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The
American
813
J76a |
Matthew
Modine and Diana Rigg star this adaptation of Henry James' novel.
Modine plays Christopher Newman, 19th-century "new man" who amasses
a fortune in California and heads to Europe to learn its ways and
find a wife. His overtures to a young French woman, a member of an
aristocratic but impecunious family, meet with icy condescension in
this classic collision between the old world and the new.
--Amazon
(90
mins) |
|
American Graffiti (Collector’s Edition)
791.43 L933a Ve |
Here's how critic
Roger Ebert described the unique and lasting value of George Lucas's
1973 box-office hit, American Graffiti: "[It's] not only a
great movie but a brilliant work of historical fiction; no
sociological treatise could duplicate the movie's success in
remembering exactly how it was to be alive at that cultural
instant." The time to which Ebert and the film refers is the summer
of 1962, and American Graffiti captures the look, feel, and
sound of that era by chronicling one memorable night in the lives of
several young Californians on the cusp of adulthood. (In essence,
Lucas was making a semiautobiographical tribute to his own days as a
hot-rod cruiser, and the film's phenomenal success paved the way for
Star Wars.) The action is propelled by the music of Wolfman
Jack's rock & roll radio show--a soundtrack of pop hits that would
become as popular as the film itself. As Lucas develops several
character subplots, American Graffiti becomes a flawless time
capsule of meticulously re-created memory, as authentic as a
documentary and vividly realized through innovative use of
cinematography and sound. The once-in-a-lifetime ensemble cast
members inhabit their roles so fully that they don't seem like
actors at all, comprising a who's who of performers--some of whom
went on to stellar careers--including Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss,
Harrison Ford, Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips, Charles Martin
Smith, Candy Clark, and Paul Le Mat. A true American classic, the
film ranks No. 77 on the American Film Institute's list of all-time
greatest American movies. --Amazon |
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Blue Velvet (Special Edition)
791.43 L987b VRe |
David Lynch peeks behind the picket fences of small-town America to
reveal a corrupt shadow world of malevolence, sadism, and madness.
From the opening shots Lynch turns the Technicolor picture postcard
images of middle class homes and tree-lined lanes into a dreamy
vision on the edge of nightmare. After his father collapses in a
preternaturally eerie sequence, college boy Kyle MacLachlan returns
home and stumbles across a severed human ear in a vacant lot. With
the help of sweetly innocent high school girl (Laura Dern), he turns
junior detective and uncovers a frightening yet darkly compelling
world of voyeurism and sex. Drawn deeper into the brutal world of
drug dealer and blackmailer Frank, played with raving mania by an
obscenity-shouting Dennis Hopper in a career-reviving performance,
he loses his innocence and his moral bearings when confronted with
pure, unexplainable evil. Isabella Rossellini is terrifyingly
desperate as Hopper's sexual slave who becomes MacLachlan's illicit
lover, and Dean Stockwell purrs through his role as Hopper's
oh-so-suave buddy. Lynch strips his surreally mundane sets to a
ghostly austerity, which composer Angelo Badalamenti encourages with
the smooth, spooky strains of a lush score. Blue Velvet is a
disturbing film that delves into the darkest reaches of
psycho-sexual brutality and simply isn't for everyone. But for a
viewer who wants to see the cinematic world rocked off its
foundations, David Lynch delivers a nightmarish masterpiece.
--Amazon |
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|
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
(Williams) 812 B873c Ve
c.3 |
The
clan has gathered to face the impeding death of their patriarch, Big
Daddy. Brick, the favored son, a
tortured boozing exfootball star who cannot face up to adult
responsibility. |
|
Cannery Row
791.43 W256c DVDe |
Director-writer
David S. Ward’s 1982 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row
(with material from another Steinbeck tale, Sweet Thursday)
has its charms, principally some top-drawer talent on both sides of
the camera; the cast is headed by Nick Nolte and Debra Winger, Jack
Nitzsche composed the music, and John Huston supplies the
voice-over. In a previous life, Nolte’s Doc was known as Eddie "The
Blur" Daniels, a star baseball pitcher in the 1920s who mysteriously
gave up the game while still in his prime; now he’s a self-styled
marine biologist with a predilection for octopi who makes his home
on "The Row," a string of sardine fisheries in Monterey, California.
