Savant's new reviews today are:

The Only Game in Town
Blu-ray
How do Liz Taylor and Warren Beatty sound to you as a romantic couple? George Stevens thought they'd click and made them the centerpiece of his intimate light drama, produced at perhaps the most wasteful cost-to-result ratio of the 1960s. Unconvincing showgirl Taylor shacks up with lounge pianist Beatty, giving us a number of expertly played and handsomely filmed romantic confrontations. But it was essentially the end of 'young thing' stardom for Ms. Taylor, not to mention Stevens' final film. In Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
6/29/13

Women in Bondage
Monogram SHOCKS wartime audiences with the RAW TRUTH about the treatment of women in Nazi Germany -- not prisoners or captives, but ordinary well-to-do hausfraus. Gail Patrick, cult figure Nancy Kelly and Gertrude Michael star. The SS dictates who marries who, who can bear children, and which children will become the SS übermen of the future. The noble heroine is informed that she'll have to conceive a bouncing Hitler baby with her brother-in-law! Prime WW2 morale propaganda from Poverty Row, that's actually less tame than the reality it depicts. From The Warner Archive Collection.
6/29/13

and

Let My People Go!
Frenchman Mikael Buch's promo copy tells us that this is the first French-Jewish-Finnish-Gay comedy, but it's mainly a light-comedy family farce with a big heart. Actor Nicolaus Maury is a lovesick gay guy who left his heart in a Finnish sauna, and strained relationships form the basis of the warm-hearted and tasteful semi-comic scenes that follow. With Carmen Maura as a ditzy mother, visuals that remind us of Pedro Almodóvar and maybe one too many borrowings from Woody Allen. But the wonderfully droll sad sack played by Nicolaus Maury makes this a winning comic turn. From Zeitgeist Films.
6/29/13

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Hello!

Gary Teetzel is probably the conduit for half of the interesting links that end up posted here at DVD Savant. Today he has a trailer for a Korean movie about a baseball-playing gorilla -- Mr. Go 3D. I like Gary's description: "It looks like a modern, Shook-Up Shopping Cart-style remake of Mighty Joe Young." Runner on first, Joe!

European correspondent and sometimes contributor to DVD Savant is Guido Bibra. He's written a flattering endorsement of Yours Truly on his German-English website called DVDLog.de, but I am far too modest and self-deprecating to possibly link to it here.

Olive Films' not-quite-announced Blu-ray releases for August combine some new titles with upgrades of four comedies previously issued only on DVD. Danny Kaye appears on new BD discs of Knock on Wood and On the Double, while Bob Hope gets a boot upward to higher resolution in My Favorite Spy and Off Limits. The completely new titles are all good: Penny Serenade, George Stevens' touching bittersweet romance with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, the Sterling Hayden Navy story Flat Top, Gordon Douglas's western Only The Valiant, and James Cagney as the vicious criminal Ralph Cotter in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, also by Douglas. I haven't been to Olive Films' website in quite a while... it's very informative and well constructed.

Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Black Sabbath
Blu-ray
Mario Bava's scary omnibus of horror tales reaches Region A Blu-ray in its original Italian version and with a stunning HD transfer. Boris Karloff stars, hosting the show and also playing a creepy eastern European vampire called a wurdulak. A nurse steals from a dead psychic in another story that viewers tend never to forget. This is one of Bava's most sumptuously-photographed features, packed with hypnotic visuals. In Blu-ray from Kino Classics.
6/25/13

Showdown at Boot Hill
Blu-ray
Charles Bronson gets star billing in this Regalscope western from 1958. Bronson is a bounty hunter who catches his prey in a small town, only to find that the townspeople are friends with the dead murderer, and won't identify his body. Bronson gets to be his tough, no extra gab brand of tough guy, but also takes a crack at a number of introspective and sentimental scenes. A neat little western item, finally available in its original 'scope proportions. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
6/25/13

and

El Sicario Room 164
A harrowing film document: a narco hitman tells us the truth of how he kidnapped, tortured and murdered for the Mexican drug cartels. The man relates this story covered with a hood for obvious reasons; what he has to say about the cartels' all-corrupting State of Terror is difficult to shake, especially when he gets into the murderous details. Gianfranco Rosi and Charles Bowden are the filmmakers behind this daring, terrifying true document. From Icarus Films.
6/25/13

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Hello!

