The Bits and Extras Column is back! After gorging myself on 22 movies at Sundance, I came back to the office and hit the DVD viewing in full stride. After watching so many good movies at Sundance it was only right that the 'movie odds' catch up with me and that I'd be in for a string of stinkers. Interestingly, among the stinkers was one extremely notable exception My Architect - a film I'd place in my top 10 films for 2005.

Ray: Special Edition

It absolutely blows me away that Paul Hirsch was nominated for an Academy Awards for "Achievement in Film Editing" for Ray. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Ray. Jamie Foxx give the performance of a lifetime... he's amazing and for that he should be rewarded. Also, you can't acknowledge Jamie Foxx's performance without giving props to Taylor Hackford for his job on directing the film. But Paul Hirsh did such a poor hack job with the film, it should be held up in film schools as an example of how NOT edit a film, not nominated for a frigging Academy Award! This is one of the many reasons I simply have stopped watching award shows, with moves like this they lose total and complete creditability. Are Academy voters even WATCHING these films!?!

I hadn't intended to rant about the hack editing job on Ray (although I feel much better now)... it's actually the horrid "Extended Edition" that got me out of my seat for this rant. Rather than offering an extended version of the film using seamless branching (see: The Forgotten) Universal does something so much worse. When watching Ray a little icon pops onto the screen letting you know you're about to be launched off into extended material. The big issue is the extended scenes are in their non-anamorphic, unscored and raw form. These segments don't flow into the film, they simply crash land, making the extended edition simply unwatchable. Extended editions are an interesting idea if they are done right, but when they're done this poorly, it's just painful.

My Architect:

You never know when you're going to stumble on to a film that is truly great. This week I was shuffling through DVDs deciding what watch and by chance decided to give My Architect a spin. Thank God I did. WOW! My Architect is simply amazing!!!! Filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn blends the story of his search to connect with deceased father (architect Louis I. Kahn) with a portrait of his father as one of the great American architects. Nathaniel Kahn does such a fantastic job balancing these two key themes that the result is nothing short of spectacular. Coming away from My Architect you not only get a true sense of Louis Kahn the architect, but you also feel the connection with a son's quest to connect and understand his father. The DVD for My Architect is also excellent. The key special feature is 10 questions w/ the Director accompanied by deleted footage. The context in the Q&A sets these deleted scenes up wonderfully and all of them add to the viewing experience. Great documentaries can hold ther own when compared to great fiction films and My Architect ranks up there as one of the truly fantastic films made. Go get it and watch it!

The only real puzzling question to me is: How can Nathaniel Kahn did this masterpiece of a film and then go on to make on of the worst mockumentaires of the year - The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan?

What The Bleep Do We Know?

Be warned. There's a great deal of buzz over the film What The Bleep Do We Know? It's been called 'a thinking persons' film', 'the little indie film that could' (making back over 10x it's original investment). What most people don't know is that the film is more a promotion for The Ramtha School of Enlightment and their teachings than anything else. Now our attorney says you can't go around calling organizations like The Ramtha School of Enlightment "a cult" - apparently people sue over talk like that. So I won't. But watching the film, you'll see a lot of Ramtha (channeled by JZ Night) and the teachings of this School of Enlightment (which include the theory that you can change your body through thought and that Twinkies can prolong your life). I love films which make you think and re-examine reality, time and space (see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, eXistenz or Being John Malkovich), but a pseudo religious film which excerpts quantum theory to fit a certain set of ideas parading as a 'non-fiction'...I say PASS.

For more great information on the background of this film, be sure to check out the cover story from The Willamette Week - Portland's intendant weekly.

Flight of The Phoenix:

I'm such a sucker for mindless adventure films. My steady diet of complex and challenging films is often accented by the occasional "'big dumb fun film'. It's the cinematic equivalent of sorbet to cleanse the palate before the next meal (something much denser and complex). Unfortunately, it's often hard to sort 'big dumb fun films' from 'big dumb bad films'. This time around I decided to take a ride on The Flight of The Phoenix. Perhaps it's the fact that the film was JUST in theaters that seduced me into watching. Or maybe it's the interesting mix of "B List" character actors. Whatever it was... I wish I had resisted.

Perhaps I would have been better served by watching the original The Flight of the Phoenix with James Stewart and Richard Attenborough or even the more recent Cellular. What can I say... it's my fault for picking up a film starring Giovanni Ribisi and thinking it would be anything but awful.

That's about all for this installment of DVD Talk's Bits and Extras. If you've got a bit or extra you'd like to see us cover or general feedback let us know.

- Geoffrey Kleinman

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