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July 29, 2013

Savant's new reviews today are:

The Tonight Show
Starring Johnny Carson
The Vault Series Volume 1

The first installment in a new series of Johnny Carson episodes offers two entire shows including original bumpers and commercials. We get a 1972 tenth anniversary program with guests Ronald Reagan, Jack Benny, Joey Bishop, Don Rickles, George Burns, Jerry Lewis, Rowan & Martin and Dinah Shore; and a regular show (in Johnny's new Burbank studio) with Bob Hope, Dom DeLuise, John Denver and Peter Fonda. Very good color, and some very nimble hosting from Johnny to keep all those egotistical talents in line. From Carson Entertainment Group.
7/30/13

For Eyes Only
-- Top Secret

This somewhat true but-adjusted-for-propaganda-purposes spy tale sends the Stasi's crack secret agent Hansen into West Germany to steal NATO's secret plan for a sneak attack on the GDR. Released the year after James Bond's filmic debut, the thriller presents an agent who avoids every trap set by the American Army Intelligence officers that unknowingly employ him. Our comrade is a dedicated soldier for communist solidarity, while the debauched Yankees womanizers, gamblers and profiteers hire nasty ex-Nazis to do their dirty work! It's an educational disc with a wealth of historical material -- including newsreels about the real spy mission. From DEFA/UMASS.
7/30/13

and

Seconds
Blu-ray

A depressed middle-aged businessman longs to escape from the loveless, dreary life he has made for himself -- and then makes contact with a mysterious organization that provides a new identity, a new appearance, and a new beginning -- for a price. John Frankenheimer's weirdest film strikes deep at a sense of unfulfillment in the American Dream. With Rock Hudson, Salome Jens, Will Geer, Frances Reid, Murray Hamilton and incredible distorted-stylized cinematography by James Wong Howe, this is one heck of an influential picture. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
7/30/13




Hello!

A pleasant Monday here in Hollywood ...

Craig Reardon forwards this YouTube radio excerpt of Arsenic and Old Lace -- starring Boris Karloff. It's fun to hear the man for whom the role of Jonathan Brewster was created, actually perform it. The original play also has a slightly different text than the movie screenplay. But this excerpt includes the famous Jonathan Brewster line that brought the house down every time: "He said I looked like Boris Karloff!"

Not enough Boris? Gary Teetzel has found a 1938 radio show Seein' Stars in Hollywood, in which Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi sing !

Finally, correspondent Mark Fischer sends along this link to his home video about organizing his home video collection. He offers a number of ideas about storage solutions. Any way one looks at it, that's a lot of discs on a lot of shelves!

Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson



July 26, 2013

Savant's new reviews today are:

Summer and Smoke
Blu-ray

Geraldine Page, Laurence Harvey, Rita Moreno and Pamela Tiffin enliven this hot 'n' bothered Tennessee Williams adaptation about a Southern Belle clashing with the man of her dreams, who just won't stop catting around. A nice blend of theatrical and filmic effects, with the A+ performances the main draw. An HD upgrade disc, in Blu-ray from Olive Films.
7/27/13


The Ice Storm
Blu-ray

Upscale suburbia in 1973 is a cesspool of despair in this Ang Lee picture, with parents and children alike expressing their unhappiness through errant sexual activity. Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci and Elijah Wood are caught up in the Watergate-era insanity, that culminates in an honest-to-goodness wife-swapping party. Some very clever cold weather filming, too, all explained in Criterion's ample extras. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
7/27/13

and

Sleepless in Seattle
Blu-ray

Norah Ephron turns out a gem, a transcendent romance from the classic mold, that also examines why old weepie Chick Flick romance movies are so enjoyable. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are strangers separated by a continent. She somehow knows that they're MFEO while he's being manipulated by his precocious ten-year-old. Everything clicks. With a great pack of supporting actors -- Rosie O'Donnell, Bill Pullman, Victor Garber, Rita Wilson, David Hyde Pierce. Apppointed with an Isolated Music Track and other interesting extras. In Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
7/27/13




Hello!

A couple of quick notes. Studio Canal has issued yet another contradictory explanation of their upcoming The Wicker Man Blu-ray: now they say that all three versions of the show will be present. Rather than dredge up all the questions this raises (or the English highway under which the uncut film negative was reportedly buried) I'll just hope for the best.

Why don't I go in for video streaming? I collect because I want to posess copies of movies I can show when I want, and remotely stored movies streamed here or there or from 'the cloud' can be mysteriously withdrawn at any time. Now this Guardian article Netflix Dropping Classics for Exclusive Content makes relying on streaming seem very foolish. The desire to see old movies initiated and nurtured all these &%#@& 'delivery systems', only for our corporate friends to abandon classic movies the moment they're earning millions instead of billions. Netflix wants to be more like HBO? Everybody wants to rule the world, is more like it.

