Zero Effect
Before Monk was conquering the cable ratings (and then going back for leftovers on ABC), first-time director Jake Kasdan (Lawrence’s son) gave us an even more defective detective in Bill Pullman’s mercurial Darryl Zero. The DVD version of Zero Effect - a movie I’ve already waxed rhapsodic about in our Movie Reviews section - isn’t exactly loaded with freatures; indeed, a lot of its material about the making of the movie is in text form. The big feature here is an audio commentary with Kasdan, talking 
about the film’s unique location shooting in Portland, as well as the contributions of the actors to their roles. Kasdan also offers some nuggets about the evolution of the story and screenplay, since he was responsible for those as well. The disc is double-sided - with a full-frame version of the movie on one side and the widescren version, both with the same content, on the other - which is a nice touch we don’t see too often. If there’s anything else I would’ve liked, it would be an isolated score track, or perhaps a commentary-and-music track (a la The Matrix); Zero Effect featured some 
marvelous musical cues by the Greyboy Allstars jazz combo, though since a lot of music slipped under most people’s radar, I’m not too surprised to see that not much attention is given to it.
Overall, a first-rate DVD which I’ll let get by with a decent rating because, despite the fact that it’s really a bit feature-starved, it’s one of my favorite flicks of the past several years. I hear that NBC is now working on a series version of Zero Effect, but it’ll be hard pressed to match the unique character of its inspiration.
