A Foreign Field (1993) Review

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(More customer reviews)It is truly a shame that this movie is largely unknown, because it is one of the finer movies I have ever watched. The acting is amazing, and the characters play off of each other brilliantly. I have told others about the movie, and have to warn them that if they are looking for lots of explosions, blood, and guts, that this is not the movie for them. Unfortunately, we have come to expect and even crave that in a war movie. What makes A Foreign Field so great is the fact that the noise and bloodshed are long over, and the movie focuses instead on the memories and core emotions that veterans and their loved ones feel when reflecting on a different time. It is a great movie to watch on Veteran's Day or Memorial Day every year.

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Two British war vets (Alec Guinness and Leo McKern) meet an American vet (John Randolph) when all three return to Normandy on the 50th anniversary of D-Day. Old rivalries resurface, particularly when two of the men discover they are searching for the same lost love (Jeanne Moreau). A lonely woman (Lauren Bacall) with her own painful but mysterious memories joins the group, while the American vet’s petulant daughter (Geraldine Chaplin) and bumbling son-in-law (Edward Herrmann) struggle to keep up with the exploits of their elders. This disparate band of survivors eventually finds common ground in the memory of what they lost on that fateful day in 1944. As seen on Masterpiece Theatre.

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RiffTrax: Plan 9 From Outer Space LIVE Nashville 2009 - from the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 Review

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(More customer reviews)I wasn't sure what to expect from this first RiffTrax Live event. By the time it was over, I'd laughed the hardest I'd probably laughed in a year or two!
Other than the two "riffed" films, there were some other short comedy bits of variable quality. There were some fake commercials, one of which I made our audience and I laugh, but the other not so much. This was my first, and likely last, experience with Jonathan Coulton. I know he is extremely popular in some circles, and if you are a fan I'm sure you'll like to see him here. Personally, I'm thankful that I can skip past him on the DVD.
On to the main films, both Plan 9 and the stewardess short were comedy gold. It was like an especially good old Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. The shots where they showed the guys off to the side while they ripped on the movie were a great idea. It was a lot of fun to see their expressions and when they even cracked each other up.
Mike, Kevin, and Bill definitely brought their A game for this one. If you enjoy RiffTrax or are an old MSTK fan like I am, I wholeheartedly recommend this.

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The comedy event of the year comes to DVD! The stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 meet the worst movie of all time to bring you RiffTrax Live! Join Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett live and onstage at the historic Belcourt Theater in Nashville as they riff along hilariously to Ed Wood's classic B-movie blunder Plan 9 from Outer Space. Hosted by internet superstar Veronica Belmont, and featuring two uproarious short films by Somethingawful.com's Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka, as well as a crowd-pleasing musical set by geek troubadour Jonathan Coulton, RiffTrax Live! Nashville '09 offers non-stop music and laughs. Also includes "Flying Stewardess," a 40's travel short that gets subjected to the guys' signature brand of rapid-fire riffing. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill and the gang for a truly magical night of comedy and cult classics: RiffTrax Live!

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Cats - The Musical (Commemorative Edition) (1998) Review