Expect some feverish review writin' here at DVD Savant... I've just gotten in Blu-rays of Shane and Q The Winged Serpent; plus a Warners DVD Charlie Chan Set, and the UPS man hasn't been here yet.

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson



July 23, 2013

Savant's new reviews today are:

Babette's Feast
Blu-ray

Gabriel Axel's carefully crafted tale of a French servant preparing a farewell meal for a pair of Danish spinsters is a movie one never forgets. It's a study in the ways people serve God and themselves, and the satisfactions that come from following one's best nature. It's also possibly the best film ever made extolling the virtues of French gourmet cooking. It's one that viewers at least need to 'taste' -- it could become a personal favorite. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
7/23/13

Foolish Wives
Blu-ray

Erich von Stroheim's 1922 masterpiece hits Blu-ray to once again convince us of the director-actor's immense talent. Von Stroheim plays a confidence man masquerading as a Russian officer, to bilk an American socialite of a small fortune. If he's to succeed he'll need to keep his mind on larceny and off sex. The first "million dollar movie" is a great story of a total villain on the loose in a Monte Carlo reproduced, no, duplicated in fine detail on the Universal back lot. Among the extras is a great documentary on von Stroheim, The Man You Loved to Hate. In Blu-ray from Kino Classics.
7/23/13

and

The Silver Chalice

Paul Newman feared that his first film might be his last - this arty, awkward and often unintentionally funny Biblical epic casts him as a silversmith fashioning a holder for the last cup Jesus drank from. With outrageous performances from Virginia Mayo, Joseph Wiseman and especially scenery masticator extraordinaire Jack Palace; only Pier Angeli finds an acceptably tasteful method of expressing piety. See Jack Palance dress up like Wile E. Coyote, ready to fly from the top of a tall tower! A reissue from The Warner Archive Collection.
7/23/13




Hello!

A quick note this week -- not feeling all that well today. I'm happy to find out that Blu-rays of Sony's From Here to Eternity and Warners' The Right Stuff will be released this Fall, on October 1 and November 5 respectively. I'm also primed for Criterion's Blu-ray of Eyes Without a Face, due October 15. Halloween is shaping up nicely this year with The Haunting and House of Wax 3D coming from Warners, and I Married a Witch! and The Uninvited from Criterion, with a stack of Vincent Price Corman-Poe pix from Shout! Factory. I know Gary Teetzel has been waiting for years for some of these titles.

Horror fans were excited by an announcement a few days ago that Studio Canal had located an intact print of the great horror film The Wicker Man to use in a restoration for their forthcoming Blu-ray. That excitement has now cooled with the news that the newly-discovered print lacks the very important prologue set on the mainland. As they say, you can read about it here at the SFX website. Just the same, director Robin Hardy is promoting this new copy as his Final Cut. Hardy's casual dismissal of the mainland prologue material doesn't fly: knowing the background of Edward Woodward's Officer Howie character is essential to a full understanding of the movie's sly comparison of Christian and Pagan beliefs. Unlike the tightly-knit believers on Summerisle, the faithful Howie is something of a pariah on the permissive mainland, a local joke. Everyone's sorry that the full Wicker Man remains stubbornly out of reach, but let's not pretend that all is well. As I say from time to time, FUDGE.

And also, the news is several days old but if you're as uninformed as I it will still be of interest: correspondent Stefan Andersson sends along a link to a Variety article by Scott Foundas about a copy of Buster Keaton's The Blacksmith. What's so special? A big section of the comedy short subject is completely different, with different gags, than the standard version seen since 1922. It was found in Argentina by historian Fernando Martín Peña.

Thanks for reading. I'm taking a nap! -- Glenn Erickson



July 20, 2013

Savant's new reviews today are:

The Cat and the Fiddle

Jeanette MacDonald's first MGM film pairs her with the charming Ramon Novarro in a simple yet endearing musical romance. They're competing composer-singers that form a perfect union, only to be split up by an amorous patron of the arts, played by Frank Morgan. The movie makes a try for a Lubitsch feel but comes up with something quite different. The experimental Technicolor conclusion (in 1934) is strangely flat but the live-sound musical numbers are warm and charming. From The Warner Archive Collection.
7/20/13

