DVDs of the week

 Add your view

Casino Royale

The Notorious Bettie Page

Idiocracy

Mozart: Cosi Fan Tutte

Look here too

• DVDs delivered direct to your door
• Check out the latest DVD chart

Daniel Craig as James Bond in Casino Royale, a film on S&M 1950s pin-up girl Bettie Page and a satire from King Of The Hill's Mike Judge are all released on DVD this week.

Casino Royale
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment UK, 12, £22.99
****
This is simply the best Bond film for ages. And not just because of those little blue shorts. Although Daniel Craig lets his muscles do most of the talking, his taciturn, impressively restrained Mr Blond is a very different breed from the cravat-wearing 007s of yore. This is a newly licensed-to-kill secret agent less likely to hit you with a quip before punching you: a 'blunt instrument', according to Dame Judi Dench's ever-marvellous M. Based on Ian Fleming's first novel, this is supposedly a more 'realistic' Bond - ie, there's no showdown in a hollow volcano, and he actually feels emotions - as well as the other things - in his liaison with pouting Bond girl Eva Green. At the same time, and thankfully as you'd expect, this is hardly cinÈma vÈritÈ: a rollicking ride of casino/crane/collapsing Venice set pieces should be sure to make even the most jaded Bond fans go hip-hurrah.
Extras: Docs Becoming Bond and James Bond For Real (both of which reveal that Mr Craig is surprisingly funny), plus totty filler Bond Girls Are Forever. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh

The Notorious Bettie Page
Icon Home Entertainment, 18, £19.99
***
S&M 1950s pin-up gal Bettie Page was actually a sweet, sexually conservative Southern belle: a homespun innocent who didn't really understand why men got all hot and bothered when she wore high, shiny heels and pretended to tie up her nubile chums. That's the ironic hook that American Psycho director Mary Harron's stylishly kinky indie flick fixes on. It's a shame that scriptwise it's a one-trick pony, with not enough legs to keep you panting with interest. That said, Gretchen Mol's lead performance is seductive, the camerawork is ravishing and there are a lot of kitsch giggles to be had over recreations of Bettie's now tame-looking 'porn' films. Unfortunately, this never really digs under Page's surface beauty. But it's still a must for fans of big knickers everywhere.
Extras: Smart, sassy commentary by director/writer Harron, co-writer Guinevere Turner and star Mol, cast interviews - and footage of the real Bettie Page doing a striptease. LI-Z

Idiocracy
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 15, £15.99
***
It seems distributor Fox did its damnedest to bury this delicious little satire from Mike Judge, he of King Of The Hill and Office Space fame. In the US, there were no critics screenings, no trailers, virtually bugger-all in the way of marketing. But if it becomes a straight-to-DVD hit in Britain, we wouldn't be in the least bit surprised. Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph discover what 'idiocracy' is when they take part in a military hibernation experiment and are forgotten about for 500 years. When they're accidentally woken by an avalanche of rubbish, they discover a dystopian world where the poor and dim have out-evolved the cautious and brainy; branding is everywhere, jobs are reduced to simple button-pressing, the president is a SmackDown champ and when the population isn't watching the Masturbation Channel, it's watching TV show Ow, My Balls! Only Wilson can save the world - mediocre in his former life but considered Einstein in this one. A few things hold this back: Wilson and Rudolph are faintly forgettable as the two fish-out-of-water leads, and Judge didn't quite know how to wrap up this saga. But Judge has his targets - the proliferation of TV, poor education and, bravely, real brands such as Starbucks and Gatorade - firmly in sight and isn't afraid to attack. You'd be stoopid to miss it.
Extras: Deleted scenes. Sharon Lougher

Mozart: CosÎ Fan Tutte
Opus Arte, no cert, £29.99
****
A hit at Glyndebourne Festival last year, Nicholas Hytner's CosÎ Fan Tutte is music with an edge. For his first opera in Britain in a decade, the popular director could have rested on his laurels: CosÎ is, after all, a well-loved favourite. But there is a thrust to this beautifully staged production that is pulsing with new life. As sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella, Miah Persson and Anke Vondung incorporate the perfect blend of naivety and sparkle when they are tricked by their boyfriends into falling for two swarthy hunks (the boyfriends in disguise) while their lovers are supposedly away. The horseplay of Mozart's exquisite battle of the sexes is played out to the full, yet the integrity of the music is preserved by Iv·n Fischer's meticulous conducting of the period Orchestra Of The Age Of Enlightenment. Such joyous and sensitive handling far exceeds the piece's undeservedly trivial reputation.
Extras: Illustrated synopsis, cast interviews and gallery. Karen Stretch

Beat Kings: Respect The Architect
Nature Sounds, no cert, £11.99
While the best hip hop MCs and DJs are given their props, their producers have, until recently, remained in the shadows. Beat Kings is a rough'n'ready doc that pays tribute to the architects behind hip hop's most seminal beats. On a budget of what appears to be pennies, Wu Tang Clan DJ Mathematics visits the likes of Prince Paul, Marley Marl, Premier, Pete Rock, RZA, Swizz Beatz, Kanye West and David Banner to glean insights into their history, inspirations and techniques. Possibly only bedroom beatmakers will revel in debates about whether the MPC60 or the SP1200 was a better sampler and whether ProTools is infringing on creativity but there are plenty of nuggets for less obsessive fans: the fact that RZA's first sampler was nicked, for instance, and that 45 King picked up the Annie soundtrack (with which he created Jay-Z's Hard Knock Life) for 25 cents.
Extras: Outtakes and a Brooklyn beats battle. Siobhan Murphy

 

What's on today   What's on tomorrow