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"HALLOWEEN"

The 25th anniversary edition of the James Carpenter thriller with Jamie Lee Curtis contains interviews with them and others. From Anchor Bay.

 

“DAY OF THE DEAD”
George Romero’s 1985 scare classic in which the living dead take over the world. No, they’re not politicians. Also from Anchor Bay.

“DIE! DIE! MY DARLING!”
Tallulah Bankhead chews up the scenery as a deranged mother who imprisons her dead son’s fiancée. I guess it’s okay. It’s all in the family. From Columbia Tri-Star.

“THE HOWLING,” “CARRIE,” “POLTERGEIST,” boxed sets of Stephen King, and other horror classics also are out on DVD.

Scary for Kids

“CASPER””
A special edition DVD brings Casper the friendly ghost to kids this Halloween. Besides the movie, there is an extra, “Casper’s Haunted House of Halloween Fun,” with safe holiday activities and tips for trick-or-treating and instructions for making costumes.

MAX’S PICKS OF THE MONTH

“LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS”
The second episode in the classic Tolkein adventure series is even better than the fabulous first. In this, Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) are lost on their way to Mordor to destroy the ring, and become involved in one adventure after another. To tell more would spoil the fun for you. It’s terrific fantasy adventure film-making. From New Line. The third and final installment in the trilogy will be in theaters this Christmas and probably on DVD next spring. Max’s rating: Two paws up and lots of tail wags.



“DOCTOR ZHIVAGO”
Coming to PBS Television next month from Masterpiece Theatre is a new production of the Boris Pasternak Nobel Prize-winning novel that David Lean made into a celebrated 1965 feature film with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. Producer Anne Pivcevic tells the love story set against the Russian Revolution more leisurely in this longer, nearly four-hour version on two DVDs, focusing more on the love story than the Lean telling. She also chose a younger cast, with rising star Hans Matheson (“The Mists of Avalon”) as Zhivago, and Keira Knightley (“Bend It Like Beckham”), who turned 17 while playing Lara during the filming. Sam Neill plays the villainous Komarovsky. Is the new version better than the beloved classic from 1965? Judge for yourself. It’s familiar, yet sometimes different, and always great story-telling, with screenplay by Andrew Davies who adapted “Pride and Prejudice” for the screen, and was filmed at 117 locations in Prague and Slovakia. From Granada and Acorn Media.

“NOWHERE IN AFRICA”
The winner of the 2002 Academy Award for best foreign language film tells the true story of a German Jewish couple and their young daughter who escape Nazi Germany in 1938 and become tenants on a remote farm in Kenya. Culture clash, the outbreak of World War II and becoming British prisoners of war, and other realities threaten to break up the family. Roger Ebert justifiably called it “Magnificent! I loved this film. It is the kind of movie that real people really, really like!” From Columbia Tri-Star.
Max’s rating: The highest.

MINISERIES
Highly recommending four multi-DVD editions of some excellent miniseries that ran recently on British or Australian television:

“A DINNER OF HERBS”
Adapted from the novel by Catherine Cookson, who always tells a real good story, this 3-disc saga follows three generations of Brits in a 19th-century working-class town. Two young men and a young woman form a friendship meant to last a lifetime that doesn’t, in a story of love, hate, murder, betrayal, and revenge. Filmed on location in the north of England with strong performances by a perfect cast of actors unknown to most Americans, this is a terrific story beautifully told and photographed. From Granada and BFS Video.

“THE MALLENS”
Another Catherine Cookson novel put to film, the story of the Mallen clan is darker than some of her other books, but just as engrossing. The Mallens were not a very nice bunch of Brits, but their wenching and ups and downs of fortune over three generations make for strong drama very much worth watching. On three DVDs, also from Granada and BFS Video.

“SHADOWS OF THE HEART”
A young woman doctor leaves mainland Australia in the late 1920s to practice medicine on inhabitants of a remote island. She encounters severe culture clash and conflicts between her modern ways and the rigid customs of her patients, and also is romantically torn between two brothers, one of them a Catholic priest. It’s earthy and excellent story-telling, on two discs from BFS Video.

