Callner, Marty

Robin Williams - Live on Broadway

Sharper and deeper than Robin Williams's previous road material, Live on Broadway is a mature comedian's view of all things to do with power, prejudice, and paranoia in the 21st century. On the anthrax scare of 2001: "The Senate cleared out of their building but told the rest of us, 'Get on with your normal lives!'" On his solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Jerusalem: "Time share!" On the pitfalls of America's deepening alliance with Britain: "The House of Commons is like Congress with a two-drink minimum." A viewer may have to slog through Williams's tedious breast fetishism, but patience is quickly rewarded with bitchy takes on Martha Stewart facing prison, solid satire about French existentialist judges at the Olympics, and subversive op-eds about the Bush administration's inability to clarify terrorist threats to the public ("Has the CIA become the Central Intuitive Agency?"). --Tom Keogh

Dane Cook - Vicious Circle

Superstar comic Dane Cook comes home to Boston in his first-ever solo HBO concert! Performing at the TD Banknorth Garden in the round in front of 18000 fervent fans Cook delivers a hilarious high-energy routine touching on such universal issues as the therapeutic value of a good lie the sincerity behind a post-sneeze God bless you cheating and its value in relationships and the shock and awe of seeing your father's genitals for the first time. This collector's edition 2-disc DVD set includes the original 90-minute broadcast version of the concert and 2-hour DANEgerous extended concert and exclusive behind-the-scenes footage.Running Time: 210 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 026359371820 Manufacturer No: 93718

Dane Cook receives a rock star's welcome from a packed arena in this stand-up concert originally broadcast on HBO. But the jury may still be out on whether Cook is phenomenally funny or simply a phenomenon. He is certainly a master of the new media. Cook has savvily marketed himself on the Internet to his target college-age audience, and they have embraced him as a fellow "bro" and "dude," who would seemingly be awesome to party with. In his timbre and physicality, he has the shaggy, likeable quality of Will Farrell, another frat boy favorite. Cook is a man of his people. At one point, he is interrupted by a drunken Boston Red Sox fan who wants to shake his hand. Cook then leaps off the stage and chases him up the aisle to give him a send-off hug, all the while being clapped on the back and offered high and low fives by the cheering audience. Cook comes complete with arrested development lingo, such as "Here's what drove me banana sandwich," that will no doubt be repeated around the dorm.

Don't look to Cook for satirical insights on politics, the war, or even pop culture. His world view is much narrower. In Vicious Circle he expounds on the pleasures and traps of lying, male crying, being sneezed on, his father's robe, bad relationships, and sundry sexual matters that cannot be printed here. Cook takes awhile to get where he's going, but his digressions are often funnier than the pay offs. He puts the brakes on one story during which he mimes driving a car to remark that if he were actually driving this way, he would be all over the road. During other bits, he parses the different spray modes on Windex, and takes the phrase "being cheated on" literally. And it takes some kind of associative genius to compare a certain female body part to a high school stage theatre curtain. The less than well received Employee of the Month aside, Cook is currently king of the comedy hill. Vicious Circle offers a time capsule look at these heady good times for the great Dane. As for where he goes from here, the good news is that Steve Martin once filled arenas like this. The bad news: So did Andrew Dice Clay. --Donald Liebenson

Camelot (Broadway Version)

A live-on-stage performance filmed for HBO in 1982, Camelot returns Richard Harris to the role he immortalized on film in 1967. Harris replaced the original King Arthur, Richard Burton, in this revival production as it was on its way to New York's Winter Garden Theatre, which turned out to be Harris' only role on the Broadway stage. Fifteen years later, he's an older and wiser Arthur, a little more world-weary but still with a twinkle in his eye. He's paired with Meg Bussert, whose Guinevere is not as beautiful as Vanessa Redgrave in the film, but a better singer and appropriately younger. Bussert, who was Tony-nominated for her role in Brigadoon the year before, sounds eerily like original Broadway star Julie Andrews at times. Richard Muenz (The Most Happy Fella revival) plays Lancelot, Barrie Ingham plays Pellinore, and Richard Backus is Mordred. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's score is still a great classic, and here two songs cut from the movie are restored, "Before I Gaze at You Again" and "The Seven Deadly Virtues," but inexplicably cut is "Then You May Take Me to the Fair." Not surprisingly the production has a more stagebound feel compared to the sumptuous feature film, but it's good to have a more faithful version of the show available on DVD. --David Horiuchi

Experience Camelot's "one brief, shining moment" as Lerner and Loewe envisioned it—live on a Broadway stage. Working at the top of his talent, Richard Harris heads an all-star cast in one of Broadway's wittiest, most literate musicals, filled with memorable tunes. Recorded at New York's historic Winter Garden Theatre in 1982, this production captures all the immediacy and intimacy of a live performance viewed from the best seat in the house.

