Peter Lord, Hugh Grant

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of bubbly. Adults and youngsters (especially parents with kids) should raise a toast of fizzy grog to Aardman Animations and its army of painstaking artists, who’ve effectively plundered Hollywood’s archive of swashbuckling tricks to create the zany-quirky spoof “The Pirates! Band of Misfits.”

As animation aficionados and guileless youngsters have come to expect from Aardman (creators of the loveably gangly Wallace & Gromit cartoons, as well as the feather-light “Chicken Run” and the lovely “Arthur Christmas”), the tedious technique of stop-motion, Claymation moviemaking has resulted in yet another wondrous work of British weirdness and idiosyncrasy.

“The Pirates!” – directed by Aardman co-founder Peter Lord and adapted from Gideon Defoe’s comic novel “The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists” – is indeed a treasure trove of oddness and eccentricity that imagines a scurvy band of shipmates who look forward to “Ham Night” every week with their benevolent Pirate Captain (voiced with salty wit by Hugh Grant).

In the Victorian-era world of these sea-going marauders, the captain is a bumbling buccaneer who wants nothing more than to win the coveted Pirate of the Year Award and show up his more fearsome and successful competitors, snotty Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven), sultry Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) and the Elvis-like Pirate King (Brian Blessed).

The Pirate Captain has a loyal if bumbling crew, a fat parrot named Polly (who is actually the last of the near-extinct dodo birds) and a creaky but serviceable ship (with a bumper sticker that reads: “Honk if you’re seasick”). So he sets off on a high-seas quest to pilfer a hold full of booty and in the process runs afoul of devious science nerd Charles Darwin (David Tennant) and his mute, conniving monkey butler, not to mention the rabidly pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton in full Cruella de Vil rant).

As usual for an Aardman production, the film is an overflowing feast of eye candy and visual gags (note especially the interior of rowdy Barnacle’s Face pirate pub, which features a full salad bar, and the wondrously daft and rococo pirate’s ship, a handcrafted miniature art piece that weighs in at 770 pounds and includes 44,569 parts). Bookish types might also spot among the pub rabble a snooty Jane Austen flinging a beer stein at the hooded Elephant Man (aka Joseph Merrick).

While the film boasts the rudimentary look of an Aardman Claymation feature (complete with silly characters and their array of shifting eyes, florid noses and toothy mouths), it’s also neatly enhanced with subtle 3D touches and dazzling flourishes of computer animation that lend uncommon texture to backgrounds and allow the seas to churn and roil and wash around the film’s model ships. This is indeed the richest and most technically ambitious of all Aardman films.

So if you think the fey Capt. Jack Sparrow and his “Pirates of the Caribbean” juggernaut has captured all the comic gold there is to find in the briny recesses of the multiplex, think again. “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” is definitely a worthy contender for Pirate of the Year honors.

- Dennis King

“The Pirates! Band of Misfits”

PG
1:28
3 stars
Starring: Voices of Hugh Grant, Salma Hayek, Jeremy Piven, Imelda Staunton
(Mild action, rude humor and some language)

NEW YORK – Picture a couple of gnarly, cutlass-wielding, Victorian-era pirates of the high seas and the last pair you’d probably envision would be urbane British actor Hugh Grant and pixyish, bespectacled animator Peter Lord.

Hugh Grant, Pirate Captain

But they are two of the primary scalawags behind Aardman Animations’ newest feature-length comedy, “The Pirates! Band of Misfits,” a stop-motion cartoon spoof of all things scurvy and swashbuckling.

During a jovial, back-and-forth press conference for the movie at the Regency Hotel hosted by Columbia Pictures, the two – Grant, the handsome, rascally leading man with his droll Brit wit, and the rumpled Aardman co-founder Lord, looking like a whimsical college don – waxed on about buccaneers, stop-motion animation, the quirks of British humor, Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin and the pleasures of voice acting.

“The Pirates! Band of Misfits” follows the seafaring misadventures of the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain, a bumbling but boundlessly enthusiastic brigand who leads a rag-tag crew on a quest to amass a shipload of booty and win for himself the much-coveted title among fellow thieves as Pirate of the Year.

Grant readily admits that he looks nothing like his big, buff, bearded animated character, Pirate Captain. But while he might have doubted his ability to play a pirate, he relished the challenge of giving voice to such a vivid, oddball comic character.