There are a variety of colorful characters in this rundown ‘hood--a
worldly-wise madam (Audra Lindley) and her charges, a bum (M. Emmet
Walsh) and his buddies--but although it takes him a while to admit
it, Doc only has eyes for Suzy (Winger), a newcomer to the scene
who, by her own estimation, "ain’t got the class of a duck." The
film relies mostly on these oddballs and their various
idiosyncrasies and adventures, and Steinbeck clearly has
considerable affection for them; it’s no surprise that some,
including Doc, were based on real folks. But while Nolte and Winger
have a certain squabbling rapport, the movie too often comes off as
stagey (the dialogue), artificial (the sets), and glib. In the final
analysis, Cannery Row isn’t John Steinbeck’s greatest book
(at the very least, it lacks the heft of East of Eden or
The Grapes of Wrath), and this effort, despite its good points,
will hardly be considered the best adaption of the author’s work to
the screen or the stage. --Amazon |
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Death of a Salesman (I)(II)
(Williams) EV/822/045B01
EV/822/046B01
Death of a Salesman
ELD/822/045L11
|
Willy Loman's tragedy in Death
of
a
Salesman assumes
proportions at once epic and painfully intimate. There is simply no
finer rendition of this
great American drama. |
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Educating Rita
ELD/792/401L11
EV/792/401B01 |
Michael Caine and Julie Walters sparkle in this brilliant comedy
about a lievely working-class woman on the path to self-discovery
and the cynical teacher who acts as her guide.
Rita desperately hungers
for an education. To escape her dreary life as a hairdresser and
confining existence at home, she enrolls in literature tutorials at
a British University. |
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For Colored Girls
Who Have Considered Suicide (Ntozake Shange; Dir: Oz Scott)
792 So425 Ve |
The history of black women in America:
having emigrated on a purely involuntary basis, they became slaves to white America
and nurturers to white America's
offspring. They were rewarded by being the last Americans given the right to
vote. This explosive, vivid "choreopoem" illuminates the story of black women
in America
as they celebrate in song, poetry and dance their strength, beauty and enormous capacity for love. The seven women comprising
the cast, including author Ntozake Shange, share with the viewer their exuberance for life and their ability to begin
again, no matter how ridiculous the odds. |
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| Glass Menagerie, The
(Williams)
EV/822/053B01
EV/822/053B02 |
Amanda, a strong willed woman who attempts to impose her shattered
dreams into the life of personality of her shy, reclusive daughter
Laura. Although dominated by her mother, Laura finds solace through
the attention of her troubled brother Tom and Jim, a "Gentleman
Caller." |
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High Noon (Two-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition)
791.43 Z77 Ve |
One of the greatest Westerns ever made gets the deluxe treatment on
this superior disc from Republic Home Video's Silver Screen Classics
line of special-edition DVDs. Written by Carl Foreman (who was later
blacklisted during the anticommunist hearings of the '50s) and
superbly directed by Fred Zinnemann, this 1952 classic stars Gary
Cooper as just-married lawman Will Kane, who is about to retire as a
small-town sheriff and begin a new life with his bride (Grace Kelly)
when he learns that gunslinger Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald) is due
to arrive at high noon to settle an old score. Kane seeks assistance
from deputies and townsfolk, but soon realizes he'll have to stand
alone in his showdown with Miller and his henchmen. Innovative for
its time, the suspenseful story unfolds in approximate real time
(from 10:40 a.m. to high noon in an 84-minute film), and many
interpreted Foreman's drama as an allegorical reflection of apathy
and passive acceptance of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist
campaign. Political underpinnings aside, this remains a milestone of
its genre (often referred to as the first "adult" Western), and
Cooper is flawless in his Oscar-winning role. The first-rate DVD
gives this landmark film all the respect it deserves, beginning with
a digitally remastered transfer from the original film negative.
Additional features include the exclusive documentary The Making
of High Noon, hosted by film historian Leonard Maltin and
featuring interviews with the late Lloyd Bridges (who played
Cooper's rival ex-deputy), director Fred Zinnemann, and producer
Stanley Kramer. Also included is the original theatrical trailer and
a special chapter stop highlighting the Oscar-winning song "Do Not
Forsake Me." Offered in English and dubbed French and Spanish, with
English closed-captioning or Spanish and French subtitles.
