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Category: Home Entertainment

Star Wars Returns to Movie Theaters

29 January 2012

Like most people I know, I was seriously disappointed in the Star Wars re-boot that creator George Lucas offered between 1999 and 2005. Of the second trilogy, I liked Attack of the Clones (2002) the best. But it was a snoozer, too, and the third and final installment, Revenge of the Sith (2005), was particularly bad. The first part of that series, The Phantom Menace (1999), arrives in movie theaters on February 10 at participating AMC Theatres for a special 3D re-release.

Besides an animated feature release called The Clone Wars (2008), the original three pictures (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi), released for the first time on DVD in 2004 as I reported here, are the only other Star Wars films and they are an historic part of 20th century American culture. Like Disney classics, the original three pictures have also been re-released in theaters, and the return of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace to theaters, now in 3D, will undoubtedly be popular among Star Wars fans of all ages. Lucasfilm announced that it will give away an all-new Hasbro Star Wars Fighter Pod with the purchase of each RealD® 3D ticket for The Phantom Menace, all weekend long, February 10-12 only at AMC Theatres (limit one per ticket, while supplies last). Lucasfilm also issued a statement that, starting Saturday, Feb. 11 at 11 a.m. local time, select movie theaters will offer activities, giveaways and interactive experiences, including (while supplies last): exclusive Anakin Skywalker Podracer 3D glasses with ticket purchase; a Hasbro Star Wars Fighter Pods collectible toy with RealD 3D ticket purchase; a Lego® promotion; a Darth Maul face-painting; special character appearances for photo opportunities and promotional demonstrations of an upcoming Xbox Kinect™ Star Wars. Additionally, these ten AMC venues in the United States will host exclusive event screenings of Phantom Menace in RealD 3D: Atlanta: AMC Southlake 24; Boston: AMC Loews Liberty Tree Mall 20; Chicago: AMC South Barrington 30; Denver: AMC Highlands Ranch 24; Orange County: AMC Tustin 14 at The District; AMC Ontario Mills 30; New York: AMC Empire 25; AMC Garden State 16; Phoenix: AMC Mesa Grand 24; San Francisco: AMC Emeryville Bay Street 16. Visit StarWars.com for more information.

I did not write reviews of the original movies (which pre-date my film journalism) or either The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones (which were released between my newspaper and online film criticism) but I succumbed to the mystique and attended opening weekends for all six movies. I must admit that, by the time I was assigned to review the last movie, the series had all but played out, as I wrote in a 2005 commentary. I disliked Phantom Menace enormously, and still do, with the needless and boring podracing and the moronic Jar-Jar Binks, whom I still joke about with friends, so there’s that (Darth Maul is the best thing about the movie). Being romantic to a fault, I enjoyed the grand-scale romance of Attack of the Clones, contrasted to the rise of fascism, and still think it holds up well compared to the others. Revenge of the Sith, was, well, the proper capstone to the whole series, which is to say it was an exercise in faith-based, malevolent monster moviemaking. While I wish the series well and respect the right of its creator to fuss with his movies all he wants (read my “George Lucas vs. the Stormtroopers“), I look to Marvel Studios and others for heroic, larger-than-life, grand-scale motion pictures, such as Captain America. Star Wars was a milestone in its day – an escape in dark, dreary times – and, if you’ve already seen The Artist and The Iron Lady, the thrilling lightsaber duel between Liam Neeson’s Jedi knight and Darth Maul (to an exciting musical score), minus the annoying bell-bottomed alien and the half-hour artificial podrace, might offer a decent value in movie theaters.