“SNOWY”
It’s about the Snowy River region in Australia, but not about wild horses, such as in “The Man from Snowy River.” An enormous hydro-electric dam is built in the remote Snowy Mountains of outback Australia in 1949, which changes the lives of everyone in the area including a family operating a hotel in a remote and sleepy community that becomes a boomtown. Reminiscent of the impact Hoover and other dams in America made on those living in the areas, the 3-DVD set is from BFS Video.

OLDIES BUT GOODIES

 

My other favorite movies this month are restored DVD editions of some of the best movies Hollywood ever put out. Besides Errol Flynn in “THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD,” reviewed last month, these are highly recommended:

“YANKEE DOODLE DANDY”
It’s Halloween this month, but it might as well be the Fourth of July because Warner Home Video released this classic patriotic 1942 musical. James Cagney won the best actor Oscar playing George M. Cohan, and charms and dances his way into your heart and movie history.

“TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE”
Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, and Tim Holt search for gold in Mexico in this 1948 Warner classic. Usually urbane Huston won the best supporting Oscar playing raggedy and toothless, and his son John Huston won for best director and screenplay. You’d think today’s corporate executives and politicians would have learned the lessons of greed from this one, but maybe they were too young to see it. No excuse now that it’s out on DVD in a digital restoration.

“TITANIC”
Not the Leonardo da Caprio 1997 blockbuster, but the 1953 movie of the same title that my master liked a lot better. Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb play estranged parents of a beautiful daughter and a younger son who are among the passengers on the ill-fated ship’s maiden voyage. I love this movie and think you will, too. If you don’t cry at the end, your heart is an iceberg. From Fox.

“PAPER MOON"
Ryan O’Neal and his then-nine-year-old daughter Tatum made this funny and heartwarming con artist comedy in 1973 and she won an Oscar for her super performance. Follow them as they bilk rural folk in Kansas and Missouri in the 1930s Depression and you will never forget them. Director Peter Bogdanovich’s commentary track on the beautifully-restored DVD is a worth-hearing extra. From Paramount.

Other oldies out on DVD this month; not classics but good, are:

“CROMWELL”
Sir Alec Guinness and Richard Harris star in this 1970 epic of the battle between King Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, a commoner who dared to challenge corruption in 17th century England. Besides high drama, there are great battle scenes and cinematography, and it won an Oscar for best costume design. From Columbia-Tri-Star.

“THE BEDFORD INCIDENT”
Richard Widmark is the obsessive commander of a U.S. ship on a NATO patrol in pursuit of a Soviet submarine off the coast of Greenland. Sidney Poitier plays a photojournalist recording the mission in this Cold War action movie from 1965, digitally restored. From Columbia Tri-Star.

“DEAD HEAT ON A MERRY-GO-ROUND”
James Coburn (he’s so conceited, I never could understand his popularity) plays a swinging con man planning to rob a bank at the Los Angeles International Airport in this light crime caper from 1966. Look for a very young Harrison Ford as a bellhop in his film debut. From Columbia Tri-Star.

SPEAKING OF HARRISON FORD…

“INDIANA JONES”
The three Indiana Jones adventures will be released on DVD late this month in a four-disk set. The fourth disk is loaded with special “making-of” and other features. It’s a great series and, on DVD, never looked or sounded better. From Paramount.

NEW THIS MONTH

“SPEEDY DEATH”
Oh, those Brits. They make the best mysteries. And from them via the BBC-TV Masterpiece Theater Mystery series comes this entry in the Mrs. Bradley Mysteries series starring the incomparable Diana Rigg as a fashionable and delightfully dour 1920s jazz age detective. It’s murder at a mansion, like the Agatha Christie mysteries, and the costumes, sets, and cars are as watchable as the plot is engrossing. “Pure enjoyment,” rightfully says The Daily Telegraph of London. As hungry Oliver Twist said in the gruel line, “Please, sir, may I have more?” A gem from WGBH Boston Video. Like me with liver treats.

“FOOL’S GOLD”
The true story of the Brink’s-Mat robbery, the biggest robbery in British history, is excitingly told in this thriller about the theft and what happened to the thieves afterward. Sean Bean stars as a small-time crook out to make a name for himself in the London underworld. A British reviewer called it “Absolutely top-notch. Bean at his most lean, mean, and magnificently moody.” From Granada and BFS Video.

