August 14-20, 2003

screen picks

by Sam Adams

Futurama, Vol. 2 ($49.98 DVD) That high-pitched wail you heard Sunday at 7:30 was the sound of millions (OK, thousands) of Futurama fans bemoaning the loss of their beloved show. Consider, though, that only 39 episodes of The Honeymooners were ever produced, while Full House lasted for eight years; clearly the length of its run is no gauge of a sitcom's success, to say nothing of its long-term standing. Perhaps in years to come, Futurama will be looked at as a vanguard in the ever-growing field of Nerd Art. With a writing staff stuffed with Ph.D.s (not to mention the requisite Harvard grads), the show substitutes science and sci-fi gags for The Simpsons' pop-culture references: The nod to Star Wars' 3-D chess game is easy enough, but the discrete mathematics humor will likely remain elusive to those not being simultaneously clued in by the audio commentary (whose rambunctious interaction, incidentally, gives you a pretty good idea of how the show gets written). It's safe to say no other show on the air would build a recurring gag on the misuse of the word "irony" into an episode, then pay it off in song, as Sunday night's valedictory show did.

As lavishly adorned as Fox's Simpsons sets, the second volume of Futurama includes audio commentary on each of the 19 episodes, deleted scenes for nearly every one (a rarity in the cost-conscious world of animation) and a handful of pencil-test run-throughs, not to mention episodes featuring the preserved head of Richard Nixon running for president and a maniacal robot Santa Claus who hunts down people he determines to be "naughty" (which is, of course, everyone). Though Fox basically sealed the show's doom by slotting it at 7 p.m. on Sundays (not to mention pre-empting it for football for months at a time), apparently the ratings of reruns on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block (where it's scheduled to return in November, with fourth-season episodes in tow) have been robust enough to start discussions about potentially reviving the show, at least on an occasional basis. But even if we've seen all the Futurama we're ever going to, the show's reputation among nerds is assured, and who do you think writes history books?

Valley Girl ($19.98 DVD) Given that, apart from its irrefutably excellent '80s soundtrack, Valley Girl's value pretty much starts and ends with Nicolas Cage's broody performance, MGM's DVD is arguably over-annotated, with commentary by director Martha Coolidge, sporadic "video commentary" by an assortment of kibitzers, a subtitled trivia track and three featurettes. But nostalgia knows no boundaries, and Valley Girl is nothing if not a journey through the past, to a time when women wore zebra-striped underwear to slumber parties, and hair, men's or women's, simply couldn't be too big. Wisely, the disc devotes a significant amount of time to that justly remembered soundtrack, with a half-hour featurette including interviews with The Plimsouls' Peter Case, Josie Cotton (yay!) and Modern English's Robbie Grey. One sobering observation: While most early-'80s flicks are chock-a-block with stars-to-be, the drop-off in the career prospects of Valley Girl's cast is pretty steep after Nicolas Cage; consider that second place goes to the zebra-striped E.G. Daily, best known as the voice of Powerpuff Girl Buttercup and Rugrat Tommy. (The bands didn't fare much better; Modern English's bassist now works as a sound technician on Hack.) Even if every performance other than Cage's is a dud, no movie containing the line "That techno-rock you guys listen to is gutless!" can be all bad.

I’m Going Home ($29.99 DVD) Manoel de Oliveira's wistful, enigmatic film arrives on video without much explanation; a brief interview with the director actually serves to confuse matters rather than clarify them. But the 95-year-old director, whose career didn't begin in earnest until his 50s, clearly isn't about to start rushing things. I'm Going Home, which focuses on the lead actor's back for much of its first sequence, then on his feet for the next, is something of a game of misdirection, or at least redirection, a reminder that answers are not always where we're first inclined to look for them. Starring the ever-marvelous Michel Piccoli as an actor forced to redefine his life even as he feels it drawing to a close, I'm Going Home is inevitably a meditation on age and dying (although it's worth noting that de Oliveira doesn't share his protagonist's defeatism; he's completed three more films since I'm Going Home's 2001 release). But it's the film's less grandiose observations that penetrate more forcefully, small moments like the wordless scenes of Piccoli's character fighting for his favorite table at a local café. New York Film Festival director Richard Peña provides commentary on the film and de Oliveira's career.