What, no reviews today? Well, I'm in a holding pattern here while the DVD Savant host site decides how I am to continue uploading reviews. They're working on the problem but no fix seems on the way that will get reviews out tonight.

Since you can't see them yet, take my word for it, the reviews are brilliant! They're Warners' Ultimate Gangsters Collection: Classics (Blu-ray) with Public Enemy, Little Caesar, The Petrified Forest and White Heat; Criterion's Japanese classic Gate of Hell (Blu-ray) and The Warner Archive Collection's Eddie Cantor musical Kid Millions. I hope I can get them launched tomorrow. Should anyone have any pressing questions about those or other new releases, please write (address above) ... if I've got the disc I'll answer as best I can.

I do have one link to offer, courtesy of correspondent Gary Teetzel: a Blastr article with scans of a 1968 Howard Johnson's Children's Menu, promoting 2001: A Space Odyssey. I'd have a sample image up here for you, but, ha, ha, I can't upload anything!  I love the way the kids finish by saying that they now understand the movie's mystery ending, and immediately declare gender-stereotyped career choices!

Thanks for reading, back tomorrow I hope -- Glenn Erickson

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Saturday May 11, 2013

Savant's new reviews today are:

Screening review:
Portrait of Jason
Theatrical screenings are underway for a new restoration of Shirley Clarke's game-changing experimental documentary from New York of the 1960s. Flamboyant gay hustler Jason Holiday addresses the camera non-stop, revealing his unusual lifestyle, his pragmatic-hipster approach to life and his ambitions to do a one-man stage show. In one twelve-hour marathon session, Clarke's camera makes this man reveal his inner self -- or does the clever fellow pace his performance to optimal dramatic effect? The film's L.A. run begins next week at the New Beverly theater. From Milestone Films.
5/11/13

Cloak and Dagger
(1946)
Blu-ray
Gary Cooper makes an unlikely physicist-secret agent, flying into wartime Switzerland and Italy to contact atom scientists working for the Nazis and engaging in one of Hollywood's most brutal fight scenes of the 1940s. But the real mystery in Fritz's Lang's espionage thriller is the "why" of how its anti-nuke, anti-Fascist message was suppressed -- pressure was brought to bear to eliminate the film's entire last reel of expensive location work. Savant has the whole story. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
5/11/13

and

Monster
(El monstruo resucitado)
They say the modern Mexican horror film began with this totally bizarre 1953 concoction about a mad surgeon with a horribly disfigured face, who vows to punish the world but would also like a little love from the adventurous reporter who answers his newspaper ad. Director Chano Urueta's impressive production conjures the look of the Universal horror classics -- a mansion in a graveyard! wax statues! an ape-man caged in the dungeon! a remote-controlled killer zombie! -- while mixing in motifs and situations from everything from Frankenstein to Phantom of the Opera. From One 7 Movies.
5/11/13

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Hello!

Dick Dinman has uploaded a great 3-part radio show this week, using his interviews with the late, wonderful Jonathan Winters. In Part One of Dick Dinman Says Goodbye to Jonathan Winters the comedian talks about his childhood, his self-imposed stay in a mental institution and his rebirth and rediscovery in the all-star comedy classic It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Part Two continues with a discussion of The Loved One and Winters' thoughts on modern comedy and politics (with an Arnold Schwartzenegger impression).

In Part Three Winters talks about Stanley Kramer and his love of painting, among some other candid observations. I was able to be a fly on the wall when Jonathan Winters and George Kennedy were helping a student out on a film shoot, and listening to him just gab for three hours was the most entertaining evening of my life. Thanks for putting these shows together, Dick.

Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson