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This Week's Dvds
Topic Started: Mar 2 2006, 04:59 PM (54,683 Views)
Stony Brooke da Mesquiteer
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Sapient Balconeer
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I bought...

The Misfits
Some Like It Hot
The Hustler
It's like Rodney King used to say, "Can't we all get a bong."
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Zodiac
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Lawrence of Arabia
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maldor
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18 episodes of wanted Dead or Alive with Steve McQueen only $5.00 at Target
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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Trevor sent me his Jock Mahoney 3-pack, including Cody of the Pony Express, the first serial I saw as a kid which I wanted to upgrade before watching it all the way through, Roar of the Iron Horse, and Gunfighters of the Northwest. Three Columbias for the price of one! Trevor rules.

I also got a new copy of the Griffith Biographs, V. 4, from Grapevine, because my computer somehow erased the old one, so I'm going to start adding to my old thread (hi, Bat!). This volume includes some of the great one's most famous films, and I've reviewed them before, but I'm not going to read those before reviewing those shorts again, if that makes any sense.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Laughing Gravy
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Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
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I got a box of screeners from Cheezy Flicks, including the new Zombies of the Stratosphere DVD, and Zorro: Season One, Columbia Film Noir Vol. 1, and The Men with Brando.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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marlin lee
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Finally let my Nephew talk me into Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure. Actually I knew he was semi-joking and was only slightly leaning towards getting it. But they had it running on one of the TVs at Wal-Mart and what I saw was good enough I decided to go ahead and get it.
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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I got Georges Franju's first feature, La Tete Contre les Murs (Head Banging Against the Wall, roughly) from Amazon France. Franju is the other movie surrealist, and one of the two founders of the Cinematheque Francaise -- he's a big name in French movies. This is about a kid who's kind of wild, so his nasty father has him locked up in the funny farm. There are two doctors there, one good and the other evil, and the story pulls no punches in showing the young man's struggle to keep his self-respect and indeed his sanity under such conditions. Strong stuff, with an all-star cast: Pierre Brasseur as Dr. Varmont, Paul Meurisse as Dr. Emery, Jean-Pierre Mocky as François Gérane, and the beautiful Anouk Aimée as Stéphanie. I haven't seen it since 1960, when it blew me away, because Shock Corridor and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest hadn't come out yet, and this went way beyond The Snake Pit in showing the potential horrors of confining someone without a trial or any reason at all, really.

I was happy to get it at a good price, and will be interested to see how it holds up. It influenced several films and may not seem so original now, but my money's on Franju, who also did Judex and Eyes Without a Face.

It's part of the Masters of Cinema series, which is IMO superior to all other DVD purveyors, even Criterion. If you don't believe me, check one out. They come with books that have all sorts of cool background info, and with cool extras too. Region 2 (aka PAL), so you need an all-region player (or you could always watch it on your computer).
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Stony Brooke da Mesquiteer
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My Universal Horror set arrived yesterday.
It's like Rodney King used to say, "Can't we all get a bong."
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cinemalover
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Just picked up the first season of Zorro at Costco and bought the big Kino Buster Keaton 11 disc Set off Amazon.
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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Good for you, cinemalover. You're going to have some fun. My suggestion is, put together some other people and watch them as an audience. Keaton can still wow the public. Start with The Navigator: everybody loves that one.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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cinemalover
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Thanks Panzer.
The Navigator would definitely be a good choice for the lead-off spot. I've always had a soft spot for Sherlock Jr. (it was an amazing technological feat for the time), and of course The General is a masterpiece.

Of the 11 features in the set I've never seen 3 of them (which would include the sometimes maligned Battling Butler). Also, about half of the 21 shorts will be new to me. I imagine I'll spread the viewing pleasure of this set out over the next several months.
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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Battling is one of the good ones. There are two Keaton silents I don't like: The Saphead and The Three Ages, and there's one I just don't care about: College.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Ignatz Ratzkywatzky
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I don't have a Blu-ray player yet, but I picked up the out-of-print Blu-ray of THE THIRD MAN at Barnes and Noble's 50% off Criterion sale.

I also found a copy of THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI on DVD at Big Lots for $3.

Tomorrow I plan on picking up THE THREE STOOGES: Vol. 7 set.
IT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM SHELF! is a movie recommendation site, focusing on forgotten classics, lesser-known gems, and oddball discoveries. https://www.bottomshelfmovies.com
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CliffClaven
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"Synergy Entertainment Presents Sherlock Holmes, The Archive Collection."

Three discs of Sherlockian oddities, mainly theatrical shorts and early TV versions -- plenty of interest for Holmes fanatics; non-believers will probably be bored. Picture and sound (excepting the silent shorts) are very respectable, the packaging is attractive, and there's a lot of stuff I've never seen anywhere else.

-- Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour: 1931 British feature film, a respectable expansion of The Adventure of the Empty House. Arthur Wortner was the "official" screen Holmes in the early sound era, and does a good job of it. Only complaint is the framing -- towards the end, everybody's head is cropped off just above the eyes.

