Rack Focus

The Tomorrow Show With Tom Snyder: Punk and New Wave
(Shout! Factory)

From October 1973 through the beginning of 1982, talk show host Tom Snyder held NBC's coveted post-Carson time slot. While not exactly a punk aficionado, Snyder played host to a number of key new wave figures and fellow travelers. This two-disc set collects eight episodes of The Tomorrow Show and features live performances by the Ramones, Elvis Costello & the Attractions, Iggy Pop, the Jam, and the Plasmatics. Patti Smith and John Lydon also drop by for interviews, and the earliest included episode, from October 1977, features a roundtable discussion on the then nascent punk movement with Joan Jett, Paul Weller, Bill Graham, Kim Fowley, and Robert Hilburn.

Vidas Secas
(New Yorker)

Following last year's DVD releases of several Ousmane Sembene films, New Yorker strikes another blow against art movie Eurocentrism with this 1963 landmark of Brazil's Cinema Novo movement, from director Nelson Pereira dos Santos (How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman). Set in the country's arid northeast during the early 1940s, Vidas Secas (Barren Lives) covers two years in the lives of a poor itinerant worker and his family. Special features include a discussion of the film by estimable NYU scholar Robert Stam and the short film Baleia the Dog, centered on the canine who plays a key role in Vidas Secas.