Saturday, August 6, 2011

Where Can I Get This?

DVDS
UK RELEASES
Mary Harron; USA 2005; Icon Home Entertainment/Region 2; Certificate 18; 90 minutes; Aspect Ratio 16:9 anamorphic; Features: audio commentary with Mary Harron, co-writer Guinevere Turner and Gretchen Mol, 'Presenting Bettie Page' short, cast interviews, theatrical trailer
Film: Anchoring this smart if slender biopic as Bettie Page, America's S&M pin-up of the repressed 1950s, Gretchen Mol brings an unforced and sunny innocence to a retro-styled tale. Harron's insistence on Page's saintly sauciness and the family values of the fetish photobook circuit (pornographers haven't been this cosy since Boogie Nights) may grate on some viewers, but the film's mix of visual styles has real charm and wit as it skips happily from noirish or home-movie monochrome for the New York sequences to a garish Health & Efficiency Technicolor for Page's breezy nudist spreads.
Disc: A pretty transfer, packaged with the usual up-tempo cast interviews. The one interesting oddity is an original Bettie Page striptease short, which shows off the homemade production values of 50s period porn. (S&S August 2006)

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