Good news -- I may be reviewing some more of Shout Factory's upcoming releases. I think they dropped the exclamation point somewhere along the way. Upcoming Shout Factory titles that appeal include a DVD box of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis the complete series, and Blu-rays of Carpenter's horror pic The Fog and L.Q. Jones' sci-fi opus A Boy and His Dog.

Just a couple of links today. Steven Nielson sends along this Photos I Like page of Historic Pictures Restored. The images go on seemingly forever; I think they're really fascinating. If a reader happens to live in any of the towns pictured, the interest level goes way up, I'm sure.

I've been exchanging emails with film critic Sergio Mims for some time now. Last week I bugged him for a link to his radio show archives, and he sent along a three hour (!) episode of The Bad Mother Film Show. Sergio's partner in criminal radio commentary is critic Erik Childress, and they get quite a wild conversation going. And keeping it up for three hours, yet! Sergio has promised to send me another soon.

Until Saturday, thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Things to Come
Blu-ray
H.G. Wells' super science fiction epic from the long-ago year of 1936 gets the Criterion treatment, with some of the best analysis and commentary ever from David Kalat and Christopher Frayling. Raymond Massey, Ralph Richardson and Cedric Hardwicke chart the 'future history' of Everytown, which emerges from a devastating war and decades of plague to emerge as a fantastic technological dictatorship of engineers and scientists. The version on view is the longest available, with a nicely polished picture and track. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
6/22/13

Spider Baby
Region B U.K. Blu-ray + PAL DVD
Director Jack Hill's most personal film is a bizarre, un-classifiable horror comedy that must have been considered beyond acceptable taste in 1964. A medical curse has reduced a family to infantile savages, which look harmless but like to play with knives. It's one of Lon Chaney's last good pictures. Playing an odd benign role. Also starring Jill Banner, Beverly Washburn, Sig Haig and the semi-legendary Carol Ohmart. The extra featurettes include Jack Hill's elaborate 1960 UCLA student film. A Region B disc; on Blu-ray (with a PAL DVD) from Arrow Video (U.K.).
6/22/13

and

The Mask of Dimitrios
A much asked-for Warners favorite with a great cast: Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson, and Victor Francen star. Lorre's writer traces a story about a dead con man, murderer and assassin across Europe, learning about his crimes from his victims and former associates. It's adapted from a book by Eric Ambler and has as many mysterious flashbacks as Citizen Kane. From The Warner Archive Collection.
6/22/13

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Hello!

A quick link today, and a really good one: Gary Teetzel forwards a link to a YouTube encoding of an entire episode of TV's Playhouse 90 from 1958. It's a live TV production of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, starring an incredible cast: Roddy McDowall as Marlow, Inga Swenson, Cathleen Nesbitt, Oskar Homolka, Richard Haydn, and... wait for it ... Boris Karloff as Kurtz. The first 40 minutes seem fairly irrelevant, and then the show launches into the content we recognize, albeit with a lot of new trimmings, including an upbeat ending. It's just like Apocalypse Now, but with everything left unspoken in Coppola's movie, spelled out as if lifted from Cliff's Notes.

Oh, and the commercials are intact as well, including one 'starring' Fred MacMurray. Thanks, Gary!

Meanwhile, they've added some attractive new titles lately over at Trailers from Hell, with director commentaries of course: Mick Garris on The Wicker Man, Brian-Trenchard Smith on the Brando Mutiny on the Bounty, Bernard Rose on One Million Years, B.C., and Josh Olson on Invasion of the Bee Girls. All good at that beautifully-designed site.

Thanks for reading -- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Medium Cool
Blu-ray
Haskell Wexler wrote a new chapter in docu-drama with this amazing fiction feature partially filmed within the demonstrations at the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968, the turning point in the anti-Vietnam War protests. We watch in awe as film history, and real history, are being made befor our eyes. With Robert Forster as a rebellious newscameraman, Verna Bloom, Marianna Hill and the Chicago police. Even if you just rent it, this is one you need to see -- it's real. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
6/18/13

The Power and the Prize
Robert Taylor is the ethical company man running up against a wall of conniving mendacity from his big boss Burl Ives. A trip to London to close a corporate swindle brings Taylor face to face with the perfect woman -- a feisty refugee and concentration camp survivor played by Elisabeth Mueller. But what will his New York cronies think when she's denounced as a prostitute -- and a Red? Another drama of big business intrigue in the 1950s, this one openly acknowledges that the anti-commie denunciations resulted in a Cold War freeze on ethics. With Charles Coburn, Mary Astor and Richard Erdman. From The Warner Archive Collection.
6/18/13

and

Hell's House
Blu-ray
Bette Davis's odd film out in her rise to stardom! She plays opposite Pat O'Brien but neither of them are the central character; that honor goes to young actor Junior Durkin, and the story is about his misadventures in a horror-house of a reformatory. This 'moral' movie inadvertently teaches kids to follow the criminal code -- never snitch and never tell anything to a cop! Restored from a print archived with the government, complete with the original main titles. In Blu-ray from Kino Classics / Library of Congress.
6/18/13

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Hello!