Permalink | Posted in Culture, Home Entertainment, Lucasfilm, Movies, Twentieth Century Fox

TNT Previews Dallas Reboot

1 December 2011

The long-running CBS prime-time soap opera Dallas gets a reboot next summer and Turner Network Television (TNT) is Texas proud of how it’s shaping up. Sample the new version in an extended trailer here. It’s pretty impressive, repeating the same basic family structure as the groundbreaking 1978 oil drama about the Ewing family that owns and runs a ranch called Southfork. Here, a couple of the previous series’ tykes are all grown up into good boy/bad boy rivals just like J.R. and Bobby Ewing were and I suspect the show’s success will hinge on the youths’ casting and acting abilities. They look too practiced, polished and “Hollywood” to me, and the women don’t have nearly the drive that their predecessors did (at least in the promotional clip) but time will tell. What it looks like they got right is the sense of scope and character and it might turn out better than the CBS show, made by Lorimar, which was dark, sinister and cruel. The photography here looks grand and Patrick Duffy, Larry Hagman and Linda Gray return to their original roles. J.R. still has his untamed eyebrows, Bobby’s still clean-cut and who knows if Sue Ellen has beaten her battle with the bottle. If the 21st century Dallas focuses on the men who drill for oil and aim to make money and the women who love them, and possibly their eco-minded Ewing counterparts, as the promo clip hints, it might just create enough tension to work. The series is scheduled to premiere in summer 2012.

Permalink | Posted in Home Entertainment, Television

TV: Hot in Cleveland 2

17 November 2011

After taking a look at the second season of TV Land‘s half-hour comedy, Hot in Cleveland (read my review of the first season on DVD here), which starts its third season on Nov. 30, I must say that it’s habit-forming. Though it winds up with a ridiculously over-the-top bachelorette party in anticipation of one of the characters’ wedding, the raunchy show holds up. Kind, romantic writer Melanie (Valerie Bertinelli) gets a column in Woman’s Day, vain actress Victoria (Wendie Malick) gets a spot on All My Children, sarcastic cosmetic technician Joy (Jane Leeves) gets a gig with the governor of Ohio and elderly Elka (Betty White) gets a courtroom trial and, in the funniest episode, goes underground in an Amish community. Guest stars include Leeves’ former Frasier castmates Peri Gilpin and John Mahoney, Bertinelli’s former TV mom Bonnie Franklin and Mary Tyler Moore as Elka’s cellmate. Other guest stars are a who’s who in classic comedy: Buck Henry (Heaven Can Wait), Carl Reiner (Dick Van Dyke), George Wendt (Cheers) and comedian and Tonight Show with Johnny Carson staple Don Rickles in a finale episode surprise. Also featured: John Schneider (Dukes of Hazzard), rocker Huey Lewis, Jon Lovitz (The Hoax) as a homeless man, underwear model Antonio Sabato, Jr. as a gay bar stud, Amy Sedaris (Strangers with Candy) as the governor’s wife, Sherri Shepherd (30 Rock) as a horny judge, Doris Roberts (Everybody Loves Raymond) and Jennifer Love Hewitt (Party of Five) as Victoria’s vain, well-endowed daughter. Some things work, some things don’t (Wayne Knight’s expanded character role does not) and most of the laughs reinforce the women’s bonds without coming at the expense of men, good taste and good values. It’s raunchy but, at the center, sarcastic Hot in Cleveland evokes the Rust Belt Midwest it sends up: good work ethic, cheerful if biting humor and four tough but tender individuals holding on to shared middle class values in difficult times. Of course, it’s sillier than that, with soap opera plot points involving lost children, prisoner pen pals and adopted dogs, but the redemptive theme comes through. Part of why the show succeeds: unlike most of what’s on TV, it doesn’t feel rushed and, like Frasier, which was far superior, it bases the humor on what ought to be taken seriously and it doesn’t always go for the joke.

Permalink | Posted in Home Entertainment, Television

TV: Glee, Season 2

21 September 2011

With ratings for the third season’s opener good but down, and Hollywood insiders blaming the second season’s stories, I thought I’d take a look at the second season of Fox’s Glee on DVD. It’s uneven, though I do recommend the season and the DVD. Read my review of the first season of Fox’s Glee to know how much I liked it.