Lord of the Flies
Blu-ray

The 1963 version. Stage legend Peter Brook tackles William Golding's ferocious novel about school kids reverting to savagery, filming on a shoestring in B&W on an island off Puerto Rico. "Kill the Pig! Spill her blood!" Working with non-actors and minus special effects (or even lights), the film conveys most of the impact of the book. Extras include many home movies from the set, and rare interviews with the director and the author. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
7/20/13

and

War on Whistleblowers

Robert Greenwald's documentary lets journalists and analysts discuss the dangerous conflict between The Free Press and the National Security State in regard to the immense public service performed by four whistleblowers from the last decade. They uncovered waste and incompetence in the Pentagon, and publicized secret programs of wholesale illegal wiretapping & surveillance initiated by the new Homeland Security power monolith. A thoughtful examination of a debate excluded from the media and marginalized by the government. From Disinformation.
7/20/13




Hello!

Some fun links for the weekend: Joe Dante circulated a URL for a really good Slackstory video montage on the NBC News page called Movies in the Movies. The nicely edited piece is a round-up of bits of feature films in which people are in theaters watching... other feature films. It's a classy montage -- they skipped John Travolta acting like an idiot watching Touch of Evil in Get Shorty. The effect is nostalgia for the dimming tradition of movie-going itself.

The irreplaceable Gary Teetzel is off waiting in interminable lines at Comic-con, but that's no reason not to post a really great item he found on the blastr page, from a previous panel discussion with voiceover actor Jim Cummings. It's called, or should be called, Vader the Pooh. Further elaboration should be unnecessary.

And helpful correspondent Russ Fischer sends along this animated HISHE YouTube piece that I thought was pretty wonderful too ... How Man of Steel Should Have Ended.

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson



July 15, 2013

Savant's new reviews today are:

Wild Bill:
Hollywood Maverick

The man is William A. Wellman, who survived flying with the Lafayette Escadrille to live one of the more colorful careers in Hollywood history. Wellman broke into film work by crashing Mary Pickford & Douglas Fairbanks' weekend house party by landing his airplane on their front lawn! The director of Wings, Nothing Sacred and The High and The Mighty appears in interviews and TV clips; the docu examines his films as well as his own personal story. From Kino Classics.
7/16/13

and

A Boy and His Dog
Blu-ray

Adapted from a book by Harlan Ellison, this adult Sci-fi from L.Q. Jones shapes up as perhaps the first fully imagined tale of life in a post-apocalyptic future. Desert scavengers Vic (Don Johnson) and Blood (his shaggy dog) exchange messages and insults via telepathic thought waves. It's a feral, nasty existence out there, and the foolhardy Vic falls easy prey to a promise of unlimited sex in Topeka, which is now a cult of survivors living underground. With a new, hour-long interview with Jones and Ellison. In Blu-ray + DVD from Shout! Factory.
7/16/13




Hello!

It's time to see what's cooking on the upcoming review forecast. July tends to be a somewhat slow month, as those home video people back from their Spring vacations are quick to slip out the door on their longer Summer vacations. Yet plenty is happening. In standard DVD I have in hand Robert Greenwald's War on Whistleblowers (Disinformation) and from The Warner Archive Collection The Cat and the Fiddle (a Jeanette MacDonald -Ramon Novarro musical), Terror on a Train (with Glenn Ford) and The Silver Chalice (with Paul Newman). The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausecsu (Kino Lorber) is a fascinating docu composed entirely of Romanian propaganda newsreels, and Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show Vault Series Volume 1 (The Carson Entertainment Group) contains an all-star 10th anniversary broadcast (with original commercials) from 1972.

Blu-rays on the upcoming list are just as eclectic: The New Zealand drama Boy and Erich von Stroheim's Foolish Wives (Kino Lorber), the Danish masterpiece Babette's Feast and the original Lord of the Flies (The Criterion Collection), the chick flick Sleepless in Seattle (Twilight Time) and Luc Besson's remarkable The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec (Shout! Factory).

I shouldn't list discs that are 'expected', to avoid a jinx... however... we're hoping that Criterion's Seconds has both versions, and that Warners/Paramount's Shane will blow away previous copies (I've never seen George Stevens' film looking really great). We also hope that VCI's White Zombie will have better luck, quality-wise, than did Kino's disc from earlier this year. I also need to be more vigilant - last month I let a couple of desirable VCI discs slip away: The Name of the Game is Kill! and Carnival Story -- and readers took me to task for promising them. I'll try to be more careful!

