Cinemascope

The truth is out there!

We should consider ourselves fortunate that at least the Golden Age color movies were done with this marvelous process. Did directors in general express any regrets once 3-strip Technicolor started to be phased out? Were there any filmmakers that wished (at that time) that the process would still be available somehow? Or did everybody just go, "aw, the heck with it, I'll use whatever color stock you give us!".

Based on this admittedly subjective analysis, one would have to say that the overall advantage goes to the 1937 version, though I'm glad to have both to suit my mood at any given moment. I'll also give a slight edge to the '37 version, but hey, when you can have both in a single DVD, who's going to complaint?

I think I have seen it, but it would have been over 20 years ago so I don't remember a whole lot. But, basically, whenever I've had a chance to watch any documentary or mini-series that has to do with filmmaking, I've always taken it.

While there is no denying that GK was a human, and probably as flawed as any human can be, at the end of the day all I can really experience first-hand are the movies, and that's the only thing that really matters to me. Everything else said about him is hearsay as far as I know, there's two sides to every story and since I can't possibly hear his side of the story, I simply forget about it and just enjoy his talent whenever I get a chance.

Also, Arkin will bring a tear to your eye in Freebie and the Bean costarring with James Caan. Can't wait for that one to be out on DVD!

a professional who surely must go down as also one of our greatest actressses as well as arguably our greatest American singer. Amen to that

Ever see The In-Laws (1979)??

Well, again, whatever flaws they may have had as people, guys like Kelly and Donen were extremely hard-working and driven, they really worked hard and perhaps they felt they deserved some gratitude or acknowledgement... whether they had too high an opinion of themselves or were unable to share credit for collaboration is perhaps a matter of opinion; there can be no definitive answer. What we do have are the results of those efforts and those collaborations, which have lived on for decades and will hopefully always be there when someone craves such entertainment.

But, at the end of the day, he should not have attacked Brooke Shields for seeking medical help for a medical problem that was endangering her life and her child's. Absolutely, well said. There are many Americans -- and for that matter, many people around the world -- who can lead a happy and fruitful life but may on occasion need pharmaceutical help to get chemical processes working right, etc. Now about this placenta business. Anyone that can explain this to me so I don't have to do a lengthy web search? I suppose it isn't living tissue, but isn't it a little suggestive (or reminisent) of cannibalism? Maybe this is just one of those things mom never took the time to talk to me about, so I know zilch. But then again I could never understand how people could eat pieces of chicken with the bones still in them and not feel like they were eating a cooked cadaver. Which, in a way, the actually are doing.

Here's hoping the rumors are true and that it is finally out of rights hell, coming to DVD and if so, hopefully TCM would rebroadcast all 13 episodes. I would love to watch that. Sometimes I get very sad thinking how few silent movies survive to this date, how many were lost to the ravages of time. And even with TCM doing a great job as it has been, we don't usually get to watch more than 1 silent movie a week.

Anybody know or have any idea where I can find the total number of short films produced by MGM? I am curious as to what percentage of all shorts made were included in the MGM/UA Home Video laserdisc issued about a decade ago. I assume it's a very small selection.

So does anyone think that Borat deserves to be considered, or that it could go on to become, a cult movie? Obviously this kind of comedy didn't appeal to everyone but it did appeal to a lot of movie goers and many of them thought it was the funniest thing they'd seen in years. In all fairness, some other viewers were not amused by some of the humor, especially the graphic parts. (And there were a lot of those!) Since the movie is out on DVD this Tuesday, do you think it will win more fans now that it's on video shelves? BTW there's some pretty funny "in-character" things that have been put in the actual DVD, some of it won't come as a surprise to anyone but some of it might. I started a separate thread in the "Cult Movies" forum, with more details. Just a small tidbit, if you go to the "languages selection" menu, try choosing "Hebrew" and see what happens!

Hi spsmyth and welcome to the boards. I'll avoid your post right now so as to remain relatively spoiler-free.

It is indeed a wonderful movie! I can totally understand those who consider it both a great sci-fi and a great horror movie.

So does anybody else think that the Borat movie will become a cult item, or that it has already become one? I can definitely see that some of the humor isn't going to be for everyone, but those that enjoy something totally offbeat and that's not afraid to push the envelope can appreciate something that's... heh, refreshingly different. Incidentally I hope this isn't a huge spoiler to anyone getting the movie on DVD but.... (mini spoiler) The DVD itself is made to look like a DVD-R with a handwritten title scrawled on the lower half and a reversed "R". At the top, a brand name helpfully explains: Demorez Is Life? No. Demorez Gotta love those details!

Together, they created some of the best musical films that will live on long after all of us are long gone. And I hope that both of them realize(d) that and that it brought them joy. Absolutely! Many will always consider Singin' in the Rain the greatest movie musical ever made! And then there's all the other movies they made!

There's supposedly a special edition of Poltergeist in the works... not sure if it has additional footage or not.

Elvis and she-vampires. Now, why can't Hollywood studios give us what we really want to see?

It was. I should have purchased the region 4 dvd of the orginial Double Indemnity. Why R4? I have R2, but only because it comes in the Barbara Stanwyck R2 DVD set.

As a spectator, I am only really concerned that Gene Kelly and Stanely Donen did some amazing work at MGM, both together and individually. Nothing can really top some of their musicals, starting with Singin' in the Rain, which they co-directed. Whatever may have gone on behind the scenes sure didn't diminish the joy for movie goers watching these great musicals. For Me and My Gal holds a very special place for me because it captures both Gene Kelly and Judy Garland near their youthful prime, and they both look wonderful in it. Despite any flaws it may have, it's much more delightful to watch than Summer Stock, because Judy Garland's health problems were starting to catch up with her, and watching it today we know it was to be her last musical at MGM. So even if the musical itself is fairly upbeat, we can't help knowing that tragedy lay ahead for Judy, even if Gene Kelly still had some of his best musicals ahead of him, Singin' in the Rain, An American in Paris, Brigadoon. There are times when a movie can have a very special meaning that goes beyond a strictly formal artistic appraisal... and for me, For Me and My Gal is such a movie.

Those are good PS comedies. One that I think most people will want to avoid is The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, which most would probably not find all that funny. Sadly, it was his last movie. There is also an interesting biopic made for cable a few years back, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, with Geoffrey Rush doing his best to capture the bizarre nature of PS. It's got a fairly good cast and should be of interest to anyone who has enjoyed PS's movies.

That's a great list, Arkadin. Wish TCM would play He Who Gets Slapped again soon, haven't seen it in ages! And it's probably one of Lon Chaney's best!

Yes, I think it was mentioned in the audio commentary. There's also scenes where you can see his face clearly during the action scenes. And he was born in 1913, so he'd have been around 51 at the time!

In case you forgot about the release date -- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/movies/homevideo/06dvd.html March 6, 2007 Critic?s Choice New DVDs: The Prisoner(s) of Zenda By DAVE KEHR THE PRISONER(S) OF ZENDA Anthony Hope published his swashbuckling romance ?The Prisoner of Zenda? in 1894, and it took all of a year for it to reach the London stage. Hope?s boys-own adventure has held its place in popular culture ever since. It offers a rousing tale of a tweedy Englishman, Rudolf Rassendyll, who finds himself taking the place of his distant cousin and double, Rudolf V of Ruritania (a fictional Mittel-European country), who is threatened by a palace coup. It inspired two sequels, countless stage productions, an operetta (with music by Sigmund Romberg), a musical (with music by Vernon Duke) and quite a few movies. The two best-known film versions, the David O. Selznick production of 1937 starring Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and the 1952 MGM version with Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr and James Mason, are out today on a double-sided disc from Warner Home Video, and it?s surprising how resilient the familiar and much-parodied material, with its preposterous coincidences and unshaded characterizations, continues to be. (The most recent unofficial version is probably Ivan Reitman?s ?Dave? of 1993, with Kevin Kline as an average American drafted to replace a comatose president.) Perhaps the secret of its lasting appeal lies in the myth of rebirth it so satisfyingly embodies; the great moment in most versions arrives when Princess Flavia, the king?s intended, realizes that he is not the drunken, immature lout she has long assumed him to be, but has mysteriously become an Oxford-educated gentleman whose erudition and athleticism are matched only by his decency and courage. That?s a makeover that even Oprah would have a hard time engineering. By the time Selznick signed up Ronald Colman for the part, Mr. Colman had already appeared in a ?Zenda? knockoff called ?The Masquerader? (1933), as a journalist who takes the place (and the wife) of his look-alike cousin, a member of Parliament with a secret drug addiction. That ?Zenda? could no longer be played straight must have been obvious to everyone, and so Selznick and his principal director, John Cromwell, approached it with just enough irony and self-awareness to pull the material into the 20th century without losing its Victorian charm. (Selznick being Selznick, he insisted on rewrites and reshoots, bringing in, among others, the writers Donald Ogden Stewart, Ben Hecht and Sidney Howard, and the directors George Cukor and W. S. Van Dyke). Hollywood legend holds that Stewart Granger, the strapping Englishman whom MGM was grooming as its swashbuckling star of the ?50s, saw the Selznick film and immediately insisted that MGM buy it for him. Selznick, it is said, asked so much for the remake rights that MGM had no money left for a new script, so the director Richard Thorpe simply reshot the Cromwell version, practically scene for scene and line for line. (Even Alfred Newman?s score was recycled, though in a new orchestration by Conrad Salinger.) Watching the two films back to back is a little like returning to Gus Van Sant?s notorious remake of ?Psycho? (1998), in which everything is the same but somehow hideously different. The advantages the remake does hold are the Technicolor photography of Joseph Ruttenberg and the Technicolor-friendly red tresses of Deborah Kerr, who is this version?s Flavia. But this is one double-sided disc that probably will not be flipped more than once. $19.98, not rated.