The DVD Report #131: November 24, 2009

The most successful film in Hollywood history in terms of tickets sold is now 70 years old. To celebrate, the 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition of Gone With the Wind has been released on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Only 150,000 editions of each have been produced. The Blu-ray set contains three discs, the standard DVD set, five. The film is on one Blu-ray disc but spread out over two standard DVD discs. Most of the supplements are contained on a second Blu-ray disc while the same elements are spread out over two standard DVD discs. Joining them in both sets is the previously released documentary, MGM: When the Lion Roars on one two-sided standard DVD.

The film, of course, looks and sounds better than it ever has, especially on Blu-ray. It also seems more relevant today than it has in recent years. The film is about the Civil War, the harshest time in American life. When originally released during the Great Depression it made the hardships of the day seem somehow less burdensome in comparison to what the characters in the film go through. Now in the harshest economic times since the Great Depression, audiences once again feel an affinity with the film that hadn’t been there for some time. The film especially resonates with women as the female characters in the film prove the most resilient.

Originally released in 1939, it was revived six times, roughly once every seven years, more than any other film in history and with more fanfare than any other re-release in history.

The 1960 re-release, which came out the year of Clark Gable’s death, was the last time the film was shown in its original version. It was also the last time its two female stars, Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland made appearances together in connection with it. The 1967 re-release, which came out the year Leigh died, was critically lambasted. In an effort to draw “modern” audiences in, MGM decided to release the film in 70MM widescreen which meant chopping off images at the bottom of the screen. It has never been shown in that version again.

After the last theatrical showings in 1967 came TV showings and eventually VHS and DVD releases, each one an improvement over the last.

The Ultimate Collector’s Edition contains over eight hours of supplements including several new documentaries as well as ones previously made in conjunction with the film’s last DVD release. Among the new supplements are an informative documentary on 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year, narrated by Kenneth Branagh; The Legend Lives On, detailing why the film still holds up and The Scarlet O'Hara War, a nicely done 1981 TV movie about the search to find the actress to play the film’s leading lady.

J.J. Abrams’ re-imagining of Star Trek ramps up the action of the old TV series while remaining faithful to the characters who are introduced in fascinating ways.

Chris Pine (Kirk) and Zachary Quinto (Spock) emerge as major screen stars following years of TV work. Karl Urban (Bones), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Simon Pegg (Scotty) and Anton Yelchin (Chekhov) resorting to his long lost Russian accent are also first rate as the rest of the Enterprise’s main crew. Bruce Greenwood is stalwart as the original captain of the ship who makes way for the new one while an unrecognizable Eric Bana makes a strong impression as the principal villain. Excellent, too, albeit in smaller roles, are Ben Cross as Spock’s Vulcan father and Winona Ryder as his human mother. Best of all is Leonard Nimoy, the original Spock, who is used quite effectively.

A sequel is already planned for 2011.

Star Trek is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

I must confess that I was not a fan of Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen’s critically acclaimed box office phenomenon of 2006. I found the film tasteless, insensitive and offensive, which I suppose was the point. Consequently I approached his latest pseudo-documentary, Bruno, with trepidation, but found it mildly entertaining.

Bruno nearly matches Borat in tastelessness but the insensitivity this time around is in Baron’s character, not the people he meets, which makes it much less offensive. Ostensibly an expose of homophobia, it is not. No one in the film calls Bruno names or attempts to do him harm. No one objects to him because he is gay. The objections come because he is totally obnoxious. There is no bite. Neither is there much to laugh at. The situations are mostly just silly. The best stuff was saved for the outtakes which are included as DVD extras.

The best part of the theatrical release version was seeing how celebrities like Paul Abdul and Ron Paul handled situations Bruno put them in. The extras give us more celebrities – LaToya Jackson, Pete Rose, Tom Ridge, John Bolton – all giving us pointers on how to handle discomfit. The answer for most of them is quietly walk away.

