Looking at Film from Every Angle

The DVD Report #31

Posted

in

by

Peter J Patrick

Tags:


I had hoped to review the massive Ford at Fox collection this week. Unfortunately, I have been unable to get my grubby little hands on a copy of the collection that releases today. What I can tell you is that it contains 24 films including the documentary Becoming John Ford. I can also tell you that most of the films in the collection are new to DVD, the centerpiece of which is a lovingly restored and scored presentation of 1924’s The Iron Horse, the film that put Ford on the map. What I can’t tell you how the new transfers of such previously released titles as The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley and My Darling Clementine stack up against their previous incarnations. Hopefully I will have more information by this time next week.

Also being released today by Fox is the Bob Hope Movie Collection. While of considerably lesser interest than the Ford collection, the fact that Fox is releasing these films at all is cause for celebration in that it signals hope that they will open their vaults even further to release some of the better films from Fox and MGM (post-1990 MGM titles as well as old United Artists and Samuel Goldwyn titles) they control.

MGM switched its distribution deal from Sony to Fox late last year. This is significant because Sony was never a great supporter of classic films, certainly not in the sense that Fox is.

Included in the Hope collection are four new-to-DVD titles: They Got Me Covered, Alias Jesse James, The Facts of Life and Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! Also included are the previously-available The Princess and the Pirate, The Road to Hong Kong and I’ll Take Sweden
/em>.

The best of the new releases is The Facts of Life, which was nominated for five Academy Awards and won one (for costume design). It’s a fairly agreeable sophisticated comedy about a married man and the wife of his best friend who are thrown together though happenstance. They enter into a clandestine relationship, but this being 1960, do not consummate their affair. Hope is the man and Lucille Ball, in her first role since splitting up with Desi Arnaz, is the woman. Ruth Hussey and Don DeFore are their clueless spouses. It is directed by Melvin Frank ( A Touch of Class).

1943’s They Got Me Covered is fairly agreeable fluff about a reporter uncovering a Nazi ring in Washington, D.C. in the midst of World War II. Hope’s co-stars include Dorothy Lamour, Otto Preminger, Eduardo Ciannelli, Philip Ahn, Donald Meek, Donald MacBride and Florence Bates. It was directed by David Butler ( Calamity Jane).

Released when TV shows set in the Old West were at their peak, 1959’s Alias Jesse James provided Hope with a strong role as an insurance salesman who unwittingly sells a policy to the fabled outlaw Jesse James and must join the James gang to try and keep Jesse alive. Rhonda Fleming is his love interest and a rather long in the tooth Wendell Corey is Jesse James. The film features cameos from many stars of the day including Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Roy Rogers, James Garner, Hugh O’Brian and James Arness. It was directed by Norman Z. McLeod ( The Paleface).

1966’s Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! is stuff and nonsense about a movie star on the lam and the small town real estate agent who helps her hide. Hope is the wise-cracking real estate agent, Phyllis Diller his equally wisecracking housekeeper, Elke Sommer the runaway movie star and Marjorie Lord is Hope’s clueless wife. It was directed by George Marshall ( Fancy Pants).

The pick of the litter of the re-issues is 1944’s The Princess and the Pirate in which Hope co-stars with Virginia Mayo, Walter Brennan, Walter Slezak and Victor McLaglen. The high seas costume comedy was directed by David Butler ( They Got Me Covered).

When Hope and Crosby made 1962’s The Road to Hong Kong, their first road picture in ten years, the 47-year-old Dorothy Lamour was deemed too old for the boys, then looking hard at 60, so the producers recruited 28-year-old Joan Collins to play the female lead. Lamour had to be content with a cameo as herself. Also featuring Robert Morley, the lackluster comedy was directed by Norman Panama ( Li’l Abner).

The worst of the lot has to be 1965’s I’ll Take Sweden, an unfunny comedy in which Hope tries to find a new boyfriend for daughter Tuesday Weld. Also with Frankie Avalon and Dina Merrill, it was directed by Fred DeCordova ( The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson).

