Reel Talent: First Films By Legendary Directors
Studio: Fox Home Entertainment
WorkNameSort: Reel Talent: First Films By Legendary Directors
The good news about this DVD? You get to see the early, New Wave’inspired shorts of George Lucas, a bright young prodigy then uncorrupted by Hollywood megalomania. The bad news? Almost everything else on it. Culled from the film archives of the University of Southern California, this (thankfully) low-priced collection proves that USC was no NYU, spawning a lot more ambitionless yes-men than ‘legends.â?� Sure, it’s great to see Lucas’ exciting race-car exercise 1:42:08: A Man and His Car and his Orwellian THX short that was later expanded into a groundbreaking sci-fi feature. And Robert Zemeckis’ A Field of Honor is an effective, if unsubtle, anti-war film. But the dated junk you have to suffer through from the likes of Stephen Sommers (the one and only!), Jon Turteltaub (the great!) and Shawn Levy (the legendary!) makes you wish these shorts had stayed buried in the university’s library. I never thought I’d think even less of the directors of 3 Ninjas and 2003’s Cheaper by the Dozen.
This article appears in Aug 29 – Sep 4, 2007.