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From the Terrace
Starring: Paul Newman , Joanne Woodward , Myrna Loy , Ina Balin , and Leon Ames Director: Mark Robson Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD Similar Items:
ASIN: B00008MTW0 Release Date: 2003-05-20 |
Amazon.com
<I>From the Terrace</I> is one of Paul Newman's lesser-known films, but it's a worthy showcase for the actor's developing screen persona. Like <I>Butterfield 8</I>, this is a slick, prestigious adaptation of a John O'Hara novel, about loose morals and forbidden love among the wealthy elite. Director Mark Robson lacks the mastery of melodrama that Douglas Sirk would've brought to this material, but he's still on target with O'Hara's tale of a prodigal son (Newman) who rejects his late father's steel mill in favor of big-business conquest, only to find his trophy wife (superbly played by Newman's off-screen wife, Joanne Woodward) straying into the arms of her former fiancé, while he falls in love with a socialite (Ina Balin) with whom he's much more compatible. A well-tuned drama of marital discord and unchecked ambition, <I>From the Terrace</I> was sharply adapted by Ernest Lehman between the triumphs of <I>North by Northwest</I> and <I>West Side Story</I>, and Newman's brooding performance gave him a solid boost to his iconic role in the 1961 classic <I>The Hustler</I>. <I>--Jeff Shannon</I>Description
Paul Newman portrays a young man whose struggle for success threatens his personal happiness, in this well-scripted screen version of John O'Hara's best-selling novel. Having never known his father's love or respect, Alfred Eaton (Newman) sets out to prove himself in the business world. Marrying the "right" woman (Joanne Woodward), he works unceasingly, but is ultimately confronted with crises and choices that force him to rethink his priorities. Co-starring Myrna Loy as Alfred's alcoholic mother, Leon Ames as his embittered father, and Ina Balin as the woman who might bring him genuine happiness, From The Terrace is an absorbing tale of ambition, power and love fueled by sharp dialogue, complex characterizations and keen insight into the human heart.Customer Reviews:
Good Stuff!.......2007-05-07
Gift for Grandma.......2007-03-30
Striff.......2007-01-19
From the Terrace.......2007-01-12
Despite your best efforts, you often become your parents.......2007-01-12
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Skin Deep (1989) (Ws Sub)
Starring: John Ritter , Vincent Gardenia , Alyson Reed , Joel Brooks , and Julianne Phillips Director: Blake Edwards Manufacturer: Warner Home Video ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD Similar Items:
ASIN: B000063K2T Release Date: 2002-06-04 |
Amazon.com
In yet another of a long line of lame Blake Edwards's films in the 1980s, John Ritter stars as a compulsive womanizer trying to get his impulses under control as he seeks to reconcile with his ex-wife. But his gonads get the better of him every time, and they also get the better of the jokes here, which are distinctly few and far between. Indeed, the film has only one sure laugh, a rather tasteless scene involving a darkened room, glow-in-the-dark condoms, and two men, neither of whom realizes the other is there until the lights go out and they've stripped for action. <I>--Marshall Fine</I>Customer Reviews:
Comedy Classic..........2007-02-22
Dragged in several places...........2006-09-12
Skin Deep.......2006-02-23
Skin deep comedy.......2005-12-04
another lost classic.......2005-10-01
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The Bette Davis Collection (The Star / Mr. Skeffington / Dark Victory / Now, Voyager / The Letter)
Starring: Bette Davis , Sterling Hayden , Natalie Wood , Warner Anderson , and Minor Watson Director: Stuart Heisler , Vincent Sherman , and Edmund Goulding Manufacturer: Warner Home Video ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD Similar Items:
ASIN: B0008ENIOI Release Date: 2005-06-14 |
Description
The Bette Davis Collection includes 3 new-to-DVD classics, featuring Davis in multiple Emmy-nominated performances as a captivating adulteress, a manipulative beauty, and a former Oscar-winning actress recovering from the end of her career.Amazon.com
Even in the 21st century, very few film stars create and define their own genre--and certainly not in the complete way Bette Davis did. <I>The Bette Davis Collection</I> gives an exceptionally good survey of essential Bette, with four of the five films absolute knock-down classics from her long reign at Warner Bros. Davis's personality was so strong that she tended to overpower her directors, but William Wyler was one of the few to maintain his own distinctive style with her, and <I>The Letter</I> (1940) is a triumph for both of them. At a humid Malaysian plantation, Davis kills a man in the brilliant opening sequence, and the remainder is a darkly suggestive unraveling of the complicated explanation.<I>Dark Victory</I> (1939) and <I>Now, Voyager</I> (1942) would be on anybody's list of most representative Davis pictures. In the former, she's a doomed heiress nobly losing her eyesight, a multiple-handkerchief situation that proved one of her biggest hits. <I>Voyager</I> allows Davis one of her favored techniques (appearing frumpy for at least part of her performance) as a mother-dominated spinster who comes out of her shell. Her match with Paul Henreid--and the music of Max Steiner--turns this into one luscious melodrama.