“When I saw the script, I panicked really,” the actor said. “I read it on the page and thought, ‘oh, that’s not very me.’ And then I looked at the character model they’d built and thought, ‘that’s really not me, at all.’ And then I realized I was going to have to do some acting. So I just started experimenting with silly voices. It sort of happened that way. But my touchstone was always the beard. I always felt if I stroked my imaginary beard I became the Pirate Captain. And so I did a lot of beard stroking.”

Lord, directing his first film since 2000’s “Chicken Run,” admitted Grant is not the first actor who comes to mind when you utter the word “pirate,” but he brought qualities to the role that were intangible.

“Hugh is the perfect person to play (Pirate Captain),” Lord said. “He’s rot at being a pirate and he’s up against some selfish and dangerous people. But the character’s essential cheerfulness is what wins through.”

For his part, Grant wryly confessed that voice acting is a pretty easy gig.

“That was the whole joy of a film like this,” Grant joked. “Things like physical comedy – I don’t really do that. But I didn’t have to. I just left it to the animators. They do the whole thing for you. In fact, they did everything for me – things I can’t do in films. Like I can’t do physical comedy, I can’t do stunts, I can’t do emotion – but they did it all.”

Did he ever want to be a pirate when he was a kid?

“I can’t say I did,” Grant said. “No, I really wanted to be in the U.S. Cavalry. And I still haven’t given up that hope entirely.”

Lord allowed that pirate movies have a long and storied history in Hollywood, but beyond a few iconic nuggets of gold he said it isn’t such a treasure trove of spoof-worthy conventions as one would think.

“At the start we looked back at old pirate movies to see what great larks they were,” the director said. “But once you’ve done the big sword fights and the swinging on ropes and the sliding down the sail with a knife, that’s kind of it then. But we tapped into a general sense of this ridiculously over-the-top jollity and good humor. The funniest one was ‘The Crimson Pirate’ that Burt Lancaster filmed, completely hilarious. They were having such a good time the whole time, bounding and leaping from place to place. So that was nice. But it’s not really such a terribly rich genre. We were just referring to some idealized folk memory of what pirate movies ought to be like, that was the idea.”

In that vein, the script by Gideon Defoe (drawn from his comic novel, “The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists”) plays fast and loose with history and has cheeky fun making villains and fools of Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin.

“That was always a big plus for me,“ Grant quipped. “I hate those two. Actually, there are people who have fixations on historical characters. Doing ‘Love Actually’ with Billy Bob Thornton, who as you know is unusual, we learned that he has a proper phobia about 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. He’s terrified of him. And I remember on that set, we had a set of No. 10 Downing Street, I found a picture of Disraeli and I used to slyly push it in front of Billy Bob. And he would just break out in a sweat.”

Which brought the conversation around to the differences between British humour and American humor.

Peter Lord

“People have asked me about that for years,” said Grant, “and honestly I don’t think there are such big differences. I guess the only place where there’s a little more emphasis in Britain is sometimes on profound silliness, just almost surreal, childish silliness like you see in Monty Python or in a lot of Aardman films, I think. But otherwise I don’t think there are profound differences.”

Lord added, “I find it impossible to answer when people ask, ‘is your humor very British?’ I have no idea. And the big question is, if it is different, does it matter really? Because we in Britain, we drink in the American humor by the gallon-load. In all sorts of different styles and tones, we take it all in and laugh at half the antics. I’m sure there are some things we don’t get. Cultural references and such. Like when people make jokes about American high school. I know there’s a whole world of experience that American high school kids have had that I haven’t had. But I don’t mind. I laugh along, I get bits of it and bits I miss and that’s fine. So I kind of hope American audiences will be similarly broad-minded and just enjoy something with a slightly different tone.”

“And it is always true that the more you try to be international with your humor or your entertainment, the more you’ll fail,” Grant said. “And the more you try to be local and indigenous and just do what pleases you the more you’re likely to succeed internationally. People like it. They like something different. They don’t like homogenized stuff.”

So, how do they hit that sweet spot with humor for kids and adults?

“It is very difficult … well, in fact it’s very easy actually,” said Lord. “I really think – I’ll say the corny thing – you just make it for yourself. Because what else can you do except what amuses you? If it doesn’t amuse you, you aren’t going to do it. So you do what amuses you.

