Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 10th, 2006
Career criminal Ray Milland shows up at the ranch of Korean vet Anthony Quinn, looking for his old flame, Debra Paget. She is now married to Quinn, but she hasn't adapted well to country life, still carries a torch for Milland, and is in the very process of leaving Quinn. She and Milland rekindle their romance, and are planning to leave town with the million dollars Milland has just scored. When Milland runs over a state trooper, he forces Quinn to guide them through the wilderness to the Mexican border. A struggle for both survival and Paget's love ensues.A welcome reminder of when thrillers didn't have to be two-and-a-half hours long, this is a tight, swiftly paced peace of work. Despite the great physical difference between them, Milland comes across as a worthy adversary for Quinn, there's a great cynical anger to the characters, and the violence is pretty brutal for its era. The location settings tend to make the studio exteriors all the more obvious, but this is a minor quibble This is a fine western noir, worthy of rediscovery.
Audio
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 9th, 2006
Something really extraordinary seems to be happening as a side effect of the recent rise in popularity of documentary films. While many films still illuminate problems in our society, some of these films have begin to become agents for change themselves. There is no denying the important role that films like The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till play in our society, but I am really moved by films like The Boys of Baraka. Show me injustice, and I am outraged. Show me programs that are righting injustices... and I am moved to action myself.
The Boys of Baraka is a very powerful film. Instead of just being another film about the deplorable situations for the youth in our inner cities, this is a film about one program that gives some kids a real chance to get out of the ghetto and break the cycle of poverty. Every year, 20 boys from the projects in Baltimore, MD are given the opportunity to spend two years at a special school in Kenya. Here, the boys not only get a quality education, but they also learn the kinds of valuable life lessons that they could never learn in books.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 7th, 2006
Bravo had an idea. On the surface it was actually a pretty good idea. They realized that of all the well known and critically acclaimed show runners out there with their hugely successful shows, there must have been some flops along the way. After all, no one hits a home run all the time. They also correctly assumed that some of these shows might have been pretty fair efforts that for some reason or another just didn’t last long enough to catch on. Furthermore, it was a rather clever marketing decision that there were folks out there who would like to see some of this stuff again. Even the idea of DVD releases was a smart strategy. The fatal flaw is the way they released this material. The DVD contains but a single episode of four very different programs. For three of the entries, these aren’t even pilots to properly introduce us to the characters and circumstances surrounding each show. Touching Evil is the worst of the lot in this department. From the very beginning, it’s obvious that we’re in the middle of a huge story with rather complicated character interrelationships. We’re left feeling like outsiders. For me that made it almost impossible to fairly evaluate the series. The added “Previously On” was completely inadequate to catch me up. In fact, it actually left me with even more questions.
Johnny Staccato is the shorter of the presentations at about 25 minutes. The series starred the wonderful John Cassavetes as a night club piano player who does a little gumshoe work on the side. The style is very much a 1950’s Sam Spade atmosphere and works quite well. The episode “Tempted” is a pretty nice affair starring Bewitched’s Elizabeth Montgomery as the apparent “damsel in distress”. Many plot twists in a short time move the story along pretty well. This is the only entry in black and white..
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 7th, 2006
Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden return for more hokiness in the complete second season of I Dream of Jeannie, which features 31 not-so-fantastic episodes with the most juvenile humor and situations. I suppose the possibilities for fun are there, but none are fully realized, perhaps because censors just wouldn't let the series be all it could be. For goodness sake, they wouldn't even allow the display of the lovely Eden's belly button in her mid-riff outfit. Leave it to censors to find sex in the most ludicrous o... places. It makes one wonder what kinds of weird kinkiness goes on behind their closed doors, but that's an avenue I don't care to travel. Truth is: the show is completely harmless, and as with Bewitched, its harmlessness is to its detriment. Fans of the series, however, will have a great time with about 15 hours of Jeannie. And if it's bad entertainment such as this you like, at least there's the lovely Eden's belly button-less frame to make the experience more enjoyable.
