December 24, 2011
December 13, 2011
Holiday Gift Guide: Video by Shawn Stone
This is the year DVD died.
Major studios are deleting catalog DVD titles by the hundreds—just check the bargain bin at your favorite music-and-moves retailer—and recent films are, more and more, available only as Blu-ray/DVD “combo packs.”
So, let’s have a wake. Dive into those bargain bins; you’ll find all sorts of treasures, from first-class editions of Japanese monster movies to stone-cold classics that barely got released. Seriously, bargain DVDs make great stocking stuffers. A good example of this is the once-elusive Paramount Centennial Collection 2-disc edition of Chinatown, which was pulled from shelves when director Roman Polanski wandered into Switzerland and got himself arrested. It’s turning up here and there for less than $10.
As for recent releases, the format has no mightier tombstone than the DVD megaset for the longest-running drama in television history: Law & Order. For 20 seasons, we followed the show’s detectives and prosecutors as they solved one ripped-from-the-headlines murder after another. (Trivia time: Which series regular appeared on the most episodes? Sam Waterston? Nope. Jerry Orbach? Nope. Jill Hennessy? Not even close.) Universal’s monster-sized Law & Order: The Complete Series retails at $699.99, but you can find it for considerably less.
This is not, however, the year DVD-R died. Burn-on-demand discs have thrived, as studios looked at the success of Warner Archive and ramped up their own release schedules of obscure and/or specialty titles. Notable among these included Richard Lester’s satire How I Won The War (MGM), starring John Lennon; Federico Fellini’s Casanova (Universal), starring Donald Sutherland as a particularly icy great lover; and Housekeeping (Sony), Bill Forsyth’s haunting version of the Marilynne Robinson novel.
The pioneers of MOD (manufactured on demand) DVD-R discs, Warner Archive, recently ventured into new territory (for them) with the seven-film, seven-disc Jean Harlow 100th Anniversary Collection. It’s their first formally packaged box set with extras, which include a set of still photos and, on the discs, newly discovered trailers, a Harlow radio drama appearance and other goodies. All of the films are worth a look, but the best are Bombshell, a hilarious Hollywood satire about a screen sex goddess not unlike Harlow herself; Riffraff, a gritty waterfront drama costarring Spencer Tracy that’s marred only by the lousy political spin MGM favored in back in the day; and Saratoga, Harlow’s last film, a racetrack comedy set you-know-where and costarring Clark Gable, Frank Morgan and Hattie McDaniel.
For home video collectors—yes, Virginia, there are still plenty of people who don’t prefer their movies streamed—Blu-ray is The Way.
Warner Home Video released two major collections of classic animation at the beginning of the fall: Tom & Jerry Golden Collection Vol. 1, and Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Vol. 1. Warner never did right by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s iconic cat-and-mouse duo on DVD, but this Blu-ray set makes everything right. It’s the first 37 MGM Tom & Jerry cartoons in chronological order, restored, uncensored and in all their senselessly violent glory. (Doesn’t that cover art just get you?) The Looney Tunes Blu-ray set, however, annoyed a lot of collectors by recycling cartoons from earlier DVD sets. Still, it’s a fine overview of the studio’s best characters and directors, and includes a few genius one-offs like Katnip Kollege.
The fall and winter have seen a bounty of contemporary and old-school classic titles. The folks at Criterion Collection recently remastered one of their most popular titles for Blu-ray, Jean Renoir’s heartbreaking, funny Rules of the Game. It’s always ranked in critic’s polls as among the top four or five films ever made for reason—it’s a delight. And they also just released Ernst Lubitsch’s sharp-edged, sexy reworking of Nöel Coward’s Design for Living, starring Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March as the three corners of the eternal triangle.
For the comedy lover, Kino’s Buster Keaton Blu-ray reissues continue this month with Seven Chances, which finds our stone-faced hero off in search of a bride. After four reels of fruitless effort, the best he can manage is not being flattened in a rockslide. (Progress!) Know someone who loves feature-length animation? Disney has given the deluxe remastering treatment to Dumbo, a 1940 classic that’s rich in character and delirious imagery (“Pink Elephants”). And for the fan of classic musicals, there’s the loaded-with-extras West Side Story 50th Anniversary Edition (MGM).