“But we’re not idiots.,” he continued. “We know, of course, that it’s for children as well. For example, the writer, Gideon Defoe, writes hilarious dialogue but would never leave any room for action at all. So we had to force his dialogue aside and said, ‘no, no, we’ve got to get some action in here. This has to be visually entertaining, as well.’ That was my role, just to make a space for the purely visual and just trust the audience that they will like humor up and down the scale. And I think that’s what we’ve done – we’ve got some quite smart humor for the sophisticated adults and ludicrous schoolboy humor for children and everything in between, I hope. It seems to all fit together rather well.”

Emily Blunt, Jason Segel

They did that quite winningly in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and they do it again in the offbeat and warmly funny, though slightly scattered, “Five-Year Engagement,” which pairs the dauntless romantic Segel with the stunning Emily Blunt and gives the British actress a chance to show off some surprisingly strong comic chops.

With Stoller taking his sweet time (perhaps too much so) rolling out the story of nuptial interruptus, the movie piles on lots of oddball diversions and quirky supporting players to extend what’s essentially a pretty simple story.

It goes like this: Segel’s Tom is an up-and-coming San Francisco chef who has finally summoned up the nerve to propose to his lovely girlfriend Violet (Blunt). But before their wedding, Violet, a smart psychology grad student, is offered a prestigious position at the University of Michigan. Noble Tom agrees to forego his culinary career and follow Violet to the rustic North Country.

There, she ends up spending too much time at work, under the fervent gaze of a too-interested supervisor (funny Rhys Ifans), and Tom falls into an increasingly sour funk as their wedding plans get put off time and again.

It should be noted that the producer here is Judd Apatow, who is practically a brand name for this sort of R-rated relationship fare. (In fact, ad copy for this film boasts of its ties to the “Bridesmaids” producer, but that’s mostly a bait and switch ploy.)

“Five-Year Engagement” contains the usual Apatow touches – lots of sexual frankness and streaming vulgarity, plenty of misunderstanding and miscommunication between men and women, hapless men struggling with issues of ego and maturity. But on its meandering course to “I do,” it contains some decidedly dark and emotional touches.

As Violet is preoccupied with her research (something to do with stale doughnuts, believe it or not), Tom devolves rather ludicrously from a gifted chef into a bearded backwoods yokel with a passion for hunting, smoking venison and brewing mead.
The roster of supporting players, mostly TV mainstays, provides some engaging but largely tangential diversions. The standouts include Mindy Kaling (“The Office”) and Kevin Hart as Violet’s chatty U of M colleagues; Alison Brie (“Community”) as Violet’s sister and Chris Pratt (“Parks and Recreation”) as Tom’s randy, idiot pal; Brian Posehn as Tom’s deranged co-worker at a hippie sandwich shop, and Chris Parnell (“Saturday Night Live”) as the sweater-knitting “faculty spouse” who gives Tom a chilling look at what his future might hold.

Stoller does an admirable job of juggling this big cast of extras and dodging in and out of various subplots. But with Segel and Blunt holding center stage and sparking up loads of endearing romantic chemistry, “Five-Year Engagement” largely keeps its eye on the prized couple and keeps us cheering on its long and winding way to the altar.

- Dennis King

“Five-Year Engagement”

R
2:04
3 stars
Starring: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Alison Brie, Rhys Ifans, Chris Parnell
(Sexual content and language throughout)

Peter Lord

NEW YORK – In what business does a great week of work amount to six seconds of product?

In the rarefied world of stop-motion animation, where puppet figures are moved in tiny increments between individually photographed frames to create the illusion of movement, six seconds of animated footage is widely considered a solid week’s labor. And that’s why an 88-minute animated feature such as Aardman’s “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” can take more than five years to complete.

Aardman Animations, the revered British house that has given us such beloved Claymation figures as Wallace & Gromit and garnered four Academy Awards, has pioneered many of the painstaking, second-by-second techniques of manipulating miniature models into fluid animated films.

It’s co-founder and co-owner Peter Lord (who started the company in 1972 with partner David Sproxton) talked about the rigors of stop motion – or stop-frame – work during a press conference for the release of “The Pirates!”

And the hallmark word of such precise, demanding, snail-paced animation seems to be “patience.”

