Recent DVDs of Interest
Posted by Chuck Grantham on May 28, 2008
For the DVD collectors among my readers I point out a list of recent and soon to come discs I find interesting:
1. George Melies: First Wizard of Cinema: legendary silent pioneering stuff if you’ve got the bucks for this large collection of some 103 173!! short films where magic meets cinema for the first time.
2. The Thief of Bagdad : The great sound production of this classic fantasy tale from 1940, selling unbelievably well on Amazon for an old film (#449 in Movies and TV as of this writing). Silent fans might want to check out Douglas Fairbanks’s 1924 version of the story, also outlandishly produced for its day.
3. Come Drink With Me: King Hu’s first wuxia film and the movie that seemingly introduced the modern film variant of the traditional Chinese Opera female- playing-male lead, the “kung fu diva”, this film finally gets a decent American release that looks suspiciously like a foreign version of the same film. But I’ll take it!
4.Heroes of the East: aka Shaolin Challenges Ninja, and neither title captures the spirit of this film, where despite all the fighting, no one dies! A top notch old schooler from one of martial arts films’ legends, Lau Kar Leung, with the Master Killer himself, Gordon Liu sporting both hair and a wife for a change!
5.The Big Trail: John Wayne’s first starring role, finally restored to widescreen as filmed, a film almost too big for its own good, but the prototype for things to come. The big talkie western with the big talkie western star!
6.A & E Romance Collection 1: Too much testosterone in the previous suggestions? Well, here’s a thirty hour round-up of stories the British seem to never tire of re-filming, including the version of _Pride and Prejudice_ with Colin Firth as Darcy (one of the adaptation’s chief strengths, according to many female viewers), _Emma_ with Kate Beckinsale before she discovered black leather and fangs, and even some romantic swashbuckling with _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ and _Ivanhoe_. Reduced from it’s original hefty price tag and reduced in many places even more.
7. Doctor Who: Beneath the Surface: In case you haven’t noticed already, I get every obscure reference Mark Goodacre ever makes to this show, as I fell under its spell in its American PBS days in the late Seventies. In the best years (personally speaking) of its classic run, between say 1966 and 1980, this was great family TV, with something for all generations. The DVD releases have been lovingly remastered and include good to exceptional bonus features, though I foresee some double-dipping ahead. This box set collects all three series about the Doctor’s reptilean menaces, the Silurians and the Sea Devils, two of which are good Pertwee shows and one a good-to-make-fun-of Davison show (and Davison leads the crowd in picking apart his series, I may add, making his probably the most entertaining commentaries among the various Doctors).
That ought to put a dent in your wallet!
That’s enough from me for tonight, though hardly all I am up to at the moment.
