The folks at 3-D Film Archive have done it again, unearthing and restoring titles even more obscure than the bountiful treasures of 3-D Rarities. Volume II, better organized as a complete program, a full evening's worth of 3-D entertainment, again offers impressive fixes of sometimes dicey extant film elements and, from a historical and technical perspective, everything here is utterly fascinating, even when the movies are just so-so.

As movies, Volume II's lineup is a bit less impressive this time out, shorts and a feature that are great fun to watch in 3-D but generally not the kind of thing you'd want to sit through "flat." However, this is more than compensated by inspired new content: narrated presentations of 3-D photographs that, in some ways, are the highlight of this show.

Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73817 Wed, 22 May 2019 17:58:24 UTC Highly Recommended

Until now, Flying Clipper (1962) was one of the most obscure, near-impossible to see films of the big screen, 70mm era. A West German-produced travelogue, it was released there (and now on Blu-ray and 4K UHD) as Flying Clipper - Traimreise unter weissen Segeln ("Flying Clipper - A Dream Trip Under White Sails"). In late 1964 smalltime distributor Continental began release of an English-dubbed version in the U.S., retitled Mediterranean Holiday, and narrated by Burl Ives.

The movie was photographed in MCS 70 (Modern Cinema Systems), a 65mm/70mm process developed in Germany but nearly identical to Todd-AO and Super Panavision 70. Confusingly, the process is also sometimes called Superpanorama 70 and, in some markets, it was exhibited in Wonderama, using a special projection lens designed to maximize sharpness when shown on deeply-curved screens. In other places it was exhibited in...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73809 Mon, 29 Apr 2019 18:40:05 UTC Highly Recommended

An all but "lost" Cinerama film, unseen by the general public for nearly half a century, The Golden Head (1964) is a movie this writer has been anxious to see since the 1980s, when I first became aware of it in Robert E. Carr and R.M. Hayes's book Wide Screen Movies. A U.S.-Hungarian production, it premiered in Hungary in December 1964 and in London the following spring, but had few other European engagements and was never released in the United States at all. Apparently, it wasn't until Cinerama Inc.'s restoration, supervised by David Strohmaier, that it received limited public showings in America, beginning in 2012.

The reason for its disappearance was simple: the movie received tepid reviews and bombed in London, playing less than two months before it was unceremoniously pulled. (The more popular Cinerama releases ran six months or more, the biggest hits more than two years.) Mislea...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73334 Mon, 24 Sep 2018 19:47:56 UTC Highly Recommended

Ed Cullen (Lee J. Cobb) knows a thing or two about disposing of a bullet-riddled corpse.

[click on the thumbnail to enlarge]

He is, after all, a lieutenant with San Francisco Homicide. The body has scarcely hit the floor before he's concocted a plan. There's little point in telling the truth, no matter how dead certai...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/72759 Tue, 30 Jan 2018 15:08:39 UTC Skip It

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States and one of the most popular. Born in 1858, Roosevelt grew up in a wealthy family and suffered from asthma at an early age; in contrast to his weak physical condition, young Teddy devoted his childhood to books and learning, particularly the subject of nature. His strength in school led him to Harvard, where he improved his physique through boxing and other sports. Roosevelt also enjoyed writing and finished his first of 18 books at the age of 24; around the same time, his budding political career grew when he became a State Assemblyman. Durin...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/72378 Tue, 12 Sep 2017 20:20:15 UTC Highly Recommended Reviewed by Glenn Erickson Many discs of 1925's The Lost World have been released, but this may be the first to achieve a satisfactory restoration. The silent film was the first feature-length prehistoric fantasy to combine live action and elaborate stop-motion models. Retaining the basic story idea of the popular 1912 book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the movie adds a romantic subplot to augment Doye's original 'knightly errand' for a damsel who turns out to be unworthy. The show became the template for dozens of 'lost world' stories to follow; it captured the imagination of millions and increased the popularity of dinosaurs. Even the inferior 1960 Irwin Allen version was a matinee hit, and sent all of us pre-teens to read the original book. As a teenager I studied every frame of my 8mm digest ve...