Pride and Prejudice

D: Simon Langton; with Colin Firth, Jennifer Ehle, Alison Steadman, Benjamin
Withrow, Crispin Bonham Carter.
VHS Home Video
Vulcan Video, 609 W. 29th St.

Anglophile? Me too. The more corsetted, tea-sipping, class-conscious Brits I
absorb, the more pacified I become. Well, this six-part series co-produced for
television by the BBC and A&E was enough to melt me into a drooling couch
crumpet. Jane Austen’s story, set in the early 19th century, of five upwardly
mobile sisters bucking to marry rich is a high school reading-list classic.
Fortunately, this production preserves the wit that is ever-so-delicately woven
through the novel, so it’s not too dry and reserved. It’s on film stock, too,
so it’s not like watching TV. Trust me, you’ll feel much more cultured when
it’s all over. — Kayte
VanScoy

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Persuasion

Here’s another in 1995’s parade of parlor-surfing Jane Austen screen revivals,
but this one is slightly darker, more brooding than the others. Ann is a plain,
kind, and reasonable girl born into a family of snobs and dandies. She finds
herself unwed and in her late 20s, having lost both the true love and the glow
of her youth. As in any Austen tale, the theme centers on finding a wise match
for an overlooked woman of excellent character. Sorry, no suspense about
whether it will all come out happy, but there sure are a lot of great dresses
and furniture.

— Kayte VanScoy

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Resident Evil

Horror, blood, and death in Raccoon City. Full-motion video at 11pm. Capcom’s
spectacular Resident Evil challenges players to find their way through a
deadly mansion filled with zombies, demonic dogs (and do they make an
entrance), giant snakes, and much worse. Resident Evil‘s 3-D
graphics are exceptional and the adventure itself is long and demanding,
requiring both problem-solving and a fast trigger finger. Caveats include the
somewhat clunky play mechanics and leaden character dialogue. The mission
itself can be undertaken as one of two characters who possess slightly
different abilities, but the level of challenge and excitement is high either
way. One of the best PlayStation games of the year.

— Bud Simons

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Who Built America

Drawing on a great deal of good intentions and intellectual firepower, Who
Built America is the electronic version of the two-volume text of the same
name which attempts to give proper credit to the various ethnic groups, labor
unions, and just plain folks who transformed America during the period between
1876 and 1914 — the centennial of the Declaration of Independence to the
outbreak of World War I. The HyperCard interface is as clunky as the box (no
jewel case) in which the disc is packaged, and there’s no index (arrgh!). Yet
some of the interactive highlights, including four hours of audio (some of this
being oral histories, and some music), hundreds of high-resolution pictures, a
time line, and 45 minutes of film (including the earliest known films of New
York and Boston) are good enough that they might point the way to a brighter
future for exploring history and knowledge through multimedia.

— Jesse Sublett

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Thunderheart

Dances With Wolves meets Like Water for Chocolate in the South
Dakota badlands, in which Native American magical realism coats this variation
of the Leonard Peltier story: Reservation dweller is framed by the FBI to cover
up Uncle Sam’s mess. Kilmer is the unbelieving token Tonto Fed who begins
having visions of his Sioux ancestry while senior bureau man and partner
Shepard tries to pin the murder on a shape-shifting, mohawked (how subtle)
tribal guy. Funny that Kilmer followed up his role as the Doors’ shaman Jim
Morrison by playing a Sioux, though Kilmer’s paleface is no match for either
the typecast Greene as a reservation flat-foot or Chief Ted Tin Elk as the
ancient tribal elder in this moody, yet capable whodunit.

— Raoul Hernandez

This article appears in July 19 • 1996 and July 19 • 1996 (Cover).