Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton, Belle Epoque, "The Jackie Gleason Show in Color" and Red Trees.
Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton
Picked on at school, Laird Hamilton “found a certain peace,” he says, in the ocean. A product of ’60s surf culture, his mother surfed and his step dad was admired for his style as a wave rider. Rory Kennedy’s documentary, Take Every Wave, shows Hamilton pushing himself hard, climbing waves as steep as mountains at heights no one dared to reach. Always a rebel, Hamilton disdained the professional circuit, preferring to ride his own way.
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Belle Epoque
Penelope Cruz was introduced to the world by Belle Epoque (1992), but she wasn’t the star—just one pretty sister among four. The witty, visually arresting and Oscar-winning Spanish production is set “somewhere in Spain” in 1931. Politics are in transition, the civil war is five years in the future and the historical nuances form a detailed tapestry in back of a romantic comedy about an army deserter who stumbles into an eccentric household.
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“The Jackie Gleason Show in Color”
This DVD contains complete episodes from the last years of “The Jackie Gleason Show” (1966-1970), much of it unseen since their original broadcast dates. The variety show’s highlight was often the comedic banter between Gleason and such contemporaries as Phil Silvers and Red Buttons. Much of their dialogue remains funny 50 years on. The comedians seemed to genuinely enjoy the exchanges. Gleason’s physical comedy was on display with costar Art Carney in segments of “The Honeymooners.”
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Red Trees
The somber yet hopeful film begins with a quote from Walter Benjamin about catastrophes blowing us into the future. Director Marina Willer travels to the places where her Jewish father and grandfather lived with their family in Nazi-occupied Prague. British actor Tim Pigott-Smith narrates passages from her father’s memoir. The family managed to survive World War II and emigrate to Brazil before eventually settling in London. Red Trees strikes a positive note for migrants.