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/72175 Fri, 23 Jun 2017 21:45:36 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series One of the most damaging ways underrepresented or minority groups have their influence or authority in the world eroded is also the simplest: erasure. Erasure is devious because it relies only on the passage of time and people's unconscious (but socially biased) interpretation of what constitutes historical importance. In 2017, director Patty Jenkins, following a stunning 14-year gap between features (her debut was 2003's Monster, a massive financial success that won Charlize Theron an Academy Award), became the first woman in film history to direct a movie with a budget of over $100m. Given how many $100m+ productions are made by Hollywood every month, much less every year, that statistic is mind-boggling in and of itself, but the injustice of it is only further emphasized by Flicker Alley's essential "Early Women Filmmakers" box set, which provides a crucial, erasure-reversing look at the wo...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/72032 Tue, 02 May 2017 19:05:25 UTC Rent It Behind the Door is a 1919silent-film feature. The film is from director Irvin Willat (The False Faces). The film isproduced by Thomas H. Ince (The Coward,Civilization). The film opens with Oscar Krug (Hobart Bosworth), who is an American ofGerman ancestry. The story is set during war and Krug is subjected tocriticism and outrage from his fellow Americans for having Germanancestry. Krug nonetheless works with the navy and sets out to be apatriotic American. Alice Morse (Jane Novak), Oscar's wife, becomes kidnapped by LieutenantBrandt (Wallace Beery), who is a German officer and commander. ...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/71690 Fri, 06 Jan 2017 21:22:39 UTC Recommended Released near the end of Clara Bow's massive career in silent film, Frank Lloyd's Children of Divorce (1927) doubles as an early launch pad for future Western icon Gary Cooper. This brisk, 70-minute production was one of six films Bow starred in that year; it's often overshadowed by the career-cementing It and WWI drama Wings, the first recipient of a Best Picture Oscar just over two yea...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/71548 Tue, 22 Nov 2016 20:40:29 UTC Highly Recommended If you're at all familiar with the three-panel, curved-screen Cinerama format and its first five travelogues released between 1952 and 1958 (This is Cinerama, Cinerama Holiday, Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/71547 Mon, 21 Nov 2016 23:55:08 UTC Recommended Reviewed by Glenn Erickson And Now for Something Completely Different, or, There's Always Something New to Learn. The excellent Flicker Alley series of Cinerama restorations dazzle us with their technical virtuosity and inform us of the series' function as propaganda in the Cold War. Project mastermind David Strohmeier deserves some kind of award. On the flip side of the Cold War's military standoff was a dirty trade & commerce war, waged wherever Russian and American desires to sew up foreign markets conflicted. We propped up South American juntas to guarantee privileges for American companies, while the Russians put enormous resources into convincing the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia that they'd benefit from better trade relations from the Soviet bloc. If Pakistan or Liberia sponsored a trade fair, U.S. and Russian vendors would be elbowing each other l...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/70787 Thu, 12 May 2016 01:41:06 UTC Highly Recommended The Movie: Byron Haskin directs the 1949 thriller Too Late For Tears, a strong film noir entry that stars the beautiful Lizabeth Scott as Jane Palmer, a housewife who lives with her husband, Alan (Arthur Kennedy). When we meet the couple they're driving their convertible out to visit some friends one night when a passing car tosses a bag at them which lands in the back seat. They pull over and Jane opens the bag to find that it's stuffed with cash. Just then, another car shows up and Jane takes charging, grabbing the wheel from her husband and driving them out of what she rightly assumes will be danger. When they make it home, they talk amongst themselves as to what to do with the loot. Alan wants to give it to the cops, Jane wants to keep it. She sweet talks him into letting it stay with them for a few days, to see what happens, before going to the fuzz. The next mo...