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track 10, Wheels Within Wheels once
more.
This Christmas (Blu-ray)
Michael McDonald
Eagle Rock
Gerard Rejskind: There’s classic rock,
and then there’s nostalgia. Nostalgia
doesn’t have to be great or even good,
it just has to remind you of a time when
you were happier, or in any case younger.
Where Michael McDonald fits in, I shall
leave to you. He comes from way back,
having been a member of Steely Dan,
and then the Doobie Brothers.
Now, just as Captain Kangaroo
wasn’t actually a kangaroo, so the
Doobie Brothers weren’t brothers, and
they weren’t named Doobie. A “doobie”
is in a fact a toke. You could look it up.
The original Doobies had a bad boy
image, wore leather, and were favorites of
the Hell’s Angels in the 70’s. McDonald
took them into another era, ditching the
electric guitars in favor of keyboards,
horns and saxes, with Motown-style
backup singers. Indeed, back in the 80’s,
McDonald did a lot of covers of Motown
classics…or parodies some would say.
McDonald hasn’t been a Doobie for
15 years, but he starts off what is billed as
a Christmas album with Doobie songs.
They are not notable as anything but
possibly nostalgia, and McDonald has
even less of a voice than he once may
have had. He has impenetrable diction,
and he has to force himself into lower
registers. The result is not pretty. When
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he gets into actual Christmas music, the
result is all but unbearable. He does a
duet with one of his background vocalists,
Drea Rhenee, and the best advice
I have for her is that she should stop
smoking. Yes she does, you can hear it.
McDonald does get into the Christmas
kitsch, with the worst version I’ve
yet heard of I’ll Be Home for Christmas,
and White Christmas. I’m only glad he
didn’t include The Little Drummer Boy.
After the applause for Christmas on
the Bayou, McDonald says, “Thank you,
you’re too kind.” I couldn’t agree more.
Superman II, The Richard Donner
Cut (Blu-ray)
Christopher Reeve, Margo Kidder
Warner Bros.
Gerard Rejskind: Clearly I haven’t been
keeping up. The remarkable version
of Superman with Christopher Reeve
was released on Blu-ray years ago, and
I’ve been waiting impatiently for the
second film to get the high-resolution
treatment. Here it is, finally, but …
wait a minute. The Richard Donner cut?
Wasn’t it Richard Lester who directed
Superman II?
It was indeed, but the plot thickens.
Donner was the director of the first film,
and he was hired for the second one as
well. Since Warner was sure there would
be a sequel, Donner even shot some key
scenes at the same time as the first film,
because it was more convenient (read:
cheaper) to do it that way. Once the first
film had proved a success and shooting
had begun on the second film, creative
differences emerged. On the evidence,
Warner wanted more of a comic book
feel to the film, something the younger
crowd would like. Donner was fired, and
Lester was hired instead.
Now, Warner could have done worse.
Lester had directed some well-regarded
films, having worked on the Goon Shows
and also with the Beatles (A Hard Day’s
Night), not to mention the two Musketeer
films. He picked up the footage shot
during the original film, but he discarded
some of the new Donner footage. He
then completed the film according to his
vision, with — once again — Mario Puzo
of Godfather fame writing the scenario.
Now you can compare them side by
side, the new one on Blu-ray, the other
on DVD. (Random thought: would it
have busted Warner’s budget to put the
two on the same disc?)
I was disappointed, since referring
to Donner’s “vision” is doing him
undeserved honor. There’s a lot wrong
with the Lester version, but it turns
out that the mistakes originated with
Donner. For example, the super powers
possessed by Superman and other survivors
of Krypton are well established,
and it is absurd to invent new ones,
such as the ability to fire a ray from the
end of a finger that causes levitation.
Making up random powers is a failure
of imagination.
There are changes that seem arbitrary.
We know that, in Superman II,
Lois Lane discovers her caped friend’s
secret identity. In the Donner version,
she discovers it in a completely different
way. Not better, not worse. Well, perhaps
a little worse.
The dumbest element in the otherwise
very good first movie was the
idea that, if Superman flies around the
earth fast enough, he can turn back
time. That’s beneath contempt. So what
would he have done if he had directed the
second film? Why, he would have used
exactly the same device. Bravo!
I was tempted to conclude that
Warner should do a Blu-ray version of
the Richard Lester version. However I
viewed that version for the purpose of
this review, and it was a lot poorer than I
remembered. Even the flying sequences,
so spectacular in the first film, are