--Amazon |
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It’s a Wonderful Life
(60th
Anniversary Edition)
791.43 C251w |
Now perhaps the most beloved American film, It's a Wonderful Life
was largely forgotten for years, due to a copyright quirk. Only in
the late 1970s did it find its audience through repeated TV
showings. Frank Capra's masterwork deserves its status as a
feel-good communal event, but it is also one of the most fascinating
films in the American cinema, a multilayered work of Dickensian
density. George Bailey (played superbly by James Stewart) grows up
in the small town of Bedford Falls, dreaming dreams of adventure and
travel, but circumstances conspire to keep him enslaved to his home
turf. Frustrated by his life, and haunted by an impending scandal,
George prepares to commit suicide on Christmas Eve. A heavenly
messenger (Henry Travers) arrives to show him a vision: what the
world would have been like if George had never been born. The
sequence is a vivid depiction of the American Dream gone bad, and
probably the wildest thing Capra ever shot (the director's
optimistic vision may have darkened during his experiences making
military films in World War II). Capra's triumph is to acknowledge
the difficulties and disappointments of life, while affirming--in
the teary-eyed final reel--his cherished values of friendship and
individual achievement. It's a Wonderful Life was not a big
hit on its initial release, and it won no Oscars (Capra and Stewart
were nominated); but it continues to weave a special magic.
--Amazon |
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| Long Day's Journey Into Night,
O'Neill (Dir: Michael Blakemore
& Peter Wood) 812 L957 VRe |
Sir Laurence Oliver, in a rare (and Emmy winning)
television appearance, stars in this explosive, painfully
autobiographical work by Eugene O'Neill, America's most acclaimed
dramatist. It is a play so brutally revealing, O'Neill hoped that
I would never be performed. On a warm summer night
in 1912, a violent storm is brewing in the home of the Tyrone family.
Ageing actor James has abandoned all hope of being a truly great performer
and has settled for being a mediocre hack. His bitter wife Mary has
slipped into the hellish world of morphine, while eldest son Jamie is a
drunk, envious of the writing talent of sickly, younger brother Edmund.
Four haunted lives are about to clash in what playwright Eugene O'Neill
called his story of "old sorrow, written in tears and blood.”
Video info.: VHS, Color,
160mins., 2003, English no subtitles, BFS Video. |
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|
M Butterfly
EV/792/105B01
ELD/792/105L11
EV/792/105B02
EVHS/812/002B01 |
The mysterious of love and the sting of betrayal are bildly
portrayed in this fictional tale of French diplomat and Beijing
Opera star Song Liling. |
|
M. Butterfly
DVD eng/ 791.43 C947 |
uring the Cultural Revolution in
China in the mid-1960s, a French diplomat falls in love with a
singer in the Beijing Opera. Interwoven with allusions to the
Puccini opera "Madama Butterfly", a story of love and betrayal
unfolds. --IMDb
|
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| Orpheus Descending
(play by Tennessee Williams; Dir: Molly Smith) |
This modern telling of the Greek myth took playwright
Tennessee Williams 17 years to write. Set in a small Mississippi town, a woman must run her
disagreeable husband's dry goods store while he recuperates upstairs from a
long illness. A young drifter musician wanders into her life and the spring
of jealousy, lust and revenge is wound tight. |
| Our Town
EV/822/052B01
|
The classic film
based on Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a small
New England town fraught with human drama, family conflict,
marriage, life and death. |
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The
Portrait of a Lady
813
J76 |
The role
of Ralph Touchett is one of Richard Chamberlain's finest
performances. Give him a character named Ralph, and he seems to
become magnificent. His performance, in this wonderful British
mini-series was so noteworthy. Ralph Touchett was the rich, but
sickly cousin of Isabel Archer, suffering with Consumption, a
terminal condition, which caused him to take a back seat in life as
a spectator. Determined to meet the requirements of his imagination,
he invested in his cousin Isabel, giving her half of his vast
inheritance. This investment came with a no strings attached
freedom, to pursue her mysterious purposes and fulfill her
unconventional desires. Ralph's faith in her was challenged as he
watched her make a disastrous choice in a husband, who married her
for the money she inherited. Ralph's physical suffering was trivial
compared to the pain he felt when his spirited cousin no longer
soared, but sank into a deep unhappiness.
--Amazon
(240 mins) |
|
Pleasantville
791.43 R823p |
Fantastical writer
Gary Ross (Big, Dave) makes an auspicious directorial
debut with this inspired and oddly touching comedy about two '90s
kids (Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) thrust into the
black-and-white TV world of Pleasantville, a Leave It to
Beaver-style sitcom complete with picket fences, corner malt
shop, and warm chocolate chip cookies. When a somewhat unusual
remote control (provided by repairman Don Knotts) transports them
from the jaded real world to G-rated TV land, Maguire and
Witherspoon are forced to play along as Bud and Mary Sue, the
obedient children of George and Betty Parker (William H. Macy and
Joan Allen). Maguire, an obsessive Pleasantville devotee,
understands the need for not toppling the natural balance of things;
Witherspoon, on the other hand, starts shaking the town up, most
notably when she takes basketball stud Skip (Paul Walker) up to
Lover's Lane for some modern-day fun and games. Soon enough,
Pleasantville's teens are discovering sex along with--gasp!--rock &
roll, free thinking, and soul-changing Technicolor. Filled with
delightful and shrewd details about sitcom life (no toilets, no
double beds, only two streets in the town), Pleasantville is
a joy to watch, not only for its comedy but for the groundbreaking
visual effects and astonishing production design as the town
gradually transforms from crisp black and white to glorious color.