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/70788 Wed, 11 May 2016 00:28:09 UTC Recommended The Movie: Directed by Norman Foster in 1950, Woman On The Run begins with a scene where a man named Frank Johnson (Ross Elliott) is out walking his dog one night on the streets of San Francisco. Completely by chance, he witnesses a mob hit go down. Once he learns that the victim was a witness to an important trial, Frank goes into hiding. The police know he saw it happen and want to talk to him in hopes of convincing him to testify against not only the hitman but his mob boss employer as well. Hoping to find him, the cops question Frank's wife, Eleanor (Ann Sheridan), but learn that she and he aren't exactly the epitome of marital bliss. She assumes his disappearance is because he wants to get away from her. Inspector Ferris (Robert Keith) does what he can to find out what happened to Frank, while Eleanor hits it off with Danny Leggett (Dennis O'Keefe), a nosey repo...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/70375 Sat, 27 Feb 2016 13:39:46 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series The Movie: In an era when film audiences were so engaged that they might get into a brawl decrying or defending a new work of cinema, Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine ("The Inhuman Woman") left an indelible mark on quite a few viewers (and movie theaters) in 1924. What's most fascinating about the reported riots that the film incited is that, unlike similar incidents sparked by the anti-religious, anti-bourgeois flick L'Age d'Or, these dust-ups were purely over aesthetic concerns. The conflict essentially boiled down to: is this trendy claptrap or real art? Battles like this continue to rage in film buff circles over the value of certain filmmakers, but can y...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/69664 Sun, 22 Nov 2015 19:13:12 UTC Highly Recommended The Shorts: Today it's hard to realize just how popular Charlie Chaplin was backin the heyday of silent films. There is no current equivalent, andthe magnitude of his fame has never really been equaled since.Chaplin's Tramp character was a world-wide sensation since his filmswere easily exported to non-English speaking countries. His movieswere in such high demand that scores of Chaplin imitators emerged,there were Chaplin imitation contests, he was the first actor to befeatured on the cover of Time Magazine, and he was one of thehighest paid people (of any profession) in the country in the1910's. His films are still immensely popular today and the lasttime I saw a Chaplin film on the big screen, it sold out the theaterwhere it was showing. His features are being released by C...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/69629 Thu, 12 Nov 2015 17:43:36 UTC Highly Recommended The Movie: William Gillette's filmed version of his Sherlock Holmes stage play was shot in the United States and played theatrically in 1916. After it ran its course, it was then shipped off to France where it was recut to cash in on the serials that were popular in Parisian theaters at that time. It played French theaters in 1919 and was never seen again. For the better part of the last century, the film was believed to be lost. There were no known elements to be found and for that reason the movie never received a revival screening, let alone a home video release. Considering that in his day, Gillette was considered the definitive Holmes (having played the character on stage more than thirteen hundred times!) this was very much a missing link in the cinematic history of the world's greatest detective. In 2014, film cans containing the dupe negative that was shipped off to Fr...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/69507 Sun, 11 Oct 2015 14:07:09 UTC Highly Recommended The Movies: Though I can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in movies,it wasn't until I was leaving high school and starting college thatI really got into film. When I discovered that there was more thanthe Hollywood fare offered at the local multiplex I dove into seeingas many art films as I could, and between screenings I'd read up onmovies. I soon stumbled upon references to 'avant-garde' movies, butthey were nearly impossible to find back in the VHS days. Sure, thebooks and articles would describe the movies, but these descriptionsdid not come close to the real thing and were often hard tounderstand. What does "a visual representation of sound" look like?I eventually tracked down and was able to see the major avant-gardefilms but even today it is hard to find these films. Sure, Image putout a great collection in 2005, Unseen Cinema - Early AmericanAvant-Garde Film 1894-1941...