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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
