DVD picks of the week: All hail Hal Holbrook and Helen Mirren

Looking at that headline, it's probably as much as anything a reflection that I myself am getting pretty friggin' old, but - by a pretty wide margin - the best two things on DVD this week are a movie starring an 84-year-old man and the complete run of a sublime TV series starring a 65-year-old woman (though on the younger side of the scale, I'm watching vol. 3 of the UK teen series "Skins" streaming on Netflix too, and that's a real treat.)

First up comes "That Evening Sun," a genuine Southern drama that has been around for quite a while. I first missed the chance to see it at the 2009 Atlanta Film Festival 365, but luckily managed to catch it in its rather meager theatrical run (it apparently has made a paltry $281,000 or so at the box office) last spring. The flick also played the Macon Film Festival this year, and is extremely worth catching now on DVD.

The few who have seen this already will know it's a rare starring turn by Hal Holbrook, the kind of treasure that should be savored while it lasts. Holbrook is probably my favorite performer, if I were forced to pick only one, and here he plays Abner Meecham, an aging Tennesseean who bolts the nursing home to try and reclaim the family homestead that his son has sold out from underneath him.

It's really a role Holbrook was made to play, full of anger, pride and, best of all, a dark humor. Returning to the farm, he finds it now inhabited by two of my other favorite Southern actors, Ray McKinnon and Maconite Carrie Preston (aka Arlene on "True Blood"), along with their daughter, played by ingenue Mia Wasikowska.

What ensues is a war of wills that can at times be hard to watch because, as each holds his ground, they each become less and less likable, but that gives the drama based on a short story by William Gay and directed by Scott Teems a natural feel.

Music by Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers makes this all go down even sweeter, so if you wanna take a chance this weekend on a movie that so far hasn't even managed to make a blip on the radar screen, trust me and give "That Evening Sun" a try.

Today's second pick comes with a disclosure: Acorn Media was kind enough to send me the complete "Prime Suspect" to review on DVD, but that doesn't change at all just how great the UK police procedural starring Helen Mirren was and still is.

Though the stories contained in the seven, three-hour-or-so installments are as gritty - and often more so - than anything you'll find on the best of American police procedurals, it's the performance of Helen Mirren at its core that make these so entertaining.

The humanly flawed cop has been played out way past the point of cliche many times, and very well by Dennis Franz on "NYPD Blue" and Dominic West on "The Wire," but Mirren plays it so naturally that it trumps the pattern completely.

Watching how her life's foibles (among other things, her Jane Tennyson battles the bottle as much as she does her inability to have anything approaching a full personal life outside of the police beat) intertwine with the often frustrating and sickening cases she pursues make this the most well-rounded police series I've encountered on TV. It's indeed on a level with David Simon's "The Wire," and anyone who's been here before knows that from me that's the highest form of praise.

These have been available individually on DVD for years now, but I believe Acorn's collection is the first time they've all been collected in one set. They would make a fine gift for anyone who enjoys great TV, or if you're so inclined, perhaps for yourself.

And with that, I have to go now to the job that pays me in something besides promotional DVDS. Peace out.

Atlanta Film Festival report No. 4: "The Secret to a Happy Ending" with the Drive-By Truckers

One of the many good things you can say about director Barr Weissman's documentary about the Drive-By Truckers, "The Secret to a Happy Ending," is that in order to get a lot out of it, you really have to be a fan of the band, which he clearly is.

That's because what he's made here, while it is indeed an engaging portrait of the Southern rockers who have been at it now, rather amazingly, for more than 20 years, is far from anything approaching a VH1-style conventional musical biopic.

Instead Weissman, who has made a living as a movie editor and has directed at least two self-released previous documentaries I'd love to be able to see, uses the band's songs themselves, which at their best really are stories, to tell the story on film.

