DVD picks of the week: All hail Hal Holbrook and Helen Mirren

Looking at that headline, it's probably as much as anything a reflection that I myself am getting pretty friggin' old, but - by a pretty wide margin - the best two things on DVD this week are a movie starring an 84-year-old man and the complete run of a sublime TV series starring a 65-year-old woman (though on the younger side of the scale, I'm watching vol. 3 of the UK teen series "Skins" streaming on Netflix too, and that's a real treat.)

First up comes "That Evening Sun," a genuine Southern drama that has been around for quite a while. I first missed the chance to see it at the 2009 Atlanta Film Festival 365, but luckily managed to catch it in its rather meager theatrical run (it apparently has made a paltry $281,000 or so at the box office) last spring. The flick also played the Macon Film Festival this year, and is extremely worth catching now on DVD.

The few who have seen this already will know it's a rare starring turn by Hal Holbrook, the kind of treasure that should be savored while it lasts. Holbrook is probably my favorite performer, if I were forced to pick only one, and here he plays Abner Meecham, an aging Tennesseean who bolts the nursing home to try and reclaim the family homestead that his son has sold out from underneath him.

It's really a role Holbrook was made to play, full of anger, pride and, best of all, a dark humor. Returning to the farm, he finds it now inhabited by two of my other favorite Southern actors, Ray McKinnon and Maconite Carrie Preston (aka Arlene on "True Blood"), along with their daughter, played by ingenue Mia Wasikowska.

What ensues is a war of wills that can at times be hard to watch because, as each holds his ground, they each become less and less likable, but that gives the drama based on a short story by William Gay and directed by Scott Teems a natural feel.

Music by Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers makes this all go down even sweeter, so if you wanna take a chance this weekend on a movie that so far hasn't even managed to make a blip on the radar screen, trust me and give "That Evening Sun" a try.

Today's second pick comes with a disclosure: Acorn Media was kind enough to send me the complete "Prime Suspect" to review on DVD, but that doesn't change at all just how great the UK police procedural starring Helen Mirren was and still is.

Though the stories contained in the seven, three-hour-or-so installments are as gritty - and often more so - than anything you'll find on the best of American police procedurals, it's the performance of Helen Mirren at its core that make these so entertaining.

The humanly flawed cop has been played out way past the point of cliche many times, and very well by Dennis Franz on "NYPD Blue" and Dominic West on "The Wire," but Mirren plays it so naturally that it trumps the pattern completely.

Watching how her life's foibles (among other things, her Jane Tennyson battles the bottle as much as she does her inability to have anything approaching a full personal life outside of the police beat) intertwine with the often frustrating and sickening cases she pursues make this the most well-rounded police series I've encountered on TV. It's indeed on a level with David Simon's "The Wire," and anyone who's been here before knows that from me that's the highest form of praise.

These have been available individually on DVD for years now, but I believe Acorn's collection is the first time they've all been collected in one set. They would make a fine gift for anyone who enjoys great TV, or if you're so inclined, perhaps for yourself.

And with that, I have to go now to the job that pays me in something besides promotional DVDS. Peace out.

A "Prime Suspect" remake? Terminate with extreme prejudice!

It's probably good for my fairly under control blood pressure that as I'm first hearing about this idiocy, it also comes with word that NBC has - for now at least - shelved this monstrosity, and for the best possible reason.

Yes, the network whose last big brilliant idea was putting Jay Leno in prime time five nights a week (how'd that work out, guys?) was actually considering a remake of the sublime BBC police procedural "Prime Suspect."

And I can certainly understand the temptation. For sheer intensity matched with characters you actually care about, only "The Wire" and - at its best - "NYPD Blue" have even come close to matching "Prime Suspect" on this side of the pond, and almost all of the credit for that has to go Dame Helen Mirren.

Of all the characters of the last 20 years or so, on big screen or small, very few have been taken over as completely as Helen Mirren dived directly into the role of Jane Tennyson and made it entirely her own. And it's apparently their belated realization of just how impossible it would be to replace her that finally led NBC to abandon this madness.

Unable to find the right actress for this, NBC has now shelved it until at least June, and here's hoping forever. If I had to name one actress who could pull this off, the only name that even comes to mind is Anjelica Huston, but as great as she is, I can't even see that working, if God forbid she'd even be interested.

And if you've somehow never seen "Prime Suspect," I can't recommend it highly enough. If you want to get started, the beginning would be best, but if you only want to watch one, No. 3, with David Thewlis and Ciaran Hinds in a truly tawdry tale about child murder and serious police corruption, is the best of all in my book.

Here's hoping that this NBC "idea" gets aborted for good, and from now on today it's all about a trio of clips that at least managed to catch my eye this morning.

First up comes a clip from the upcoming flick "Date Night" featuring Tina Fey, Steve Carell and, in this clip, a shirtless Marky Mark. Even though NBC's current king and queen of comedy would seem to make a dream team on the big screen, I somehow just can't get all that excited about this. I just get the sinking feeling it's gonna lack any of the truly manic appeal of "After Hours" in chronicling a supposedly "wild" night in NYC. Anyways, enjoy the clip.

Next up comes a TV spot for something I'm much more excited about, "The Runaways." On paper, the idea of Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning playing rockers Joan Jett and Cherie Currie just sounds dreadful, but the buzz about this out of Sundance was mostly positive, and it really does seem music video director Floria Sigismondi has come up with something that will rock when this finally comes out March 19. Enjoy.



And finally today comes a surprise that made me genuinely laugh out loud. I've never found Jimmy Kimmel all that funny at all, but Tracy Morgan can really do no wrong in my book (yes, I'm really gonna go see "Cop Out" just to see how funny he can manage to be in it, even though the reviews are dreadful.) In this clip I have to assume appeared on Kimmel's show sometime this week (after my school-night bed time, of course), he and Morgan make a rap video, and it's absolutely as silly as you might imagine. Here's hoping that Kimmel's turn as Lil' Jim puts the final nail in autotune. Enjoy, and have a perfectly bearable Thursday. Peace out.