 |
| 1.82:1 DVD capture: A Dirty Shame |
The DVD |
|
|
|
| Buy the A DIRTY SHAME poster at Moviegoods (click on image) |
New Line pulls out all the stops for their DVD release of A Dirty Shame, which, despite hype-free cover art, contains an, ahem, obscenely thorough feature-length making-of, two commentary tracks, and a fittingly nostalgic set of trailers. Furnished with its own chapter index and subtitle options, Mark Rance's bizarrely-narrated All the Dirt on "A Dirty Shame" (82 mins.) rounds up every pertinent member of the cast and crew--many of whom make up "The Dreamlanders," John Waters' stock company--for the dual purpose of celebrating this return to form for Waters and deifying the man himself, though at times it does seem most like a glorified crash-course in fetish nomenclature. ("White man's terms," actress Jean Hill scoffs.) By the same token, the piece is refreshingly uninhibited, with actress Tracey Ullman chiding co-star Johnny Knoxville early on for doing the "classic running in on my EPK" thing. Predictably, Selma Blair's expensive prosthetic breasts are a major tangent; less predictably, so is the casting of Suzanne Shepherd ("Big Ethel"), who became paralyzed with regret after signing on without reading the script. Interspersed with much grappling over the potential cynicism of the film and whether Waters has in fact gone (too) soft in his middle-age, this is easily the definitive contemporary profile of the auteur, besting A&E's recent Waters-centric episode of "Biography" by virtue of not having to cater to network standards and practices.
Though their generous face-time in the documentary renders a non-screen-specific group yakker by Dreamlanders Devra Kitterman (Greens Foreman), Pat Moran (Associate Producer & Casting Director), Vincent Peranio (Production Designer), Van Smith (Costume Designer), and Brook Yeaton (Prop Master) somewhat superfluous, there's surprisingly little crossover between Waters' interview segments and his commentary proper, in which discussion of the sight gags and one-liners gives way to poignant reflection on his growing sympathy with the Big Ethels of the world. For whom Waters made A Dirty Shame it's difficult to say, but throughout this cineaste-friendly dialogue we're reminded of Sergio Leone's axiomatic reason for continuing to crank out westerns despite his waning interest in them: "Nobody forgives success." These yak-tracks supplement a would-be outstanding 1.82:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that unfortunately suffers from sporadic shimmer and edge-enhancement, though the exceptionally fun Dolby Digital 5.1 audio distracts us from any shortcomings of the image. (And it's not just the activity of the mix that impresses, but the quality of the reproduction as well.) A deleted scene--actually a naughty outtake also included in the doc--plus trailers for each of the Waters titles available from New Line (A Dirty Shame, Pecker, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Polyester) and ROM-based extras (the always-welcome script-to-screen interface, a dirty glossary, and weblinks) round out the NC-17 platter. New Line is concurrently releasing an R-rated edition to appease puritanical chain outlets--and as Waters laments in the doc, the MPAA has so much lobbying power that if they had the cojones to match, such elaborate measures wouldn't need to be taken.-Bill Chambers
|
The Film
excerpted from a longer review found here
John Waters' A Dirty Shame is perhaps most intriguingly read as an updating of David Cronenberg's sexual zombie film Shivers: although the Canadian auteur's phallic parasites are substituted with the Baltimore auteur's knock-on-the-head slapstick, the core premise retains that essential element of ordinary people-turned-sex-crazed maniacs at the drop of the proverbial hat. Including George Romero's The Crazies under its umbrella influences, A Dirty Shame stumbles when it indulges in too much of Waters' hallmark drag childishness (grotesquerie is always interesting, just not the same one ad nauseum) but actually soars in a way that no Waters film has since fifteen random minutes sprinkled throughout Cry-Baby--especially in its casting of Jackass Johnny Knoxville as Christ-like Ray-Ray, the saviour of sexual deviancy. "Let's go sexin'!" replaces fishes and loaves as Ray-Ray leads a motley collection of Waters freak apostles (each of whom has been transformed by a good knock on the head into specialized fetishists) seeking to transform the shut-thigh'd suburban "normals"--called "neuters" in Waters-speak--into hot-pants'd perverts.
The road to the second coming (pun intended) is paved by mousy, frigid housewife Sylvia (Tracey Ullman), wife to frustrated stud Vaughn (Chris Isaak) and mother to mega-jugged biker-bar dancer Caprice (Selma Blair), for her status as the twelfth apostle to Ray-Ray's church of kinky holds the key to not only a new way to copulate, but also the pearly-necklace gates of eternal ecstasy. The picture's extended conclusion of hordes of sex-crazed psychopaths terrorizing a convenience store, then a sleepy street, is as lawless and anxious as a good horror film, though in Waters' picture, the rapers and pillagers are the underdogs and the heroes. It's Dawn of the Dead if the ghouls were the lovable, misunderstood protagonists. (Day of the Dead is so effective mainly because it actually allowed this idea to find full flower.) A Dirty Shame, tellingly, has a strange amount of lore for something not necessarily intended to be a genre film. The concussion needs to be accidental, for example, and new concussions revert the converted.
A Dirty Shame distracts from its strengths whenever Waters' glee with celebrity defecation and horror/fascination with the vagina (the third or fourth time a character emerges from between labial bushes, watches start getting checked) overwhelms a satirical eye keen enough to dissect the hypocrisy and sanctimony fuelling our self-proclaimed guardians of good taste. At its best, the film is exactly what Cronenberg's Crash would have been like had the director of Pink Flamingos adapted it. Too bad that A Dirty Shame takes a good half hour to get going, employs clumsy CGI squirrels for no good reason but to raise the already disquieting spectre of Caddyshack, and, worst of all, despite the gradual homogenizing of Waters' technical style, demonstrates a scattershot, ADD attention to trenchant detail. But if it's irritating in a bad way, it's also irritating in a fruitful way--and from that madcap hit-or-miss mess emerges Waters' best film in a long time, as well as an interesting contribution in what appears to be a trend to redefine the zombie film along the lines of not slow vs. fast, but kicking-and-screaming vs. cross-eyed-and-painless.-Walter Chaw
© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.
|
Buy at Amazon USA
Buy at Amazon Canada
DVD GRADES:
Image A-
Sound A
Extras A+ |
DVD VITALS:
RunningTime
88 minutes
MPAA
NC-17
AspectRatio(s)
1.82:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
English Dolby Surround
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English, Spanish
DVD-9
Region One
New Line
What's coming out on DVD? Check the release calendar
Published: June 13, 2005
|
dvd reviews: