or, Savant picks The Most Impressive Discs of 2015
This is the actual view from Savant Central, looking due North.
What a year! I was able to take one very nice trip back East too see Washington D.C. for the first time, or at least as much as two days' walking in the hot sun and then cool rain would allow. Back home in Los Angeles, we've had a year of extreme drought -- my lawn is looking patriotically ratty -- and we're expecting something called El Niño, that's supposed to be just shy of Old-Testament build-me-an-ark intensity. We withstood heat waves like those in Day the Earth Caught Fire, and now we'll get the storms part. This has been a wild year for DVD Savant, which is still a little unsettled. DVDtalk has been very patient and generous, and so have Stuart Galbraith & Joe Dante; so far everything...
This is the actual view from Savant Central, looking due North.
What a year! I was able to take one very nice trip back East too see Washington D.C. for the first time, or at least as much as two days' walking in the hot sun and then cool rain would allow. Back home in Los Angeles, we've had a year of extreme drought -- my lawn is looking patriotically ratty -- and we're expecting something called El Niño, that's supposed to be just shy of Old-Testament build-me-an-ark intensity. We withstood heat waves like those in Day the Earth Caught Fire, and now we'll get the storms part. This has been a wild year for DVD Savant, which is still a little unsettled. DVDtalk has been very patient and generous, and so have Stuart Galbraith & Joe Dante; so far everything...
- 12/15/2015
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
He's back and he's funnier than ever. The mischievous, cagey entertainer William Claude Dukenfield starred in some of the best comedies ever. This five-disc DVD set contains eighteen of his best, all the way from Million Dollar Legs in 1932 to Never Give a Sucker an Even Break in 1941. And we get to see all sides of W.C's talent -- he was a top-rank juggler, of just about anything. W.C. Fields Comedy Essentials Collection DVD Universal Studios Home Entertainment 1932-1941 / B&W / 1:37 Academy 1316 minutes (21 hours, 46 min) Street Date October 13, 2015 / 99.98 Starring Larson E. Whipsnade, T. Frothinghill Bellows, Egbert Sousé, Eustace P. McGargle, Harold Bissonette, Professor Quail, Augustus Winterbottom, Mr. Stubbins, Sam Bisbee, Ambrose Wolfinger, Cuthbert J. Twillie, Humpty-Dumpty. Written by Charles Bogle, Mahatma Kane Jeeves, Otis Criblecoblis
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
In the late 1960s there were these things called Head Shops, see, where various hippie consumer goods were sold.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
In the late 1960s there were these things called Head Shops, see, where various hippie consumer goods were sold.
- 10/27/2015
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
"The indie Texan filmmaker David Lowery receives a double bill at the reRun Gastropub Theater in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and while Pioneer, a 16-minute short, and St Nick, an 86-minute feature, don't provide hard answers to their mysteries, both are deeply intriguing," writes Andy Webster in the New York Times. Regarding St Nick, a "potentially stifling ambience is deflected by quiet suspense and the awe-inspiring compositions of the cinematographer, Clay Liford. Decaying rustic interiors evoke Andrew Wyeth still lifes; pastoral long shots suggest a Southwestern walkabout. And Mr Lowery seems ready for a bigger canvas."
"Obliquely charting the terror, loneliness, and liberation of navigating a cold, callous grown-up world, St Nick follows nameless brother and sister runaways (played by real-life siblings Tucker and Savanna Sears) who take up impermanent residence in an empty Texas house," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "David Lowery's debut feature is long on silence and laden...
"Obliquely charting the terror, loneliness, and liberation of navigating a cold, callous grown-up world, St Nick follows nameless brother and sister runaways (played by real-life siblings Tucker and Savanna Sears) who take up impermanent residence in an empty Texas house," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "David Lowery's debut feature is long on silence and laden...
- 4/23/2011
- MUBI
"Greg La Cava is, to my mind, the No. 1 director of these great and grand and glorious United States of ours. I have many friends, Directors, and I hate to have to expose my hand like this." —William Claude Dukenfield.
W.C. Fields, celebrated this month at the Film Forum in New York, might possibly be the greatest of the talking clowns, eclipsing even the Marx Bros, even Laurel & Hardy. It's easy to forget he had a substantial silent career before talkies, so crucial does that distracted drawl seem to his star identity. While Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd seemed somewhat diminished when audible words emerged from their lips, like Stan and Ollie, Fields blossomed in talkies. But, though they truly excel when offered the gift of speech, their silents are nothing to be sneezed at either.
Although Fields' talkies often had gifted comedy directors at the helm, notably former Keaton collaborator Clyde Bruckman,...
W.C. Fields, celebrated this month at the Film Forum in New York, might possibly be the greatest of the talking clowns, eclipsing even the Marx Bros, even Laurel & Hardy. It's easy to forget he had a substantial silent career before talkies, so crucial does that distracted drawl seem to his star identity. While Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd seemed somewhat diminished when audible words emerged from their lips, like Stan and Ollie, Fields blossomed in talkies. But, though they truly excel when offered the gift of speech, their silents are nothing to be sneezed at either.
Although Fields' talkies often had gifted comedy directors at the helm, notably former Keaton collaborator Clyde Bruckman,...
- 4/21/2011
- MUBI
Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr here, to talk about an impromptu musical number that doubles as a historical document. Frank Capra’s Oscar-sweeping screwball comedy It Happened One Night is naturally best remembered for the cute love story that unfolds (over the course of several nights) between stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.
However, it’s also something of a postapocalyptic travelogue, since the odd couple’s odyssey by bus up the East Coast gives them a panoramic view of a nation debilitated by the Depression. They run into purse snatchers, con men, starving children, and crowds of poor families forced together by poverty. For Colbert’s spoiled heiress, it’s a shocking glimpse of how the other half lives. But the world she discovers is not all negative: the bus’s passengers comprise a makeshift community, and it’s one that loves to sing.
So while the bus chugs along,...
However, it’s also something of a postapocalyptic travelogue, since the odd couple’s odyssey by bus up the East Coast gives them a panoramic view of a nation debilitated by the Depression. They run into purse snatchers, con men, starving children, and crowds of poor families forced together by poverty. For Colbert’s spoiled heiress, it’s a shocking glimpse of how the other half lives. But the world she discovers is not all negative: the bus’s passengers comprise a makeshift community, and it’s one that loves to sing.
So while the bus chugs along,...
- 3/19/2011
- by Andreas
- FilmExperience
Evergreen satire Meet John Doe shows the little people being used by the media to serve its own ends. Sounds familiar, says John Patterson
Sometimes I blame Frank Capra for Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell. Capra's evergreen 1939 melodrama in the form of a civics lesson, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, peddles the notion that our most desirable elected representative isn't the richest, canniest or best-connected professional politician, but the honest, untutored back-country hick with a love for the founding fathers – or, failing that, Jimmy Stewart himself.
It turns out that Capra, the director most closely associated with the 1930s, era of the Great Depression, had mixed feelings about The People whom the majority of his movies celebrate, and who are by and large depicted by him as dignified, funny, resilient and honest. The famous bus ride scene in his masterpiece It Happened One Night, when passengers take turns on verses...
Sometimes I blame Frank Capra for Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell. Capra's evergreen 1939 melodrama in the form of a civics lesson, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, peddles the notion that our most desirable elected representative isn't the richest, canniest or best-connected professional politician, but the honest, untutored back-country hick with a love for the founding fathers – or, failing that, Jimmy Stewart himself.
It turns out that Capra, the director most closely associated with the 1930s, era of the Great Depression, had mixed feelings about The People whom the majority of his movies celebrate, and who are by and large depicted by him as dignified, funny, resilient and honest. The famous bus ride scene in his masterpiece It Happened One Night, when passengers take turns on verses...
- 10/22/2010
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
David Cairns
The Forgotten: Flaming Beefcake
The Forgotten: Remember You Must Die
The Forgotten: That Glaring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze
The Forgotten: Forty Million Frenchmen
The Forgotten: April 29
Fernando F. Croce
Now on DVD: “Panic in the Streets” (Elia Kazan, 1950)
Adrian Curry
Movie Poster of the Week: "Punch-Drunk Love"
Movie Poster of the Week: "La Salamandre"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Band of Ninja"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Oh, That Nastya!"
David D'Arcy
Podcast. David D'Arcy and Alexei Popogrebsky
Podcast. Bahman Ghobadi, Roxana Saberi and Obash of The Yellow Dogs
The Ferroni Brigade
The Way to the Golden Donkey
Sex and Politics: Jack Stevenson's "Scandinavian Blue: The Erotic Cinema of Sweden and Denmark in the 1960s and 1970s"
Daniel Kasman
Video Sundays: Music Videos by An Older Generation
Image of the Day: Damsels in Distress #3
Video Sundays. From Hollywood to New German Cinema, The Impressionist Whirligig Camera...
The Forgotten: Flaming Beefcake
The Forgotten: Remember You Must Die
The Forgotten: That Glaring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze
The Forgotten: Forty Million Frenchmen
The Forgotten: April 29
Fernando F. Croce
Now on DVD: “Panic in the Streets” (Elia Kazan, 1950)
Adrian Curry
Movie Poster of the Week: "Punch-Drunk Love"
Movie Poster of the Week: "La Salamandre"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Band of Ninja"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Oh, That Nastya!"
David D'Arcy
Podcast. David D'Arcy and Alexei Popogrebsky
Podcast. Bahman Ghobadi, Roxana Saberi and Obash of The Yellow Dogs
The Ferroni Brigade
The Way to the Golden Donkey
Sex and Politics: Jack Stevenson's "Scandinavian Blue: The Erotic Cinema of Sweden and Denmark in the 1960s and 1970s"
Daniel Kasman
Video Sundays: Music Videos by An Older Generation
Image of the Day: Damsels in Distress #3
Video Sundays. From Hollywood to New German Cinema, The Impressionist Whirligig Camera...
- 5/2/2010
- MUBI
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.