Susan Granger’s DVD Update for week of Friday, April 16:
Family bonds are tested in “Brothers,” a plodding war drama about a Marine (Tobey Maguire) reportedly killed in Afghanistan, his bereaved wife (Natalie Portman) and his bad-boy, ex-con brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) – because the Marine, who was actually captured by the Taliban and forced to commit atrocities, becomes obsessed with his wife’s possible infidelity when he eventually returned home.
Narrated by Joan Allen, “Blessed is the Match” follows the remarkable real-life journey of 22 year-old Hannah Senesh, who parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe with a small group of Jewish volunteers from Palestine in 1944, staging the only military rescue mission for Jews that occurred during W.W.II; the dvd includes additional scenes and interviews.
Hope springs eternal for the Chicago Cubs in “We Believe,” narrated by Gary Sinese, exploring the extraordinary bond between the city of Chicago and its beloved baseball team playing on the legendary Wrigley Field.
In what’s been called a Business Week version of Punk’d, “The Yes Men Fix the World” trails two gonzo political activists from New Orleans to NYC to India as they pull off one of the world’s most outrageous pranks, skewering corporate greed and imposing cosmic (and comic) justice by any means necessary. And Monsoon Wedding meets American Idol in the satirical “Loins of Punjab,” starring revered Indian actress Shabana Azmi, Ayesha Dharker, and Ajay Naidu, as six contestants in a small New Jersey town compete for the title of Desi Idol in a Bollywood-style singing contest.
For kids, “John Deere Earth Mover Action” is a 40-minute tribute to big machines – excavators, front-end loaders, graders, scrapers and backhoes – including the fast, powerful, four-track 764-Dozer. There’s also Seseme Street’s “Bert and Ernie’s Great Adventures” as the Muppet pair appear as Claymation for the first time.
PICK OF THE WEEK: During the 1960s, when rock music was banned in Britain, seafaring deejays broadcast, live, 24/7 from an old tanker anchored in the North Sea; their misadventures are chronicled in the fanciful, free-spirited “Pirate Radio” with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rhys Ifans, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.