Bruno is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Child actor Bill Milner is the central character in John Crowley’s Is Anybody There? He plays a young boy fascinated by the deaths of the old codgers living in his parents’ old folks’ home. Enter melancholy retired magician Michael Caine who teaches the boy a few life lessons before popping off himself.

While the film has its moments, it is a mostly depressing movie about old people who have nowhere to go but into the ground. Caine is good, but when isn’t he? It’s a treat to see the likes of Leslie Phillips, Rosemary Harris and Sylvia Sims, but it would be a bigger treat to see them in something a bit more uplifting.

Is Anybody There? is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Another film about children and death, Nick Cassavetes’ My Sister's Keeper starts out intriguingly as Abigail Breslin hires attorney Alec Baldwin to sue her parents to keep them from forcing her to give a kidney to her dying sister (Sophia Vassilieva), but quickly deteriorates. The young actors, Breslin, Vassalieva, Evan Ellingson as their brother and Thomas Dekker as Vassalieva’s cancer ward squeeze are fine, but the adults are anything but, especially Cameron Diaz as a harridan of a mother. The film’s ending, which I understand to be different from the novel upon which it is based, is a totally ridiculous cop-out.

My Sister's Keeper is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

With Jeff Bridges now being touted as the one to beat for this year’s Best Actor Oscar for Crazy Heart, now is a good time to catch up with some of the many films he’s made over the course of his long career.

Bridges has stated that his own favorite films are American Heart and Fearless, both from 1993 and both worth seeing again. Also worth seeing are two new DVD releases, this year’s The Open Road and 1989’s See You in the Morning from the Warner Archive.

The actor is the main reason for seeing The Open Road, a low budget, barely released film in which he plays a retired baseball player travelling from Ohio to Texas with his estranged son (Justin Timberlake) and the son’s estranged girlfriend (Kate Mara) to be at the side of his ex-wife (Mary Steenburgen) as she undergoes open heart surgery. Directed by Michael Meredith, the film co-stars Harry Dean Stanton as Steenburgen’s father and features cameos by Lyle Lovett and Ted Danson. It’s pretty much what you’d expect, but Bridges is fascinating to watch as a beloved public figure who is an ass in real life. Timberlake is low key but competent in his first major starring role.

The Open Road is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Bridges is at his best in Alan J. Pakula’s See You in the Morning as a psychiatrist whose difficult to please wife (Farrah Fawcett) asks him to leave so she can be free to see other men. He then has a whirlwind romance with a recent widow (Alice Krige) which results in a shaky second marriage.

Pakula’s screenplay is compelling but has too many stops and starts leading to its inevitable conclusion. The treats are in the acting. Besides Bridges and Krige, there are excellent performances by Drew Barrymore and Lukas Haas as Krige’s kids, an already scene stealing Macaulay Culkin as Bridges and Fawcett’s son, Frances Sternhagen as Fawcett’s charming mother and George Hearn and Linda Lavin as the friends who introduce Bridges to Krige.

Interestingly, Pakula is said to have based his screenplay on the breakup of his marriage to Hope Lange and his subsequent marriage to a non-professional. Christopher Murray, Pakula’s stepson from his marriage to Lange, has a scene stealing bit as one of Bridges’ psychiatric patients.

-Peter J. Patrick (November 24, 2009)

The DVD Report #130: November 17, 2009

One of the most satisfying animated features of all time, as well as a front-runner in this year’s Oscar race, Pixar’s Up is a film that pulls you in from the first frame and doesn’t let you go until the last.

It begins with a starry-eyed 15-year-old boy becoming transfixed with the career of an explorer (voiced by Christopher Plummer) who becomes discredited and disappears. In the meantime the boy, Carl, meets his soul mate, Ellie, who shares his love of adventure. Throughout their marriage, they plan to get away to a mystical wilderness retreat in South America, but life keeps getting in the way. Eventually they grow old and Ellie dies. Now 78 years old, Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) is a grumpy old man still clinging to his and Ellie’s lifelong dream of getting to that retreat. As could only happen in animation, he floats away with helium balloons lifting his house into the stratosphere.