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/68411 Mon, 22 Jun 2015 22:52:59 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series The Movie: The bravura day-in-the-life-of-Russia silent The Man with the Movie Camera has been endlessly discussed in film studies classes, picked apart by critcs, and ranked near the tops of innumberable "Best Of" lists. Dziga Vertov's pioneering documentary has a place in film history, but how well do we know the actual man with the movie camera? Flickr Alley's Blu Ray release Dzinga Vertov: The Man with the Movie Camera attempts to shed some light on this Soviet master - not only does it have a lovingly restored, pristine version of his most iconic film, it also includes four other 1924-34 propaganda films which give a full picture of this inventive filmmaker. The films on Dzinga Vertov: The Man with the Movie Camera reveal a dazzling film craftsman who had one foot in the European Avant Garde, the other in the Communist dogma of his hero, Vladimir Lenin. Post-Revolut...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/68160 Sun, 21 Jun 2015 10:19:20 UTC Highly Recommended In 10 Words or Less Little-seen voyages into the third dimension Reviewer's Bias* Loves: Good 3D movies Likes: Archival releases Dislikes: Bad 3D Hates: Home 3D naysayers The Movies When I bought a new television a year or so ago, one of the main things I wanted in it was 3D. I love the immersive feel of good 3D, and wanted to enjoy that at home. Since then, I've grown a healthy collection of titles which I enjoy watching, as I don't mind putting on a pair of glasses to get something more from a movie. Sure, there are terrible cash grabs, which add 3D as an afterthought in order to boost box office totals, but there are great ones as well, like its use in The LEGO Movie. Like with all movies, the...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/68869 Fri, 05 Jun 2015 11:35:40 UTC Recommended For years the famous Russian science fiction film Aelita (Аэли́та, 1924) was difficult to see. The Soviet government frowned on its lazy polemics, and most in the west were aware of the film only through a handful of extremely tantalizing stills showcasing the picture's striking constructivist sets and costumes. Finally though, Aelita (here called Aelita, The Queen of Mars on the box but not the movie) did appear, in a 1991 Kino International VHS release. My memory is a little hazy, but I'm pretty certain it was released to laserdisc soon after, which is how I remember pal Charlie Ziarko and I watching it a year or two after that. Like many others who'd waited years to see it, we were dazzled by the Mars sets and costumes, but notably underwhelmed by everything else. Nonetheless, more than 20 years later, I was anxious to see Flicker Alley's new manufactured-on-dem...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/68857 Tue, 02 Jun 2015 23:36:01 UTC Highly Recommended Part of Flicker Alley's welcome new line of manufactured-on-demand silent classics, The Lost World (1925) is a shrewd early title to lead off with. The still-entertaining fantasy adventure is famous for its stop-motion dinosaurs and other special visual effects by pioneering animator Willis O'Brien, eight years before O'Brien did even better work for the classic King Kong. Adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 same-named novel (Doyle briefly appears as himself in the film's prologue), the movie served as the template for innumerable imitators and remakes, including producer-director Irwin Allen's gaudy, ludicrous 1960 film of the same name, and the vaguely related The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), from director Steven Spielberg. Flicker Alley's release, produced for DVD by Serge Bromberg and David Shepard, is at 93 minutes a good half-hour longer than most previously ava...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/67684 Sat, 04 Apr 2015 23:35:50 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series The Serial: I love silent film and really like serials too, so when a silentserial (of which there are very few that still exist in theircomplete state) is released, I get really excited. So it's naturalthat I'd have be eager to screen The House of Mystery, a10-part, six and a half hour serial released in 1923 from France'sAlbatros Productions that has just made its way to DVD thanks toBlackhawk Films and Flicker Alley. As high as my expectations were,they were surpassed by this excellent series that is filled withdrama, action, and some impressive filmmaking. Regine (Helene Darly) is the adult daughter of factory owners andlives ...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/65507 Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:57:25 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series Physical media dead? Don't tell me that in a year that has seen more virtually lost movies rescued from oblivion and splendiferously restored for Blu-ray: a reconstructed original cut of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, rescued and revitalized titles from the 3-D Film Archives (Dragonfly Squadron and The Bubble), restored versions of 55 Days at Peking, The Sicilian Clan, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Mack Sennett shorts, and Betty Boop Cartoons immediately come to mind. Few Blu-rays, however, have been as hotly anticipated by this reviewer as David Strohmaier's restored Cinerama movies, released by Flicker Alley. In this era of insatiable instant gratification, it's worth remembering that these once hugely popular features were impossible to see at all, in any form, for nearly half a century. Filmed in the groundbreaking but technologically complex three-panel Ci...