“Winged Migration” is coming out on a Blu-ray disc this week. But even if you lack that technology, you should seek this movie out in its other DVD or video formats. It’s one of the most entrancing and valuable nature documentaries ever shot, about birds in flight all over the world. In images of tremendous depth and amazing clarity, “W.M.” follows many different species in their vast migration patterns from continent to continent, showing us incredible aerial sights while swooping over landscapes awesome in their grandeur.
Have you ever wanted to fly like a bird? You may not be ready for gliders or parachutes, but “Winged Migration” offers a visual ride that’s easier and more glorious. French producer-director-writer Jacques Perrin (also an actor familiar from “The Young Girls of Rochefort” and “Z”) shot this picture over four years, in 40 countries. The cinematographers follow the birds–including geese, ducks, sparrows, swans, cranes, eagles and even a few of those latest movie superstars, penguins–everywhere: above the icy wastes of Antarctica, over Sahara sands, fertile valleys and rugged seacoasts, and high above Manhattan’s pre-9/11 skyline.
Like no other film ever made, “Winged Migration” gives us a bird’s-eye view. After seeing it, you’ll be envious.
`Winged Migration’ (Blu-ray) (star)(star)(star)(star) (France; 2001, Jacques Perrin). No extras. (Sony)
– indicates material from past Wilmington reviews.
Wim Wenders (8-disc set)
Package rating: Excellent.
Wenders is a poet of the cinema who loves to take us out on the road, pull us deep into the nitty-gritty or let us soar with the angels. One of the seminal figures of the 1960s-’70s German new wave–along with Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder–Wenders is best known for two Cannes prize-winners, “Paris, Texas,” and “Wings of Desire.” But he’s a director who loves to shoot often and who comfortably splits his time between big-star dramatic movies and highly personal documentaries. Like his mentor Nicholas Ray, one of his collaborators below, Wenders makes beautiful, rebellious movies. This recently released set gives us a great look at him. (The films are in German, English and other languages, with English subtitles.)
“The Scarlet Letter” (star)(star)1/2 (Germany; Wim Wenders, 1972). A German version of the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic of adultery in puritan colonial America, shot in Spain with Senta Berger as Hester and Lou Castel as Dimmesdale. A production fiasco in many ways, but moving. “Wrong Move” (star)(star)(star)1/2 (German; Wenders, 1975). Playwright/filmmaker Peter Handke’s modern script based on Johann Goethe’s 1795 “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship,” becomes another wistful and robust Wenders road movie, with Rudiger Vogler. “The American Friend” (star)(star)(star)(star) (Germany; Wenders, 1978). Based on “Ripley’s Game,” the third of the icy Patricia Highsmith thriller series, this is a Wenders masterwork–a chilling tale of painting, crime and forgery with Dennis Hopper as Ripley, now turned art swindler, Bruno Ganz as a suspicious frame-maker and a supporting cast of film directors, including Nick Ray, Sam Fuller, Jean Eustache and Wenders himself. “Lightning over Water” (star)(star)(star)(star) (German; Wenders/Nicholas Ray, 1980). A sad, brilliant portrait of the dying American maverick filmmaker Nicholas Ray (“Rebel Without a Cause”), co-directed with Ray: a chronicle of life, death and art, with an annihilating climax. “Room 666” (star)(star)(star) (Germany; Wenders, 1982). Wenders interviews Steven Spielberg, Michelangelo Antonioni, R.W. Fassbinder, Herzog and others at the 1982 Cannes Film festival. “Tokyo-Ga” (star)(star)(star) (Germany; Wenders, 1985). An austere, heartfelt tribute to Wenders’ favorite filmmaker, Japan’s Yasujiro Ozu and to Ozu’s city, Tokyo. With Chishu Ryu. “Notebook on Cities and Clothes” (star)(star)(star) (German; Wenders, 1989). An engagingly serious exploration of the world of fashion in Tokyo and Paris, focusing on designer Yohji Yamamoto. “A Trick of Light” (star)(star)(star)1/2 (German; Wenders, 1996). A delightful film. In black and white and a deliberately primitive style (juxtaposed with modern color footage), Wenders playfully portrays the Lumiere-era German film pioneers, the Skladanowsky Brothers.
Extras: Commentaries with Wenders and Dennis Hopper, Nicholas Ray lecture, deleted scenes, featurette, booklet, trailer. (Anchor Bay)
Other recent releases
– `Mouchette’ (star)(star)(star)(star) (France; Robert Bresson, 1967). Based on another, harsher novel by Georges Bernanos (who also wrote “Diary of a Country Priest,” the source of Bresson’s 1950 classic), this bleak masterpiece about an outcast village girl (Nadine Nortier) and her exploiters is a portrait of loveless, Godless rural life, done with unblinking compassion. The location is Provence, the music is by Monteverdi and the stark black-and-white images chart Mouchette’s fall with chilling clarity. In French with English subtitles. Extras: Commentary, documentary, featurette, essay, trailer. (Criterion Collection)
-`The Gridiron Gang’ (star)(star) (U.S.; Phil Joanou, 2006). Even though it’s based on fact, and a 1992 documentary of the same name, the plot here seems prefabricated: Rebellious young felons at a California juvenile detention camp are molded into a winning team by their hard-driving, hard-body probation officer/coach, Sean Porter (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). The movie seems prefab too. Directed by Phil Joanou (“U2: Rattle and Hum”), it’s set up as a mix of gritty street crime drama and heroic sports thriller-comedy–a cross between “Boyz N the Hood” and “The Longest Yard.” It fumbles on both counts. Extras: Commentary with Joanou, deleted scenes, featurettes. (Sony)
`Idiocracy’ (star)(star)1/2 (U.S.; Mike Judge, 2006). Luke Wilson gets quick-frozen and wakes up in 2505, to find that thanks to bad mass media and poor family planning, the country has become so stupid (the No. 1 movie is “Ass,” and that’s its subject) that Wilson is now a world genius–and a dangerous man. Not as funny as Judge’s cult classic “Office Space,” this variation on C.M. Kornbluth’s “The Marching Morons” still has pretty zingy laughs and satire. I have one carp: Given today’s media and politicians, it won’t take us five centuries. Extras: Deleted scenes. (Twentieth Century Fox)
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mwilmington@tribune.com