Dick Dinman's newest radio shows are on silent comedy great Harold Lloyd and the new Criterion release of his masterpiece Safety Last! Dick's shows interview producer/director Rich Correll, who is helping with new releases of Lloyd's classics. The two shows are Dick Dinman Salutes Safety Last! Superstar Harold Lloyd, Part One and Part Two.

And reader Andrew Melomet sends us to a web page (in English) for a museum devoted to the magical Czech moviemaker Karel Zeman. I reviewed Zeman's remarkable The Fabulous World of Jules Verne; the Karel Zeman Museum page has images and samples of all of Zeman's imaginative work. The museum is in Prague, very near the Charles Bridge (known to us I suppose as the fancy bridge seen in Barbra Streisand's Yentl.) A bit of site searching under "Film Club of Karel Zeman" will lead you to where Region 2 PAL DVDs of three of his films (Journey to the Beginning of Time, The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, and The Fabulous Baron Munchausen) can be purchased. Andrew has seen them and says that they were well-restored and a bargain.

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Hard Times
Blu-ray
Charles Bronson is the hard-as-nails pickup fighter in 1933 New Orleans and James Coburn his unstable promoter in Walter Hill's debut directing assignment. A sleeper hit that grabbed both the martial arts audience (the fights are that good) and the fans that made Bronson one of the biggest stars of the '70s. With Jill Ireland, and Strother Martin as a predictably colorful gent named Poe, who even gets an opportunity to quote Edgar Allan. In Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
6/15/13

Safety Last!
Blu-ray
Restored and remastered, comedian Harold Lloyd's biggest silent hits are coming back to go shoulder to shoulder with Chaplin and Keaton. Harold plays his patented ambitious go-getter, who go-gets himself into hot water inflating his image for his best girl and his best friend. The famous climax is the extended climb of the face of a tall building, with a new hazard appearing at each floor. The extras include an excellent Kevin Brownlow documentary and a new featurette with location expert John Bengtson visiting the actual rooftops where parts of the daredevil climb were (partially) faked. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
6/15/13

and

Blowing Wild
Blu-ray
Oil man Gary Cooper can't shake the lustful attentions of Barbara Stanwyck, who doesn't care that she's married to Coop's old buddy Anthony Quinn. Ruth Roman is potentially Cooper's new girl, if they can scrape together enough cash to escape the South American hellhole where they're stuck. And if this is South America, where did all those Mexican bandits come from? This big-scale but blatantly plagiaristic adventure-western baldly lifts whole chapters of The Treasure of Sierra Madre and The Wages of Fear; redeeming it is a delirious Dimitri Tiomkin music score and a wholly demented title tune, sung in top form by none other than Frankie Laine. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
6/15/13

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Hello!

Congrats to Video Watchdog for publishing Allan MacInnis's interview with French director Bertrand Tavernier in their issue number 173. Allan gets illuminating answers from Tavernier about the diverging versions of his amazing science fiction film Death Watch, while also discussing the cut and uncut versions of the director's murder mystery In the Electric Mist.

And Sam Peckinpah expert Mike Siegel contributes a comprehensive twelve-page making-of article on Straw Dogs to the Volume 9, number 26 issue of Cinema Retro magazine, the colorful large format "essential guide to the movies of the '60s and '70s". The collectors and experts that helped me with Sergio Leone issues put me in touch with Siegel, who really knows the works of director Peckinpah.

Finally, I'll preview my upcoming review of Criterion's Things to Come Blu-ray with a note inspired by disc commentary track speaker David Kalat, who caught an amazing discontinuity in the film that I'd never seen. I'll only hint that it happens when the young space travelers actually enter the space capsule to be shot 'round the moon by the film's absurd Space Gun.

I had a chance to study the film more closely, and found another odd editing / continuity puzzle. At 44:37 into the picture, the warlord called The Boss (Ralph Richardson) returns on horseback from fighting the "Hill People". He and his consort Roxana dismount. After a quick cutaway, we see the same wide shot of the front of the Great Hall, but the crowd is grouped differently and there are no horses or troops present. The film dissolves into a scene in which The Boss berates his scientists to get his ancient airplanes flying.