Although the film has all the trappings of a kid’s movie - a lovable big bird, a sweet-natured dog that talks and a fearless 8-year-old stowaway (Jordan Nagai) - its appeal to adults is even stronger as it teaches or reaffirms some very valuable life lessons. [spoiler]Only after Carl comes across a note from Ellie in a photo album of their seemingly mundane life, thanking him for their life’s adventure together and telling him to find a new adventure, does he find the strength to let go of the past and rejoice in the here and now[/spoiler].

The Blu-ray release of the film is a four-disc set comprised of the film with commentary on disc one; special features on disc two; a standard DVD version of the film and a digital copy.

The 2001 Pixar hit, Monsters, Inc. has also been given the same deluxe Blu-ray packaging.

John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi and the late James Coburn are among those lending their voices to this still-fun extravaganza about monsters who scare little children and are, in turn, scared by them.

Now we move from children’s films to decidedly non-kid-friendly ones.

A psychological horror film in the grand tradition of such evil child movies as The Bad Seed and The Omen, Juame Collet Serra’s Orphan somehow slipped under the radar in theatres.

This is a Grade A drama about a couple who, having lost their third child in childbirth, decide to adopt an older girl from the local orphanage. The adoptive mother (Vera Farmiga) soon begins to suspect all is not right with “Esther”, but the adoptive father (Peter Sarsgaard) remains convinced his wife is imagining things.

Twelve-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman is as convincing as the brat as are Jimmy Bennett as her “brother” and adorable Aryana Engineer as her deaf-mute younger “sister”. CCH Pounder lends considerable charm to the role as the nun who runs the orphanage. You may see some of the twists coming, but you won’t see them all.

Orphan is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

It isn’t often that a remake improves upon the original, but Tony Scott’s update of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, previously filmed by Joseph Sargent in 1974, does just that.

The basic premise is the same: four gunmen hijack a New York City subway car, demanding $1 million in ransom to be paid in one hour or passenger-hostages will be shot one by one for every minute the money is delayed.

The characters have been re-written to suit the personalities of the new film’s stars, Denzel Washington and John Travolta, in for Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw as the perplexed transit officer and the chief bad guy, respectively, and the ending has been changed. The biggest difference, however, is in the spectacular special effects, which were unimaginable thirty-five years ago.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD. The 1974 version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is available on standard DVD only.

One of the year’s nicest surprises is Richard Loncraine’s My One and Only, which was given a limited theatrical release in what seems like just a week or two ago. Marketed as a comedy, it is filled with dramatic tension as well as comic touches throughout.

Renee Zellweger is very funny in the early scenes and poignant in the later ones as her character matures. She plays a former Southern belle who catches her bandleader husband with another woman, packs up her two teenage sons and goes cross country in search of another husband in 1953. Though somewhat fictionalized, this is the story of how she works her way to Hollywood where her older son (Mark Rendall) is determined to become a movie star. Through happenstance, however, it’s her younger son (Logan Lerman) who winds up with the Hollywood contract and changes his name to George Hamilton. Both Lerman and Rendall are outstanding.

Kevin Bacon plays the husband while Chris Noth, Eric McCormack, Steven Weber, Nick Stahl and Troy Garity appear as various men she meets along the way.

My One and Only is supposed to be a Target exclusive but within days of its release it was already available online at Amazon.com and E-Bay.

Barely released overseas, Griffin Dunne’s The Accidental Husband is a direct-to-video release in the U.S.

Uma Thurman as a smug radio psychologist and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a fireman who looks like he never bathes may be a mismatched couple, but the supporting cast including Colin Firth, Isabella Rossellini, Keir Dullea, Sam Shepard and Brooke Adams, shines in this easy-to-take throwback to the screwball comedies of the 1930s, albeit one with a modern twist.

The Accidental Husband is available on standard DVD only.