“It doesn’t seem like patience, particularly,” said Lord. “All of the animators that do their one or two seconds a day, they don’t seem overly patient. That’s because they’re trying to do something. Every day they’re trying to achieve something, and that keeps their energy level high. Because every day, slowly, they’re trying to get somewhere and achieve something, and that’s exciting.”

“Pirates” star Hugh Grant, also on hand for the press day, chuckled and asked director Lord about a persistent rumor attached to the grueling production.

“Is it true the story of the one man doing 10 seconds of the tavern scene who got married, had children, got divorced while he was just making that 10 seconds?”

A raucous and intricate scene in a Barnacle’s Face pirates pub – the longest in the film – in which several pirate characters were first introduced, took 18 months to shoot.

“It’s not quite that,” Lord explained with a laugh, “but he did start in the tavern at the beginning of the shoot and sort of emerged at the end, now married and with a child which he didn’t have when he went in there. He spent 18 months in the tavern. Sounds like heaven. And that wasn’t the whole scene. It was like half the scene. Other people shot the other half.”

“You told me that one good animator had done a great week’s work if he’s done four seconds,” Grant said.

“Six seconds,” Lord corrected. “And happy with that.”

- Dennis King

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:

“Thor at the Bus Stop”

The weirdly titled “Thor at the Bus Stop” (due out on DVD Tuesday) is a hipster hash of Monty Python-esque skits, offbeat street denizens, existential philosophizing and low-low-budget ingenuity that shows some promise from filmmaking brothers Jerry and Mike Thompson.

Shot on a proverbial shoestring and freighted with all the usual flaws of DIY filmmaking – bad acting, cheesy production values, self-consciously jaded dialogue – “Thor” is nevertheless a pretty cool calling-card work for the obviously clever and inventive Thompson brothers. In this, their first feature-length collaboration, the writer-director-actor siblings display a strong penchant for quirky humor (of the Python kind) and world-weary nihilism (they’ve obviously watched a lot of Tarantino).

“Thor” is a comedy-fantasy that takes place in a glum, unnamed urban neighborhood populated by rigorously oddball characters. They include Ultra Stan the Everyman (who delivers pizzas), Bernard Barnard (a moronic TV reporter), Big Zed and Little Fred (they steal lunchboxes from school children), Passenger Seat Pete (a blandly submissive dupe), Beat Nick (a poet), White Trash Chuck (a wannabe hipster), One-Way Walter (a cool dude who highjacks cars), Detective Mergatroy (a TV camera hog) and, of course, the Norse god of lightning, Thor (passing through the neighborhood on the day he dies).

The slow-paced story unfolds mostly in short, loosely interwoven sketches and is weighted down with loads of philosophizing – some of it silly, some of it vaguely cool. In fact, the whole tone of this silly-smart flick might best be summed up by this observation from one street denizen, “There’s only two ways to act. Just two ways, Either be cool. Or not.”

“Thor at the Bus Stop” is not rated and runs 100 minutes. It’s being released by VCI Entertainment.

- Dennis King

Woody Allen’s history-hopping chameleon “Zelig” has nothing on the real-life cipher Juan Pujol Garcia, a shadowy Spanish double agent who changed the course of World War II with his amazing espionage exploits, which are compellingly detailed in the documentary thriller “Garbo: The Spy.”

This insanely clever and amazing true-life story from documentarian Edmon Roch reveals a masterly tale of intrigue and deception that might come as a surprise even to the most ardent World War II buff. It’s relates the audacious exploits of a freelance spy who wormed his way into the good graces of both the British and the Nazi intelligence services and proved such a great actor that he was given the codename “Garbo” (after the enigmatic actress Greta Garbo).

While, in truth, Pujol’s loyalties were to the Allied cause, he was so convincing to both sides (the Nazis codenamed him “Alaric”) that he was awarded an honorary knighthood by the British and the Iron Cross by the Nazis. And as Roch’s film relates, Garbo’s greatest triumph came in Operation Fortitude, in which, though a tangled web of made-up operatives and misinformation, he misled the Germans about the exact date and location of the D-Day invasion.

Since, naturally, there is virtually no film record of Garbo’s undercover deeds, Roch cobbles together the story with animated maps, talking-head interviews (mainly with novelist-historian Nigel West), archival war footage and, most cleverly, clips from classic spy movies (“Mr. Moto’s Last Warning,” “Our Man in Havana,” “Mata Hari” and so on) that mirror actual events.