The second season begins with the anniversary of Jeannie's discovery at the hands of good-hearted astronaut Tony Nelson. The first episode comes complete with a villain (the Blue Djinn), who was actually responsible for Jeannie's imprisonment. It's an episode that cries out for the main plot of the inevitable movie version of this decrepit-on-ideas series. But it's no more interesting than the other 30 episodes included here. Other highlights for fans of the series: "How to Be a Genie in 10 Lessons," in which Jeannie is forced to torment her aloof master in an effort to "be like other genies." There is the two-part "The Girl Who Never Had a Birthday," in which Captain Nelson and his sometimes rival Roger seek to find out Jeannie's birthday before she wills herself into nothingness. Last and just as least, there is "My Incredible Shrinking Master," which is just like it sounds. In a nutshell, if you've seen one episode, you've seen them all.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 7th, 2006
Tyrone Power has been plying his trade as a pirate in the waters near Jamaica. When his former captain becomes the governor of Jamaica, Power goes straight. He has his eye on Maureen O'Hara, who is engaged to a duplicitous aristocrat who is feeding information to unreformed pirate George Sanders (utterly unrecognizable in shaggy red hair and beard). There will be many complications before Power can claim the resisting O'Hara as his own.Compared to the Errol Flynn pirate movies Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk, this one is a bit light on the action, really only getting down to the buckling of swashes in the final act. The romance between Power and O'Hara is a bit difficult to take in this day and age as well, especially in the first part of the film as it dances into rape fantasy territory. But be that as it may, this is still a first-class adventure.
Audio
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 6th, 2006
Not having much appreciation for (or just being an aficionado of) the film noir genre, I could probably do one better and say that even if noir was induced on me subliminally, there may be a good chance that I wouldn't even recognize it. So I don't know how cool things like The Blackboard Jungle or some other films are and I can't really rule them out of hand. So when I got House of Strangers to review, I had to give it a try.
Based on a novel by Jerome Weidman (who won a Pulitzer for a Broadway play) and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (who directed a couple of films called Guys and Dolls and Cleopatra), the film centers around several brothers and their father Gino, played by Edward G. Robinson (Soylent Green). Gino's favorite son Max (Richard Conte, The Godfather) is thrown in jail in connection with his father's dealings (he runs a well-known bank in New York). Unbeknownst to Gino, his other sons Pietro (Paul Valentine, Against All Odds), Joe (Luther Adler, Absence of Malice) and Tony (Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Hot Shots!) overthrow Gino in a power play, which leads to Gino's death.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 5th, 2006
Synopsis
Paul Gross plays Geoffrey Tennant, a once celebrated actor who had a meltdown during a performance of Hamlet. Now he’s trying to mount The Tempest at the head of a broke company about to be evicted from its premises. Meanwhile, his former mentor, Oliver Welles, has just mounted a dispiriting version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the New Burbage Theatre, and very shortly thereafter dies. Tennant is brought in as the new artistic director, and his attempts to stage Ha...let are troubled by the ghost of Tennant, a lunatic director, scheming suits and difficult actors.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 5th, 2006
Synopsis
Paul Gross plays Geoffrey Tennant, a once celebrated actor who had a meltdown during a performance of Hamlet. Now he’s trying to mount The Tempest at the head of a broke company about to be evicted from its premises. Meanwhile, his former mentor, Oliver Welles, has just mounted a dispiriting version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the New Burbage Theatre, and very shortly thereafter dies. Tennant is brought in as the new artistic director, and his attempts to stage Ha...let are troubled by the ghost of Tennant, a lunatic director, scheming suits and difficult actors.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 4th, 2006
I admit, when I received this film in the mail for review, I was extremely suspicious of it. I am not a conspiracy theorist, and though I am interested in the facts surrounding the 9-11 tragedy, I am not one that buys into all the theories surrounding the day. The cover of this disc, and the fact that it came to me by itself in a plain brown envelope, made me believe that I was in for another crackpot theory.
When I started to watch the film, however, I realized that this was going to be a film that was much ...ore aligned with my interests than I originally thought. The main premise of this film is to dispute the growing belief in the United States that the Jews were behind the attacks of 9-11. specifically, the focus is on an ancient manuscript called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is said to be the minutes of a meeting of a group of Jews, and outlines their plans for world domination.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 4th, 2006
Fox has done a really great thing with their Fox Film Noir line. There are tons of great film noirs from the 40's and 50's, and Fox has done an excellent job of grabbing those classic films and presenting them in great new affordable editions for modern viewers to experience for the first time. I Wake Up Screaming is one of 18 films currently in the series, and I am sure that number will only continue to grow over time.
Betty Grable shows up here in a starring role that is a departure from her u...ual flirty faire. Here she plays a secretary, the sister of a murdered model. The film is told in flashbacks through the police interrogation process, as the investigation into who murdered this mysterious woman slowly unfolds. We discover that Grable's character has fallen in love with the prime suspect, and the more questions the police ask, the deeper the story goes. Plot twists, quick dialog and shady characters fill this film, and the whole sorted affair builds to a gutsy surprise ending.