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/65508 Wed, 19 Nov 2014 01:47:06 UTC Recommended Please Note: The screen shots accompanying this review come from the DVD portion of Cinerama's Search for Paradise. The Movie: The kitschy travelogue Search for Paradise whisks viewers off on a distant journey involving dangerous rocky mountain pathways, turbulent river rapids, a spectacular royal coronation, and, uh, lots of military aircraft. This 1957 release was the fourth film made in the pre-IMAX big screen format known as Cinerama, which emerged five years earlier as the first serious widescreen cinema process to lure audiences away from their television sets. As with Flicker Alley's other reissues of Cinerama films, the impressively packaged Blu Ray/DVD combo pack of Search for Paradise ...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/64610 Mon, 01 Sep 2014 13:18:26 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series Any good film critic/historian worth his salt tries to experience as many movies of all kinds as humanly possible. One simply can't write intelligently about Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) without an awareness of the influences of John Ford's seminal John Wayne Western The Searchers (1956), for instance, just as The Right Stuff (1983) is essentially a brilliant reworking of another Ford-Wayne film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). And how can one even begin to understand the entire filmography of Quentin Tarantino without first seeing the spaghetti Westerns, Euro-war movies, Yakuza thrillers, and Jack Hill-directed Blaxploitation pictures that so inform his oeuvre? I had long considered myself something of an authority of classic film comedy. Over the years I've watched and re-watched (and re-watched) practically every surviving feature and short by Chaplin, ...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/64604 Sun, 24 Aug 2014 23:35:53 UTC Highly Recommended Please Note: The screen shots used here are taken from the DVD portion of Chaplin's Mutual Comedies. The Movies: Like The Beatles in 1964 or Michael Jackson in 1983, Chaplin's Mutual Comedies 1916-17 gives you Charlie Chaplin, Pop Culture Icon at the peak of his popularity. In these airy slapstick comedies, Chaplin is balletic, mischievous, quick-witted, and physically adept - yet having a subtlety and expressiveness lacking in his fellow silent clowns. Flicker Alley's spiffy two-Blu Ray, three-DVD set contains all twelve of the two-reel comedies Chaplin made at the Mutual studio in 1916-17, restored and presented with multiple soundtracks, copious annotations and documentaries on the little guy's en...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/64690 Tue, 15 Jul 2014 19:43:47 UTC Recommended The Movies: I love early cinema for a lot of reasons: you can see filmmakerscreating the language of film as time goes on, the movies themselvescan be magnificent, and the creativity is often astounding, just toname a few. One of the main things that draws me to the early days offilm is that it's a window on the past. No only can you see monumentsplaces that no longer exist, but movies have often documented a way oflife that has largely disappeared. It's amazing to see just how peoplelived a century ago: what they put in an ice box, how they dressed, andwhat social customs they embraced. For others that enjoy the historicalaspect of movies Flicker Alley, in association with Blackhawk Films,has just released a wonderful collection - We're in the Movies. This setincludes a pair of documentaries (Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/63435 Mon, 31 Mar 2014 17:14:51 UTC Recommended Click onan image to view the Blu-ray screenshotwith 1080p resolution The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of the most famous storiesever told. The basis of this film version (and the many otheradaptations that have happened throughout decades) is the novel byaut...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62032 Mon, 11 Nov 2013 00:11:26 UTC Highly Recommended Please Note: The screen shots accompanying this review come from the DVD portion of Cinerama Holiday. The Movie: Vegas roulette tables and slot machines, Parisian can-can girls, ice capades, a county fair, yodelers, hotshot Navy pilots - viewing the 1955 production Cinerama Holiday is like being part of a schizophrenic slide show at your senile grandparents' home. This beautifully photographed widescreen travelogue is very quaint and of-its-time, yet the sheer magnitude of it still has the power to astonish. As a demonstration of what widescreen cinema was capable of, it can't be beaten. Like their previous release...