Clarence Clemons: Who Do I Think I Am?
Although continually threatening to be more about the arty tics of director Nick Mead than about Clarence Clemons, whenever the camera points to people who knew “the Big Man,” the documentary becomes interesting. Clemons grew up in segregated Virginia with white friends (they couldn’t be together in public). More than an onstage foil for Bruce Springsteen, the affable saxophonist was essential to the Boss’ sound, his horn picking up the story when Springsteen’s words trailed off.
Get Out Your Handkerchiefs
Gérard Depardieu was seldom better than in his role as the husband in the art-house hit, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978). He’s besotted with his wife, but, unable to relieve her depression, tries to match her with a stranger in the opening scene. “You need a change,” he insists. Witty, conversational, with clever verbiage that survives in subtitles, the Oscar-winning film is a sophisticated comedy of sex and romance. Out now in an anniversary Blu-ray edition.
“The Buster Keaton Collection: Volume 3”
The latest Buster Keaton Blu-ray release features Seven Chances (1925), which stands alongside The General as the silent comedian-director’s best work. It’s a story of frustrated romance, with Keaton’s protagonist thwarted through his own bungling lack of confidence, in a sequence of mishaps. It’s still funny nearly a century later. Keaton’s character is racing against the clock in a world where every clock is wrongly set. Seven Chances is coupled on the Blu-ray with Battling Butler (1926).
The Mad Adventures of “Rabbi” Jacob
Victor (played by rubber-faced comic Louis de Funès), an obnoxious and motor-mouthed French xenophobe, stumbles into a green, gooey vat at the Yankee Chewing Gum factory—and the fun begins. The Mad Adventures of “Rabbi” Jacob (1974) is a hilariously slapstick flick of chase scenes, bungling cops and mistaken identity. Kidnapped by a rhetoric-spouting leftist Middle Eastern revolutionary, the anti-Semitic Victor and his captor wind up disguised as Hasidic rabbis as they evade pursuers.