If <I>Mr. Skeffington</I> (1944) is not as celebrated as those films, it is nevertheless a characteristic Warners work-out. Davis wasn't shy about playing unsympathetic roles, and Fanny Skeffington--vain, selfish, married for practicality--is an exasperating tour de force. She gets good support from Claude Rains as the sensible, adoring husband. <I>The Star</I> (1952) is no classic, but its Pirandellian aspects will appeal to the actress's fans: Bette plays a washed-up Oscar-winning star desperate to get herself back in the public eye (think if it as a less witty postscript to <I>All About Eve</I>). There's some hint the main character is modeled more on Joan Crawford than Bette herself, in which case Davis must have loved playing it.
Extras are modest, with short featurettes giving background on three of the discs, and director Vincent Sherman providing commentary for <I>Mr. Skeffington</I>. But the films themselves, and their neurotically intense star, are quite capable of standing alone. <I>--Robert Horton</I>
Customer Reviews:
Changing my tune.......2007-05-05
The Bette Davis Collection.......2007-02-23
BRAVO!.......2007-02-17
Fabulous.......2006-12-23
Bette Davis's Best Movies All In One Simple Box.......2006-11-04
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Christmas in Connecticut
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck , Dennis Morgan , Sydney Greenstreet , Reginald Gardiner , and S.Z. Sakall Director: Peter Godfrey , and Don Siegel Manufacturer: Warner Home Video ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD Similar Items:
ASIN: B000B5XOZC Release Date: 2005-11-08 |
Amazon.com essential video
<I>Christmas in Connecticut</I> is a holiday film that plays 365 days of the year. Barbara Stanwyck gives a brilliant, sardonic performance as Elizabeth Lane, a columnist for <I>Smart Housekeeping</I> magazine, whose enticing descriptions of the exquisite meals she prepares for her husband and baby on their bucolic Connecticut farm earns her fame as "America's Best Cook." A writer, she is; a cook, she is not. As she types the words, "From my living room window, as I write, the good cedar logs cracking on the fire..." the view is of clothes flapping on the line outside her bachelorette Manhattan apartment. An able supporting cast keeps her lie on life support: her editor, her stuffy and detestable architect suitor, and the wonderful "Uncle" Felix (S.Z. Sakall), an English-garbling Hungarian chef who provides the recipes that fill her column.Cut to Jefferson Jones, a sailor adrift at sea for weeks after his destroyer is torpedoed. Memories of the food described in Lane's columns are central to his survival. After his rescue, as he's recuperating in a naval hospital, a marriage-minded nurse thinks she might nudge Jones to the altar if he could only experience a <I>real</I> domestic Christmas. And it just so happens that she was nurse to the grandchild of Alexander Yardley, the wealthy and powerful publisher of --you guessed it--<I>Smart Housekeeping</I> magazine. And so, she pens the letter that could unravel Lane's carefully constructed fraud. She writes to Yardley asking that Jones be included in America's ultimate Christmas--the one to be held at the Lane family farm in Connecticut. The pompous Yardley (ably portrayed by Sidney Greenstreet) believes the Lane myth and instantly sniffs a story that will send his magazine's circulation skyrocketing. And staring down a lonely holiday, he decides to join the Lanes for Christmas on the farm, too. Now, all Lane has to do is come up with a farm. And a husband. And let's not forget the baby. <I>Christmas in Connecticut</I> is classic screwball entertainment of the best kind, with its on-target skewering of social convention and house-of- cards-about-to-tumble tension: a perfect farcical vision of domestic blitz. <I>--Susan Benson</I>
