Max's Best DVD Picks

Best Oldie of the Month

"The Talk of the Town"
Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Ronald Colman together in one picture, and is it a good one! It’s a madcap romantic comedy with the least likely of premises: a charming accused arsonist who has broken out of jail (Cary Grant) sets up housekeeping in a small college town with a teacher (Jean Arthur) and a stuffy law professor (Ronald Colman.) Do they think he’s really an arsonist? When the two men fall in love with the teacher, which does she choose? Will they find out who the real arsonist is?
The 1942 movie directed by George Stevens was nominated for seven Oscars including best picture. Stevens shot two endings, with Arthur winding up with Cary in one and with Ronald in the other. In the final release, majority ruled. See if you think they were right. Digitally restored by Columbia Tri-Star. (For more on this film, visit The Ronald Colman Pages.

Foreign Goodies

The Brits offer some excellent films this month.

"Foyle’s War"
If you saw the recent PBS Masterpiece Theater TV series, or especially if you missed it,and you like British mysteries with good stories and a World War II setting, this is your cup of tea. Michael Kitchen, one of the best Brit actors around, who played Robert Redford’s best friend in Out of Africa, stars as middle-aged Detective Chief Inspector Christopher Foyle sleuthing in a small town in the English countryside during the war. Not exactly on the front line of war battle, he finds himself on the front line of homefront intrigue and murder which often has ties to the war itself. On four discs from Acorn Media.

"Haggard"
A British television series of a few years ago, makes its way onto DVD in a two-disc set from Granada and BFS Entertainment. It’s fun to step back into 18th century England and meet the folks in a small town where life centers around Squire Haggard, a loutish, fat drunk who owes money to everyone, and his son who is a handsome lecher out to marry the richest beautiful damsel he can put in distress. Anything goes as they try to make a farthing at anyone else’s expense. Hilarious! said the London Daily Express, and it is pretty funny.

"Sergeant Cribb "

If you like British mysteries in fog-shrouded Victorian London, you’ll find this British TV series based on the novels of Peter Lovesey very rewarding in a 3-disc set. lan Dobie plays the sleuthing police sergeant on the trail of some nasty killers including Jack the Ripper. From Granada and BFS Entertainment, a special feature includes a history of Scotland Yard.

For Puppies and Children

Nothing new to recommend, but newly-restored DVDs of two great children’s and family classics from a decade or two ago, highly-recommended to help take your and your kids’ mind off the war:
"Journey to the Center of the Earth"

From 1959, with Pat Boone (no white bucks in this one) as a 19th century Scottish student accompanying science professor (James Mason) on Jules Verne’s fantasy to an inner-Earth world with prehistoric animals that climaxes with the lost city of Atlantis. The DVD from 20th Century-Fox is a sharp new digital remastering and in widescreen.

"Swiss Family Robinson"

Walt Disney live action movie from 1960 with John Mills and Dorothy McGuire as parents shipwrecked with their three sons on a remote island beset by pirates.

DVD News

It used to take almost a year before movies made it from theaters to DVD. Now it takes only about three and a half months. Hooray for getting the trash out faster. Is DVD out-distancing video? You betcha. Consumers spent $80.2 million renting DVDs and $77.6 million renting videos from January 1, 2003 to March 16. This is a first in the six-year history of DVD.

Salute to Ol’ Ski-Nose Leslie Townes Hope (aka Bob Hope) was born on May 29, 1903 in Eltham, England, but he and the world can start celebrating his 100th birthday early, when many of his best and funniest movies will come out on DVD and video April 15. His movies were made at Paramount Pictures, but his library of films from that studio is now owned by Universal (as if you even cared to know). So besides catching the 2-hour Bob Hope Special that day, you can rent or buy DVDs his four hilarious "Road to" pictures with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour as well as "The Paleface," "The Ghost Breakers," and some earlier films as double features with two movies on a disc. Happy Birthday, Bob! You were one of the funniest.