At 49:07 there's a ragged cut from The Boss shouting, "I want those planes!" to the same exterior angle of the Hall. The cut drops us right into the middle of a music cue, which ends in less than five seconds. Look quick and you'll see the horses ridden by The Boss and Roxana two scenes ago, being led away to the left. The shot would seem to be the real transition from the arrival scene, earlier. In fact, although The Boss has just finished trouncing the Hill Tribe, a couple of dialogue lines in the scene with the scientists suggest that the job is perhaps not quite yet done: "Victory approaches!" Was the 'bully the scientists' scene meant to come earlier, perhaps? Was this editing snafu incorporated into the (unseen, as yet lost) long cut, or something that cropped up during later, hasty cut-downs?

Things to Come shows so much hasty cutting to shorten dialogue scenes, that a single glitch like this one barely makes a ripple. But I thought I'd mention it anyway, just in case. My review of the Criterion disc should be up here at DVD Savant in about a week.

Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

No
Blu-ray
Gael García Bernal is a Chilean advertising director who takes on the sales job of a lifetime -- producing a month's worth of TV messages to convince the Chilean people to vote against their dictator Agusto Pinochet in a national plebiscite. Instead of assembling clips of government crimes, Bernal must convince his opposition associates to go with a 'happy' message, promising a positive future free of political extremism: "Chile, happiness is coming!" A refreshing true story about South American politics, with fine acting and an intelligent script. In Blu-ray from Sony Pictures Classics.
6/11/13

Dark Command
Blu-ray
Republic Studios produces an 'A' western about the 'Bleeding Kansas' guerilla warfare of our Civil War, radically simplifying the issues and making frustrated romance provide the motivation for anarchy. But all this is packed into a standard Republic format, with John Wayne playing an anachronistic Texas cowboy just trying to be an honest guy. Also starring Claire Trevor, Walter Pidgeon and a young Roy Rogers as a jolly good guy who also happens to be a hot-headed murderer. it's a very likeable picture, but things get a little confused! Directed by Raoul Walsh, adapted from a book by W.R. Burnett. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
6/11/13

and

Jubal
Blu-ray
It's Othello down on the ranch, up in the Grand Tetons. Nasty ranch hand Rod Steiger, jealous of boss Ernest Borgnine's wife (Valerie French), convinces Borgnine that the innocent new hire Glenn Ford has been up to no good. Waiting in the wings for Ford is the gloriously healthy Felicia Farr. Delmer Daves directed and co-wrote this 'adult' western, that billboarded a rape scene in its advertising. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
6/11/13

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Hello!

A quick one today -- work looms overhead.

Several people have sent me the following link, and yes, I do appear in a couple of the pictures therein, lifted from DVD Savant. It's an Io9 photo layout of BTS stills from famous science fiction movies, and the quality is so good that I recommend a looksee. This is the link, it's called Stunning Behind-the-Scenes Photos Show Iconic Movies in a New Light.

On Close Encounters, I took the photo of my boss Greg Jein, working on one of his Oscar-nominated miniatures, a tabletop set where Richard Dreyfuss' Neary first encounters a UFO. The other two photos are of me PRETENDING to work on the miniature. I did a lot of sanding of little parts, drilling holes in tubes for the Mothership, and helping Greg line up forced-perspective shots, but that was pretty much my contribution to the miniatures department. Randall William Cook first sent me this link, with an expected joke line: "Two nice photos... of the Official Cola Taster on CE3K. Thought you'd enjoy." He's not far off the mark.

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Jack the Giant Slayer
Blu-ray + DVD + UltraViolet
$180 million buys one heck of a stack of excellent special effects, as Nicholas Hoult, Ewan McGregor and Eleanor Tomlinson do battle with a clan of nasty, pug-ugly Giants in a fairy tale land floating somewhere high in the stratosphere. The story mixes in Jack and the Beanstalk and a fair share of perfidious villainy (that's the very worst kind) from Stanley Tucci, but the real problem is dealing with a battalion of twenty-foot guys whose main joy in life is biting the heads off of puny, squirming Earthlings. Bryan Singer's movie is suitable for all but the most impressionable kids, but it looks like most everybody stayed home when the picture debuted in 3D in March. A 3D BD is available as well. In Blu-ray + DVD + UltraViolet from Warner Home Video.
6/08/13

