Screen Picks

by Sam Adams

The Castle of Cagliostro ($29.95 DVD, $29.95 subtitled VHS, $19.95 dubbed VHS) If you were charmed by last year’s Princess Mononoke but found it just a bit weighty, the release of this 1979 gem offers the perfect chance to explore the lighter side of famed anime director Hayao Miyazaki. Starring the well-known manga character Lupin III — the grandson of Maurice Leblanc’s fictional French thief — it’s a boisterous adventure that’s part James Bond, part Cary Grant. Lupin III is a dashing playboy bandit who’s always slightly too sure of himself, a cocky goofball who gets himself into scrapes as quickly as he gets out of them. Here he’s up against the evil Count Cagliostro, the monarch of a tiny European country which may be home to the world’s largest counterfeiting ring. In addition to fleeing the bumbling Inspector Zenigata and getting a peek at all that fake money, Lupin’s also, wouldn’t you know it, out to save the imprisoned princess whom the Count’s forcing to marry him. Castle doesn’t have Mononoke’s elaborate scenery, but it has a lightness of touch that is woefully absent from today’s heavy-handed adventures. With its wit and humor it’s more like Hitchcock’s classic entertainments, goosing you and letting you in on the gag at the same time.

Silver and Gold ($24.99 DVD, $19.98 VHS) Neil Young’s not exactly Mr. Showbiz, but he’s made a surprisingly consistent effort to document his live act at every stage of his career. Silver and Gold, released to coincide with Young’s album of the same name, is Young’s seventh concert document, following Rust Never Sleeps, Freedom Alive, Weld, Unplugged, The Complex Sessions and Year of the Horse. Shot on Young’s solo acoustic 1999 tour, the straightforward film captures Young in a setting that should be intimate but still feels expansive. Surrounded by a semi-circular forest of guitars (the unplugged equivalent of the giant Marshall stacks he used on the Weld tour), Young coaxes out versions of a half-dozen tunes from the S&G album as well as older songs from "Philadelphia" all the way back to "Expecting to Fly." Silver and Gold gets you close enough to see that Young prefers Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and dips his harmonicas in a plastic beer cup full of water, and since he never acknowledges the audience, it really is just like being there.