"THE WAITING TIME"
John Thaw plays a British solicitor’s clerk who travels to Berlin with a female corporal, to help her learn the truth about the mysterious murder of her German lover ten years earlier. They become targets of the infamous East German State Secret Police in the movie based upon the best-selling novel by Gerald Seymour. From BFS Entertainment.

Not really much to howl or wag my tail about in other new titles this month, but just to let you know what’s on the shelves in stores other than pet shops:

“IN COLD BLOOD”
Truman Capote made literary history with his “is it fiction or is it nonfiction?” best-selling book that became this tense movie about two ex-convict drifters on Death Row charged with the murders of a Kansas farm family. Even more interesting today since one of the stars playing one of the accused is Robert Blake, now under suspicion of having murdered his wife in real life. From Columbia Tri-Star.

“HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE”
Another cop buddy movie. Harrison Ford plays the older cop and Josh Hartnett his younger and prettier rookie partner investigating murder in the hip-hop music industry. Humorous side plots involve Ford moonlighting (and daylighting) as a real estate agent whose mind and cell phone are constantly preoccupied with getting no-shows to his houses, while Josh’s mind is locked on yoga. It’s hard to care about who killed whom, and if you like hip-hop, fine, but it hurt my ears. From Columbia Tri-Star.

“THE DRAUGHTSMAN’S CONTRACT”
In the English countryside of the late 17th century, a wealthy and beautiful woman hires a handsome young draughtsman to create sketches of her estate as a gift to her husband, and to be paid partly in coin of the realm and sexual favors. He soon becomes the prime suspect in a bizarre murder mystery. Released in 1982 and now out on DVD from Wellspring, The Village Voice said “It is funny, beautiful, sardonic, witty, and full-bodied.” (Caution: heavy sex and nudity.)

“ANGER MANAGEMENT”
Adam Sandler gets into a misunderstanding with flight attendants on a jet plane, so a judge sentences him to take some anger management. His counselor, Jack Nicholson, decides the best way to treat him is to move in with him. Sandler plays it stoic and Nicholson off-the-wall and unshaven. A warning appears before the film starts: “Rated PG-13 for crude sexual content and language.” But they could put that on just about every new movie, couldn’t they? From Columbia Tri-Star.

“DADDY DAY CARE”
An actor who can’t act but is running for governor and it’s doubtful he could govern made a similar movie about kindergarten a few years ago, and that’s probably why they made this one, because original ideas are harder to find in Hollywood than bones I buried in the back yard five years ago. Eddie Murphy hams it up as an out-of-work parent who starts a day care center with a friend. Of course the kids run the place.

“SCENES OF THE CRIME”
Jeff Bridges, one of the few real talents in movies today, is totally wasted playing a Los Angeles crime lord involved in a war between rival underworld gangs. It’s about a lot of people I didn’t care at all about.

“FORBIDDEN DANCE”
It’s the lambada, that sexy dance that was kind of a craze maybe ten years ago. A beautiful Brazilian princess (Laura Herring) goes to Los Angeles to try to stop a conglomerate from destroying the rainforest in her country. She needs a job, so she becomes a maid in a wealthy home in which the family’s handsome son (Jeff James) ought to be in college or at some job, but prefers to dance. She teaches him the lambada and they fall in love (who wouldn’t, dancing that close?). They enter a dance contest so they can appear on television to denounce the conglomerate. It’s kind of a TV movie version of “Saturday Night Fever” with salsa.

“GAS FOOD LODGING”
A sexy mother and her two over-sexed teenage daughters all come of age in a New Mexican town. Lots of sexy goings-on in this one.

DOCUDRAMA

“THE NAVIGATORS”
High adventure and intrigue awaits you in this docudrama telling the true story of the 1801 race between two ship captains to be first to lay claim to the land known today as Australia. Englishman Matthew Flinders and Frenchman Nicolas Baudin sailed their ships into both paradise and hell, one eventually becoming recognized as one of the greatest navigators in history, and the other a forgotten man. Watch to learn which is which. From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and BFS Entertainment.

 

MUSIC AND THEN SOME

"BROADWAY’S LOST TREASURES"
Some of the biggest show stoppers from Broadway musicals of the past – 22 of them – bring back the excitement of their opening nights on this DVD. They’re called “lost treasures” because the numbers were performed by the original cast members for a television special in 1967 but put in the archives afterward. New introductions by Angela Lansbury, Joel Grey, and others lead into Carol Channing singing from “Hello, Dolly;” Yul Brynner from “The King and I;” Zero Mostel from “Fiddler on the Roof; dancing from “Cabaret” and “42nd Street;” hit numbers from “Cats,” “Evita,” and other legendary stars and songs. From Acorn Media.