Description
Journalist Elizabeth Lane is one of the country's most famous food writer. In her columns, she describes herself as a hard working farm woman, taking care of her children and being an excellent cook. But this is all lies. In reality she is an umarried New Yorker who can't even boil an egg. The recipes come from her good friend Felix. The owner of the magazine she works for has decided that a heroic sailor will spend his christmas on *her* farm. Miss Lane knows that her career is over if the truth comes out, but what can she do?Customer Reviews:
A bit plodding, but funny series of reversals.......2007-04-04
Barbara Stanwyck is perfect..........2007-03-31
Another Christmas Classic.......2007-02-20
Holiday Favorite.......2007-02-18
Christmas in Connecticut.......2007-02-17
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Come Early Morning
Starring: Ashley Judd , Jeffrey Donovan , Laura Prepon , Diane Ladd , and Scott Wilson Director: Joey Lauren Adams Manufacturer: Weinstein Company ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD Similar Items:
ASIN: B000MEYJHO Release Date: 2007-03-20 |
Amazon.com
Come Early Morning comes as a mid-afternoon career correction for Ashley Judd, an actress oft dissed in the years since her fresh, breakout performance in the indie gem Ruby in Paradise. No mystery there: what other lovely and talented woman has appeared in such a string of crummy serial-killer movies? By redemptive contrast, Come Early Morning suggests a de facto sequel to Ruby 13 years down the road. Again Judd limpidly portrays a young Southern woman, Lucy, trying to get free of a debilitating heritage--dysfunctional family on every side--and find her way to some kind of contentment. Lucy makes more bad decisions than Ruby did. For her, early morning isn't so much a new day as the hour when she faces waking up with one more guy she couldn't care less about. She plans it that way, because commitment is something she flees with grim resolve. But she also knows that the program isn't working for her.The writing-directing debut of another offbeat actress, Joey Lauren Adams (Chasing Amy), this is a beautifully observed film, free of condescension toward its Arkansas folk, with an appreciative eye for the plain beauties of small-town life and semi-rural roads, and a sharp ear for three-cushion dialogue. "Did I miss Easter?" Lucy's housemate quietly cracks when she finds Lucy dressed for Sunday-go-to-meetin'; Lucy's trying to reconnect with her estranged dad (a magical, almost wordless performance by the wonderful Scott Wilson), who's started attending "a new holy-roller church." She also meets a newcomer (Jeffrey Donovan, excellent) who ought to be Mr. Right ... but nothing quite plays out according to formulaic expectation in this movie--among the most satisfying of 2006, which most people are going to have to discover on DVD. --Richard T. Jameson
Description
(Drama/Romance) Lucy is a 30-something woman who keeps waking up with a stiff hangover and a guy she doesn't even want to look at. If coming to grips with why she keeps repeating this pattern isn't enough, Lucy also begins to realize that she needs to get in touch with her familial past and, more importantly, with the person she has become.Customer Reviews:
Great acting by Ashley Judd.......2007-06-06
Love Ashley Judd, just not this movie.......2007-06-03
LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!.......2007-05-25
I liked the movie. Thank you........2007-05-10
Not even worth the one star.......2007-05-05
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Love Finds Andy Hardy
Starring: Mickey Rooney , Lewis Stone , Fay Holden , Cecilia Parker , and Judy Garland Director: George B. Seitz Manufacturer: Warner Home Video ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD Similar Items:
ASIN: B0001DCYUA Release Date: 2004-04-06 |