It starts, appropriately enough, with Patterson Hood, who along with Weissman and drummer Brad Morgan were on hand for Friday night's Georgia premiere to close out the Atlanta Film Festival, playing "Bulldozers and Dirt" on the mandolin. This early DBT's track perfectly sets the stage for a look at the world from which the band sprang and still calls home, the American South.

And along with letting the band members tell their stories through word and song, Weissman introduces moviegoers to some of the most colorful characters who populate their musical world, including a visit with the ancient George A. Johnson, immortalized in the Patterson Hood song "Sands of Iwo Jima." Hearing Hood talk about his great-uncle's life as you see Johnson hold Hood's sleeping baby girl is a moment almost too tender to take. There's also an extended look at the life of Gregory Dean Smalley, the Atlanta musician who died way too early and was "The Living Bubba," and a visit with Wes Freed, who has created the artwork for every DBT's album since "Southern Rock Opera."

But the main stars, of course, are the band members themselves, and Weissman clearly had warts-and-all access during the five years or so he spent with them on the road, and the movie perhaps paradoxically gets better and better as the band starts to almost unravel. "A Blessing and a Curse," which I happen to be listening to right now, has grown into my favorite DBT's record, with "Decoration Day" a close second. It's easily the band's most intimate album, so it's often hard to watch the pain (including the end of the marriage of band member Shonna Tucker and former member Jason Isbell) that went into making it.

It led, of course, to Isbell eventually quitting the band, but though I won't reveal exactly how, it also came close to bringing about the demise of the whole group too. But this is, in the end, a movie made by an albeitly very talented fan of the band, but in the end a fan just the same, so he packs the movie with little moments that will make you smile even in this "World of Hurt." My favorite of all would have to be Mike Cooley's solo performance of "Space City" and the heartbreaking story behind it.

In the end, like I said, this isn't a movie likely to win many converts, but for fans, it's a complete and completely engaging portrait of a band that will hopefully just keep on rocking for at least another 10 years or so. It's currently making the festival circuit, so keep an eye out for it, and will eventually of course be available at Netflix, Amazon, etc., and I'll certainly let you know about that when it comes.

For the closing night of the Atlanta Film Festival, Hood, Weissman and Morgan took questions from the audience, and that's when Hood revealed just why it took so long for the movie to be completed. Weissman was ready to wrap things in 2005, after the completion of "A Blessing and A Curse," but as Hood pointed out, at that point the title "The Secret to a Happy Ending" would just have been an entire misnomer. At Hood's request, he ended up sticking around for another two years or so, when things ended on a much better note (and if you haven't bought the DBT's latest, "The Big To-Do," do so immediately ... it's their best in the last five years or so.)

After the Q&A, Reel Fanatic fave Ray McKinnon took the stage, and the band unveiled the "video" for "This F*****g Job," which is really a short film starring McKinnon and directed by "That Evening Sun" director Scott Teems. Finish that off with a short performance by Hood, Morgan and new Drive-By Trucker Jay Gonzalez, and you certainly have the makings of a perfect evening out. And that's exactly what I am now. Peace out.

Yes, I'll watch Ricky Gervais do ... well, just about anything

You know, I haven't been to a Broadway show in many years, but if I were to go wild and spring for one now it would certainly be what Julie Taymor is cooking up.

The stager of "The Lion King" has been working for some time now on a musical "Spider-Man," an idea so crazy that it should almost certainly work. And now she's got two of the main players from among her regulars.

Even Rachel Wood will play Spidey's paramour Mary Jane Watson, and the great Alan Cumming will play Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin. No word yet on who will play the webcrawler himself.

And, as a final word on all that, a formal apology from me to Ms. Taymor: I avoided seeing "Across the Universe" in theaters because it just looked like such a mess, but as happens what seems more and more every day, I was once again wrong. Yes, it's hippy, dippy and trippy, but it's also a heck of a lot of fun, so I'd definitely recommend a rental if you've never seen it.

And from here on out today, it's all about funny, and two flicks I'm certainly looking forward to.