A Wilder Time

Some of the best movies by that master screenplay writer-director, Billy Wilder, are now in a DVD gift set. The emphasis is on comedy with "Some Like it Hot," "The Apartment," "The Fortune Cookie, "One, Two, Three" and some others, but the set also includes the terrific courtroom drama "Witness for the Prosecution."

Musicals Are Back!
"Chicago" won the best picture Oscar, but even better musicals from the MGM vault are being released in gorgeous digitally- restored picture and sound. Fall in love again with the songs of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Kathryn Grayson, and dancing of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. The new DVD musical releases include "West Side Story," "Silk Stockings" (oh, boy was Cyd Charisse gorgeous!), "High Society," and "Les Girls," with more coming soon. (We hope they finally get around to giving us >Meet Me in St. Louis? on DVD.)

Also on DVD will be a new 3-hour musical documentary covering the history of American popular music from 1860 to 1960 called "The Great American Songbook," with Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Doris Day, Bing, Frank, and Gene and others. Sounds good.

SUPER GOOD DVDS
Columbia Tri-Star continues its unique offering of DVDs in the extra-sharp Superbit high resolution format with two recent Brad Pitt hits: "Seven Years in Tibet" and "Legends of the Fall." It’s too bad audiences didn’t flock to "Tibet," because it’s a rare intelligent Hollywood movie in which a real jerk experiences a spiritual conversion, a subject the studios rarely tackle. "Legends," which won the 1994 Oscar for best cinematography, is more than just a pretty picture; it’s a strong story of three brothers and their father (Anthony Hopkins) living in the wilderness of the Old West, learning from nature, history, war, and love. Both are highly recommended.

An Oscar for Porn
Congratulations, Hollywood, giving the Oscar for best foreign film to the first porn movie. "Y Tu Mama Tambien" ("And Your Mother Too") comes from Mexico, "a frank, open, and unhibited celebration of teenage sex." Unrated, it should have an X-rating for nudity and profanity by two teenage boys whose every other word starts with an F and whose minds and actions are totally consumed with having sex with any woman stupid enough to fall for their lines. The opening scene tells it all... a teen boy and girl naked and in heat. Hollywood filmmakers have been pushing the envelope with more and more graphic violence, often under the guise of satire, but they're not fooling anybody. Now they're embracing Mexico's export that pushes the envelope on sex, under the guise of sex education. This movie is definitely not one parents should show their children under 30. Roger Ebert gushes enthusiatically and defends this movie by claiming it to have good messages about sex, and says this movie "is not at all pornographic."
Roger, I can recommend a good optometrist.
Max's rating: Two paws DOWN.

Why aren’t there enough (or some might even say ANY) new movies for those of us Over 30, or even over 50? A writer on the movie business I highly respect, Scott Hettrick, editor-in-chief of Video Business, a weekly publication for video store owners, says it’s because we don’t buy as many movie tickets as those who are younger, nor do we rent or buy as many DVDs or videos. Well, okay, then which came first, the chicken or the egg? If that needs explaining, it’s simply that maybe if more intelligent movies were made and offered on DVD and video, we would pay to see them. For example, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is an intelligent comedy someone over 30 would enjoy. It knocked ‘em dead at the box office and is doing great business in DVD and video rental and buys.
So what will Hollywood do with that lead? Probably give us mindless spinoffs such as "My Big Fat Polish Funeral," in which teenagers with no parental guidance take over their Aunt Fanny Kowalski’s funeral. And if you make that into a megahit screenplay, I want 10 percent.

What’d he say? Can anyone tell me what the lyrics are to the song Eminem wrote that won the Oscar for best original song this year? I couldn’t understand a word of it, and the beat hurt my ears.I think they call it "rap" music, which hurt my master’s ears, too. He said he went into a PetCo store a few days ago to buy me some rawhide bones, and they were playing some gangster rap at full-volume which turned his nervous system into the sound a fork makes when you stab it into a pan or scratch your nails across a blackboard. He asked the store manager to turn it down or even better turn it off, and got a blank expression for a reply. He said he wonders why stores and restaurants play loud rock music for the employees instead of music the customers might want to hear while they shop or eat.

		April 2003

	by Max (with Walt Oleksy)