First, the negatives: songs lack an emotional, organic connection to characters and plots, key characters are lost in unfocused, agenda-driven episodes, and there’s absolutely no energy, enthusiasm or suspense for the vocal choir competition that powers the Lima, Ohio, William McKinley High School glee club’s sense of purpose. Staying with the episodes takes effort, unlike the first season when you couldn’t wait to see the next one. The positives are pretty positive: a few serious issues (atheism, bullying, sexual orientation) are explored with thought-provoking themes, humor and perfectly (if sporadically) suited tunes, and a few performances are outstanding. Among Glee‘s second season highlights: Kurt (Chris Colfer) singing the Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” as a non-romantic ballad about his father (Mike O’Malley) in the season’s best performance, a “mashup” of “C’mon Get Happy” and “Happy Days Are Here Again”, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, and gay kid Kurt singing the duet “Baby It’s Cold Outside” with his romantic interest, preparatory schoolmate Blaine (Darren Criss). The New Directions choir sings Fleetwood Mac songs in an episode that works, a Rocky Horror tribute which makes no sense, and guest stars, especially Gwyneth Paltrow, detract from the core cast.

Directing and writing is off-key, with characters such as cheerleader Quinn (Dianna Agron) behaving as if their story arcs never happened, and Glee is at its best when the song advances the story, the story is moved by characters we care about, and characters are consistent. Cast additions are fine, though they don’t add much. Mannish Sue (Jane Lynch) is positively psychotic, veering from warm and friendly at Christmas to sociopath in back to back episodes, and glee club teacher Will (Matthew Morrison) is dumbed down and lost in the din of convoluted plots. Neurotic Emma (Jayma Mays) is dumbed down and she’s hardly in the show this season. There’s too much Brittany (Heather Morris), not enough Principal Figgins (Iqbal Theba) and Kurt and his dad are the most involving subplot, while others are variously too cruel, precocious, and callous. But when Glee is on, it’s right on, with music, glamor, and the spirit of youth in song.

Permalink | Posted in Home Entertainment, Music, Television

TV: Hot in Cleveland

12 September 2011

Primarily because it features actresses from some of my favorite TV sitcoms, I decided to check out the first season of TV Land’s first scripted situation comedy, Hot in Cleveland, on DVD. I don’t find much on TV (other than Turner Classic Movies) to like, so this original half-hour cable series, already approved for a third season, is a pleasant surprise.

When three working women friends from Los Angeles crash land in Cleveland, Ohio, during a trip to Paris, they end up in a bar where men find them attractive and people seem less affected and pretentious than they do in L.A. So, they decide to stay. The culture clash continues to fuel the comedy thereafter in this entertaining new show created and produced by those who made NBC’s classic 1990s’ sitcom, Frasier, which is the last comedy I watched regularly on TV.

Here, we have Hot in Cleveland‘s moral center, Melanie, Mel for short, played perfectly as usual by all-American Valerie Bertinelli (Barbara Cooper on One Day at a Time), a divorced writer who leads the trio towards a post-40s fresh start in the Midwest, Joy (Jane Leeves, Daphne Moon on Frasier) a Beverly Hills eyebrow stylist, Victoria (Wendie Malick, Nina Van Horn on Just Shoot Me!), a five-time divorcee soap opera actress, and their rental property’s caretaker, Elka (Betty White, Rose on The Golden Girls). Elka gets the best lines, digging at acerbic Joy, and Malick basically plays the same narcissist she did on Just Shoot Me! But Bertinelli pulls everything together as a benevolent but bold mid-lifer who makes an effort to listen, be a good friend, and remake herself in Cleveland. Renewal is the theme for fall, making Hot in Cleveland, which, contrary to some reviews, is more like Frasier in its goodness than it is like Golden Girls in cattiness, a good pick for home entertainment. Coming soon: a review of the second season of Glee, due on DVD tomorrow.

Permalink | Posted in Home Entertainment, Television

Three 9/11 DVDs: PBS, National Geographic, HBO

26 August 2011

For the fifth year marking the 9/11 attack, I watched three documentary productions from HBO, PBS (Frontline) and National Geographic. Overall, these are the best I’ve seen. Read the entire article, which contains chilling details and facts about the attack which are not widely known, here.

