DVDs of the week

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10 April 2012

The Simpsons hit the big screen, large-scale effects in Transformers, and a festive movie with a dark twist are among the DVDs of the week.

DVD OF THE WEEK
The Simpsons Movie
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, PG, £19.99

****
How do you top a cartoon that's so sharply observed and scripted that it sticks around on telly for 20-odd years? Not easily, if The Simpsons Movie is anything to go by as it hits the usual high standards without exceeding them. Here Homer's adoption of a pet pig inadvertently precipitates a full-scale environmental disaster in Springfield. The town is then quarantined in a huge, glass dome. Homer must then both rescue its residents and his relationship with his family to redeem himself.

It's a straightforward enough plot, so these 90 minutes are used to broaden scope: the world outside Springfield comes into play, and Homer's family responsibilities are explored in a more sobering way than ever before. Perhaps more time could have been afforded to the peripheral but equally important characters that give the Simpsons universe its brilliant colour. Overall, though, the movie's undeniably good - and you'll be humming 'Spider Pig, Spider Pig' till June.

Extras: Pretty good - cast and crew commentaries, deleted scenes, trailers, plus skits including Homer hosting the Tonight Show and the Simpsons judging American Idol. Sharon Lougher

Transformers
Paramount Home Entertainment, 12, £19.99
**

Michael Bay makes big (like, really, reeeeally big), stupidly entertaining action films - and we love him for it. Armageddon, Bad Boys I & II? Top banana. So when it came to making a movie about robots that transform from cars and lorries and stuff, based on a longrunning Japanese toy franchise, you can see why executive producer Steven Spielberg gave him a bell. But shrinking big-bucks action to the small screen ironically magnifies its glaring faults - such as the lack of plot or characterisation.

The 'transforming' bits are still thrilling but it's a good hour of frankly boring action before head 'goodie' robot Optimus Prime introduces himself. That leaves you far too much time to fruitlessly ponder why a superior master race of robots is genetically designed to represent rapidly defunct Earth technology - whatever happened to the one that transformed into a tape player, eh?

Extras: Director commentary. You have to upgrade to the £24.99 two-disc edition if you want all the behind scenes stuff, including interviews with senior officials from the US Department of Defense who were 'consulted on the film to give it authenticity' - so it's their fault, then. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh

Robert Newman's History Of Oil
Spirit Entertainment, 15, £19.99
***

Rob Newman, stand-up and activist of Newman and Baddiel fame, is an eccentric old sod. He's as much performance artist as he is political polemicist and this briskly paced but digression-filled romp through the murky history of oil, for instance, has its feet atmospherically in the past.

The intro is played like a silent film, the accompanying footage (archive stuff, with Newman doing fun impressions of historical figures) is deliberately crackly, and the cameraman darts in and out of every nook and cranny of East London's Hoxton Hall, where this was filmed, giving the whole thing a lo-fi, indie feel.

But for all the packaging that wraps this show, adapted from his 2005 Apocalypso Now tour, he's got some sharp points to make --one of which is that, if Tony Blair had been tried at Nuremberg, he'd have been hanged for 'planning and waging an aggressive war'. Hope Gordon Brown's watching...

Extras: Disc of another (less lucid) show - From Caliban To The Taliban. Sharon Lougher

Shaggy: Live At Chiemsee Reggae Summer, 1998
Charly Films, no cert, £15.99
*

A grown man gyrating like a horny teenager at a school disco? This can only mean one thing: Mr Lover Lover is back. Yes, this might sound hellish, and it would be if it wasn't for this DVD's knack of taking Shaggy so seriously that it's inadvertently funny. It presents his performance at Germany's premier reggae festival (don't let this taint the event's otherwise strong programming) recorded both in its original TV form and a 'special' remix version. Three hours and 20 minutes of pure, unadulterated, cheese-tastic entertainment awaits those brave enough to sit through poor sound quality, a Bob Marley medley 'tribute' and dance moves so sexually suggestive they make you want to squeal.

'Shaggy is a legend' seems to be the pervading tone and, admittedly, the man's done well, engraining pop-reggae hits from Boombastic to Oh Carolina into our memories. But whether this achievement amounts to more than a stocking-filler joke is questionable.

Extras: A poorly written biography rolls up the screen reeling off facts and figures. Zena Alkayat

Black Christmas
Pathe Distribution, 15, £15.99
***

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the Kappa Gamma sorority house, not a creature was stirring... except for the axewielding cross-dressing psycho in the attic. Broah-ha-ha! A festive movie with a jolly dark twist, the backstory of this evilly enjoyable ho-ho-horror explains that little Billy was born at Christmas.

Yellow and disfigured by some disease or other, Billy got locked in the attic by his mother after she killed his beloved pop with a claw hammer. Then, one Christmas Eve, Billy escapes, murders his mom and her lover with a tree ornament and has been locked in an asylum ever since - but he still always tries to come home for Christmas... Gleefully remaking the 1974 slasher, this scary movie has all the inventive gore (candy canes and fairy lights all become slaughter tools), sexy girls and tongue-in-cheek giggles you'd expect from the makers of Final Destination. Yep, someone's coming down the chimney, and it ain't Santa...

Extras: Alternate endings, deleted scenes, two featurettes. LI-Z

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