Writers and filmmakers have long relished the fantasy of physically entering works of art. Buster Keaton jumped into the movie he was projecting in Sherlock Jr.; Jeff Daniels strolled in and out of an onscreen adventure in The Purple Rose of Cairo; young Austin O'Brien hopped into Arnold Schwarzenegger's movie in The Last Action Hero. Jasper Fforde has made a career of writing novels about Thursday E. Next, a detective who enters Jane Eyre and Hamlet to stop people from kidnapping the heroes or scrambling the plots. And in an episode of Spike Milligan's 1950s radio series The Goon Show, whichever character managed to gain control of a typewriter could rewrite the fate of all the other characters.
Then there's German author Cornelia Funke's 2003 novel Inkheart, the first book in a trilogy, which supposed that some people are "silvertongues"; when they read books aloud, they literally bring the works to life. Characters materialize in the real world, while characters from this world vanish into the books - similar to the risk run in the film Jumanji, in which a malevolent board game stranded Robin Williams for decades in a jungle. In the movie version of Inkheart (2008), out on DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday, the "silvertongue" is Mortimer Folchart (Brendan Fraser), a book restorer. The power of the written word has seldom been as sharp.
Since the movie doesn't reveal a pivotal piece of information until half an hour in, and since the blurb on the DVD package is atypically careful not to give the game away, let me just say that Folchart and his daughter Maggie (Eliza Hope Bennett) quickly find themselves at the mercy of villains whom Folchart released years earlier from a rare book called Inkheart.
The wild card is Dustfinger (Paul Bettany), a travelling juggler who can shoot fire from his hands, who wants only to get back into the book to rejoin his wife, and straddles the line between good guy and villain.
The really nasty fellow is Capricorn (Andy Serkis), who has built an evil empire on Earth since escaping from the book. You don't mess with Capricorn, but of course our heroes have to - as does Folchart's no-nonsense aunt (Helen Mirren), whose anguish when her library is destroyed by fire early in the film recalls the razing of the ancestral library in Mervyn Peake's novel Titus Groan, itself the first volume in a trilogy.
This doesn't even begin to cover the explicit literary references in this film - to Peter Pan, to the saga of The Minotaur and to The Wizard of Oz, which at one point gives Maggie the little dog Toto. "Maggie," Folchart says, "just pretend that you're in a book. Children always escape in books." "No, they don't," she replies. "Remember The Little Match Girl? They found her in an alley frozen to death."
The movie is not for young children, since Capricorn's villainy would terrify them, but it's good sport for those who seek fantasy adventures with a brain. The film ends earlier than the book does, so, in the DVD's sole bonus feature, Bennett (introduced by Funke) reads part of the concluding chapter. Expect fairies and trolls.
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MOVIES
THE PINK PANTHER 2 (2009)
Steve Martin isn't likely to erase anyone's memories of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, however many times he mangles the word "hamburger." In this sequel, Clouseau frustrates John Cleese rather than Kevin Kline as Chief Inspector Dreyfus, competes with Alfred Molina, Andy Garcia and others to catch the crook, and increases the number of pratfalls. In the extras, Cleese says he is "anxious these days" about remembering lines, "whereas with physical comedy I never think I'm going to get that wrong."
MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981)
In a script worked out by the two leads from tape recordings of their conversations, avant-garde theatre director Andre Gregory bends the ear of playwright and actor Wallace Shawn for most of two hours with tales of his exotic adventures seeking enlightenment in distant climes. Shawn, more the homebody, questions Gregory's assumptions and argues for the more modest pleasures of life. Pick a side, either side. Extras on the Criterion DVD include an interview by Shawn with director Louis Malle. W.C.
TV
REBA SEASON 6 (2007-08)
Country-music star and Broadway sensation Reba McEntire is a force of nature, which must explain how this otherwise pedestrian sitcom set in a southern U.S. suburb made it to the end of its sixth and final season. Although Reba Hart (McEntire) lost her husband to a squeaky blonde, both husband and blonde remain part of a family that includes daughter Cheyenne and her own husband. McEntire is given most of the wisecracks, and delivers them in a drawl thick enough to patch walls.
THE GIRLS NEXT DOOR
Season 5 (2008-09)
The ick factor is high in this reality show about three women who get close to octogenarian Hugh Hefner by taking their clothes off for his Playboy empire. Holly, Bridget and Kendra all left at season's end to perform in other shows. The series drew high ratings not because men tuned in for the nudity, says an E! Entertainment Television exec v-p, but because women from 18 to 34 wanted to watch three buddies go on shopping sprees and hang out by the pool. W.C.
BLU-RAY
CONFESSIONS OF
A SHOPAHOLIC (2009)
Isn't it always the way? You're mired in debt and, instead of getting that plum job writing for a fashion magazine, you land a gig dispensing advice on personal finance. The Hollywood romcom machine is working at full tilt, with Isla Fisher as Becky, the helpless shopaholic from Sophie Kinsella's source novels. Hugh Dancy plays her boss. Kristin Scott Thomas plays the fashion editor from hell. Deleted scenes include Becky's lust for a pair of zebra-print pants on sale ("these are the jeans that God wears").
WALTZ WITH BASHIR (2008)
After the 1982 assassination of Phalangist Christian leader Bashir Gemayel, Israeli soldiers stood by in Lebanon while Palestinians were slaughtered by the Phalangist militia at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. One of those Israeli soldiers, director Ari Folman, tries to exorcize his demons by interviewing former comrades and using animation to illuminate their blocked, often surreal memories. The images will be sharper than ever in Blu-ray, which, given the horrific subject matter, may not be a blessing. W.C.