The Frontline DVD series encompasses seven hours of various programs that aired on PBS (some before the attack) and, though they use sources with heavy liberal biases to discuss events, the package is generally factual and informative. Al Qaeda Files: Frontline fails to explore, let alone explain, the role of faith and religion in the act of mass murder and certain terrorist dictatorships, such as Iran, are conspicuously left unexamined. But the Frontline programs, contained on several discs, offer evidence of the spread of Islamic terrorism and the West’s appeasement.

Both the Clinton administration’s refusal to exterminate a known jihadist with hostile intent and the Bush administration’s ignorance and evasion are evident in National Geographic: Inside 9/11, a briskly paced chronology on two-discs, “War on America” and “Zero Hour.” The discs are packed with crucial—and relatively unknown—facts.

HBO’s In Memoriam: New York City 9/11/01 is basically former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s tribute to America’s beloved city, the Twin Towers and those who were brutally murdered. Whatever one’s political philosophy, Giuliani is respectful and so is this 60-minute production by Home Box Office. The program’s chronological approach to the attack returns at certain intervals to the pre-attack World Trade Center, two grand skyscrapers featured here in one lingering shot, with the sunrise-smacked towers looking like two white gold bars reaching into the morning sky—beacons in a city of prime movers. Read the full review of all three DVDs here.

Permalink | Posted in History, Home Entertainment, Television, War

Three 9/11 DVDs: Discovery, CNN, Independent

26 August 2011

In 2005, I reviewed three documentaries (all now available on DVD), including Cable News Network’s comprehensive first anniversary tribute, America Remembers: The Events of September 11 and America’s Response. CNN’s 2002 DVD includes footage of memorial services and President George W. Bush’s address to a joint session of Congress following the attack.

In one segment, a CNN producer reveals that, after the first plane, hijacked by Islamic fundamentalists, was crashed into the World Trade Center, as people in the newsroom watched the live feeds, looking at the huge hole in the side of the building, someone said: “That’s no accident.” I wrote that the DVD is worth watching for several reasons, not the least of which is the remarkable photography, now as much a part of our history as the Japanese planes bombing our ships at Pearl Harbor. CNN includes rare video captures of the first plane screaming into New York City and a close-up of the first plane’s gaping hole. The producers feature shots you probably haven’t seen.

Also reviewed are the independent Remember September 11, 2001 and The Flight That Fought Back, the Discovery Channel’s 90-minute chronological recreation of United Air Lines Flight 93—on which passengers resisted the Moslem hijackers—narrated by 24‘s Keifer Sutherland, which is the most compelling. Each of the three programs minimize the role of ideas, i.e., fundamentalist Islam, in the enemy attack. The Flight That Fought Back reconstructs the day’s events using actors and brief simulations. Read the complete 2005 article here.

Permalink | Posted in History, Home Entertainment, News, Television, War

Maltin on Movies

25 August 2011

Film historian Leonard Maltin, promoting the latest edition of his Movie Guide, recently chatted with me about movies. The teacher, critic and historian, a regular on the syndicated television show Entertainment Tonight since 1982, who teaches a film class at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, is also the author of The Disney Films, The Great American Broadcast, and Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide. Leonard Maltin writes, co-produces and hosts the Walt Disney Treasures DVD series, which he tells me has been suspended, and produces a newsletter.

Scott Holleran: What single movie do you get the most out of with repeat viewings?

Leonard Maltin: It’s a tie between my two favorite movies—Citizen Kane and Casablanca. In both cases, I seem to notice and appreciate new things each time out. With Casablanca, I recently wound up writing a lengthy article on all the background music—it occurred to me that there’s “Love for Sale” by [composer] Cole Porter and others—and here we thought just about everything that could be written about Casablanca had been written.

Scott Holleran: Why are you migrating old movies from your annual Movie Guide to your classic film guide? Why not jettison some of today’s mediocre, irrelevant pictures?