-- Lost in Limehouse: 1933 two-reeler, a wildly uneven and eccentric comedy running from melodrama parody to Laugh-In style random gags. A top-hatted villain has kidnapped a young noblewoman and entrusted her to Chinese accomplices in Limehouse. The hero, a lowly apprentice ("but, I trow, a noble lad"), engages Herlock Sholmes and Hotson to help rescue her, accidentally signaling a tong war in the process. Like Laugh-In, if you stick through the lame gags there are some bits that are either transcendently corny or just wonderfully random.

-- Limejuice Mystery, or Who Spat in Grandfather's Porridge?: 1930 marionette short, no dialogue but with a very tight musical score. An "Anna May Wong" puppet dances in an opium den; there's a fight; and Holmes is called in (by three bobbies who kneel and beg at Baker Street). Holmes and Watson end up at the opium den, there's another fight and fadeout. Some impressive puppetry and sort of an unintended nightmare feel. Mercifully, the porridge is only in the title.

-- Sting of Death: 1955 TV anthology show, starring Boris Karloff as a "Mr. Mycroft" who suspects a beekeeping neighbor of foul play. Not deep by any means -- Just four characters, small sets and barely enough plot for a half hour cartoon, much less an hour drama. Still, it's fairly clever and you get Karloff doing a cheerful sendup of Holmes -- although the script is rather cagy about his identity, never explicitly mentioning the great detective or offering any solid clues. Sly writing or copyright issues?

-- The Man Who Disappeared: 1951 British TV pilot. A very free adaptation of Man With the Twisted Lip, shot in London. The production is on a par with most low-budget television shows of the era (and on this set), and not especially memorable. One grand blooper: Although it's explicitly set in Victorian times, you can clearly see auto traffic on Tower Bridge in the background of one scene.

-- A Case of Hypnosis: 1952 TV show, performed by chimps. Lightskull, a Sherlock Holmes wannabe, saws on a violin and rides in a little car with his sidekick to capture a hypnotist. Semi-clever but gets old fast.

-- Strange Case of Hennessy: 1933 short starring Cliff Edwards (Ukulele Ike and the voice of Jiminy Cricket) as "Silo Dance" (so this is really a Philo Vance parody). A mess with stiff musical numbers and insufficient laughs. The short is clearly missing the first few minutes that set up the plot (but everything else in the set looks complete). Produced by Van Buren, better known for ancient cartoons that turn up in every PD collection.

-- The Speckled Band: 1949 TV anthology episode. Alan Napier (Alfred from the 60's Batman) is a surprisingly dashing Sherlock Holmes and Melville Cooper is his comic Watson in a simple but entertaining adaptation. The show is framed by a quaint Irish host who pulls a story off his library shelf each week.

-- The Copper Beeches: 1912 French silent. A strange antique; barely makes sense even if you know the story. While the film was made in France, there were English intertitles that look like part of the original print. The print is in sorry shape, but they did their best with it and provided a suitable score.

-- Man With The Twisted Lip: 1921 English silent. Eille Norwood was the first major screen Sherlock, starring in a very successful series of silent two-reelers. Movie storytelling had really advanced in 9 years, and this plays much more smoothly than the 1912 film -- still, Holmes stories are hard to pantomime. It's set in modern 1921 London and there are some interesting location shots. Respectable print, and again nicely scored.

-- The Case of the Screaming Bishop: 1944 Columbia Studios cartoon. Good print of a mediocre B&W Holmes spoof -- good animation but more silly than funny. There's no bishop, screaming or otherwise, although there is a possible explanation for the title. First, there was a Perry Mason film titled Case of the Sleeping Bishop; and the British title of SH's Fatal Hour was The Sleeping Cardinal. Somebody thought one of those films was sufficiently well-known in 1944 to make the parody title work.

-- The General's Boots: 1954 TV anthology episode. Basil Rathbone plays a hard-nosed British general sharing a life raft with two civilians -- one an angry former underling -- after a plane crash. Nothing to do with Holmes (aside from the presence of Rathbone) but a well-done short story.
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Sgt Saturn
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CliffClaven
Nov 13 2009, 12:29 AM
-- Sting of Death: 1955 TV anthology show, starring Boris Karloff as a "Mr. Mycroft" who suspects a beekeeping neighbor of foul play. Not deep by any means -- Just four characters, small sets and barely enough plot for a half hour cartoon, much less an hour drama. Still, it's fairly clever and you get Karloff doing a cheerful sendup of Holmes -- although the script is rather cagy about his identity, never explicitly mentioning the great detective or offering any solid clues. Sly writing or copyright issues?
This is the era when August Derleth had to call his detective "Solar Pons" as the great man and his heirs would not let him use the Holmes name. This leads me to suspect copyright issues, but I know no more than you.
Edited by Sgt Saturn, Nov 13 2009, 10:52 AM.
The Ol' Sarge
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