Amazon.com
It's hard to overstate just how corny and funny the Andy Hardy series of the 1930s and 1940s looks by today's standards--but that doesn't mean these films don't have a certain winning quality. It doesn't matter whether it's Mickey Rooney's winningly goofy blend of lust and innocence as a high school kid dying to make out with his girlfriend or his surprisingly touching man-to-man talks with his father, Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone). Think of this film as the precursor to "Archie" comic books, with its story of young Andy, desperate for the money to buy a car, winding up with three dates to the same formal dance. Rooney is engaging as the motor-mouthed (yet deceptively thoughtful) teen in pre-World War II, tail-end-of-the-Depression, small-town America: often in a coat and tie, always in a dandyish porkpie hat. This was the first film in this series in which Judy Garland appeared as girl-next-door Betsy Booth. <I>--Marshall Fine</I>Description
Andy frantically tries to juggle two girlfriends at the same time.Customer Reviews:
Andy Meets the Starlets.......2006-07-06
You Were Right Mr. Mayer !.......2005-11-29
Bring Us More Andy!.......2004-11-16
Wonderfully funny and Entertaining!!!.......2004-10-02
Surprisingly Fresh.......2004-05-26
Clearly this is Mickey Rooney's movie. I've never been fond of him as an actor. His mugging and frentic energy make me turn away in embarrassment. However, in this film there are many moments when his enthusiasm is more infectious than his mugging is distracting. He works well with Lewis Stone and Judy Garland. Also he conveys his internal dilemma dealing with two girls with comedy and concern. There are also many moments when he hams it up so I don't want to mislead anyone! But at least I could see why he was so popular which is something that had escaped me despite watching several of the Garland-Rooney musicals.
The reason I watched this film was to see Judy Garland and I wasn't disappointed. This film was shot shortly before, "Wizard of Oz" and she is awkward and somewhat unfocused but alas she is Judy Garland which means despite her lack of maturity, she is the best thing in the film. Her musical numbers are delightful and her predicament of being too young for Mickey is touching and sweet. Sure, she doesn't know what to do with her hands and occasionally mugs for the camera but at sixteen Judy Garland is clearly bursting with talent, promise and excitement.
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Snow White and the Three Stooges
Starring: Carol Heiss , Larry Fine , Joe DeRita , Moe Howard , and Edson Stroll Director: Walter Lang , and Frank Tashlin Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD Similar Items:
ASIN: B0007IO77C Release Date: 2005-04-26 |
Amazon.com
Many Stooges fans will find <I>Snow White and the Three Stooges</I> painful going, while some might find it quite charming. The film was conceived as a vehicle for Carol Heiss, the 1960 Olympic figure skating champion, but it was obvious that her limited acting would not carry the classic plot very far. So the Three Stooges were substituted for the Seven Dwarfs, and Prince Charming (Edson Stroll) became their companion. The start and end of the film follow the Disney version fairly closely, with Patricia Medina providing the only real acting as the Wicked Queen, abetted by the reliable villainy of Guy Rolfe.In fact, Snow White lost in the woods is almost a frame-by-frame copy of the Disney sequence, complete with a live tree out of the 1939 <I>Wizard of Oz</I>. This might grab some youngsters' attention by frightening them and some by amusing them, but the love sequences and the forgettable songs might bore them. The fight sequences are possibly too grisly for some children; Guy Rolfe dies by falling into a vat of boiling oil.