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62020 Sat, 09 Nov 2013 19:40:18 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series Let me say this right up front: you're going to want to get this. Cinerama South Seas Adventure (1958) was the last of the 1950s Cinerama films, movies never shown on television nor, until now, released to home video. In the case of Cinerama South Seas Adventure, it doesn't seem to have been shown publicly at all after the early 1960s, more than a half-century ago. Restoring these once hugely-popular but virtually lost films has been a personal crusade of many film buffs, historians, and preservationists, but it took the tenacity and ingenuity of Cinerama reconstructionist David Strohmaier to get the job done, aided by innumerable craftsmen and technicians. Via distributor Flicker Alley, the first two Cinerama Blu-ray releases, This Is Cinerama (1952) and Windjammer (1958) were issued last year to much deserved acclaim. These discs were beautifully packaged, compromised o...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51499 Fri, 09 Aug 2013 19:32:05 UTC Highly Recommended The Movies:   Flicker Alley is one of those companies, like Criterion, whoexcel at releasing high quality films. They have an amazing track record of putting out a great productandtracking down some amazing films.  Everytime they announce a title my interest is piqued, which is why I'm abitsurprised that I missed 2011's set of important silent movies LandmarksofEarly Soviet Cinema.  It's a pity too,because this set of four films from behind the Iron Curtain are fun,interesting and well worth watching. It's a set that fans of early cinema and movie buffs that enjoyforeignfilms need to track down.   The set consists of eight movies, four fiction and fourdocumentaries...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/60977 Fri, 12 Jul 2013 11:25:47 UTC Highly Recommended THE FILMS Please Note: The images used here are taken from the DVD edition included in the release, and do not directly reflect the picture quality of the Blu-ray edition under review. If you look up page for director Curtis Harrington on IMDB, you'll be confronted with an extremely checkered Hollywood filmography, one that begins promisingly enough with the personal/auteurist Dennis Hopper-starring 1962 feature Night Tide but then quickly begins a descent through a purgatory of interestingly half-rancid B-movies (like 1971's Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/60229 Tue, 07 May 2013 19:04:25 UTC Highly Recommended The Films:   In February of 1920, a group of seasoned Russian filmmakersarrived in Paris.  They had been successful in their mothercountry, but the revolution of 1917 and Lenin's subsequentnationalization ofthe film industry (and the seizure of all assets of those companies)caused thegroup to flee.  Once in France,theyformed the core of a new film studio they dubbed Albatros and startedmakingtechnically proficient and beautiful movies. While nearly impossible to see in the US fordecades, Flicker Alley, inassociation with Film Preserva...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/59473 Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:28:18 UTC Highly Recommended The Movies:   When I was young, growing up in Rochester, New York in thelate 60's/early 70's, my mother would bundle me up so I could play inthe snowwith layers of sweaters and socks, a coat, a hat and mittens an thensay "goout and have fun Nanook."  I neverthought much about it.  I just assumedthat it was one of those phrases that people used even though no oneknew whatit meant (like "hoist by your own petard"). That's a testament to the effect Robert Flaherty's 1924 film, Nanook of the North had on thecountry.  Even 50 years later, though itwas rarely (if ever) shown on TV or in wide release theatrically, itwas stillpart of the lexicon, in at least a limited sense.Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/59009 Fri, 08 Feb 2013 20:46:30 UTC Highly Recommended The Movie:   I'm a pretty big silent film buff.  Itravel from the East Coast to SanFrancisco each yearto attend the SF Silent Film Festival and I have managed to amass apretty goodcollection of silent films on DVD which I frequently enjoy.  Previous to Flicker Alley's release of The Late Mathias Pascal (1926), I hadn'tencountered French director Marcel L'Herbier or the star of the film,Russianactor Ivan Mosjoukine, so I wasn't sure what to expect. As it turns out, I was missing somethingspecial.  This film is a wonderfulexperience.  Part drama and part comedy,the film can be appreciated as a straight story or as an comment of theh...Read the entire review ]]>