The DVD release of Adrienne Shelley’s Waitress includes a documentary on the life of the writer-director-actress’ career, which was tragically cut short by her murder last year. I wish I could report that her last film is worthy of the tribute given it. Sadly, at least for me, it is not.

The film’s main asset is Keri Russell’s charm, but even she can only stretch credulity so far. Why an intelligent, self-sufficient young woman would stay married to an abusive jerk (Kevin Sisto in a somewhat milder version of his Six Feet Under character) when she has other options is beyond me. So is the implausible, impractical affair the pregnant woman has with her doctor (Nathan Fillion in a pre-cursor to his current Desperate Housewives role). Not even Andy Griffith can salvage it as the stereotypical grumpy old man with a heart of gold. Russell’s scrumptious looking pies, though, make you wish you were there to enjoy them.

Finally, there is a new movie on DVD to treasure. Mira Nair’s The Namesake is one of the best coming-of-age films in a long time. It stars Kal Penn ( Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) as the American-born son of Indian immigrants Irrfan Khan and Tabu, but the film is as much their story as it is his and the film’s final dedication is to the parents. Taking place primarily in Bengal and New York, the film, which alternates seamlessly between Hindustani and English, is easily Nair’s ( Salaam Bombay!, Monsoon Wedding) best film.

Criterion’s reissue of 1938’s The Lady Vanishes is an improvement over their nine-year-old first issue of the Hitchcock title, though that version, one of the first DVD releases, was itself a fairly decent re-master. One of the hallmarks of Alfred Hitchcock’s British period, the film starring Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave and Dame May Whitty as passengers on train, centers around the mystery of Whitty’s disappearance. It features a considerable amount of wit along with the suspense, most of it supplied by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as fellow passengers Charters and Caldicott. Radford and Wayne were to reprise those characters in three subsequent films, Night Train, Crook’s Tour and Next of Kin. The droll Crook’s Tour is included as an extra with this release of The Lady Vanishes.

Starz Home Entertainment’s “uncut and uncensored” reissue of 1983’s Bad Boys is 19 minutes longer than the old Artisan release. Director Rick Rosenthal confides that Sean Penn beat out Kevin Bacon and Tom Cruise for the role in auditions by the three then up-and-coming actors. Esai Morales, Ally Shedy and Reni Santoni co-star in the reform school melodrama that holds up surprisingly well.

I’ll be back next week with more on Ford at Fox…or not as the case may be.

Peter J. Patrick (December 4, 2007)

Buy on DVD!
Use Each Title’s Link


Top 10 Rentals of the Week

(November 25)

  1. Live Free or Die Hard
              $12.4 M ($12.4 M)
  2. Hairspray
              $9.60 M ($9.60 M)
  3. Shrek the Third
              $9.10 M ($20.1 M)
  4. Ocean’s Thirteen
              $6.51 M ($14.4 M)
  5. Rescue Dawn
              $6.43 M ($6.43 M)
  6. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
              $6.25 M ($23.2 M)
  7. Ratatouille
              $5.11 M ($18.9 M)
  8. Spider-Man 3
              $4.95 M ($29.2 M)
  9. The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause
              $4.73 M ($4.73 M)
  10. Deck the Halls
              $4.20 M ($15.6 M)

Top 10 Sales of the Week

(November 18)

  1. Shrek the Third
  2. Ratatouille
  3. Ocean’s Thirteen
  4. Spider-Man 3
  5. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
    6. Transformers
  6. Meet the Robinsons
  7. Amazing Grace
  8. Gilmore Girls: The Complete Seventh Season
  9. The Jungle Book
    New Releases
    (December 4)

    Coming Soon

    (December 11)

    (December 18)

    (December 25)

    (January 1, 2008)

    (January 2, 2008)

Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Search Our Site

Affiliated Sites

Posts by Topic

Infrequent Updates

Site Updates

Our Team

Login

Register

Registration Form

Contact Us

Archives

Verified by MonsterInsights