneering, self-hating souse who drinks to forget the death of his first child and keeps on drinking to forget his own failings. "Poor François," remarks one townsperson of his drive to "save" Serge. "Always ready to do a good deed." But François' efforts, while sincere, are not necessarily completely altruistic and there is a hint of arrogance in his sanctimonious lectures. Meanwhile this twentysomething young man rather recklessly starts sleeping with the 17-year-old sister (Bernadette Lafont, all pouts and curves) of Serge's neglected wife (Michèle Méritz), which François treats with rather more nonchalance than everyone else.

 

 

"Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer: The Complete Series" (A&E) is the first small screen version of Mickey Spillane's violent pulp detective, previously featured on radio and the big screen. The title is something of misnomer, in that this is hardly Mickey Spillane's sexist, sadistic misanthrope with a gun. And it's not just that he's been toned way down for fifties TV. Darren McGavin is a smiling tough guy with a snappy wit and self-effacing humor, not shy about using his fists and quick to kiss a willing dame. But this Hammer also has principles and  loyalty and uses humor as much as he does violence in his work. This New York PI actually seems to enjoy life as much as he enjoys his job. 

 

Considered excessively violent for the day, this half-hour crime show (a long-gone genre that, at its best, has the quality of a short story) today plays like hard-boiled nostalgia with a tongue-in-cheek flair, and the generic studio sets are enlivened by New York streets and location shooting. It's a snappy little series and a lot of fun, thanks in large part to McGavin's amiability and rough-and-tumble humor, and the episode guest cast includes Angie Dickinson (in two episodes), Robert Vaughn, Lorne Greene and DeForest Kelley as a rather nasty hoodlum posing as a stand-up middle-class citizen.

 

The series lasted two seasons and a whopping 78 episodes (they didn't skimp on seasons back in the day), all of them collected on 12 discs in a box set of two standard cases with tightly-packed hinged trays. In terms of storage efficiency, these are both substantial, efficient and still easy to access.

Here's a neat snippet from an interview with McGavin talking about the series.

 

"The Dick Van Dyke Show 50th Anniversary Edition: Fan Favorites" (Image) presents 20 classic episodes of the series that has been called by many the greatest sitcom of all time. Carl Reiner based the show about New York comedy writer Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke), his genial modern wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) and his wisecracking writing partners (played by veterans Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie) on his own experiences but it took the easy rapport of the cast, from Van Dyke and Moore bridging the gap between 1950s patriarchy and 1970s equality to the by-play of the writer's room, to turn the generous writing to comic magic. It's still the best the TV comedy has to offer.

 

The five-disc collection (in a box-set of five thinpak cases) also features the original pilot "Head of the Family," which featured an entirely different cast (including Reiner as Rob, Barbara Britton as Laura, and Sylvia Miles as Sally), the featurette "The Making of It May Look like a Walnut!," a clip from "Diagnosis Murder" where Van Dyke’s Dr. Mark Sloan of 1998 meets the Rob Petrie from yesteryear in a clever bit of video magic, Dick Van Dyke singing the show theme song (complete with lyrics by Morey Amsterdam, unheard to that time) at the Hollywood Bowl, bonus interviews and rehearsal footage among the supplements.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs for September 20

 

"Modern Family: The Complete Second Season" (Fox) was the reigning champ of the 2011 Emmy Awards with five wins, including "Outstanding Comedy Series," a match set of "Supporting Actor" (Ty Burrell) and "Supporting Actress" (Julie Bowen) trophies, and awards for Directing and Writing. This is the show's second win for top comedy and it earns it once again, updating the classic American family sitcom with an extended family that is nothing if not diverse. And funny. 24 episodes on three discs on DVD and Blu-ray, plus featurettes, deleted scenes and a table read for one of the season's scripts among the supplements.

 

"Mike & Molly: The Complete First Season" (Warner) crowned its debut season with an Emmy for its leading lady Melissa McCarthy (who was a hysterical scene stealer in "Bridesmaids," also out this week). The comedy, from "Two and a Half Men" creators Mark Roberts and Chuck Lorre and sitcom legend James Burrows, follows the stumbling romance between two plus-sized singles (McCarthy and Billy Gardell) who meet at an overeaters anonymous meeting and fumble through courtship like teenagers. It was the hit new comedy of the 2011 season and McCarthy's win inspired a generous gesture of solidarity and support from her fellow nominees, who coronated her before her acceptance speech. (You can see that highlight -- sadly truncated -- below, after the jump.) Reno Wilson, Katy Mixon, Nyambi Nyambi and Swoosie Kurtz co-star. 24 episodes on three discs on DVD and two discs on Blu-ray, plus two featurettes, deleted scenes and a gag reel.