Leonard Maltin: Because in a reference book I don’t feel it’s my place to decide what’s irrelevant in the main scheme of things. I certainly express my opinion film by film—it’s as thick as it can be without falling apart—and that’s what gave birth to the Classic Guide, so those films have a place to reside.

Scott Holleran: And it’s another way to make money?

Leonard Maltin: Uh, no. Let me just say that being in the reference book business in the Internet age is not a doorway to great riches.

Scott Holleran: What is the primary purpose of the Movie Guide?

Leonard Maltin: It hasn’t changed since it was introduced—to be a fingertip guide to movies for people who watch movies at home—to provide a brief review and opinion and to provide more information than one can get from TV guides and screen guides.

Scott Holleran: What single, consistent reader response do you get to the Movie Guide?

Leonard Maltin: Well, now when we make a mistake, we hear about it right away by e-mail—they used to let us know through snail mail. People still seem to be grateful for some guidance. I hear a lot of comments like “I was deciding whether to stay up late and watch this movie and, thanks to you, I did”—or, “thanks to you, I didn’t.”

Scott Holleran: Do you think film criticism can be reduced and aggregated to a number?

Leonard Maltin: No. That’s not criticism, that’s shorthand for an opinion. It may be a consumer service. We hope that in our brief reviews we offer a compact form of criticism.

Scott Holleran: You use stars in the Movie Guide. Does your friend Roger Ebert’s Thumbs Up symbol dumb down motion picture criticism?

Leonard Maltin: No. It’s another form of shorthand, and it’s legitimate within the boundaries of what it can cover. An editor forced the stars on me. I argued with him but he said people will love it and he was right. People respond to those things.

Scott Holleran: Are you primarily a teacher, a critic or an historian?

Leonard Maltin: I wear different hats at different times. If I could do only one, I would be an historian.

Scott Holleran: What’s the next installment in the Walt Disney’s Treasures DVD series?

Leonard Maltin: There is no next installment. That is out of my hands. I would love to do more but it’s up to the Walt Disney Company.

Scott Holleran: What’s your favorite Hollywood movie theater?

Leonard Maltin: I love Grauman’s Chinese Theatre [on Hollywood Boulevard]. I also like [Disney’s] El Capitan, the ArcLight Hollywood and the Samuel Goldwyn Theater at the Academy [of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] on Wilshire [Boulevard]. If I had to pick one, I would probably pick the ArcLight. It’s a nice environment and a nice theater.

Scott Holleran: What’s your best movie review?

Leonard Maltin: I can’t say. I can tell you the review that has gotten more compliments than any in my career. It was a review of a [horror spoof] movie called Transylvania 6-5000 [Maltin delivered a short sentence during an appearance on Entertainment Tonight in 1985 in which he declared that the movie “stinks” on cue with the tune “Pennsylvania 6-5000” by the Glenn Miller Orchestra]. The review appeared on ET and it was as thorough and as definitive a review as that movie warranted.

Scott Holleran: What’s your most controversial movie review?

Leonard Maltin: Either Blade Runner or Taxi Driver. Both get negative reactions. There’s also my positive review of Cecil B. DeMille’s [1952] The Greatest Show on Earth [starring Charlton Heston, Jimmy Stewart, and Betty Hutton], a film which gets attacked as undeserving of winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. I feel somewhat vindicated by Steven Spielberg’s praise for The Greatest Show on Earth, which he has said influenced the train wreck scene in Super 8.

Scott Holleran: Who is your favorite movie critic?

Leonard Maltin: I don’t read a great many movie critics—I certainly don’t read reviews before I write my own—but of those I read, I like David Denby in the New Yorker, also Anthony Lane and [former newspaper critic] Kenny Turan and possibly the best film critic in America is Todd McCarthy now with the Hollywood Reporter. He is incredibly knowledgeable and incisive and eloquent. And I like Roger Ebert.

