The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 24

VIDEO NEWS AND REVIEWS From Checkers to Watergate, Nixon is back By VINCE STATEN Video Writer IT I rY rT iy rfl 4 It's called a Freudian slip. I was typing the name of a new Richard Nixon tape from ABC Video and I typed it: "Richard Nixon: His I I 4 I if It, hi jwaiag. 4 Anthony Hopkins, above, portrays Richard Nixon, and Joan Allen plays Pat Nixon in Oliver Stone's "Nixon. At left, the real 37th president in troubled times. on, and it's for the Nixon completist only.

Perhaps the most revealing Nixon on video is from long, long ago. It isn't a new tape, but watching it is always a revelation. It is Nixon's famous "Checkers speech." It was the fall of 1952 and the Democrats had finally been able to inflame the public with news that President Dwight David Eisenhower's young running mate was the beneficiary of a slush fund. Ike was under pressure to dump the young anti-Communist but instead decided to sit back and let him "twist slowly in the wind" to borrow a phrase from the Watergate days. Nixon fought back and made one desperate attempt to hold onto the Republican vice presidential nomination.

The party bought time on the young medium of network television, and Nixon went on to defend his actions. In what has become known as his "Checkers speech," Nixon explained that the gifts, including a cocker spaniel named New releases "12 Monkeys" (MCA, $101.98) Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt and Madeleine Stowe star in this sci-fi drama in which scientists travel back in time from 2035 to 1996 seeking a solution to a virus ravaging Earth. Terry Gilliam directs. Rated R. "The Juror" (Columbia Tri-Star, $101.98) The verdict: Guilty of stretching the bounds of believability.

Alec Baldwin is chilling as a seductive henchman for a mobster, but Demi Moore as a sculptor (and actress) is hard to swallow. Rated R. "Mr. and Mrs. Loving" (Hallmark, no suggested retail price) This drama, based on a true story, follows the love story of an interracial couple.

When the couple marry in 1960 in Virginia, they are arrested and outlawed from their home. They move to Washington, D.C., where they meet an idealistic lawyer whose belief in their rights leads to a Supreme Court battle. Timothy Hutton, Lela Rochon and Corey Parker star. Rated PG-13. The Journey of August King (Buena Vista, $99.98) Jason Pa-tric, of "After Dark, My Sweet" (and Jackie Gleason's grandson), turns in another lean but commanding performance as a young widower in North Carolina, circa 1815.

The lad risks his life when he helps a runaway slave (Than-die Newton). Rated PG-13. "Shanghai Triad" (Columbia TriStar, no suggested retail price) From Zhang Yimou, director of "Raise the Red Lantern," comes this absorbing drama that grows into a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. A teen-agr is initiated into organized crime by his uncle when he is given the job of errand boy for a singer and prostitute. Rated R.

In Chinese with English subtitles. "The Demolitionist" (A-PIX, $94.95) After an undercover cop is killed by a crime lord and his thugs, a scientist resurrects her as "the Demolitionist," giving her super strength and an arsenal of guns and gadgets. Nicole Eggert and Richard Grieco star. Rated R. From staff and wire dispatches Top video rentals Here are the top videocassettes in rentals for the week ending today, as reported by Billboard.

1. "Get Shorty" 2. "Casino" 3. "GoldenEye" 4. "The American President" 5.

"Leaving Las Vegas" 6. "Jumanji" 7. "Powder" 8. "Grumpier Old Men" 9. "Seven" 10.

"Father of the Bride" staten Lie and Times." It is, of course, "Richard Nixon: His Life and Times." But it illustrates one thing about the 37th president of the United States: No one is neutral about Nixon. Not me. Not my typing fingers. And not Oliver Stone. "Nixon," director Stone's meditation on the man and the myth, arrives on video this Tuesday all three hours and two minutes of it.

The movie is not at all what you might expect. Anthony Hopkins a Brit! is amazing in the title role. And who would have thought that Stone, Hollywood's liberal lion, would make a film about Nixon's life, much less a complex, contradictory, sometimes even sympathetic biography of Nixon? I found myself distracted during much of the movie, arguing with the casting choices: James Woods is crazed, but he isn't Nixon aide H. R. Haldeman, and Paul Sorvino is not foreign-policy guru Henry Kissinger.

Maybe the history is too recent and too well-known to lend itself to fictionalization just yet. And as amazing as Hopkins is as Nixon, the film's script never really captures the former president. Richard Nixon remains a moving target. To ride "Nixon's" coattails, something a lot of Republicans did over the years, a number of video companies are using the occasion of the release of Stone's movie as an excuse to mine their own vaults for Nixon videos. By my count, there are five Nixon-related tapes being released, or re-released, this month.

It's an explosion of Nixon! So if you're curious about the only president to resign during his term at least, so far then head to your friendly neighborhood video store. For sheer depth of coverage there's "The Real Richard Nixon," a three-volume set that features the extended interviews that Nixon sat for in 1983. He is prodded, if not necessarily grilled, by author Frank Gannon. Nixon is candid because he viewed this session as a way to rehabilitate his reputation. The interviews are divided according to topic, so if you have a particular interest, you can focus on that.

Vol. 1 is titled "Early Life," Vol. 2 is "Pat" Nixon's long-suffering wife and Vol. 3 is "Twenty Eight Days," about those four weeks in the summer of 1974 when the Nixon White House collapsed under the weight of the Watergate scandal. If the scandal is your thing, then Free-lance writer Vince Staten's column appears weekly in SCENE.

Write him at The Courier-Journal, 525 W. Broadway, P.O. Box 740031, Louisville, Ky. 40201-7431. you'll want to rent "Watergate," a 1994 Discovery Channel documentary that won a Dupont Award, the Oscar of TV news.

It's long five hours but that's because it's the definitive look at the "third-rate burglary" that brought down a president. Daniel Schorr, longtime CBS newsman and sometime Nixon nemesis, is the host. All the major players, from Haldeman and John Ehrlich-man to John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy, all White House players, are interviewed. The strength of "Richard Nixon: His Life and Times" is the way it details the reactions Nixon elicited in journalists.

It features ruminations about the man by the men and women of ABC News who covered him during his political career: Ted Koppel, Peter Jennings and especially Barbara Walters, who was a Nixon watcher from his early days in the House and Senate. In a similar but more sympathetic vein is "Richard Nixon Remembered," a documentary originally produced at the time of Nixon's death. Offering tributes to the man are many longtime associates, including the Rev. Billy Graham and Kissinger. There's even a word from President Clinton.

"Kissinger and Nixon" is a made-for-TV movie about Nixon's bristly relationship with Kissinger. It stars Ron Silver as Kissinger and Beau Bridges as Nix- Checkers, had been given to him and his family. In the speech's most maudlin moment, he said, "I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it." Whether you find it a sob-sister performance worthy of an Oscar or a powerful partisan political speech gets back to that Freudian thing. But the tape is nothing short of fascinating, and you can see it in its entirety 30 minutes on "Current Affairs, 1950s Style." In today's column "Current Affairs, 1950s Style" (Shokus, $24.95) "Kissinger and Nixon" (Turner, $79 95) "Nixon" (Buena Vista, $99.98) "The Real Richard Nixon" (Central Park, three volumes, $19.95 per tape, $49.95 for the set) "Richard Nixon: His Life and Times" (ABC Video, $9 95) "Richard Nixon Remembered" (Turner $14.95) "Watergate" (Discovery Channel Video, three volumes, $19.95 per tape, $49.95 for the set) Page f6 The Courier-Journal SCENE July 6. 1996.