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(More customer reviews)The `Cats' DVD is a cinematic record of the Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical as performed on the London stage in, I believe, 1998 starring Elaine Paige in the `lead' role of Grizabella, although the only aspect of her role which warrants calling it the starring role is the fact that this character sings the `show-stopper' song, `Memory' which, if you are to believe writer / director Kevin Smith's bit in `Jersey Girl', has become a real Broadway cliché. The show is the most truly `ensemble' performance I can think of. Few characters stand out for more than the length of a single piece, yet practically all characters are on stage for over 50% of the two-hour performance. Aside from Paige, the only character / actor who is remotely familiar to me is John Mills who is on for but two scenes and who is more of a prop than a character.
I make a strong point of the fact that this is a recording of a stage performance rather than a conversion of the play to a more realistic environment. This conversion is done for most Broadway plays turned into movies, especially for big musicals such as `Oklahoma', `The Sound of Music', `My Fair Lady', and `Chicago'. But this conversion is not always successful. That is, the very big realistic setting is not always an enhancement. My best evidence for this is the film done of `The Fantasticks' with a cast including such high powered talent as Joel Gray and others. As someone how has seen the play done on the live stage three times with three different interpretations, including a performance by the New York City cast, I can say that the movie failed to breath any life into the classic minimalist staging it gets in intimate little theaters. The movie was simply not as good as the live performance. This is clearly not the case with this DVD record. It gives us the stage fantasy that needs practically no embellishment with a real ally or cinematic whiz-bang.
Like `The Fantasticks', I have seen `Cats' on the New York stage sitting in a mezzanine seat about 4 rows from the back of the Winter Garden theatre. And, while there is something about a live performance that simply cannot be recorded, I will say that this DVD (and VCR) recording is quite as good a record as you can get.
My most important criteria for evaluating a movie on DVD or VCR is whether or not the work wears well after the second or third or fourth viewing. For example, `Chicago' was fun to watch once, but I have no burning desire to watch it again. On the other hand, `Singin' in the Rain' I can watch about once a year and still find the time well spent. I will say with great conviction that I can watch this recording of `Cats' once a year and enjoy every minute spend with the experience, because I have done so over the last few years. The performance and its record are so durable that my second most important criteria for a DVD, a good commentary track, becomes unnecessary. And, the commentary track is basically a waste of time for a musical anyway, especially a musical based on famous poems written 65 years ago by the most notable poet, T. S. Eliot in `Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'.
The play has the thinnest of plots based on a once a year selection of one Jellicle cat to ascend into some state of grace, presumably at the conclusion of their legendary nine (9) lives. The only other plot twist involves the kidnapping of the head cat, Old Deuteronomy, thereby preventing this feline apotheosis from being carried out.
This accounts for four or five out of the nineteen numbers. All the rest are based directly on fourteen out of the fifteen poems in Eliot's little book.
One may think that this work has but a single hit song and, therefore, the remaining musical numbers are second rate. This is certainly not the case. I find myself tapping my toe to all numbers, with especial pleasure coming from `Jellicle Cats', `Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser', and `The Pekes and the Pollicles'. These are much more like stories in song than a simple ballad with easily remembered refrain.
Very highly recommended for anyone with a taste for musicals and worth a try for anyone who likes fantasy.


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CATS:COMMEMORATIVE EDITION - DVD Movie

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Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Pod People (1988) Review

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(More customer reviews)Good? This episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is the BEST! It ranks perhaps even above, Ator, Attack of the-the Eye Creaters, and even infamous short, Mr./Ms. Be-Natural. The Amazing Collasial Episode guide called it a fan favorite. Kevin Murphy noted how he wanted to kill this movie. The movie itself is a spin off from ET, perhaps? No one is really sure. It starts of in a misty wilderness with three poachers. Then we are in outer-space, (viewing something). Then it goes to some cheap rock band playing a stupid song which is excellently mocked by bots. Then the crew decides to take some nature shots of deer and wild life. We are then transported to the gentle loveable (extremely annoying) star? of the show Tommy's house. The thing from outer space crashes These little short hairy monsters (that are actually kind of cute) come out and kill the poachers. But Tommy finds one while serching for more "specimens" which are really CENTIPEDES! He names him Trumpy, we unfortunaly have have the plot of a horrible movie. But it was Tommy's kitten "Mittens" that stole our hearts. He attacked Trumpy's nose in one scean but obviously no one on the camera crew saw. I will give you Misties a personal guarentee that this movie is sucessful bashed!! And the songs they sing will stick in your head for a long while and make you laugh when it's inappriopriate and embarass you. This is probably the best episode ever done. It also has the best segway of all-time when Joel, Crow, Tom, and Gypsy sing a re-take of the movie's rock group song. "Hidous partrol now?" There's too many funny parts in this movie to tell in this review, but I guarentee you'll love it! END

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Theater of Blood (1973) Review