Scott Holleran: I’m going to put you on the spot and ask you for a one-word evaluation or estimate of 22 movies you recently added to this year’s edition of the Movie Guide. 22 movies in 30 seconds—are you ready?

Leonard Maltin: I’ll try—unless it’s a movie that one of my associates [editors for the Movie Guide] saw and reviewed for the Guide.

Scott Holleran: Super 8?

Leonard Maltin: Terrific.

Scott Holleran: Win Win?

Leonard Maltin: Great.

Scott Holleran: The Tillman Story?

Leonard Maltin: Profoundly moving.

Scott Holleran: Atlas Shrugged, Part 1?

Leonard Maltin: Didn’t see it.

Scott Holleran: Tangled?

Leonard Maltin: Great fun.

Scott Holleran: The Social Network?

Leonard Maltin: Exceptional.

Scott Holleran: The King’s Speech?

Leonard Maltin: Wonderful.

Scott Holleran: District 9?

Leonard Maltin: Disarmingly original.

Scott Holleran: Up?

Leonard Maltin: Enchanting.

Scott Holleran: The Hangover?

Leonard Maltin: Really funny.

Scott Holleran: Milk?

Leonard Maltin: [pauses] Ambitious—and emotionally stirring.

Scott Holleran: Frost/Nixon?

Leonard Maltin: Brilliant.

Scott Holleran: Slumdog Millionaire?

Leonard Maltin: Also brilliant. [pauses] Awfully tough but rewarding.

Scott Holleran: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?

Leonard Maltin: Great entertainment.

Scott Holleran: There Will Be Blood?

Leonard Maltin: Tremendously compelling.

Scott Holleran: No Country for Old Men?

Leonard Maltin: Riveting.

Scott Holleran: Juno?

Leonard Maltin: Unexpectedly winning.

Scott Holleran: Little Miss Sunshine?

Leonard Maltin: Sleeper.

Scott Holleran: The Lives of Others?

Leonard Maltin: Unforgettable.

Scott Holleran: The Queen?

Leonard Maltin: Superb.

Scott Holleran: The Sea Inside?

Leonard Maltin: Unjustly undervalued.

Permalink | Posted in Books, Home Entertainment, Interviews, Movies, Plume, Walt Disney Studios

Movie & DVD Review: X-Men: First Class

13 August 2011

Having enjoyed three previous X-Men pictures (I skipped the Wolverine movie) as comics-based movies, I expected the prequel X-Men: First Class, released earlier this year, to deliver the same results and it does. It moves too fast, contains too many characters, and, with fright wigs, leaps of logic and girls in go-go boots, it’s too campy and unserious to compete in a league with Marvel’s own Captain America, but they’re all like that and at least this one’s not as dark. With one glaring problem I have with the plot, this Fox film makes an enjoyable DVD pick.

Blitzing the screen with no less than seven different locations in the dizzying first 15 minutes, the story of two men who are “mutants” with special powers sets up the conflict. One man, Eric, is a Jew tortured by the Nazis as a boy. He grows up and gets the fascists back in the movie’s best scene. The other, Charles, is a “telepath” who can read minds and he grows up to be called by his country to defend against a dictatorship worse than the National Socialists (though X doesn’t depict it that way): the Soviet Union. A third mutant, played by actor Kevin Bacon, has been engaged by the Communists against America, climaxing as most readers know in the so-called Cuban missile crisis. It’s a terrific and exciting premise.

As the plot adds humans, mutants, G-men and X-men alike, switching locales faster than a mutant morphs into some other form, the good mutants manage to find what amounts to a new class of supermen, with the series’ theme that it’s OK to be different well intact. Accept and love yourself is offset by lines about finding something “bigger than yourself”, which sounds ripped from an Obama or McCain speech, but the action moves and amid the subplots there are some amusing characterizations, such as they are, and thrilling scenes. When the students are training with Charles and Eric, who begin to take divergent paths in battling the Soviets, who are usually referred to as Russians, X-Men: First Class has the most fun. The whole thing has the energy of Fox’s 24 with the style of the TV show Mad Men. Very episodic, not larger than life.

