There are those who see Oliver Stone as a visionary who has effectively created a new cinematic language an art-house filmmaker working successfully within the Hollywood machine. And the DVD aficionado who digs a little deeper will be rewarded with many more tasty nuggets. Plus, the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack rocks, managing to be both airy and thunderous at the same time. It comes with a second disc that takes a sober look at Fletcher Prouty, the insider informant X, and also includes some recently unclassified documents about the assassination. The two-disc set of Nixon has another director s cut with several scenes reinserted back into the movie, and it s accompanied by Stone s interview with Charlie Rose, in which the director takes stock of the Watergate years.
Extras are great to have, of course, and there are some dandies here.
But the real value of a collection like this is the way it illustrates the development of a filmmaker s vision. In Stone s case, the traditional narrative form has slowly been replaced by directorial legerdemain. The mind thinks fast, Stone says in Oliver Stone s America . But the audience understands. They see fast.