Just in time for the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Criterion has released Wim Wenders’ 1987 masterwork Wings of Desire on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Bruno Ganz stars as a colorblind angel assigned to Berlin before the fall of the wall. The angel, who has the ability to hear people’s thoughts who falls in love with a beautiful singer and longs to become human so he can spend time with her. Peter Falk co-stars as himself in Berlin to make a movie.

Part of the charm of the film is the black-and-white cinematography that makes up most of the film. When the angel becomes mortal and begins to see in color at the end of the movie, the film loses its pristine look and turns ordinary looking even to Wenders who says so in his informative commentary.

It seems like White Christmas has been re-issued by Paramount just about every year, but in reality the new 55th Anniversary Edition is only the third time around for the 1954 holiday classic directed by Michael Curtiz that was first released on DVD in 2000.

The original DVD release featured commentary by the then-only surviving star, Rosemary Clooney, as well as a retrospective interview with the actress-singer who passed away in 2002. The 2007 reissue offered an improved picture but no other changes to the original release. The current two-disc release retains the film with commentary on the first disc and moves the Clooney interview to the second disc where it is joined by tons of other extras including informative documentaries on three of the film’s four stars. Clooney’s brother and sister, niece and daughter-in-law Debby Boone are interviewed along with the proprietors of the Kentucky museum that occupies Clooney’s old house and contains a good deal of memorabilia from the film.

The Crosby documentary includes interviews with his widow, Kathryn, and his son, Harry. The Danny Kaye documentary includes interviews with his daughter and tributes to his philanthropic impact on UNICEF.

The fourth star, Vera-Ellen, doesn’t get her own documentary, but she is mentioned in everyone else’s including the one on composer Irving Berlin, which features an interview with one of his daughters. Finally, there is a short documentary on the film-to-stage production of the recent Broadway musical.

Sony (Columbia) has made available in one DVD set a group of British horror films from the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Called the Hammer Films Icons of Horror Collection, the two-disc collection consists of The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll; Scream of Fear; The Gorgon and The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb.

Terence Fisher’s The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll from 1960 changes a few things from Robert Louis Stevenson’s oft-filmed tale. This time around instead of smooth faced Dr. Jekyll growing a hairy visage as he turns into the hideous Mr. Hyde, he is bearded as Jekyll and smooth faced as Hyde. The object of Hyde’s lust is not the prostitute Ivy but his cheating wife, Kitty. Paul Massie stars as Jekyll and Hyde opposite Dawn Addams as Kitty and the redoubtable Christopher Lee as his wife’s lover.

Lee also turns up in Scream of Fear and 1964’s The Gorgon .

In Seth Holt’s Scream of Fear he’s the village doctor who may or may not have something to do with the disappearance of a wealthy man and the attempted murder of the man’s only child. Susan Strasberg stars as the man’s wheelchair-bound daughter who enlists the aid of her stepmother’s chauffeur (Ronald Howard) in determining the stepmother’s (Ann Todd) involvement in the disappearance. More of a psychological murder mystery than a horror movie, the four leads are all excellent.

Lee and Peter Cushing are the stars of Terence Fisher’s The Gorgon in which the title character turns men who gaze upon her into stone. Though obviously cheaply made, it’s nevertheless eerie and atmospheric and worthy of a look. The same can’t be said for the same year’s The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb directed by Michael Carreras. This dull and witless re-telling of the oft-filmed tale stars Terence Morgan, Ronald Howard and Fred Clark.

That’s enough for this week. Star Trek and Gone With the Wind next week.

-Peter J. Patrick (November 17, 2009)

The DVD Report #129: November 10, 2009

I'll have DVD reviews of Up, Star Trek and the 70th Anniversary Edition of Gone With the Wind soon, but for now let's take a little detour into the world of CDs.

Now that downloads of songs have become the thing to do, CDs that you can actually hold in your hand may well be on the road to distinction. In the meantime, let's enjoy them while we can.

A number one best seller in Great Britain earlier this year was We'll Meet Again, a compilation of World War II era songs by 92 year-old Dame Vera Lynn. What is remarkable about this set is not only her age, making her the oldest performer to reach number one on the album charts, but the fact that these are songs she sang more than sixty years ago that have never been out of print. The lady has had more compilations of her songs put together on various releases over the years than anyone else on the planet.