Somewhere out in the desert of New Mexico (or maybe old Mexico, it's hard to tell), veryfunnymen Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have been working on something called "Paul," and it looks like just my kind of thing. Directed by Greg Mottola, whose last two flicks, "Superbad" and "Adventureland," have just been fantastic in my book, it's an American road movie starring the two of them and an alien they somehow manage to pick up at Area 51 on their way to ComicCon.

And now it's got a Web site you can check out here. It's pretty primitive so far, with only three videos and two collections of flicker pics, but it's still worth checking out and will surely get much better soon. If you visit, among the many things you'll learn is that the flick is set to feature Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio, among other funny folks, so keep your eyes on this one.

But the main event here today is the trailer for Ricky Gervais' fall flick, now titled "The Invention of Lying," which he co-wrote and co-directed with Matthew Robinson. It kind of looks like the most generic sort of romantic comedy, but since it's Gervais, I'm still betting it will bring the funny.

If I can make one more video recommendation, although just about no one in the world bothered to see it, "Ghost Town" is just a thoroughly entertaining little flick. Starring Gervais, a charming Tea Leoni and Wiig as a truly maddening doctor, it's well worth a rental too.

And with that, I'm off to enjoy a probably scorching day at Athfest, featuring Bloodkin, Patterson Hood and more, all for free. Enjoy the trailer, and have a great rest of the weekend. Peace out.

All hail the Drive-By Truckers: A video tribute

As I too rapidly get older, I've found it's much easier to keep up with movies than it is music, though I love them both. I couldn't tell you what's hip on the radio now if you put a gun to my head, and I'm really not sure I would want to.

But one thing I've managed to stay sure of for the past five years or so is that the Drive-By Truckers just kick royal ass every single time they manage to release an album, as they did again this week with the seriously satisfying "Brighter than Creation's Dark."

When I first found them (or more correctly, my brother did and demanded that I catch up), they had put together a 2-CD "Southern Rock Opera" that sort of works as a tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd (and really, why not?). Since then my favorite Truckers' album (and I'm sure many other people's too) has been "Decoration Day," and I've managed to see them live 5-10 times now, the best times being at their home at the fabulous 40 Watt Club, surrounded by adoring kids and standing in about an inch of standing liquid that I hope was mostly beer.

So, rather than talk about any of the craptastic movies opening wide this week (I love Diane Lane to death, but I'm not gonna watch yet another movie about a guy who tries to kill people on the Internet), here's a video tribute to what I seriously think you can call the greatest rock band in the world (Rolling Stones be damned, at this point.)



Keep your drawers on, girl, it ain't worth the fight
The Cooley track "Zip City" is easily my favorite Drive-By Truckers song, and, in spite of its rather negative portrayal of the plight of teen girls in the South, I've been surprised by just how many women really like it too.



"Bon Scott singing Let There Be Rock"
If you ever have the pleasure of seeing "Let There Be Rock" performed live, be careful not to look too closely at the people all around you, because I can assure that that many white kids in one place, almost all giving the hook' em horns sign and bobbing their heads in unison, can indeed be more than a little frightening. That said, this would have to be the Truckers' signature song, and I still love it every time I hear it.



"Some people stop living long before they die"
The audio's a little shoddy on this performance of "The Living Bubba," which purports to be from Jason Isbell's last show with the band before he chose the wrong solo path and is now fading into oblivion. A tribute to Gregory Dean Smalley, an Atlanta musician who died of AIDS, it's a sweet song that just happens to rock balls too.



"American boys hate to lose"
The Truckers' new CD, "Brighter than Creation's Dark," has several good songs about the Iraq war, including Patterson Hood's searing "The Man I Shot," but their greatest war song, and frankly one of the best I've ever heard, is "Dress Blues." This clip has been viewed more than 34,000 times at Youtube, so hopefully Jason Isbell's song about a fallen friend has touched more than a few people.

And there you have it. Hopefully everyone's Friday goes just a little bit better with a solid dose of rock. Peace out.