A roundup of the current best and rest in DVD. In this installment: Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Fifth Season, Family Guy: Season Five, Little Britain: The Complete Third Series, Miami Vice, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Election, Ballets Russes.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Fifth Season (Warner Bros, $34.95)
Some folks say the mighty Curb jumped the shark in Season Five (Warners, $49.95). There may not be episodes as awesome as Trick or Treat (a hawkish Jew goes ballistic at Larry for humming Wagner: “Are you Jewish?”), but it’s still top draw – truthful and perceptive, excruciating and hilarious. (Entourage has some amusing moments, but it’s wildly overrated, not lived-in and blasphemous to compare this new kid to the Curb.) I watched the first four seasons concurrently. Five hinges around Larry hiring a black Muslim private investigator to investigate his past on the hunch he may be adopted. In his usual insouciant slob way, Larry barges into the guy’s office when he’s praying to Mecca. Larry has some good Muslim comedy moments, but treads uncharacteristically daintily round it. On the Judaism front: Larry skewers some more sacred cows, notably in The Ski Lift. He pushes the boundaries in The Seder, befriending a sex offender, outraging people by inviting him to a family celebration of the Jewish holiday. In The Bowtie Larry gets in a fight with Wanda over the “racist” dog he’s adopted and falls in and out of favour with the lesbian community. Larry gives The Passion of the Christ a thumpin’ in The Christ Nail. “This is a sad day for the Golden Globes. It is, however, quite a good day for Larry David. I suspect the wife will be a little forthcoming tonight,” Larry is ever witty on the DVD’s accompanying documentaryette on the history and tao of Curb. The show’s vertiginous sense of reality becomes even before complex here. Unfortunately, though photographed, they don’t interview the real Mrs David, Laurie. “I just adore Larry,” the fantasy Mrs David, Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) enthuses about real life and Curb’s versions of Larry. Larry’s effervescence, gangly physiognomy and uncurbed awkwardness recall Groucho Marx; these two are of the same order. As Curb/Seinfeld confederate (and Borat director) Larry Charles says, he’s “taken reality to another level.” New to DVD. (2-disc set; optional English subtitles; The History of Curb So Far/Even Further featurettes).—Alexander Bisley

Family Guy: Season Five (RS, $59.95)
Family Guy Season Five begins with a blast, PTV, a topical, pointed satire about the FCC’s indecency crusade in America post the Janet Jackson incident. The amusingly crass Big Man, Peter Griffin, sets up his own salacious TV station. Which the FCC shut down. The FCC then move into the Griffin household to censor real life. Family Guy doesn’t have the same genius of The Simpsons, its ridiculously charismatic godfather, but there’s some bloody funny stuff, consistency aside. After Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, Stewie has another inspired foray into politics, busting in on Osama filming one of his video sessions. In one scene, the Evil One models big, green-rimmed 80s sunnies. The season has first-rate jokes about Bush (“Well you know how George W. Bush felt when he turned up in Vietnam”), Cheney (his hunting accident), Oprah’s book club and maypole dancing. One excellent episode weighs in persuasively on Gay Marriage – take that, West Wing. As ever, Peter is the centre of things. The toy factory jobsworth doesn’t have Homer Simpson’s charm, in fact he makes Borat look enlightened, but he’s an entertainer. New to DVD. (3-disc set; optional English subtitles; commentaries; deleted scenes).—Alexander Bisley

Little Britain: The Complete Third Series (RS, $39.95)
Is Family Guy a bit too gross sometimes? Little Britain: The Complete Third Series probably is, an inconstant elderly woman coming to mind. While such returns are diminished – including the aptly named vomiting Tory Maggie – ye olde classics remain true enough. The credits involve Andy Pipkin (Matt Lucas) jumping on a trampoline, he’s soon at his best stealing an icecream from a baby. Mr Yeah-I-Know swims around an aquarium after Lou reminisces his musing, “I thought you said the underwater world had a sublime natural beauty.” Daffyd becomes a rent boy and gets a girlfriend. Vicky Pollard, now with six pushchair-bound kids, is a phone sex operator, and is involved in a hilarious dance-off. Tristram Shandy’s Rob Brydon puts in some solid stuff. You know if you like it. New to DVD. (2-disc set; commentaries; deleted scenes; interviews; various featurettes).—Alexander Bisley

Miami Vice (Universal, $39.95)
After tailoring the sleekest thriller in years (and probably the best film Tom Cruise will ever star in), Michael Mann followed up Collateral with a howling, self-congratulatory parody of himself. Miami Vice is easily the best advertisement for shooting in hi-def digital video since All About Lily Chou-Chou, but is otherwise a gaffed attempt to merge the high-stakes procedural detail of Heat with a not-to-be-taken-seriously pop-cultural touchstone of the eighties. Mann doesn’t so much as pastiche the funk of the TV series as he does his own cinematic tics, from the opening night club stakeout, to the staid grey suits, to Colin Farrell’s excessive posturing and brood (and you thought Al Pacino was over the top). Gong Li, as the sexy drugs cartel baroness, is a proverbial fish out of water, belonging anywhere but capitalist America (or in a shower with Farrell for that matter). The payoff of another bruising guerilla shootout comes better late than never though, and if there’s one Michael Mann trademark worth reprising, it’s his theatre of men with guns. And as a creature of the night, no other filmmaker brings life to the after hours quite like Mann; swapping Los Angeles’ topography of diodes and LEDs for the pastel-neon blaze of Miami, Florida, he’s illuminated another town that never sleeps. New to DVD. (optional English subtitles; Miami and Beyond/Miami Vice Undercover featurettes; music video).—Tim Wong