The album begins with one of the three songs Lynn is most famous for, "(There'll Be Blue Birds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover" immediately establishing a nostalgic mood that lasts through all eleven tracks. The title track, her signature tune, is heard third on the album. This compilation does not include "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" but don't worry, as I will soon reveal, another famous songstress has that one covered.

Among the songs that are included you'll find "As Time Goes By", "It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow" and "When I Grow Too Old to Dream".

Michael Feinstein and Cheyenne Jackson combine their considerable vocal talents on The Power of Two, a studio rendering of the material they covered in the show they performed at Michael's world famous cabaret club, Feinstein's at Loew's Regency.

The album opens with the two paired on "I'm Nothing Without You" from Cy Coleman and David Zippel's City of Angels after which the two alternate with one powerful ballad after another, joining together again for the title song as well as "Me and My Shadow" and Rodgers & Hammerstein's "We Kiss in a Shadow" from The King and I.

On his own, Michael sings such gems as "Old Friend", "So in Love" and "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter" while Cheyenne sings "A Foggy Day", "Someone to Watch Over Me" and Burton Lane and E.Y. Harburg's "Old Devil Moon" from Finian's Rainbow, the revival of which he is now starring in on Broadway.

Jackson's co-star in Finian's Rainbow, the fabulously voiced Kate Baldwin has her own recently released CD called Let's See What Happens,comprised completely of songs by Finian's composer Burton Lane and and lyricist E.Y. "Yip" Harburg either together or in collaboration with other show business greats.

The title tune is from Jule Styne's and Harburg's magnificent score for Darling of the Day, as is "That Something Extra Special' which opens the album. Along the way she gets to sink her teeth into such gems as "Come Back to Me" and "He Wasn't You" from Lane and Alan Jay Lerner's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever; "Here's to Your Illusions" from Sammy Fain and Harburg's Flahooley and "I Don't Think I'll End It All Today" from Harold Arlen and Harburg's Jamaica.

The highlight is, of course, her perfectly delivered "How Are Things in Glocca Moora" from Finian's Rainbow.

Broadway legend Chita Rivera has delighted us for more than fifty years on cast recordings of such shows as West Side Story in which she was the original Anita; Bye Bye Birdie in which she was the original Rose; Chicago in which she was the original Velma Kelly; Kiss of the Spider Woman in which she played the title character and the revival of Nine in which she essayed the role of Liliane La Fleur. "Nine" is also the number of Tony nominations she has secured over the years.

Now at the age of 76 she has finally been given her own album, And Now I Swing, which she opens with a medley of "I Won't Dance" and "Let Me Sing". She then launches into such diverse material as Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields' "Where Am I Going" from Sweet Charity; Jacques Brel's "Carousel" and Carol Hall's "Circle of Friends" proving age has not diminished her vocal strengths.

The final track on the album is the aforementioned "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square", the one signature tune of Vera Lynn's inexplicably left off her current hit compilation.

Liz Callaway long ago learned how to supplement her Broadway career (Baby; The Spitfire Grill) with cabaret appearances and occasional albums.

Her latest, Passage of Time, is a collection of wistful songs with the emphasis on cutting through the pain to get to the sunny side of life. Her repertoire ranges from a medley of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head"and "Singin' in the Rain"to the plaintive title tune, from The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby"to Carly Simon's "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be" in duet with her sister, Ann Hampton Callaway.

Callaway's greatest strength is her interpretation of show tunes, which are in no small supply here. Included are "Patterns" from Baby; "I'm Not That Girl" from Wicked; "Make Someone Happy" from Do Re Mi; "Something Wonderful" from The King and I and two very different songs from two very different Stephen Sondheim musicals, "Children Will Listen" from Into the Woods and "Being Alive" from Company.

