Hurt, all dolled up with no place to go, in Kiss of the Spider Woman.
Who knew William Hurt was so gabby? (Or that he calls Glenn Close “Glennie”?) He’s been one of my favorite actors since the first time I saw Body Heat on TV as a kid, but I had no idea the guy talked this much — or that he has a role on the upcoming second season of the FX show Damages.
When Dave Itzkoff of the Timesasked him about it and what it was like to reunite with his Big Chill costar Close, his long-winded answer kicks off with a “Yeah, you know. You get older and people start passing away.” That’s a bit of a Macon Leary thing to say, isn’t it? As I read it, I imagined Kathleen Turner’s character from The Accidental Tourist getting pissed off and leaving a second time.
The best new DVD release of the week is only slightly new, but it’s so good that it’s worth pointing out to anyone who missed it the first time around: Warner Brothers has re-bundled their two-year-old Val Lewton Collection with the new documentary Martin Scorsese Presents Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows, which recently debuted on TCM and will also be available separately.
For those of you with one-track minds, lesbian subtext found its way into several Lewton movies (he was Alla Nazimova’s nephew, after all), most memorably 1943’s The Seventh Victim, but what makes this set so remarkable is that it gives fans an opportunity to appreciate the scope of Lewton’s visionary ability to recognize directorial talent and emphasize psychological horror in response to budget constraints. Also, Simone Simon was the hottest “cat woman” ever, until Michelle Pfeiffer came along.
If you think my eyes are distracting, wait until you hear my accent.
Also new on DVD:
Glenn Close fans can gorge themselves on 500+ minutes of her new FX series, Damages, as the complete first season makes its way to DVD. Rose Byrne, Ted Danson and Tate Donovan costar.
Sophia Loren is reliably gorgeous in El Cid, which gets the 2-Disc Deluxe Edition treatment, but you’ll also have to sit through two hours of Charlton Heston.
If you’re so inclined, you can relive Groundhog Day over and over (and over) again, this time with a Special 15th Anniversary Edition release.
Spellbound documentarian Jeffrey Blitz focuses on nerdy kids again, this time in an acclaimed fictional film, Rocket Science.
Mary McCormack, who played Nia Long’s partner in The Broken Hearts Club, stars in Right at Your Door, a thriller about dirty bombs in Los Angeles that is bound to make you queasy.