Idealistic King Arthur longs to create a perfectly principled kingdom, but sees his dream undone by a tragic love triangle involving Queen Guenevere (Meg Bussert) and his best friend Lancelot (Richard Muenz). In this thoroughly engaging Tony®-nominated production, the medieval monarch's vision—a place where "violence is not strength, and compassion is not weakness"—speaks to our time and for all time.

Recommended for family viewing by the National Education Association

DVD SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE original Broadway PLAYBILL® (DVD-ROM) and bios of Lerner & Loewe and Richard Harris.

Jerry Seinfeld Live on Broadway: I'm Telling You for the Last Time

When Seinfeld wrapped up its ninth and final season in the spring of 1998, the popular show's namesake and cocreator decided to offer a symbolic gesture to his fans. Taped for HBO in August 1998, on the final date of Jerry Seinfeld's tour appearances at New York City's Broadhurst Theater, I'm Telling You for the Last Time presents the standup comedian's so-called "final" standup, or at least his final tour with the standup material that made him famous. The video opens with a great prologue in which Seinfeld's old material is literally laid to rest, with many of Seinfeld's comedy colleagues in attendance at the "funeral." (Jay Leno is there, but David Letterman is conspicuously absent, and while it's a bit self-congratulatory to show Seinfeld's fellow comedians fighting like vultures over his abandoned jokes, it's worth it just to see Garry Shandling pilfering from the catering table like a homeless intruder.)

Whether he's talking about airline flights, cab drivers, or memories of Halloween and an ill-fitting Superman costume, Seinfeld's observational humor is as timeless and sharp as the day he first performed it. Even the most familiar routines (such as the one about pharmacists with a superiority complex) are like old friends who still haven't overstayed their welcome. Seinfeld's delivery is polished to a shine--he's a consummate professional--and an impromptu Q&A with his appreciative audience demonstrates that he's equally adept with a fast and witty comeback. This performance certainly wouldn't be the last we'd see of Jerry Seinfeld, but from the perspective of phenomenal fame and fortune, it's a fitting farewell to the classic "bits" that took him to the top. --Jeff Shannon

DVD Features:
Biographies
Interactive Menus
Interviews
Other:Audience Q&A

Marc Anthony - The Concert from Madison Square Garden

Marc Anthony brings his elegant passions to the Big Apple in this exciting 2001 concert performance. The dazzled audience erupts at the singer's knockout, Spanish-language openers, "Y Hubo Alguien" and "Contra la Corriente," swoons to his exultant "You Sang to Me," and hangs on every marvelous syllable in the exquisitely phrased "When I Dream at Night." Anthony's material occasionally slides into bathos ("That's Okay"), but at his best he can go from big band salsa ("Nadie Como Ella") to Burt Bacharach-flavored pop-soul ("My Baby You") to gorgeous, breathless ballads ("Da la Vuelta") without breaking a sweat. But when he needs all engines firing at once, such as on his hot-hot-hot big hit, "I Need to Know," the tension and power are delicious. Watching Anthony work a stadium crowd--gliding, dancing, playing to every corner--reminds one of Mick Jagger's playbook. --Tom Keogh

Futuresex / Loveshow - Live from Madison Square Garden

Britney Spears - Live from Las Vegas

With a November 2001 Las Vegas performance that became an HBO special, Britney Spears headlines a visual spectacle that surpasses even Vegas's stage shows. From the opening "Oops! I Did It Again" to the closing "I'm a Slave 4 U," Spears and her dance troupe athletically romp through a live, life-size, 90-minute music video. There's no musical emphasis (usually the original recordings play while Spears nominally pays attention to what she's supposed to be singing), but that's not the point.

Soft-spoken offstage, Spears becomes someone else entirely in front of an audience: numerous costume changes, a plethora of filmed footage, awesome acrobatics, and a gigantic stage set create the ultimate triumph of visuals over music. During the encore, "Baby One More Time," rain drenches Spears, giving a born entertainer one final opportunity to leave her fans awestruck. The concert was broadcast live to four military bases, and Spears acknowledges the soldiers' service in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. --Kevin Filipski

The Pee-Wee Herman Show - Live at the Roxy Theater

Not quite a children's show The Pee-Wee Herman Show is slyly subversive a little bit naughty and always outrageous. Making its premiere as a midnight show on February 7th 1981 at The Groundlings Theatre in Hollywood the performance then moved to the famed Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip where it was filmed as part of HBO's new series On Location. Conceived as an homage to children's television programs of the 1950's and 60's this live stage production features original music puppets a cartoon a short educational film and Pee-wee's hilarious live-action friends.System Requirements:Running Time 59 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 014381203028 Manufacturer No: ID2030HWDVD

The Rolling Stones - Four Flicks

Futuresex / Loveshow - Live from Madison Square Garden