 

"The Kennedys" (New Video), starring Greg Kinnear as Jack Kennedy, Barry Pepper as Bobby and Katie Holmes as Jackie, hit TV earlier in 2011 with a notorious backstory: originally created for the History Channel, the $25 million mini-series was turned down for factual inaccuracies and a focus on lurid gossip and picked up by Reelz, a virtual unknown among cable channels. But it came into the Emmys with ten nominations and left with a win for Pepper for "Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries of Movie." Hollywood Reporter TV critic Tim Goodman complains that it "feels like a paint-by-numbers recitation of history and a not-very-sordid waste of artistic license." The eight-part series (which runs about six hours sans commercials) arrives on DVD and Blu-ray (both are three-disc sets) with the bonus featurette "The Kennedys: From Story to Film."

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs for September 20

 

Not all winners are yet available on home video or digital download – neither "Mildred Pierce" nor the first seasons of "Boardwalk Empire" or "Game of Thrones" have been announced by HBO (through subscribers can view them via their new HBO Go service) and don't expect the second season of "Justified" until late spring, when the third season begins.

 

These winners, however, were released earlier this year:

 

"Mad Men: Season Four" (Lionsgate) – Outstanding Drama Series

 

"Downton Abbey" (PBS) – Outstanding Miniseries or Made for Television Movie, Supporting Actress (Maggie Smith), Directing (Brian Percival) and Writing (Julian Fellowes)

 

"Friday Night Lights: The Fifth And Final Season" (Universal) – Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Kyle Chandler) and Writing (Jason Katims for the series finale)

 

"The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Fourth Season" (Warner) – Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (Jim Parsons)

 

"The Good Wife: The Second Season" (Paramount) – Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Julianna Margulies)

 

Based on the pilot episode of "Body of Proof: The Complete First Season" (Disney), one might think the show was trying to create a Dr. House for the forensic crime genre. Dana Delaney's Dr. Megan Hunt, a former neurosurgeon who had to give up that career after a car accident left her with debilitating nerve damage (and a patient dead on the operating table under her knife), is now a forensic pathologist working directly with the police. In that first episode, it's more like she's competing with them, challenging them, even take over their interrogations with a surly unpleasantness. "Don't believe everything you've heard about me," she cautions one veteran investigator. "The truth is much worse."

 

Thankfully all that unpleasantness and arrogance is tone down in the second episode and the brilliant Dr. Hunt becomes merely headstrong and demanding. She's also more human, and that's what the show really is supposed to be about. Once a blindly ambitious career surgeon, neglecting her family with a self-righteous attitude that drove her husband (Jeffrey Nordling) to divorce, she's trying to build bridges and reconnect with her teenage daughter, her society mother (Joanna Cassidy) and even her ex-husband, whose vindictiveness in the pilot calms down out over time.

 

Jeri Ryan is Cuddy to her House, the boss who tends to cover for her star doctor, and John Carroll Lynch (so often comic relief or villain) and Sonja Sohn (of "The Wire") are the very capable detective she comes  to respect. Unlike the "CSI" shows, this forensic pathologist actually works WITH the police, not in place of them, and through  the course of the abbreviated first season, they start to feel like a team. It's all pretty familiar and, at root, conventional, but the baggage of Dr. Hunt's life has interesting dramatic potential that one hopes will be developed in the second season.

 

Nine episodes on two discs, plus featurettes on cadaver make-up and the costuming and the obligatory blooper reel.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs for September 20

 

Kristin Wiig co-writes and stars in the hit girl-bonding romp "Bridesmaids" (Universal), a hit comedy that reminds us that women can have just as much fun playing in the comedy sandbox of adolescent behavior, poor judgment and gross-out gags. Videodrone's review is here and Videodrone talks to Kristin Wiig about the film and DVD here.

 

Speaking of brides, "Bride Flight" (Music Box) is a romantic drama about three Dutch women emigrating to New Zealand to meet their husbands-to-be in 1953 and one young man emigrating for a better life. Set during the Last Great Air Race from London to Christchurch, the chance meeting becomes a turning point in their lives. Film critic Roger Ebert writes that ""Bride Flight" takes this melodrama and adds details of period, of behavior, of personality, to somewhat redeem its rather inevitable conclusion." It's the most expensive film ever made in the Netherlands and features an appearance by Rutger Hauer in his first role in a Dutch film in years. In English and Dutch with English subtitles. Arrives on DVD and Blu-ray, both with a featurette and bonus interviews, plus Digital Download and OnDemand.