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Madman, $29.95)
Revenge-chic reaches its apex, and then comes tumbling down. Park Chan-wook sure has a wicked gift for dynamic, visual set-piece, and his shot designs are that of a mad scientist’s. But with an avenging angel at his disposal, he does little with the reversal of gender except subvert Lee Young-ae’s built-in halo and melodrama kinks. Here, she’s the victim of blackmail, enduring a 13 year sentence on behalf of a child murderer holding her newborn baby to ransom. Once out, she enacts the most feminine of revenge: in her preparations, everything has to be “pretty”, from her blow-wave hairstyle, to the high heels on her feet, to the commissioned ornamental hand-piece on her gun, to the liberal application of makeup. Even when she emerges from prison, she’s the breezy image of a covergirl, donning Elizabeth Taylor sunglasses, and wearing the same polka dot dress that became all the rage after her arrest made headline news in the spectre of Olivia Hussey. Surrounded by patisserie sweets, ice flakes, and purified tofu, it’s all fucking gorgeous to look at, but resembles something more akin to a snow globe – you shake it, it snows, it looks nice, but then what? In her case, a selfish act of vengeance becomes a support group experience after discovering that not one, but four children were killed. The families of the deceased are rounded up, forced to watch home movies of their child’s kidnapping and death (easily the film’s most grueling sequence), before being asked to pick a number, a weapon, and take turns at butchering a bound and gagged Choi Min-shik until dead. It’s all incredibly absurd, and hard not to chuckle at – a brief moment of perverse relief following the devastating recap of child murders, not to mention a welcome reminder of Park’s knack for pitch black humour in the most unlikely of situations. New to DVD. (Korean language with optional English subtitles; Making Of featurette; deleted scenes; poster/stills gallery; trailers).—Tim Wong [Read More]

Election (Hopscotch/RS, $34.95)
Gangsters have featured prominently in 2006; while audiences currently marvel at Martin Scorsese’s Infernal Affairs remake The Departed, it’d be a shame to overlook Johnnie To’s terrific Election, which wraps its entire cinematic sprawl in the dimly lit underworld of triad politics. Here, it’s all about the tussle for gangland supremacy, and is fought out amongst two of Hong Kong’s biggest chesses: Lok (Simon Yam), and Big D (Tony Leung Ka-fai). The interplay between the two bosses is like that of Michael and Sonny Corelone – one’s cool and calculated, while the other’s hot-headed and explosive – but that everything’s waged over Yum Cha or incense in a veiled ceremonial hush makes for some pretty unorthodox viewing in terms of the gangster movie on a whole. There’s plenty of shouting and threatening and even some killing, naturally, but what’s interesting about To’s film is that it meanders through the murky waters of power struggle without much in the way of a skirmish. Until, out of the nowhere, it’s like we’re suddenly watching Casino, and everything’s turned nasty (like hole in the ground nasty) courtesy of a little homicidal license. This isn’t as fun as Throw Down, or as adventurous as Breaking News, but for a director on Cannes’ good books with a reputation for an almost Hawksian command over genre, just about anything To does these days makes mincemeat out of Hong Kong commercial cinema by default. New to DVD. (Cantonese language with optional English subtitles; Making Of featurette; cast and director interviews).—Tim Wong [Read More]

Imagine dancing choreography by the likes of George Balanchine, David Lechine and Leonide Massine, and getting to do so on a set designed by Dali or wearing a costume by Matisse! Dancing has never been a big money spinner, but the artistic benefits are shown as immense for those dancers associated with the two companies that directors Daniel Geller and Danya Goldfine follow in their documentary. The film opens with a lone ballerina, who teeters, ethereal and insubstantial amongst the film grains. Such archival footage is peppered throughout. Watching Yvonne Chouteau dancing Coppelia, circling imploringly on point, gave me that indescribable feeling you get in your stomach when you see someone you like walking down the street. While I could happily have watched such footage for two hours, the film is primarily made up of interviews with the dancers themselves. These interviews give insight into the history and rivalry of Massine’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and de Basil’s Original Ballet Russe. The hubris of the choreographers dominates; the creative processes, gossip, intrigue, politics and power-play that came with being beautiful and artistic are also fascinating. Also mapping the birth of modern ballet, the filmmakers touch on events such as the controversial but popular mixing of Tchaikovsky and ballet in Le Presage, and do a good job of placing ballet in a historical context. You will also learn that going to one of the Ballet Russes’ performances was “one of the great erotic pleasures” in pre-war London, enough to cause you to “slather at the mouth”. While the film drags in a few places during the last half hour, mimicking the decline of the companies it follows, Ballets Russes is recommended for dance fans from all disciplines as well as all those inflexible people to whom the word “plie” means nothing. New to DVD. (deleted scenes; rare archival performance footage; photo galleries; trailer).—Catherine Bisley [Full Review]