Costumes are amazing though totally ridiculous, such as miniskirts, which didn’t appear until long after the movie’s 1962 setting, but it is a comic book movie after all. There are too many in the cast to mention and few are in the movie long enough to stand out, but the leads are fine and Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone), Edi Gathegi (Atlas Shrugged, Part One) and Lucas Till (Battle Los Angeles) make the most of the student roles. The big Cold War missile climax is forced and overdone, and a sort of fatigue sets in trying to keep track of the multiple subplots (another series trademark). My major problem with X-Men: First Class is that, by reframing the historic confrontation between the Soviets and the Americans, not only does it play fast and loose with history (in reality, the Soviets put nuclear missiles in Communist Cuba, aiming them at U.S. cities, because President Kennedy had foolishly and dangerously allowed the Soviets to put up the Berlin Wall), the movie diminishes what really happened and reduces a nuclear conflict to a bout between bad and good X-men, which minimizes Soviet barbarism. I never got the feeling that the entire United States was at stake. Instead, both Soviet Russia and the U.S. are practically given moral equivalency. It drains the drama from the showdown.

The DVD (available Sept. 9, also on Blu-Ray) comes with a 22-minute insider feature in which one of the film’s creators refers to Kevin Bacon as “just about the coolest guy in the universe” and it’s clearly geared toward diehard X-Men comics fans. Fox also includes an anti-smoking propaganda piece for the state of California and an instructional feature about how to use the digital copy included with the DVD.

Permalink | Posted in Home Entertainment, Marvel Studios, Movies, Twentieth Century Fox

Three Fifties Movies New to DVD

28 June 2011

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment recently put a batch of B movies on DVD (priced under $20 each) through its video on demand, tapping into MGM’s library. Among the new releases are several interesting pictures worth seeing at least once for diehard film fans. The unexceptional My Gun is Quick (1957) starts off well enough but peters out and is notable chiefly for being based on the pulp fiction murder mystery novel by Mickey Spillane. Robert Bray as private detective Mike Hammer is physically right for the role; the muscular actor is strong, masculine and commanding, flirting with everyone from his full-figured secretary Velda to Whitney Blake’s wealthy, blonde dame and sending a young prostitute packing for home in the Midwest. Packed with gangsters, strippers, and gunshots, this clunky potboiler is drained of Spillane’s pulsating narrative, though a few lines pop off the screen. A lengthy Los Angeles freeway chase offers a rare glimpse of southern California in the 1950s.

Sex is the subtext of The Careless Years (1957), directed by Arthur Hiller (Love Story), featuring a young Dean Stockwell (NBC’s Quantam Leap) and Natalie Trundy (of the 1970s Planet of the Apes films) in an earnest episode of teen-age love. The short movie is stiff, dated, and totally predictable and it is also curiously involving as the Santa Monica High School teens act out their passion in a logical sequence that leads them to conflict with their parents, played by such actors as Barbara Billingsley (Leave it to Beaver) and, briefly, character actress and Folgers’ coffee lady Virginia Christine, who played a subtle racist in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Judgment at Nuremberg.

Another actress from Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Beah Richards, is featured in the best of these, Take a Giant Leap (1959), a frank racial and sexually-themed drama about a black boy (Johnny Nash, who went on to record “I Can See Clearly Now”) in an integrated neighborhood. With Ruby Dee as the object of his boyhood crush, and Estelle Hemsley memorably as the witty and wise old woman who’s his grandmother, the perils and pressures of being black in the Fifties come across in this 100-minute drama, which is based on a play. The only child of a bank teller and his wife gets tired of being the only black and he dares to speak up with a degree of self-respect exactly as his parents taught him, much to their chagrin. With raging hormones and a mind of his own, the youth goes on a binge in the wrong part of town, encountering a hooker with anything but a heart of gold, among others. From there, Take a Giant Leap drifts into standard coming of age fare, though with good performances and common sense, it’s worth a look.