One of the bright stars of Broadway since the early 1990s, Rebecca Luker first enchanted audiences with her supporting role in The Secret Garden, but quickly graduated to leading lady status in revivals of such all-time great musicals as Show Boat; The Sound of Music and The Music Man. More recently she originated the role of Mrs. Banks in the Broadway production of Mary Poppins.

A wonderful cabaret singer and occasional recording artist, her latest album, Greenwich Time, features a collection of lesser known songs, the best known of which is probably Maury Yeston's "Unusual Way" from Nine .

Other songs include "on My Way to You" by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand; "Billions of Beautiful Boys" by Paul Loesel and Scott Burkell; "He Never Did That Before" by Debra Barsha and Mark Campbell; "What the Living Do" by Ricky Ian Gordon and the haunting title tune by Sam Davis and Randy Buck.

One of today's best known divas, long time actress, cabaret performer and recording artist, Linda Eder has never had any trouble selling CDs. Her latest, Soundtrack should be no different.

This time around Eder concentrates on well known songs from movies ranging from the 1960s to the present day. Among the '60s songs she covers are Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini's "Charade" from the film of the same name and Fred Neill's "Everybody's Talking", not written for, but certainly popularized by Midnight Cowboy.

The '70s are represented by The Bee Gees' "If I Can't Have You" from Saturday Night Fever and the '80s by Phil Collins' "Against All Odds" from the film of the same name. The '90s are represented by Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the '00s by "Falling Slowly" from Once.

-Peter J. Patrick (November 10, 2009)

The DVD Report #128: November 3, 2009

Christmas comes early on Blu ray with the release not only of the holiday classics, A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life, but with the releases of 50th Anniverary Edition of North by Northwest, the long sought after release of Forrest Gump and Criterion's first subscriber voted release, Howards End, as well.

Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol has been filmed many times but none more effectively than Brian Desmond-Hurst's 1951 version with Alastair Sim, simply marvelous as a profoundly miserable Scrooge who is delightedly and delightfully transformed at film's end. The Blu-ray disc, as was to be expected, offers the crispest blacks and whites we've ever seen for this film, but even better, delivers the dialogue and other sounds so immaculately we actually hear things we may have before. Not only Sim, but Mervyn Johns and Hermione Baddeley as the Crachits, Michael Hordern as Marley's Ghost and Kathleen Harrison as Scrooge's befuddled landlady provide the best interpretations of these characters the screen has ever given us.

From the late 1950s through the early 1970s Christmas Eve television programming in most markets included a showing of either the 1938 MGM version of A Christmas Carol with Reginald Owen or the definitive 1951 version discussed above, or both. Beginning in the mid-1970s after Frank Capra forget to renew the copyright to 1947's It's a Wonderful Life, that film fell into the public domain and local programmers started showing it on Christmas Eve instead of either version of the Dickens classic, both of which they would have had to pay rentals for.

The annual telecasts of It's a Wonderful Life turned what had initially been a box office disappointment into a holiday tradition. Although it had been nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor (James Stewart) and Director (Capra), it took nearly thirty years for it to become a hit! Like A Christmas Carol, the crisp black and white cinematography looks better than ever and the immaculately reproduced soundtrack is crystal clear. In addition Stewart as the man who gets to see what things would have been like had he never been born, the film boasts marvelous performances from Donna Reed as his wife and Henry Travers as his guardian angel, Clarence, as well as such acting legends as Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, H.B. Warner and Gloria Grahame in pivotal supporting roles.

There is a Region B Blu-ray of Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 masterwork, The 39 Steps, which was recently released in Great Britain, but Warner Bros.' 50th Anniversary Edition of North by Northwest is the first Hitchcock film released in the format in North America. It looks and sounds more breathtaking than ever as we are pulled, hearts pounding, once again into the murder at the U.N., the attempted killing of Cary Grant with the crop duster and the climax across the face of Mount Rushmore. Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason are at the top of their game.

Extras include the Ernest Lehman commentary from the standard DVD release as well as several vintage documentaries, a new documentary, The Master's Touch: Hitchcock's Signature Style and the superlative 2003 TCM documentary on Cary Grant's life and films narrated by Jeremy Northam and Helen Mirren.