Along with a gripping narrative of the spy’s wartime efforts, Roch adds on a surprising and poignant third act, which involved Pujol faking his own death after the war, moving to South America and operating a cinema for nearly 40 years. Most surprising is footage of an aged Pujol, returned to Normandy in 1984 to walk the beaches, tour the military cemetery and receive a medal of gratitude from the British government.

As espionage thrillers go, “Garbo: The Spy” is a bracing nail-biter, shaded with the gripping touches of an inventive director and with the added bonus of being largely factual.

- Dennis King

Jack Nicholson was born to play sharp-dressed, wisecracking private investigator Jake Gittes, an ex-cop with some bad memories of his old Chinatown beat in 1937 Los Angeles, who’s doing much better for himself these days tracking down unfaithful wives and husbands — until he uncovers a monumental scam engineered by the corrupt powers that be that will shape the future of L.A.

One could argue that this film was a career best for many of its collaborators, including director Roman Polanski, production designer Richard Sylbert and cinematographer John Alonso, who created a beautiful film noir in color, its atmospherics enhanced by Jerry Goldsmith’s haunting score with its melancholy trumpet solos. Then there was Faye Dunaway, the lovely but flawed woman of mystery and tragedy with whom Jake becomes involved, and director John Houston in full acting mode as the mighty, menacing and unrepentantly sinful Noah Cross, the manipulator of deceitful doings within the Department of Water and Power.

And then there is the taut and complex screenplay that won an Academy Award for Robert Towne, who always intended “Chinatown” to be the first of a trilogy based loosely on the history of the shady dealings that built the City of Angels.

The Blu-ray edition contains a three-part documentary on that history, “Water and Power: The Aqueduct — The Aftermath — The River and Beyond,” plus commentary by Towne and director David Fincher (“Zodiac”). There’s also an appreciation of the film from prominent filmmakers and documentaries on the filming of “Chinatown” and its legacy.

And there’s that dark and jolting ending in a part of the city where things never went well for Jake, when one of his colleagues sadly implores him with that famous last line to “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

Just try to forget it.

— Gene Triplett

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:

“Man vs. Wild: Top 25 Man Moments”

British adventurer Bear Grylls is famous for seeking out some of the harshest, most life-threatening places on earth and demonstrating some of the radical survival measures necessary to make it out alive. Extreme and queasy highlights from his popular Discovery Channel series,” Man vs. Wild: Top 25 Man Moments,” are due out on DVD Tuesday.

The buff and gritty Grylls, a former member of Britain’s elite SAS and canny survival expert, has hosted versions of “Man vs. Wild” on British, American and international television networks and found a macho audience for his sometimes stomach-turning techniques for besting a wild and wooly Mother Nature.

Each episode of the show features Grylls (and his stalwart, behind-the-camera crew) being dropped off in some horribly inhospitable location, with minimal gear and resources, and showing viewers how to survive.

Over the course of the series, which debuted on Discovery in 2006 and was canceled this year due to a contract dispute, Grylls has scaled rushing waterfalls, dashed through forest fires, waded rapids, parachuted from helicopters, climbed slick ice faces and raced a speeding freight train through a Montana tunnel.

And in order to survive in various forbidding climates, he has wrestled alligators, eaten all manner of bugs, drunk his own urine from a rattlesnake skin, munched on deer droppings, field dressed a camel carcass and used the corpse of a sheep as a sleeping bag.

“Top 25 Man Moments” is a compilation of the worst and weirdest of these survival escapades, narrated with devil-may-care showmanship by the irrepressible Grylls, a man’s man who wisely leavens his macho bluster with some goofy, regular-guy humor.

“Man vs. Wild: Top 25 Man Moments” is rated PG and runs 215 minutes. It’s being released by Travel Channel – Gaiam.

- Dennis King

The "New" Stooges

Since Moe, Larry and Curly made their bones in their 1930s and ’40s heyday with some 200 comedy short subjects for Columbia Pictures, a short review of the Farrelly Brothers’ chaotic but affectionate “The Three Stooges” seems fitting.

So here are some highlights and lowlights from the movie that, depending on your point of view, is either a sweet homage to those Poobahs of the Eye Poke or a clumsy recycling of their archaic comic anarchy or a juvenile mimicry of crude their cultural imprint.