Never Let Me Go
Clark Gable and Gene Tierney unite for a romantic suspense story with a topical theme -- he's a Yankee reporter, she's a Moscow ballerina, and since the year is 1953, rotten Uncle Joe Stalin won't give her an exit visa. It's a clever, absolutely accurate snapshot of the personal pain of the Cold War. Director Delmer Daves and producer Clarence Brown wisely concentrate on a long-shot rescue caper instead of the politics, keeping us pinned to our seats through the only slightly exaggerated finale. A handsome production filmed by Robert Krasker and co-starring Richard Haydn, Bernard Miles and Kenneth More. From The Warner Archive Collection.
6/08/13

and

Perfect Understanding
Blu-ray
Fading star Gloria Swanson personally produced this sophisticated/shallow tale of heartbreak among some Veddy Veddy Rich Londoners, coming up with a mostly inert romantic comedy. See the kissing games played by permanently vacationing socialites at various continental watering holes! The reason to see this is not only the legendary Swanson, who is still quite impressive in her early thirties, but her chosen co-star: a young Laurence Olivier, whose film acting skills at this time consist of looking great and delivering good foreplay dialogue. A truly unusual forgotten picture that will have star-obsessed viewers trying to read significance into every gesture and glance. With two short Mack Sennett comedies. In Blu-ray from The Cohen Film Collection.
6/08/13

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Hello!

Some tense moments yesterday during the mass shooting and other chaos in Santa Monica. We received a great many calls and emails from people concerned for my wife, who is a professor at Santa Monica College. She often takes meetings in that library building, but I was happy to report that during the melee she was home preparing finals. Had she been working at school I have no idea how I would have reacted. Last night I made a brief announcement on Facebook, which I rarely use. * I really feel for the police, and especially our great campus policemen at SMC ... what a risky job they perform in this profit-driven shooting gallery of a nation.

Whew -- good to get that over with. Apologies to folk incensed that I sometimes break with the program and talk about more than movies. They do have a legit gripe.

The good news --- ? It was easy to calm down last night, reading John McElwee's new book Showmen, Sell It Hot! John has carried over his unique & pleasing writing style from his Greenbriar Picture Shows site, and the result is a fine book that's a great read and also something to show off on a coffee table. An authority on the refined art of old-time movie showmanship, John gives us an enormous amount of fascinating information without the usual self-import film book veneer. The book takes us on an historical tour of grass-roots salesmanship for Hollywood product, from the silent Foolish Wives to the clever re-issue bonanza that made Bonnie & Clyde the must-see movie of its year. The many B&W & color illustrations of vintage film ads and stills directly reference the text and are of an excellent quality enabling detailed study. John debunks myths -- neither King Kong nor Cat People really 'saved' RKO -- and tells the fascinating stories behind the distribution of big classics like Citizen Kane. He details the penny-saving tricks that kept movie house open through the Depression and during the rationing of the war years. Think of it, when theaters couldn't sell candy (sugar rationing) or flavor their popcorn (more rationing), what did they sell at the all-important concession stands? It's fascinating to see what sold and what didn't. John's stories sweep away the hype from famous feuds (Davis vs. Crawford) and politically-themed disasters (My Son John), giving us a practical perspective on an industry distorted by egos and glamorous myth. I skipped a couple of chapters, and am going back to catch up with them tonight.

I can also report unusally high approval emails for my Oz The Great and Powerful review. I'm trying to not to stay so mum about positive reader responses. That's it... thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson

*Even if you've friended me on Facebook, please use my email above for correspondence -- I don't check Facebook often and want to keep Savant-talk properly archived. And like our Orwellian government, I frequently reference these sinister mail archives, mooo ahh hah hah hah hah! Muchas Gracías.

Savant's new reviews today are:

Oz The Great and Powerful
Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy
What a pleasant surprise -- nothing's perfect, but Sam Raimi's glossy prequel to The Wizard of Oz has good performances and a great story that work some clever twists into Frank Baum's fantasy world. It's also not too grim, nor fashionably 'dark'. Some of the more delicate angles are beautifully done, as with a little China Doll character worthy of classic fantasy. And the story is informed and deepened by our hard-implanted knowledge of where it all must end up. Great designs, mostly good direction by Sam Raimi. WIth James Franco, Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams. In Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy from Disney Blu-ray.
6/06/13