As a Three Stooges vehicle, it differs from their other films. Except for Curly Joe's spoonerisms, there is little humor in the dialogue, a bare minimum of slaps (without the reassuring comic sounds), and no eye pokes. (Moe was sensitive to parental complaints about their television shorts.) There is, however, a touching moment when they are mourning the supposed death of Snow White. And you do get to see them in color. --<I>Frank Behrens</I>
Description
The world's greatest fairy tale is about to get a few new and hilarious wrinkles. For starters, it's all live action as Snow White takes to the ice in the person of 1960 Olympic figure skating champion, Carol Heiss. Then, standing in for the Seven Dwarfs,Customer Reviews:
fairytale classic given a new spin.......2007-05-26
The best yet of their work.......2007-04-05
Charming children's fantasy by OZ's Noel Langley, best for family viewing but Stoogeheads should see this at least once.......2007-03-19
Are you people insane?.......2007-01-22
Family veiwing.......2007-01-16
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Don't Trust Your Husband
Starring: Louise Allbritton , Marie Blake , Madeleine Carroll , Bess Flowers , and Rita Johnson Manufacturer: Geneon [Pioneer] ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD Similar Items:
ASIN: B000BGH2JA Release Date: 2005-11-22 |
Customer Reviews:
beware the wife who's falsely-scorned..........2007-05-28
a pleasant surprise.......2007-01-12
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The Star
Starring: Bette Davis , Sterling Hayden , Natalie Wood , Warner Anderson , and Minor Watson Director: Stuart Heisler Manufacturer: Warner Home Video ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD Similar Items:
ASIN: B0008ENIMK Release Date: 2005-06-14 |
Amazon.com
"Come on, Oscar--let's you and me get drunk." This caustic Bette Davis line is not aimed at a co-star but at the Academy Award itself, which down-on-her-luck actress Margaret Elliot cradles bitterly at the beginning of an inebriated evening. As you can guess, Davis is at full-throttle in his ripe melodrama, which came a couple of years after <I>All About Eve</I> and serves as a kind of less-classy companion piece to that classic. As the movie begins, Margaret has lost her career and family because of her own demanding nature. Rescued by a roughhewn boatbuilder (Sterling Hayden) she once befriended, she confronts what's most important--being a star, or being a (ahem) woman.The rickety script and cut-rate production values betray <I>The Star</I> as a product of Davis's post-Warners wanderings. It does have some sunny location shots of San Pedro, plus a young Natalie Wood before she broke out of child-star roles. But the biggest draw, other than Davis, is the Hollywood behind-the-scenes juice, and the guessing game of how close the material was to Davis's own career (rumor has it the character, who wants to glamorize herself for a supporting part as a slatternly housemaid, was based more on Joan Crawford). It ain't art, but it's an artifact of a different era, skipping between backstage expose and camp. <I>--Robert Horton</I>
Description
As Margaret, Bette Davis got yet another good picture and earned her ninth Academy Award nomination. Davis?s confident, perceptive performance lends absolute authenticy, as did a prop she provided. An Oscar stautette set noticeably on the car dashboard during Margaret?s drunken spin through Beverly Hills ? was one of two Davis owned. Sterling Hayden and Natalie Wood co-star in this gripping story that has many moments of truth (Leonard Maltin?s Movie Guide). The Star shines. <P><b>DVD Features:</b><b>Featurette:</b>New Featurette How Real is The Star? - RT: 7:45<b>Theatrical Trailer:</b></p>Customer Reviews:
Stark Film Illustrating The Tragic Downsides Of Movie Stardom.......2007-04-09
"Going.....going.....gone.".......2006-09-09
Fame and fortune are not the most important things in life.........2006-07-17
If you're a star...you're always going to be a star!.......2006-05-19
What Goes Up Must Come Down.......2006-03-05
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Danielle Steel's Palomino
Starring: Lindsay Frost , Eva Marie Saint , Rod Taylor , Beau Gravitte , and Michael Greene Director: Michael Miller Manufacturer: Anchor Bay ProductGroup: DVD Binding: DVD Similar Items:
ASIN: B0007WQHC6 |
Customer Reviews:
Great Movie.......2007-01-03
(:D) ....it was ok for me .......2006-06-11
One Great love story !.......1999-06-06
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