For more foreign language release, check out the "Foreign Affairs" spotlight here.

 

"Brand New Day" (Fox) follows a runaway Aboriginal teenager on his way back home to reunite with his girlfriend while his boarding school headmaster (Geoffrey Rush) is hot on his trail. The Australian musical road movie was originally released under the title "Bran Nue Dae." NPR film critic Ella Taylor writes: "Enjoyable and forgettable in equal measure, the lovably cheesy Australian movie Bran Nue Dae is a must for children bitten by the musical-revival fever, for all who heart American Idol, and for anyone who came of age in the late 1960s - and is willing to hear the beloved pop standards of their youth massacred for a new age." On DVD and Blu-ray.

Bruce Willis goes direct-to-DVD in the heist thirller "Set Up" (Lionsgate) and he gets second billing to Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson to boot. If that's not a career wake-up call, I don't know what is. Ryan Phillippe and Randy Couture co-star. On DVD and Blu-ray, with commentary, featurettes and interviews.

 

Non-fiction:

"Circo" (First Run) follows a small family circus traveling the backroad circuit of rural Mexico. Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan describes it as "a marvel of a documentary, a clear-eyed and affectionate film that tells a remarkable story with both visual and personal sensitivity. More impressive still, it's largely the work of one man." Features an interview with director Aaron Schock and a follow-up featurette among the supplements.

 

"4th and Goal" (First Run) chronicles the journeys of six college football players with NFL aspirations and "Ed Hardy: Tattoo the World" (Docurama) profiles the influential tattoo artist.

 

And the rest:

"Forever Plaid: The Movie" (Flatiron) isn't a movie, it's a recording of the theatrical musical fantasy. "Breaking the Press" (Fox) is a sports drama with a religious theme. Ray Liotta and Ving Rhames star in the murder mystery "The River Murders" (Sony). "Spooky Buddies" (Disney) is the latest direct-to-DVD sequel in the cute little puppy series.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs for September 20

 

Catherine Deneuve essentially plays herself in "I Want to See" (Typecast), a documentary/fiction hybrid about a famous French actress in Beirut and who, with a Lebanese actor (Rabih Mroue) acting as guide, driver and commentator, tours the devastation and reconstruction of South Lebanon. The unspoken politics behind the small talk is the elephant in the car but this is more conceptual art piece than documentary: strangers talking in a car as the world goes by outside. Like an Abbas Kiarostami film without the discipline or the design. The film is strongest when the cameras are turned outward to look at the world going by: urban ruins like rotting corpses, a village leveled to rubble, a coast buried in mountains of tangled of rebar and broken concrete, the surf orange from the detritus, and in between a verdant, green countryside that looks for all the world like a rural idyll. Except for the land mines. In Arabic and French with English subtitles.

 

Semih Kaplanoğlu's "Yusuf Trilogy" chronicles life in the Anatolian provinces of Eastern Turkey through the life of Yusuf, a poet raised by a single mother. The three films in the series -- "Yumurta" (Olive) (aka "Egg," 2007), "Sut" (Olive) (aka "Honey," 2008) and "Bal" (Olive) (aka "Milk," 2010) -- stairstep back through his life, from adulthood back to childhood, ending (or perhaps beginning in a rural village where (in the words of AV Club film critic Sam Adams) "sweetness is hard to come by, and its pursuit can be dangerous, even life-threatening. But its simple, unadulterated pleasures are matchless, and the same can be said for "Bal"’s best moments." The widescreen films are presented in soft, non-anamorphic editions from a lo-fidelity master, in Turkish with English subtitles. The films are only available separately in this release. Could be that a box-set edition will follow sometime in the future but no such plans have been announced at this time.

 

Patricio Guzman directs the documentary "Nostalgia For The Light" (Icarus), a poetic portrait of the Atacama Desert in Chile, the driest place on Earth, with a political undercurrent. "This film demands patience from the viewer, unfolding its themes and its spectacular images gradually," writes Salon film critic Andrew O'Hehir. "But it packs a potent intellectual and emotional wallop, combining a post-Augustinian philosophical consideration of time with a passionate desire to uncover Chile's painful recent history." On DVD and Blu-ray, both with five bonus short films by Guzman. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Don Kaye reviews "The Silent House" (IFC), a thriller from Uruguay shot in a single, unbroken take, at MSN's Parallel Universe: ""The Silent House" (or "La Casa Muda") is certainly an impressive technical achievement. But what Hernandez accomplishes with his digital camera cannot replace the lack of a strong story, well-developed characters, or the sense that we've seen a lot of this before." In Spanish with English subtitles.