Lords of Lowbrow: Brothers Peter and Bobby Farrelly (“Dumb and Dumber” and “There’s Something About Mary”) have cut their moviemaking careers from a common cloth with the original Stooges, larding most of their movies with rough slapstick and roaring political incorrectness, plus ample doses of bathroom humor and sappy sentimentalism. So this seems a perfect pairing of filmmakers and subject matter.

Dunderheaded Doppelgangers: Although the Farrellys flirted with big stars for the leads (Russell Crowe, Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, Jim Carrey and Paul Giamatti were rumored), the three relative unknowns they settled on are very good. Chris Diamantopoulos, with his bowl haircut is a fine scowling Moe (“whatsthatmattawithyou”), Sean Hayes, topped with Larry’s balding frizzcut, lends some surprising depth to the most underrated Stooge, and bald-pated Will Sasso captures the fluttery mannerisms and frantic facial contortions of manchild Curly (“woo-woo-woo”) with both affection and precision.

Keeping It Short: Although the original Stooges always aspired to make feature films, Columbia honcho Harry Cohn kept them in the “short subjects” ghetto, perhaps realizing that their brand of idiocy is best served in small doses. The boys late-career feature efforts (without the late Curly) are simply dreadful.

The new “Three Stooges,” told in three chapters, is needlessly complicated and meanders off into a ludicrous murder plot featuring bombshell-of-the-moment Sofia Vergara. Aside from a pretty hilarious bit featuring the kooky cast of “Jersey Shore,” the story flies in the face of the Stooges’ simple – and simpleton – style of storytelling.

Slap-slap-slapstick: With a plethora of eye gouges, nose tweaks, forehead slaps, noggin boinks and hammer fists– with appropriate sound effects – the new film manages to capture all of the Stooges’ classic abuse gags. Interesting, though, in this correct age of Parental Guidance that the Farrellys felt compelled to include a funny little postscript – warning kids in the audience not to try this stuff at home. Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!

- Dennis King

“The Three Stooges”

PG
1:32
2 stars
Starring: Sean Hayes, Will Sasso, Chris Diamantopoulos, Sofia Vergara
(Slapstick violence, rude and suggestive humor, including language)

In an amazing burst of brilliance from 1939 to 1943, writer-director Preston Sturges virtually defined the “screwball comedy,” a uniquely American style of comedy characterized by farcical situations, witty dialogue, social satire and cheeky battles of the sexes.

In a frantic run of popular hits, Sturges (one of the first studio screenwriters allowed to direct his own scripts) turned out “The Great McGinty,” “Christmas in July,” “The Lady Eve,” “The Palm Beach Story,” “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek” and “Hail the Conquering Hero.”

But the crown jewel of that amazingly creative period was “Sullivan’s Travels,” the 1941 comedy of Depression-era Hollywood that starred Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake and followed the odyssey of a pampered director of escapist movies who goes on the road as a hobo to learn about life and discovers the healing value of laughter.

Previously released in a Universal Studios boxed set of Sturges films and a state-of-the-art Criterion Collections disc, “Sullivan’s Travels” is now available as a stand-alone DVD as part of Universal’s gala 100th Anniversary celebration.

The disc comes in a glossy foil slipcover that opens to reveal the original theatrical poster, facts about the film (it was actually produced by Paramount and later sold to Universal) and a studio timeline that places it in relationship to other Universal classics of the era (such as 1936’s “My Man Godfrey,” which is also receiving the royal anniversary treatment).

While the Criterion DVD contains the most extensive selection of extras, the new Universal release is more limited, with only two brief centennial featurettes included – “100 Years of Universal: The Carl Laemmle Era” and “100 Years of Universal: The Lew Wasserman Era.”

Younger movie fans might not be familiar with the witty, urbane Sturges, but “Sullivan’s Travels” is the source of one brilliant nugget that inspired a latter-day hit that should be familiar to all young hipsters – Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2000 hit “O Brother, Where Art Thou.”

In “Sullivan’s Travels,” the title character, Joel McCrea’s Sully yearns to leave behind his pampered life as a maker of glib Hollywood hits and go out into America’s heartland to learn first hand the rough-and-tumble life of the country’s poor and downtrodden.

His goal is to make a serious, socially relevant movie that will be “a commentary on modern conditions. Stark realism. The problems that confront the average man!” The title of that proposed picture? “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

- Dennis King