Thanks for reading -- Glenn Erickson



July 12, 2013

Savant's new reviews today are:

Shark!
Blu-ray

Five years removed from the feature directing chair, Sam Fuller hired on to write and produce a cynical treasure hunt drama to be filmed in Mexico. A good cast -- Burt Reynolds, Silvia Pinal, Arthur Kennedy, Barry Sullivan -- and some great underwater photography are definite assets, but Fuller was double-crossed by his producers, who recut and restructured the picture into a form that he disowned. Just the same, we can tell that this is a Sam Fuller picture in every scene. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
7/12/13

and

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing
Blu-ray

Fox's 1955 blockbuster is a sweeping romance with the ingredients audiences craved: big stars William Holden and Jennifer Jones, and Hong Kong for an exotic CinemaScope background. A Eurasian doctor and an American correspondent visit great restaurants and take sexy swims together. But arrayed against them are Cold War politics, colonial prejudices and her inner struggle with confining traditions. It's all acccompanied by the lush, slightly overcooked theme song, which became even more popular than the movie itself. In Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
7/12/13




Hello!

Some good links tonight! Correspondent - critic Sergio Mims sends along a link to a terrific Forbes article: it reinforces my own opinion and says what I want to hear: Six Reasons Why DVDs Still Make Money and Won't Die Anythime Soon.

Special reader Jaci Spuhler sends a link to an essential artistic embellishment of a classic by Stanley Kubrick: Two Recreated Scenes from Dr. Strangelove. It's very sophisticated stuff.

I almost don't want to post this one. If Vanity Fair thinks this montage is hip or insightful, they're mistaken. It's a The Film Snob's Dictionary Entry on American-International Pictures. They define a Film Snob as a "person for whom the actual enjoyment of movies is secondary to knowing more about them than you do." Whoever wrote this knows next to nothing about A.I.P. -- nobody trashes exploitation films any more, based on the premise that they're pretending to be art and are therefore pretentious. What a maroon! What an Eskimo Pie!

Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson



July 09, 2013

Savant's new reviews today are:

The Life of Oharu
Blu-ray

One of the most impressive Japanese classics, Kenji Mizoguchi's sad epic about a 17th century lady of Kyoto is a scathing criticism of gender politics. Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) makes the mistake of acting on a romantic impulse, an affront to 'protocol and decorum' that destroys every attempt she makes at happiness. Also starring a nearly unrecognizable Toshiro Mifune as Oharu's true love. With a fascinating documentary about Ms. Tanaka's goodwill tour to Hawaii and America in 1949. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
7/09/13

Fall Guy

Producer Walter Mirisch's first credited film is a Loser Noir thriller of modest means but shrewd judgment: the story is by Cornell Woolrich and the talented leading player is Clifford (actually Leo) Penn, the father of Sean Penn. A foolish guy lets himself be drugged by a blonde he meets at a party, and before he knows it he's framed for a murder. This is the notorious Monogram murder thriller with the pop-up corpse in the closet. From The Warner Archive Collection.
7/09/13

and

The File on Thelma Jordon
Blu-ray

A far more expensive noir concoction is this Hal Wallis production with Wendell Corey as an alcoholic District Attorney and Barbara Stanwyck as the woman who sizes him up as the perfect patsy for her plan -- or is she really in love with him? Director Robert Siodmak generates a 'domestic noir' feel of entrapment and disillusion -- Corey's romantic crisis threatens to ruin his marriage and his career yet he can't be bothered to care. It's a highly regarded, somewhat dulled-down Loser Noir. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
7/09/13




Hello!

Dick Dinman has a pair of new radio shows to audit, accessible on the web. Both use interviews with WB executive and Warner Archive Collection originator George Feltenstein to discuss interesting new product. Those Legendary Warner Bros. Gangsters delves into last Spring's Ultimate Gangster Collection Classic Blu-ray box, that presented four vintage favorites in razor-sharp HD. Revisiting Forbidden Hollywood checks out the Pre-Code delights of the Forbidden Hollywood Collections Volume 6 and Volume 7, with special attention to how the titles are chosen and the careful attention that is used in their restoration. I only wish other studios' vintage classics were treated as well.

Mister Dinman's efforts are also lauded in a Greenbriar Picture Shows post, by John McElwee. Dick was a Hollywood film booker in the 1960s and '70s, and in Greenbriar's Monday, July 8 post he recounts some difficulties his theater chain had booking Warren Beatty's Bonnie & Clyde, back in 1967.

Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson



July 06, 2013

Savant's new reviews today are:

The Painted Veil

MGM simplifies W. Somerset Maugham's novel and makes all the characters noble to the point of unreality. But Greta Garbo brings it all back to life again, with a face that records every fleeting emotion. A Viennese girl make a hasty marriage, relocates to Hong Kong and then falls in love with her husband's best friend. And don't forget the cholera epidemic and the riots. George Brent and Herbert Marshall are the men in her life, but it's Garbo's movie all the way. From The Warner Archive Collection.
7/06/13

and

Retreat, Hell!
Blu-ray

This supposedly minor Joseph H. Lewis turns out to be the least hectoring Korean War combat picture -- that means it's also the best. Frank Lovejoy and Richard Carlson are WW2 veterans back in USMC uniform to shepherd the kids drafted to fight the North Koreans and Red Chinese. The big center of interest is 17 year-old Russ (Rusty) Tamblyn, who is excellent as a Marine recruit who hits a few snags earning his Red Badge of Courage. Leave it to director Lewis to make old war picture clichés exciting again. Made while the war was still in progress. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
7/06/13




Hello!

Joe Dante forwards an interesting article about The Making of John Carpenter's The Thing, written by one of its producers Stuart Cohen. The story is still a bit confusing but we get a good notion of how Carpenter reworked his picture in mid-shoot, and how all those 'greasy grimy gopher guts' special effects became the tail wagging the dog. (I still think they're great, though...)

By the way, after just mentioning it a week or so ago, the Trailers from Hell site is undergoing major changes. I don't know if they've completely switched over yet, but they've installed a different video delivery system, with a bigger window. Looks very polished now, although the site always got an A+ for graphics.

Correspondent Russ Fischer hits us with another great film-related docu viewable on YouTube. Writing with Light: Vittorio Storaro lets one mull over the Italian cinematographer's theories about light and color, amid a lot of vintage Storaro film clips. I'm getting plenty of reader responses about earlier links to Bernard Herrmann, 20th Century Great and The History of Aspect Ratios, but nothing compared to the excitement generated by the George Pal daily outtake rolls ... see the July 2 main page column, just below.

And frequent correspondent Edward Sullivan sends along a great little link, a piano recital of Bernard Herrmann's suite, A Portrait of Hitch, transcribed by John Ogden... it's very nicely done.

Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson



July 02, 2013

Savant's new reviews today are:

Champion
Blu-ray

Kirk Douglas wasn't always the athletic tough guy. His breakout 'physical' hit is this Stanley Kramer-Carl Foreman concoction about an ambitious prizefighter who doublecrosses everybody who loves him or gives him a break. With great performances from Arthur Kennedy and Paul Stewart, and a Trifecta of alluring female talent -- Ruth Roman, Marilyn Maxwell and Lola Albright. This is no Body and Soul -- individual egotism is the villain, not society. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
5/02/13

and

Shoah
Blu-ray

Claude Lanzmann's nine-hour, 26-minute epic documentary on the Holocaust is unmatched in its field -- with no vintage film footage or recreations, Lanzmann probes the memories of survivors, observers and the SS perpetrators, to record the truth of events in a way beyond doubt or critical denial. The lengthy, largely uncut interviews reveal as much about the speakers as they say about the events they describe. With extras -- particularly three additional Lanzmann documentaries -- that greatly expand the scope of the film's mission. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
5/02/13




Hello! Some great links to offer DVD Savant readers today!

First, continental contact Guido Bibra sends along History of Aspect Ratios, a pretty good guide, at least visually, to the major developments in AR Evolution. Some important wrinkles are skipped, there are too many lengthy film clips (including a North by Northwest clip that looks grossly misframed) and the really interesting stuff -- the multitude of funky late-'50s film formats -- is just skipped. But hey, the graphics showing the use of real estate on 35mm and 70mm film are very helpful, and John Hess is a lively and entertaining host.

Avid correspondent Craig Reardon gives us a link for Bernard Herrmann, 20th Century Great, a really good, musically intense show about film composers in general and Herrmann in particular. I won't claim that I personally learned a lot, as musical information tends to go in my left ear and out my right, without stopping. But it was fascinating stuff all the way.

Finally, I'm grateful to correspondent David Faltskog, who really really made my day with links to three Incredible George Pal Special Effects Outtake Reels. These look like transfers from prints in the Paramount stock footage library -- back in the '80s when looking for footage of stars and planets for a TRW commercial, I remember accessing other original special effects outs and trims from Pal movies.

See! -- plenty of footage of the spaceship model (including a shot where it runs off the rails!) in a selection of When Worlds Collide Effects Outtakes.

See! -- Martian fighting machines blast away, with scratched film substituting for animation effects and superimpositions not yet composited, in War of the Worlds Effects Outtakes.

See! -- a really feeble War of the Worlds TV presentation to sell Paramount on the idea of an updated TV show. I think we saw this at Trumbull's place in the 1970s, and it wasn't very impressive then, either.

Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson


Don't forget to write Savant at [email protected].

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