Two hours of new bonus features accompany the Blu-ray release of Robert Zemckis' 1994 Oscar winner, Forrest Gump, but the real thrill is the film itself stunningly delivered in the best possible format. This film, which covers the most turbulent events of the second half of the 20th Century is a time capsule that means more to those who lived through the era than it does for those who came of age at the time of the film's release or thereafter. In 1994 you were either a Forrest Gump or a Pulp Fiction fan. I was a Gump-er. Tom Hanks, in an Oscar nominated performance, Gary Sininse in an Oscar nominated one, Robin Wright, Sally Field, Mykelti Williamson and Haley Joel Osment are all as terrific as we remember.

Several months ago Criterion gave subscribers to its site a choice of several films to be re-mastered and released on Blu-ray. The 1992 Merchant-Ivory production of E.M. Forster's Howards End was the resounding winner of that survey. It was an excellent choice. Not only is the film worth seeing again, it's worth seeing in this superlative rendition which provides brilliant color detail missing in the rather lackluster standard DVD transfer. Loads of extras accompany the film, but the real treat is the film itself with the lived-in characterizations of Oscar nominated Anthony Hopkins and Vanessa Redgrave, Oscar winning Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, James Wilby and the rest of the cast bring Forster's characters vividly to life.

It's either feast or famine with DVD releases of classic films. This week we can feast on three newly released box sets: Sony's (Columbia) Samuel Fuller Film Collection and Film Noir Classics, Vol. 1 as well as Universal's Claudette Colbert Collection comprised of some of her Paramount films from the 30s and 40s.

Legendary writer-director Sam Fuller had a long career. The Samuel Fuller Collection is made up of seven films, four of which he wrote the screenplays for, one of which was taken from a novel he wrote and two which he himself directed.

Richard Dix and Fay Wray are stars of silent westerns whose careers come to a halt with the advent of talkies in 1937's It Happened in Hollywood for which Fuller co-wrote the screenplay The highlight of the film is a party for a sickly boy put together for Dix by May Robson's stand-in, played by Zeffie Tilbury. Doubles of everyone from Bing Crosby, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, W.C. Fields, Joan Crawford and Irene Dunne to Victor McLaglen are given amusing bits to do.

Fuller wrote the stories for 1938's Adventure in Sahara, a French Foreign Legion melodrama with Paul Kelly and 1943's Power of the Press with Otto Kruger as an evil publisher. Both would be forgotten were it not for Fuller's connection to them.

The equally legendary Douglas Sirk directed 1949's Shockproof, co-written by Fuller. Neither Sirk nor Fuller were happy with the studio imposed ending which mutes the film's overall sense of doom, but it is classic film noir nonetheless. Cornel Wilde has one of his better roles as the parole officer who falls for paroled murderess Patricia Knight, his then wife in real life.

Fuller's award-winning novel, The Dark Page was the basis for 1952's Scandal Sheet directed by Phil Karlson, a psychological thriller in which tabloid editor Broderick Crawford accidentally kills his ex-wife. The cover-up leads to an additional murder and the threat of several more. John Derek co-stars as Crawford's star reporter and surrogate son. Donna Reed as the reporter who loves Derek but doesn't trust Carwford, Henry O'Neill, Henry (Harry) Morgan and Rosemary DeCamp provide memorable supporting performances.

The best film of the lot is 1959's The Crimson Kimono, which Fuller both wrote and directed. A murder mystery on the surface, the film's real strength lies in its characterizations, particularly of Glenn Corbett and James Shigeta as former Korean war buddies, now cops in love with the same woman – Victoria Shaw who, surprisingly for the time it was made, prefers Japanese-American Shigeta. Anna Lee provides a memorable supporting performance.

Fuller also wrote and directed 1961's Underworld U.S.A., a superb film noir in which Cliff Robertson infiltrates the mob in order to wreak vengeance on the men who murdered his father years earlier. Dolores Dorn co-stars.