Ross does tip his hand a bit about halfway through the film,
obscuring the movie's basic message of the unpredictability of life
with overloaded and obvious symbolism, as the black-and-white
denizens of the town gang up on the "coloreds" and impose rules of
conduct to keep their strait-laced town laced up. Still, the
characterizations from the phenomenal cast--especially repressed
housewife Allen and soda-shop owner Jeff Daniels, doing some of
their best work ever--will keep you emotionally invested in the
film's outcome, and waiting to see Pleasantville in all its final
Technicolor glory. --Amazon |
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A search for an American voice in
theater: Into the Post-War Era (Elena Pinto Simon)
810 S594 DVDe W051228V
|
This six-part series traces the history
of stage drama and the American imagination, from pre-Revolutionary days to
the late 20th century, through interviews and archival images. Using theater
as a mirror, each program reveals the ongoing development of American culture
and society's artistic aspirations. |
| Street Car
Named Desire, A
EV/822/050B01
EV/822/051B01 |
Looking for a
benchmark in movie acting? Breakthrough performances don't come much
more electrifying than Marlon Brando's animalistic turn as Stanley
Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Sweaty, brutish,
mumbling, yet with the balanced grace of a prizefighter, Brando
storms through the role--a role he had originated in the Broadway
production of Tennessee Williams's celebrated play. Stanley and his
wife, Stella, are the earthy couple in New Orleans's French Quarter
whose lives are upended by the arrival of Stella's sister, Blanche
DuBois. Blanche, a disturbed, lyrical, faded Southern belle, is
immediately drawn into a battle of wills with Stanley, beautifully
captured in the differing styles of the two actors. This
extraordinarily fine adaptation won acting Oscars for Leigh, Kim
Hunter, and Karl Malden, but not for Brando. Although it had already
been considerably cleaned up from the daringly adult stage play,
director Elia Kazan was forced to trim a few of the franker scenes
he had shot. In 1993, Streetcar was rereleased in a
"director's cut" that restored these moments, deepening a film that
had already secured its place as an essential American work.
--Amazon |
|
Summer and Smoke
EV/792/690M01 |
Since childhood, spinster Alma Winemiller has loved handsome young
Dr. John Buchanan, Jr.. But John has fallen hard for Rosa Zacharias,
the town's sultry vamp, and descends into a seamy nightlife while
ignoring Alma's dreams of romance and possible marriage.
--IMDb |
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Theatre of the Absurd: Six Character in Search of An
Author
EV/822/062BO1 |
This production brings to vivid light
the struggle to define
reality which characterizes the
playwright's work. In
Pirandello's view, man assumes reality
in accordance with
the role he plays; thus
all roles are disguises and life is
an endless comedy of
illusion. |
|
The Crucible
DVD eng/791.43/H999/ |
The movie is
centered around the Salem Massachusetts witch trials of 1692. The
movie is based on the play "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller. He also
wrote the screen play adaptation. |
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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
EV/822/047B01
EV/822/047B02
EVR/822/047M11 |
Taylor and
Burton in a Scorching Study of
Marriage Gone Mad. Drop in for drinks with George and Martha.Nothing
fancy,just a ferocious, headlong slide into the corrosive hell
of a marriage twisted by
years of hatred and
humiliation. The most famous real couple
of the '60s, Elizabeth
Taylor and Richard Burton, portray the most famous stage couple
of the '60, George and
Martha, in first-time film director Mike Nichols' searing, shocking
screen version of Edward
Albee's smash Broadway hit Who's
Afraid
of
Virginia
Woolf? |
|
Washington Square
813
J76w |
This
story, based on Henry James’ novel, concerns Catherine Sloper, a
19th-century heiress whose father disapproves of the man she loves.
In a twisty plot, questions are raised about both her father's and
her suitor's motives, and Catherine must untangle the connections
between love and money. This provides fodder for Henry James's
critiques of the shallowness and sexism of his society. Some find
James's work stiff, self-important, and a bit dull, while others see
him as the most astute social critic of his time, so your enjoyment
of this film may be a matter of taste. But it's definitely a period
piece done right, which is to say that it fully captures its era,
and never stoops to anachronisms that would interrupt the viewer's
sense of an older, crueler world. --Amazon (115 mins) |
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