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(More customer reviews)As incredibly good as this movie is, one must give pause before attempting to review it; after all, Vincent Price plays an actor who murders the critics who panned his performances and cost him the acting award he felt he deserved. I find it something of a relief to have nothing at all negative to say about this unusual, almost brilliant movie. This is essentially a slasher film, but it differs markedly from its modern counterparts by injecting the story with intelligence, culture, and actual feeling. Vincent Price plays Edward Lionheart, a Shakespearean actor who deigns to perform no dramas not penned by the Bard. There is no better actor, he truly believes, than himself, and thus he is slowly crushed by the stream of bad reviews the local critics hurl down upon his performance in one play after another. After facing humiliation at an annual awards banquet, he takes his own life-or at least so everyone thought at the time, despite the fact that his body was never found. Two years later, a literary critic dies mysteriously on the ides of March of multiple stab wounds. Then a second critic is killed and his body dragged through the streets behind a horse. As more critics die, it begins to become clear, even to the rather ineffectual police, that the murders are all patterned on the death scenes of Shakespearean dramas. After the fourth murder, where the culprit deviates from the script of The Merchant of Venice by literally taking a pound of flesh from the victim, the de facto leader of the critics knows that Lionheart is the murderer because "only he would have the temerity to rewrite Shakespeare." The deaths here range from the somewhat comical to the ludicrously horrid to the deliciously gruesome, with a few nice touches of 1973-style blood thrown in for good measure. Each murder is of course accentuated by a vainglorious dramatic performance by Lionheart. This imbues the movie with both maudlin comedy as well as academic pretentiousness. At the very end, even more unexpected emotions bubble up in the viewer, a phenomenon manifesting itself through a combination of Price's perfectly over-the-top acting and a wonderfully evocative soundtrack.
One actually gets something of a lesson in Shakespeare in this film. Lionheart doesn't base his revenge killings on Shakespeare's most famous plays-instead, he draws on several that I and probably many others are not intimately familiar with-yet the magic he breathes into each scene makes one anxious to delve into the Bard's original plays themselves. In total, the following Shakespearean plays serve as the basis of the murders: Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, Cymbeline, The Merchant of Venice, Richard the Third, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Henry the Sixth, part 1, Titus Andronicus, and King Lear. A little Hamlet is also thrown in for good measure. I must say that the cast is a great complement to the storyline, although even the lovely Diana Rigg of Avengers fame pales in the shadow of Price's mesmerizing aura as he brings to life a character seemingly written especially for him. Who else could have played such a convincing Shakespearean actor and ingeniously mad killer simultaneously? I must admit it is somewhat strange to watch Rigg play the role of Lionheart's fiercely loyal daughter, though, and I daresay that many Rigg devotees such as myself may not even recognize her when she first appears.
Theater of Blood is truly one of Vincent Price's most memorable performances. His ability to morph into and truly become different Shakespearean characters is superb, and the range of emotions he is able to express is pretty powerful, especially in the closing moments of the film. A couple of the killings are somewhat farcical, but most of them are rather ingenious and fascinating. Just wait until you see Price playing the role of a bushy-headed hairdresser. The best killing, without a doubt, involves a surgical gown, a scalpel, and a handsaw-I'll let you figure out what Lionheart does with these items. The idea for this movie may not be wholly original, but Theater of Blood works magnificently, and the combined talents of Price and Rigg make this a classic that really should find a home in the collection of all horror movie buffs.

