The "Hairspray to Heaven" Discs of the Week

Colma: The Musical (Lions Gate)
Here's one of those pleasant surprises that sometimes arrives here at the Film.com stratospheric flying platform unannounced and without a blip on our radar screens: a likeable, unpretentious indie film, this time from young multi-ethnic filmmakers whose diamond-in-the-rough talent more than compensates for their shoestring budget.

This small-scale pop-rock musical was shot and set in the San Francisco suburban cemetery town of Colma, a cryptopolis with over a million inhabitants, and just barely over a thousand of them are breathing. The best-friend triangle of Rodel, Billy and Maribel find themselves in a state of limbo. Fresh out of high school, they're just beginning to explore a new world of part-time mall jobs, crashing college parties, opening yourself up to sex and/or relationships, and deciding who you are, which means deciding to move on or stay put. (The cemeteries of Colma -- "Deadsville, USA" -- provide a handy metaphor for staying put.) As newfound revelations and romances challenge their relationships with one another and their parents, the trio must assess what to hold onto, and how to best follow their needs and desires.

The break-into-song tunes are catchy (the opening number and the song about crashing the college party really stick in your head), the lyrics funny and inviting, and the appealing performers suitably unpolished.

Director Paul Wong assembled a group of San Francisco musicians and actors to make this feature film debut. He started his career in television, most recently working on the comedy Arrested Development. Colma: The Musical was originally written as a pop album by H.P. Mendoza, who also stars in the film, along with Jake Moreno and L.A. Renigan.

Colma: The Musical won the Special Jury Prize at the 2006 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, the IFP Gotham Award for "Best Film Not In a Theater Near You" and a nomination for the Independent Spirit "Someone to Watch" Award. It was called "sweet, simple, snarky, real, and directed with maximum panache on a minimal budget" (San Francisco Bay Guardian), "a giddy, unexpected pleasure" (L.A. Weekly) and an "irresistible coming-of-age charmer" (The Village Voice). And The Oregonian nailed it by pointing out that Colma's "let's-put-on-a-show" attitude is a welcome relief from the navel-gazing typical of coming-of-age tales.

For a film like this, picking at the places where the screenplay could have used some beefing up, or the melodrama moments that probably read better on paper than performed out loud, would be like throwing a bottle at the paper boy. It's not a great film, but we sure enjoyed it more than many bigger films that try harder to convince us they're great.

Lions Gate brings Colma: The Musical to DVD with a good-looking transfer (anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1) and sounds-dandy 2.0 stereo audio. Extras start with the audio commentary by director Richard Wong and writer/composer/actor H.P. Mendoza. Also on board are deleted scenes and trailers.

Other musical DVDs out this week are:

Hairspray (New Line)
Here's the sort of "sunny" movie musical comedy that gives you either a warm glow or skin cancer, depending your disposition. Nonetheless this critical and audience darling wins us over with the sheer force of its personality, its solid performances from everyone involved, and its upbeat Great White Ways tunes. It's good clean fun that gets all its steps right, and it even gives us Christopher Walken singing a love song with John Travolta, who does drag even more convincingly than Rudy Giuliani.

New Line's two-disc "Shake and Shimmy Edition" DVD delivers Hairspray with an excellent anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 image, and equally fine sound options in Dolby Digital EX 5.1 and DTS-ES 5.1.

The plus-size extras include two audio commentaries. The first one is a chatty, light dialogue between director Adam Shankman and his 18-year-old star Nikki Blonsky ("Tracy Turnblad"). The second and more informative track is with producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron. "The Roots of Hairspray" is a three-part documentary about the original 1988 John Waters film and the subsequent Broadway musical that inspired this film adaptation. You get an even more comprehensive production history in the 78-minute retrospective "You Can't Stop the Beat: The Long Journey of Hairspray." "Hairspray Extensions" spotlights six songs and the work that went into staging them for the movie. Also here are "Step by Step: The Dances of Hairspray," deleted scenes, the theatrical trailer, a DVD-ROM component, and more.

Hairspray is now available in standard definition and Blu-ray. The Blu-ray edition adds audio in DTS-MA 7.1 and a "Behind the Beat" picture-in-picture commentary. The HD DVD edition is coming soon.

Led Zeppelin: The Song Remains the Same (Warner Home Video)
It's Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham and John Paul Jones in their 1976 film (long a midnight movie standard) preserving three nights of concerts in Madison Square Garden during their "Houses of the Holy" tour. This newly amped-up re-release should finally help you sort out whether the hallucinogenic fantasy sequences you remember were actually in the film or, like, dude, not.

Warner Home Video's remastered and remixed DVD is now on the shelves in both a two-disc Special Edition and a Collector's Edition. The remastered image (anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1) presents a significant improvement over the 1999 DVD release. The sound, also remastered with the band's oversight, rattles the roof and wraps around your head with pristine, full-blooded options of DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby 2.0 stereo. You've never heard this set list sound so good. It's reason enough to pick up this edition, even if you've vowed to never hear "Stairway to Heaven" again as long as you live.

Both editions feature, for the first time, all 16 performances from the 1973 Madison Square Garden concerts, including the never-before-released "Over the Hills and Far Away" and "Celebration Day (Cutting Copy)" in addition to "Misty Mountain Hop" and "The Ocean." We also get over 40 minutes of newly added features with the original theatrical trailer, vintage TV footage, and more, including a BBC interview with Plant and a radio piece by a young rock journalist named Cameron Crowe, who would go on to chronicle his experiences in the fictionalized comic drama Almost Famous. The Collector's Edition adds a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and rare memorabilia such as news articles, concert reviews, reproductions of original premiere invitations, collectible lobby cards and a free poster offer.

Blu-ray and HD DVD versions are available as well. For, you know, the colors. . . .

Ravi Shankar: Concert for World Peace (A&E Video)
The exciting, enthralling sitar master (and Norah Jones' dad) performs his head-snapping ragas during a 1993 concert at London's Royal Albert Hall. The audio arrives in LPCM stereo and Dolby 5.1 options. The chief extra is a brief featurette on Shankar with support from Philip Glass and others. Here's one of those magnificent performance DVDs that could too easily slip our attention, so give it a look and see what it is about Shankar that George Harrison, among others, found so life-altering.

Read about more new DVDs.

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Mark Bourne

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