"We Are the Night" (IFC) is a German vampire drama about a quartet of forever-young women living high in the nocturnal nightlife of Berlin's nightclubs. Dennis Gansel (of "The Wave") directs. "Blades of Blood" (Lionsgate) is a South Korean martial arts costume picture.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs for September 20

 

"What kind of cops are you?"

"The new kind."

 

"Hawaii Five-0: The First Season" (Paramount) revives the old cops-in-paradise crime series with a young cast and a maverick new sensibility. This Five-0 is a special branch of the Honolulu PD, personally created by the Governor (guest star Jean Smart) to take on major crimes and high-profile cases, and it makes up its rules. Think of it as a classic cop show on steroids and suntan lotion.

 

Alex O'Loughlin is the new model Steve McGarrett, the local boy made good: a former Navy SEAL hardcase with a cowboy approach to police work and the looks of a GC model. Danno (Scott Caan), a Jersey transfer with a sardonic streak, helps cut through McGarrett's intensity and counterbalance his single-minded pursuit of the men who murdered his McGarrett's father. Filling out the team is disgraced officer Chin Ho (Daniel Dae Kim), accused of a crime he didn't commit, and surfer girl turned fresh Police Academy graduate Kono (Grace Park).

 

This is boilerplate stuff: Steve McGarrett takes a job on the force to get the man who killed his father (guest appearance by William Sadler; get that man his own series) and stays on to run his own team. Between the weekly rotation of new cases, he digs into the web of criminal conspiracy and finds Wo Fat (Mark Dacascos, like O'Laughlin a good-looking and stylish new model villain) and corruption infiltrating the department and even the government.

 

O'Loughlin apprenticed under Michael Chiklis's Vic Mackey on "The Shield" and apparently brought some of those ideas to the island, but he's not crooked, merely reckless. Remember that thing about making up his own rules? He and his team heists $10 million from a police evidence locker and then lose it before he can sneak it back in, and then walk right into a major frame-up in the cliffhanger season closer. Danno's job here isn't so much to keep McGarrett honest but to remind him of all the lines he's stepping over, and then back his plays unconditionally. I can appreciate that kind of loyalty, but this is one cowboy cop who could use some push back from his partner.

 

24 episodes six discs plus commentary on two episodes and a big complement of supplements. A lot of those are basic promo pieces (like the "behind the scenes" look at recording the new incarnation of the iconic theme song) but there's also "Shore Lines: The Story of Season 1," a substantial half-hour featurette, plus "Picture Perfect: The Making of the Pilot," highlights from the Comic-Con panel and the usual deleted scenes and gag reel.

 

It's also coming out on Blu-ray, but it's exclusively available through Best Buy for now.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs for September 20

 

Every couple of years, some film with a predominantly female cast becomes a big hit and suddenly every paper and online film site is reminded that women also go to movies. With "Bridesmaids" (Universal), the story was extended to the insight that hey, women can be funny too. Really. Wow, insight indeed.

 

Read Videodrone's interview with "Bridemaids" star/co-writer Kristen Wiig

 

No, the real story is that women can have just as much fun playing in the comic sandbox of adolescent behavior, poor judgment and gross-out gags and that both male and female audiences find it just as funny. "Bridesmaids" found box-office gold in a girl-bonding romp filled equally with outlandish bridal showers and alcohol-fueled slapstick aggression, grand romantic gestures and furtive sex, high couture and low blows.

 

Wiig, like so many underutilized and highly creative performers before her, answered the lack of substantial roles by writing one for herself and her fellow funny ladies, but she built the character of Annie on a foundation of disappointment and anxiety that women and men both can relate to. An entrepreneur picking up the pieces from a failed business, she's broke, in a job she hates, a roommate situation that drives her farther into depression and a relationship with a cad who undercuts her self-esteem with every sleepover. When her best friend (fellow "SNL" regular Maya Rudolph) announces that she's getting married, the sinkhole just gets worse, especially when she finds herself competing with a spoiled society girl (Rose Byrne) who proclaims herself the new best friend.

 

The anxiety of underemployment and the palpable humiliation of slowly losing her independence gives a human dimension to the over-the-top comedy and helps smooth out the sometimes spotty nature of this kind of filmmaking. But mostly, it's satisfying to see Annie act out in ways that movies allow men to constantly but rarely extend to women: responding to stress and jealousy like an overgrown adolescent, misbehaving out of pique and anxiety, screwing up big and getting the opportunity to make good and be forgiven.