“RIVERDANCE: LIVE FROM NEW YORK CITY”
Jean Butler and the other Irish dancers star in this DVD from their Radio City Music Hall engagement which also features the Moscow Folk Ballet. The DVD includes behind-the-scenes footage. From Tyrone Productions and Columbia Tri-Star.

“DRALION”
The amazing avant-garde Cirque Du Soleil circus group’s latest sight-and-sound spectacular is now out on DVD and it will knocks your socks off. The disc includes a segment on how the show was made. From Columbia Tri-Star.

For Pre-schoolers

"FOR THE LOVE OF ART"
Health and education specialists say introduction of the arts at an early age helps children learn basic learning concepts and life skills such as self-confidence, concentration, problem-solving, motor control, and verbal skills. This DVD introduces babies to some of the world’s greatest classical music and fine art to stimulate creative learning capabilities. Paintings come alive with a fully orchestrated musical score including Mozart and Beethoven. From Baby Laureate and endorsed by Montessori Educators.

“FOR THE LOVE OF WORLD TRAVEL”
Kids take an interactive, cross-cultural journey around the world in this DVD, discovering children, animals, and landmarks of other countries. Also from Baby Laureate.

“SAFARI LUNCH”
If your kids push the plate away if it has veggies on it, this DVD might motivate them to snarf them down. Kids aged 2-6 are taken on a nutrition expedition through fields, farms, and factory tours to see how foods are processed for a picnic lunch. From Yum Yum Studios.

For Pre-Teens

“THE BABY SITTERS CLUB”
The popular book series comes to the movie screen as seven girlfriends start their own summer camp. Fans of the books will like the humor, romance, and friendship. From Columbia Tri-Star.

STAGE-TO-DVD

“OKLAHOMA”
Before Aussie hunk Hugh Jackman (I’m sure he’s a dog lover) became an American action star in “X-Men” and a romantic leading man in “Kate and Leopold,” he played Curly, the male lead in a staged performance of the Rodger and Hammerstein musical. It’s out now on DVD from Image. Yes, he can sing, too. And don’t forget he stars in a Broadway musical this fall based on the life of an Aussie rock star.

TV-TO-DVD

“DAWSON’S CREEK: THE SERIES FINALE”
In case you missed it, or want to see it again, the pretty boys and girls of Capeside are reunited five years after they were last seen in the series, attending Dawson’s mother’s wedding. What can I say? I didn’t watch the series. My vet told me to lay off sugar and had me neutered.

“SANFORD AND SON: THE THIRD SEASON”
The complete 24-episode third season of the antics of Redd Foxx as a grumpy junk dealer and his son is very funny, on three DVDs. Groundbreaking, the TV series created by Norman Lear of “All in the Family” was the first sitcom featuring an African-American cast. From Columbia Tri-Star.

Bones to Pick

Watching most movies today is like playing a game called “How many products and other commercials can you spot?” Prime example of product placement in movies: Tom Hanks’ “Cast Away” was a nearly three-hours-long commercial that could have been titled “On an Island with a Wilson Volleyball from FedEx.” The New York Times now reports that “moviemercials” are coming soon to a theater near you, and that “Advertisements won’t only be in the movies, they will be the movies.” “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Haunted Mansion,” both based on Dineyland rides, were the first wave of merchandise-themed movies. Coming next are movies based on toys such as Hot Wheels, G.I. Joe, Barbie Doll, and Super Soaker squirt guns. “We don’t like to make souvenirs of movies anymore,” says a Mattel toy spokesman. “We need the entertainment to create a brand for us that’s long term.” Okay, guys, you want “long term”? Long term for me will be “Out of here!” Where’s my library card?

I bet you didn't know, but besides reviewing movies, I sing opera. Click here to see and hear me rehearsing the Barcarolle from "Tales of Hoffman."

Maybe you would like to visit my master's web site with highlights of his huge collection of old movie magazines, Bijou Follies
Two more web sites I recommend are: Errol Flynn and Jeffrey Hunter