Life is Sweet
Blu-ray
Savant loves Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky... and really enjoyed this inspired 1990 show. The tale of a family of London eccentrics is absorbingly warm and human, even as it touches on some troubling relationships. Every character is memorable: parents Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent (so young!), oddly-adjusted daughters Claire Skinner & Jane Horrocks, and Timothy Spall's pathetically self-destructive fool. The disc extras includes a TV experiment by the creative Leigh, Five Minute Films. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
6/06/13

and

The Magic Christian
Blu-ray
A well-known 1969 title with Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr makes its Blu-ray debut in a fine-quality transfer. It hasn't aged well at all -- the appeal might be to confirmed fans of the stars, author Terry Southern or the rock group Badfinger. Filthy rich Englishman Guy Grand adopts a bum from the park. Together they prove that greed makes the world go around, and that there's no limit to the disgustingly humiliating things people will do for money. With cameos (not always satisfying) by Raquel Welch, Christopher Lee, Roman Polanski and Yul Brynner. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
6/06/13

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Hello!

Access to my Savant front page broke down between Saturday and Monday, throwing the review schedule out of whack. As soon as that was fixed I found that my ability to upload new reviews was down too. Three days later I'm back, hopefully in good shape. I should be resuming my Tuesday-Saturday review schedule by next Tuesday.

It isn't DVDtalk's fault -- their good folk have become very responsive to my problems. That said, after twelve years here I wonder if a change might be a good thing... you never know. No specific complaints, as it's nice to have a home on the web.

Connected folk know this already, but if you're only semi-informed like me you might want to know about Twilight Time's announced Blu-ray release schedule for the rest of 2013. We're already awaiting Sleepless in Seattle & Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (July 9), and Body Double, Sexy Beast & The Disappearance (August 13). September 10 brings us John Ford's Drums Along the Mohawk and Louis Malle's Alamo Bay. Following on October 8 are Steve Barnett's Mindwarp and Robert Mulligan's The Other. November 12 will be the big day for Carol Reed's Oliver!, Sydney Pollack's The Way We Were and Robert Stevenson's Jane Eyre.

Criterion's Blu-ray attractions for August are Ophuls' The Earrings of Madame de... (August 6), John Frankenheimer's Seconds (August 13), Satyajit Ray's The Big City & Charulata (August 20), Lubitsch's To Be Or Not To Be and a Fassbinder Eclipse Box (August 27).

Finally we have two 3D announcements from Warner Bros.: Andre de Toth's House of Wax and the original Wizard of Oz re-jiggered for 3D , both on October 1. I will make arrangments to hijack borrow my friend's glorious 3D setup!

Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson

Savant's newest reviews from Saturday, delayed by a web glitch, are:

Philadelphia
Blu-ray
Jonathan Demme promotes a sane reaction to the AIDS epidemic -- a 'safe' movie but a necessary one. Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington contribute fine performances in an attempt to make a dent in the public perception of gays. The result not only works, it became the first movie on the issue capable of swaying the hearts and minds of people not already converted. With an Isolated Music Score. In Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
6/01/13

Forbidden Hollywood Collection
Volume 7
The WAC finds four more Pre-code winners. Edward G. Robinson is an axe-wielding Tong executioner in the fascinating The Hatchet Man with Loretta Young. Cad's cad Warren William seduces Maureen O'Sullivan and Loretta Young (respectively) while playing high stakes business games in Skyscraper Souls and Employees' Entrance. And Bette Davis experiments with both shacking up and open marriage in the stylish Ex-Lady. From The Warner Archive Collection.
6/01/13

and

Sons and Lovers
Cinematographer Jack Cardiff's first job of direction sees him handing the camera to Freddie Francis, for a fairly uncompromising (for 1960) version of the semi-autobiographical D.H. Lawrence classic. Dean Stockwell is excellent as the son of coal miner Trevor Howard, breaking free of the influence of his mother (Wendy Hillier) for flings with a local girl (Heather Sears) and a needy suffragette (Mary Ure). Nicely turned out in every respect, and reportedly filmed on some of the actual locations of Lawrence's youth. From 20th Fox Cinema Archives.
6/01/13

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Hello!

It's a quiet Saturday here, which is a blessing in itself. I want to move on to more reviews, so here's one fun link, courtesy of Joe Dante: We hear lots of news about top pix competing at Cannes, but little mention of the kind of movies being hawked down in the low-rent stalls, as it were. The Guardian gives us a gallery of posters and comments with the irresistible title Palme d'Awful: the worst films for sale at Cannes.

Thanks for reading, see you on Tuesday --- Glenn Erickson