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Theatre of Blood (1973) Review

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(More customer reviews)As incredibly good as this movie is, one must give pause before attempting to review it; after all, Vincent Price plays an actor who murders the critics who panned his performances and cost him the acting award he felt he deserved. I find it something of a relief to have nothing at all negative to say about this unusual, almost brilliant movie. This is essentially a slasher film, but it differs markedly from its modern counterparts by injecting the story with intelligence, culture, and actual feeling. Vincent Price plays Edward Lionheart, a Shakespearean actor who deigns to perform no dramas not penned by the Bard. There is no better actor, he truly believes, than himself, and thus he is slowly crushed by the stream of bad reviews the local critics hurl down upon his performance in one play after another. After facing humiliation at an annual awards banquet, he takes his own life-or at least so everyone thought at the time, despite the fact that his body was never found. Two years later, a literary critic dies mysteriously on the ides of March of multiple stab wounds. Then a second critic is killed and his body dragged through the streets behind a horse. As more critics die, it begins to become clear, even to the rather ineffectual police, that the murders are all patterned on the death scenes of Shakespearean dramas. After the fourth murder, where the culprit deviates from the script of The Merchant of Venice by literally taking a pound of flesh from the victim, the de facto leader of the critics knows that Lionheart is the murderer because "only he would have the temerity to rewrite Shakespeare." The deaths here range from the somewhat comical to the ludicrously horrid to the deliciously gruesome, with a few nice touches of 1973-style blood thrown in for good measure. Each murder is of course accentuated by a vainglorious dramatic performance by Lionheart. This imbues the movie with both maudlin comedy as well as academic pretentiousness. At the very end, even more unexpected emotions bubble up in the viewer, a phenomenon manifesting itself through a combination of Price's perfectly over-the-top acting and a wonderfully evocative soundtrack.
One actually gets something of a lesson in Shakespeare in this film. Lionheart doesn't base his revenge killings on Shakespeare's most famous plays-instead, he draws on several that I and probably many others are not intimately familiar with-yet the magic he breathes into each scene makes one anxious to delve into the Bard's original plays themselves. In total, the following Shakespearean plays serve as the basis of the murders: Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, Cymbeline, The Merchant of Venice, Richard the Third, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Henry the Sixth, part 1, Titus Andronicus, and King Lear. A little Hamlet is also thrown in for good measure. I must say that the cast is a great complement to the storyline, although even the lovely Diana Rigg of Avengers fame pales in the shadow of Price's mesmerizing aura as he brings to life a character seemingly written especially for him. Who else could have played such a convincing Shakespearean actor and ingeniously mad killer simultaneously? I must admit it is somewhat strange to watch Rigg play the role of Lionheart's fiercely loyal daughter, though, and I daresay that many Rigg devotees such as myself may not even recognize her when she first appears.
Theater of Blood is truly one of Vincent Price's most memorable performances. His ability to morph into and truly become different Shakespearean characters is superb, and the range of emotions he is able to express is pretty powerful, especially in the closing moments of the film. A couple of the killings are somewhat farcical, but most of them are rather ingenious and fascinating. Just wait until you see Price playing the role of a bushy-headed hairdresser. The best killing, without a doubt, involves a surgical gown, a scalpel, and a handsaw-I'll let you figure out what Lionheart does with these items. The idea for this movie may not be wholly original, but Theater of Blood works magnificently, and the combined talents of Price and Rigg make this a classic that really should find a home in the collection of all horror movie buffs.

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Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol. 4 (Girl in Gold Boots / Hamlet / Overdrawn at the Memory Bank / Space Mutiny) (1988) Review