For classics of a more recent vintage, there’s Nicole Kidman, deliciously wicked, in Gus Van Sant’s black comedy To Die For (Image); Peter Jackson’s last great film before he became obsessed with elves and monkeys, Heavenly Creatures (Miramax Lionsgate); Todd Haynes’ love letter to glam rock, Velvet Goldmine (Miramax Lionsgate); and George Clooney’s directorial debut, the letter-perfect satire Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (Miramax Lionsgate), starring Sam Rockwell as TV game-show guru Chuck Barris.
And if you prefer to wait until the last minute, two of this year’s unlikely big hits arrive in stores Dec. 20: Woody Allen’s charming Midnight in Paris (Sony), and the heartwarming Dolphin Tale (Warner Home Video, in both 3D and flat formats).
August 03, 2011
On a few Capital Region Screens . . . 40 Years Ago
At the movies at a few Capital Region cinemas, Aug. 3, 1971.
Cinema 7 in Latham--not a 7-plex, but a one-screen house on Route 7 that's now an office building--is showing one of the year's big hits, Summer of '42. "Held Over Fifth Week."
The Mohawk Drive-In (where Kohl's Plaza is now in Colonie) and the Riverview Drive-In (Scotia-Amsterdam Road) have the same double feature: A forgotten, low budget stock-car racing flick called Jump and, still in circulation 2 years after its debut, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch.
The Andromeda Strain is in its last night at the Towne Theater in Latham, immediately to be replaced by an MGM double feature: Shaft and the deeply bizarre Pretty Maids All In a Row.
Continue reading "On a few Capital Region Screens . . . 40 Years Ago" »
April 11, 2011
Anti-Heroes Tonight at the Palace
The hero/heroine doesn't usually win in a David Lean picture.
Lawrence doesn't realize his pan-Arab vision in Lawrence of Arabia; Zhivago loses his world and Lara in Doctor Zhivago; Ryan's Daughter is ostracized; Aziz loses his idealism and Adela her credibility in A Passage to India; the lovers are parted in Brief Encounter.
Lean's WW2 epic, the 1957 Best Picture winner The Bridge On the River Kwai, is especially rich. Col. Nicholson (Alec Guiness) wants his men to keep British discipline in the face of the brutal conditions of a Japanese POW camp; an American officer (William Holden) wants to escape from that same camp; and Japanese commander Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) wants his railroad bridge built with POW labor. They all get what they want.
Unfortunately for them.
This is a marvelously entertaining character study of very different personalities surviving the horrors of war. It's also a taut action film.
And it's at the Palace Theatre in Albany tonight (April 11) at 7 PM for a mere $5 ($3 kids).
And no, it's not the same watching it on TV, even if you have a large screen and a Blu-ray player. NOT. THE. SAME.
April 09, 2011
Magnificent Doug
Sunday (April 10) at 2 PM and Monday (April 11) at 7:30 PM, Proctors will make good use of their mainstage movie screen by showcasing Allan Dwan's 1922 version of Robin Hood starring Hollywood's first great swashbuckling star, Douglas Faribanks. There will be live organ accompaniment, and it only costs $12 (and just $10 for students and seniors).
I've seen it 3 or 4 times in various circumstances and always enjoyed it, but there's a basic rule of thumb for a Fairbanks epic: the bigger the screen, the better.
Here's Doug offerring Maid Marian (Enid Bennett) a dagger, suggesting that she use it if his band of merry men don't arrive in time; the implication is that she would thus, by death, avoid a "fate worse than death." It isn't much of a spoiler to note that she doesn't have to use it.
Poor Enid: Just two years later, Milton Sills slips her a knife for the same purpose in Frank Lloyd's almost as entertaining swashbuckler The Sea Hawk. Both films, of course, were loosely remade/reworked for Errol Flynn in the late 1930s.
The Fairbanks Robin Hood also finds Alan Hale portraying Little John--as Hale will again with Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood and John Derek in Rogues of Sherwood Forest.
March 11, 2011
Second Time Around
Nicole Kidman didn't win the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance in RABBIT HOLE, but she probably should have. It only played a week at Regal Crossgates Stadium 18, with little-to-no advance word/advertising (thanks a lot, Lionsgate); it returns for a second engangement at the Spectrum 8 Theatres.
Showtimes for RABBIT HOLE and other films in our new daily movie schedule.
Why not take a trip to retroland to read Laura Leon's review from the movie's first visit to Capital Region screens?
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