April 10, 2003
April 10, 2003

A nice day in L.A. ... and a pair of nice DVDs to tell you about.

First Run Features' Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times is a plainwrap record of some of the Professor's political speeches, and as such is an excellent introduction to the country's premier intellectual dissident. A nice DVD job, with 30 extra minutes of lecture material. This review's on the early side - the disc doesn't officially street until June.

Columbia TriStar's Born Free has already been out for several weeks, but don't let it slip by. It is an intelligent treat for animal lovers, and an excellent movie to show 6 year olds just old enough to learn the difference between movie animals and the real thing. It also has the cutest lion cub footage ever shot.

Savant had a great time today: he played hooky from cutting to see the final result of the film restoration of THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, and it looked great. Much of the print, which was a mix of new Italian and old American source elements, was just beautiful. The new grotto sequence was a bit down on the quality scale (it was made from a print) but will probably be indistinguishable after the video transfer. All of the other missing scenes were there too. The voice replacement was done very well - with a script translated by John Kirk, and read by Eli Wallach, Clint Eastwood and a Lee Van Cleef impersonator. All in all, the post dubbing was excellent, with only Clint sounding a bit reedy with his aged voice. When this shows in selected theaters and on AMC in May, it's going to get a lot of positive attention for MGM. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

Posted by DVD Savant at April 10, 2003 09:37 PM