The best known of Columbia's Film Noir collection is the previously released 1953 classic, The Big Heat, directed by Fritz Lang. That's the one in which cop Glenn Ford's house is blown up by the mob with his wife (Jocelyn Brando) inside, the one in which Lee Marin disfigures Gloria Grahame by throwing a pot of hot coffee at her.

The oldest film in the collection is 1952's The Sniper, directed by Edward Dmytrk which greatly benefits from location filming in San Francisco. The first Hollywood film to deal with the hunt for a serial killer, it still impresses today. Adolphe Menjou, Arthur Fanz, Marie Windsor and Richard Kiley star.

Phil Karlson's 1955 heist film, 5 Agaisnt the House gives Kim Novak one of her first starring roles as a slinky dame who joins Guy Madison, Brian Keith, Kerwin Matthews, Alvy Moore and William Conrad as Korean war buddies who fall out over the planned robbery of a casino.

1958's Murder by Contract, directed by Irving Lerner, is a tense psychological study of a hired assassin played by Vince Edwards.

It's back to the streets of San Francisco for the last film in the collection, 1958's The Lineup, directed by Don Siegel with Eli Wallach as the hit man pursued by cops Warner Anderson and Emile Meyer. The chase scene through the then unfinished Embarcadero Freeway anticipates Bullitt by a decade.

Claudette Colbert starred in sixty films made mostly in the 1930s and 40s. Universal, which owns the rights to pre-1950 Paramount films has finally put together six of her best remembered films in one package.

Colbert's effervescent charm is nicely on display in 1933's Three-Cornered Moon but this early screwball comedy, directed by Elliot Nugent, really belongs to Mary Boland as the ditzy mother of a once wealthy clan that must now find jobs to support themselves. Richard Arlen and Wallace Ford co-star.

The second of her seven films opposite Fred MacMurray, 1937's Maid of Salem, directed by Frank Lloyd, provides Colbert with one of her best dramatic roles. It's the only non-comedy in the collection.

The first, and in many ways, the best of several films made over the decades about the Salem witch trials, Colbert as the title character and MacMurray as her fiancé are the nominal leads in the film which provides juicy character roles for the likes of Bonita Granville, Harvey Stephens, Gale Sondergaard, Beulah Bondi, Sterling Holloway, Donald Meek, Louise Dresser, Zeffie Tilbury and Madame Sul-Te-Wan. Granville, in one of her patented child monster roles, all but steals the film. At the time of its release in March, 1937, Granville, Sondergaard and Bondi were all nominees for the first ever supporting actress Oscar for their roles in 1936 films.

Colbert juggles Melvyn Douglas, Robert Young and Lee Bowman in 1937'screwball comedy, I Met Him in Paris, which actually takes place in Sun Valley, Idaho doubling for a Switzerland ski resort. It was directed by Wesley Ruggles.

Gary Cooper and Colbert have their only on-screen pairing in Ernest Lubitsch's Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, scripted by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. He plays a much married millionaire she marries for money but comes to love in the end. Edward Everett Horton is her impoverished titled father and David Niven is her former fiancé. Though not considered one of Lubitsch's major works, the film nevertheless has aged quite well.

It's back to Fred MacMurray in Mitchell Leisen's amiable 1943 charmer, No Time for Love, in which she's a reporter and he's a contractor digging a tunnel under the Hudson River. Ilka Chase, Richard Haydn and June Havoc co-star.

Colbert and MacMurray are re-united for 1947's box office smash, The Egg and I, directed by Chester Erskine. This is the only film previously available on commercial DVD in the U.S., having been part of a Ma and Pa Kettle box set. The hillbilly family led by Oscar nominee Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride was introduced in this film about transplanted New Yorkers.

The Warner Archive Collection has released Colbert's last film, the made-for-TV 1987 two part mini-series, The Two Ms. Grenvilles for which the actress won an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe opposite Ann-Margret as her murderess daughter-in-law. Both actresses are sublime.

-Peter J. Patrick (November 3, 2009)