New DVDs include 'When the Moors Ruled in Europe' and 'Shea Goodbye'

"WHEN THE MOORS RULED IN EUROPE." (2006. NOT RATED. ACORN MEDIA. $24.99.)

About halfway into Acorn Media's moderately intriguing "When the Moors Ruled in Europe," it hit me: Her long brunette tresses notwithstanding, host Bettany Hughes seems to be trying to sound like Simon Schama. Well, if you're going to mimic, mimic from the best. This two-episode British documentary postulates that Islamic culture was the basis of Western culture, that there would be no Oxford University if a wandering Brit hadn't returned to the Isles with a memoir of the great thirst for knowledge and love of beauty in Moorish Spain, that the so-called Reconquest of Spain was actually a civil war between Islamic and Christian Spaniards and that the Renaissance was merely a discovery of Islamic culture.

I'm oversimplifying, but not by much. Nonetheless, it is true that Islamic culture has often been underrepresented in Western history, that Arabic numerals helped advance civilization because they were easier to work with than Roman numerals and that the celebration of art, architecture and the written word in the great Moorish cities of Cordoba and Toledo did have a lasting impact on European civilization. While Hughes does simplify too much, a discerning viewer will be convinced by some of the points in the documentary. Even more valuable are the extraordinary images of Islamic art and architecture in Spain.

-- David Wiegand

"SHEA GOODBYE." (2008. NOT RATED. GENIUS. $24.98.)

Calvin Coolidge once said that "the man who builds a factory builds a temple." He had that man confused with the one who builds a baseball stadium. Think of the transcendent, soaring emotion that Shea Stadium has seen since its opening in 1964. The great events. The great players. The feeling of community. The father-son and father-daughter bonding. This 76-minute documentary highlights the great events that have taken place at Shea. Of course, there were the New York Jets, who won the Super Bowl in 1969. And who could forget the pandemonium that the Beatles incited? The film dutifully notes these historical landmarks, then cuts to its real interest: the New York Mets.

The important moments are all there: Tom Seaver's almost perfect game, Tommie Agee's catches, Ron Swoboda's catch, "Ya Gotta Believe," Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry and the perennial favorite: the groundball going between Bill Buckner's legs. When was the last time you saw an interview with Art Shamsky? This documentary has one, and also comments from Seaver, Bud Harrelson and others. At the end of this season, Shea will be torn down to make way for a new stadium being built next door. There are generous special features, which include longer excerpts from the games highlighted in the documentary.

-- Mick LaSalle

"THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY'S." (1968. RATED PG. UNITED ARTISTS. $19.98.)

This 1968 William Friedkin comedy set in 1925 New York will be appreciated by those who enjoy the corny humor and bawdy broads of burlesque. Co-written by "All in the Family's" Norman Lear, the movie isn't just a story about burlesque, everything that happens in it is burlesque, from the offstage one-liners ("My apartment is so small I have to go out in the hall to change my mind") to an over-the-top bagel fight in a theater-district deli. Narrator Rudy Vallee introduces the story about a "real religious girl who by accident invented the striptease," and we meet Rachel (Brit Ekland), a beautiful Amish girl -- who knew they wore false eyelashes? -- who has run away to the big city to be a dancer.

When she winds up at Minsky's, she attracts the attention of roguish Raymond (Jason Robards) and sweet Chick (Norman Wisdom), innocently jeopardizing their 10-year partnership. But when proprietor Billy Minsky (Elliott Gould) is threatened with a police raid instigated by a voyeuristic prude from the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (Denholm Elliott), the players rally. Raymond concocts a scheme to promote a show featuring "Mademoiselle Fifi, the woman who drove a thousand Frenchmen wild" -- and then have Rachel do her chaste "Garden of Eden" number instead. But when Rachel's father, and the cops, show up, things don't quite work out as planned. Nice supporting roles by Forrest Tucker as a gangster type and Bert Lahr, in his last film, as a has-been vaudevillian named Professor Spats. No bonus features.

-- Sue Adolphson

"CATHERINE DENEUVE: 5-FILM COLLECTION." (1968-84. NOT RATED. LIONSGATE. $39.98. THREE DISCS.)

Especially observant viewers might pick up on this little-known aspect of Catherine Deneuve -- she was, is, really beautiful. Lionsgate has released a Deneuve set at the same time it has released a Sophia Loren set, and I suppose this might be an occasion for one of those two-types-of-people-in-the-world distinctions: I reached for the Deneuve set first. To see her in these films, as a young woman (from her mid-20s through her early 40s), is to be reminded just how beautiful beautiful can be. If Loren was beautiful in a way that made a randy viewer want to do something about it, Deneuve was beautiful in a way that was almost paralyzing, that did not incite lust but awe. How drunk did men have to be just to get up the nerve to kiss her?

My favorite thing about this set is that the films range from OK to lousy. They're not "Belle de Jour" or "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," which means you get to see Deneuve as she was seen in France, in her heyday, in films that could never have been released here separately: "Manon 70" (1968), "Le Sauvage" (1975) "Hotel Des Amerique" (1981; an Andre Techine film, co-starring Patrick Dewaere, a year before his suicide), "Le Choc" (1982; opposite Alain Delon) and "Fort Saganne" (1984). The Deneuve-Delon pairing is especially bizarre, in that it involves two actors too beautiful to change expression. Saying "Je t'aime" is one thing, but to actually show some facial variation would be a little too intimate for these two.

-- Mick LaSalle

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)