New this week on DVD:
- In those Gilligans Island episodes of yore, we were all secretly rooting for Maryann to turn the Professors head, and maybe smash Gingers teeth in while she was at it. But watching it come to fruition isnt as much fun as Id thought it would be. Ginnifer Goodwin plays Rachel, the Maryann to Darbys (Kate Hudson) Ginger in Something Borrowed. Rachel has been playing doormat to the spotlight-hogging, man-eating Darby since they were in elementary school, and secretly harbouring a crush on Darbys fiancé Dex (Colin Egglesfield) since before the date was set. So she sleeps with him. Rachel feels badly about it, but not that badly, since she sleeps with him again. All her other best friend (John Krasinski) can do about it is listen and shake his head meaningfully.
Filmmakers pull out all the stops to try to convince us to root for the philandering couple, but it backfires. Based on the beach read by Emily Giffin, Something Borrowed features a lot of frantic back-and-forths by milquetoast characters, intercut with tiresome flashbacks.
Good special features on the blu-ray disc, including a lengthy gag reel, additional scenes, a bit on what it means to turn 30, location tours with author Giffin and an extra devoted to actor Steve Howeys ad-libbing. Cast and crew also weigh in on the wedding tradition of something borrowed.
- Its not so much nostalgia for the 1981 original Arthur that makes this remake so unpalatable: its the non-stop, grating presence of its lead, Russell Brand, an acquired taste at the best of times. Dudley Moore was a drunken teddy bear; Brand is a few pence short of a pound.
Helen Mirren is Hobson, Arthurs long-suffering nanny, quick with the tale of how she had to rub Tabasco on her nipples in order to wean her charge. Theres not much in the way of humour here, as Arthur wanders solo out of his Park Avenue penthouse and falls in love with the first commoner he sees (a wasted Greta Gerwig). This is in direct defiance of mummys orders that he marry a high-powered exec in the family business (Jennifer Garner) or else be disinherited. We buy neither the romance nor the power play, and theres not an ounce of subtlety to be found in the remake.
Special features on the blu-ray disc include a surprisingly modest gag reel, additional scenes and Arthur Unsupervised: an expose of the on-set shenanigans by Brand and director Jason Winer.
- NEDS, the new film by actor/writer/director Peter Mullan (The Magdalene Sisters) wont help the Glasgow Tourist Board. Set in 1972, the film chronicles Johns (a young Greg Forrest, a teenaged Conor McCarran) fight to avoid gangs, jail and worse. With a belligerent, alcoholic father (Mullan) and a brother already lost to the violence, the deck is stacked against him. It takes less than six weeks for John to go from a boy with the academic potential to escape the confines of his council flat, to a NED (non-educated delinquent) looking at a life sentence in Barlinnie prison, if hes not careful.
Even Scots will find the dialect a challenge and you need a strong stomach when the boys start fighting with bricks and hammers, but Johns desperate situation comes through loud and clear.
Two deleted scenes are the only extra on the standard disc.