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(More customer reviews)This fourth collection of episodes from the classic TV comedy show, "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (which, if you don't already know, is the program where a silhouette of a man and his two robots sitting in theater seat provide running comedic commentary to rotten movies), contains four episodes from the later seasons that appeared on the Sci-Fi Channel. That means Mike Nelson is the host, Billy Corbett is doing Crow's voice instead of Trace Beaulieu, and Pearl Forrester is now the evil scientist holding the crew of the Satellite of Love hostage.
The early DVD collections were all focused on the Comedy Central years of MST3K, so this is a nice shift in Rhino's marketing. Some fans aren't fond of the host segments in these later years, but there are some occasional funny ones. The riffing, however, is as good as ever, and has changed to an angry, sarcastic style different than the Joel and early Mike years. I love both styles, but some fans prefer one or the other. Just be aware that in this package you're getting a full-assault of the later, Sci-Fi Channel episodes. (Rhino is about release another package of Sci-Fi Channel episodes, after which I hope they'll return to some of the early seasons to maintain balance.)
Of the four episodes on this collection, two are superb, while the others are entertaining but more average. Here's what you'll find:
GIRL IN GOLD BOOTS: A really sleazy `go-go' film from the late 60s with some disturbing similarities to "Showgirls" (except it's better). Sleazy `elf boy' picks up a girl in a greasy spoon restaurant with the promise of making her a dancer in Los Angeles at the club where his drug-addled sister works. Unfortunately, Elf Boy is a bit psychotic, the boss at the club is oily and sleazy, and a poetic spouting dude named Critter (or "Yak Boy") tries to lure our girl from her plunge into a life of...(gasp!)...SIN! Oh, and there's lots of cameras leering at girls in skimpy go-go outfits dancing to lousy music. The film is similar to early MST3K episodes like "Hellcats" and "Wild Rebels" in its greasy ugliness, but the film is mostly slow and boring. Mike and the `Bots do a decent job with it, but this is only an average episode. There is a funny host segment where Mike sings a syrupy guitar ballad while the ship burns.
HAMLET. A 60s German TV production of the play, horribly dubbed into English, and starring Maximilian Schell. It's bleak, drab, slow, and shot entirely on a single very uninteresting set of black curtains and granite furniture. The amusement of this episode is watching Mike and the `Bots take on a classic of literature, and riff off of famous lines, some of which is hysterical. But the production is so ponderous and slow that you'll be screaming along with the hosts for Hamlet to just shut up and die at the end ("Is there a word in English language he hasn't said?" one of them asks). There's a funny host segment called "Alas Poor Who?" set up as gameshow, where contestants must identify celebrities based on pieces of their bones. An intriguing, if not fantastic, episode.
SPACE MUTINY. Ah, here's the gravy! An awful South African-produced sci-fi stinker that rips off the plot of "Battlestar Galactica" - as well as all of its effects footage! (I'm not sure this was legally done.) The inhabitants of the giant space cruiser `The Southern Sun' - which is mostly a large basement and boiler room - face a mutiny by guys in marching band outfits. A chunky loser and his love interest (old enough to be his mother) must save the ship. There are loads of people flipping over railings as they get shot (railing kill!), mutineers who can't aim worthy a damn, a chase on vehicles that go slower than golf carts, and a hero who screeches like a woman at odd moments. Mike and the `Bots really let this film have it, and the result is one of the funniest episodes of the Sci-Fi Channel years.
OVERDRAWN AT THE MEMORY BANK. Just as great an episode as "Space Mutiny" is this horrendous Public Television-produced film. Acutally, it isn't a film: it was shot on VIDEO! Cheap and flat looking, and filled with cheesy video toaster effects, the film blows any chance of succeeding it might have had. And it had potential. It has a real star, Raul Julia, and an early cyberpunk and proto-`Matrix' idea of a man whose mind is lost inside a giant corporate computer in a dystopian future. But none of it makes the least bit of sense, and it reaches hysterical levels of incomprehensibility by the end. Mike and the `Bots are in top form, and there's plenty to laugh at here. The end sequence, where they call the tech-support line for the movie to complain, is a classic!
In addition to the films, Mike Nelson makes brief introductions to each episode, describing a bit of the behind-the-scenes torture the writers went going through. It's a nice feature, and I hope Rhino continues it.
Unlike some earlier Rhino discs, there are no "un-cut, un-MST3K" versions of the films available. Frankly, I never watched the un-cut films on the discs where is WAS available, and I don't think anyone would want to watch any of these film without Mike and the `Bots. They change awful entertainment into great entertainment - and that's a magic feat all on it's own, and why "Mystery Science Theater 3000" will live forever as one of comedy greats.
Come on, JUST PUSH THE BUTTON, FRANK, and buy this collection!

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Item Name: Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol. 4 (Girl in Gold Boots / Hamlet [1961] / Overdrawn at the Memory Bank / Space Mutiny); Studio:Rhino Theatrical

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