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Warner Legends Collection (The Adventures of Robin Hood / Yankee Doodle Dandy / The Treasure of the Sierra Madre / Here's Looking at You, Warner Bros.) - Two-Disc Special Edition

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn
ASIN : B0000AJX6K
Sales Rank : 52707
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780790782249
ISBN : 0790782243
UPC : 085393269425
Release Date : December 30, 2003
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 461

Description

Three great Warner classics in one boxed set! Each title a two-disc special edition! Contents include: The Adventures of Robin Hood; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; and Yankee Doodle Dandy. Also, this collection includes a bonus disc: Here's Looking at

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The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Dashing Errol Flynn is the definitive Robin Hood in the most gloriously swashbuckling version of the legendary story. Warner Brothers reunited Michael Curtiz, their top-action director, with the winning team of Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (Maid Marian) and perennial villain Basil Rathbone as the aristocratic Sir Guy of Gisbourne, and pulled out all stops for the production. It became their costliest film to date, a grandly handsome, glowing Technicolor adventure set to a stirring, Oscar-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The decadent Prince John (a smoothly conniving Claude Rains) takes advantage of King Richard's absence to tax the country into poverty but meets his match in the medieval guerrilla rebel Robin Hood and his Merry Men of Sherwood Forest, who rise up and, to quote a cliché coined by the film, "steal from the rich and give to the poor." Stocky Alan Hale Sr. plays Robin's loyal friend Little John (a part he played in Douglas Fairbanks's silent version), Eugene Palette the portly Friar Tuck, and Melville Cooper the bumbling Sheriff of Nottingham. Flynn's confidence and cocky charm makes for a perfect Robin Hood, and his easygoing manner is a marvelous counterpoint to Rathbone's regal bearing and courtly diction. The film climaxes in their rousing battle-to-the-finish sword fight, a magnificently choreographed scene highlighted by Curtiz's inventive use of shadows cast upon the castle walls. --Sean Axmaker

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
James Cagney thrills in a rare (and limber) song-and-dance performance as composer-entertainer George M. Cohan. This nostalgic biography is told in flashbacks, covering Cohan's formative years becoming Broadway's brightest star and touching upon his loves, musicals, and artistic triumphs. Director Michael Curtiz (The Adventures of Robin Hood) offers Cagney ample opportunities to invent an utterly charming performance in what is practically a one-man show. If you've never seen Cagney as a hoofer, you're in for a treat: his dancing is as dynamic as anything else he's ever done on screen. --Tom Keogh

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Ranked at No. 30 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 all-time greatest American films, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a genuine masterpiece that was, ironically, a box-office failure when released in 1948. At that time audiences didn't accept Humphrey Bogart in a role that was intentionally unappealing, but time has proven this to be one of Bogart's very best performances. It's a grand adventure and a superior character study built around the timeless themes of greed and moral corruption. As adapted by writer-director John Huston (from a novel by enigmatic author B. Traven) it became a definitive treatment of fate and futility in the obsessive pursuit of wealth. Bogart plays Fred C. Dobbs, a down-and-out wage-worker in Mexico who stakes his meager earnings on a gold-prospecting expedition to the Sierra mountains. He's joined by a grizzled old prospector (Walter Huston, the director's father) and a young, no-nonsense partner (Tim Holt), and when they strike a rich vein of gold, the movie becomes an observant study of wretched human behavior. Bogart is fiercely intense as his character grows increasingly paranoid and violent; Huston offers a compelling contrast as a weathered miner who's seen how gold can turn men into monsters. From its lively opening scenes (featuring young Robert Blake as a boy selling lottery tickets) to its final, devastating image of fateful irony, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre tells an unforgettable story of tragedy and truth. With dialogue that has been etched into the cultural consciousness (who can forget the Mexican bandit who snarls "I don't have to show you any stinking badges!") and well-earned Oscars for John and Walter Huston, this is an American classic that still packs a punch. --Jeff Shannon

New Price: $6.99

Chisum

Actors: John Wayne, Forrest Tucker, Christopher George, Ben Johnson, Glenn Corbett
ASIN : B00008WJBE
Sales Rank : 22463
Director : Andrew V. McLaglen
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780790740744
ISBN : 0790740745
UPC : 085391108924
Release Date : December 03, 2003
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 111

Description

Chisum showcases John Wayne in the twilight of his remarkable 200+-film career. As John Chisum, a real-life cattle king determined to protect his empire against a land-grabbing developer (Forrest Tucker). Wayne's no-nonsense persona snugly fits this lively reworking of the events of New Mexico's 1878 Lincoln County War. "Directed in fine sagebrush style by Andrew V. McLaglen and beautifully photographed by William H. Clothier" (The Warner Bros. Story), Chisum is the kind of sweeping, brawling Western that made Wayne endure as a star.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Commentary w/ Andrew McLaglen
Featurette:"John Wayne and Chisum"
Theatrical Trailer

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Although Chisum stars John Wayne--playing a benign variation on his Red River empire-builder --he's curiously sidelined in this umpteenth retelling of Pat Garrett, William Bonney, and the Lincoln County War. Sam Peckinpah would direct the world-class version of that götterdämmerung, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, three years later. This version, directed by Andrew V. McLaglen in a slightly less broad vein than usual, is just odd--not least because it omits Garrett and Bonney's celebrated final confrontation. Geoffrey Deuel's Billy is a pleasant juvenile who scarcely seems delinquent, let alone murderously psychotic. Glenn Corbett's characterization of Garrett consists mainly of wearing a seriously BIG hat. There's an irksome rivalry for Chisum's perky niece (Pamela McMyler), and a Dominic Frontiere score that's the Western equivalent of elevator music. Chief scoundrel Forrest Tucker seems bored, but Christopher George, Richard Jaeckel, and Bruce Cabot get some juice into their villainy. --Richard T. Jameson

New Price: $19.95

Wyatt Earp [HD DVD]

Actor: Kevin Costner
ASIN : B000U1ZVD0
Sales Rank : 34835
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 0
Format : AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Binding : HD DVD
EAN : 0085391142690
UPC : 085391142690
Release Date : December 25, 2007
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 190

Description

Kevin Costner plays the most famous lawman ever to stride the Wild West. In a gritty, complex portrayal hailed as a "classic American performance" (Bob Campbell, Newhouse Newspapers), Academy Award winner Costner (Dances with Wolves, The Bodyguard) plays the man who became a myth in acclaimed director Lawrence Kasdan's (The Big Chill, Silverado) epic, action-filled saga. Gene Hackman, an Oscar winner for Unforgiven, as Wyatt's iron-willed father, and Dennis Quaid (The Big Easy, The Right Stuff) as Earp's deadly best friend Doc Holliday add power to this mammoth, hard-hitting Western. From Wichita to Dodge City to the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, Wyatt Earp is a thrilling journey of romance, adventure and desperate, heroic action.

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This massive, in-depth study of the dark Western icon comes off with mixed results. Trying to capture the whole life, (warts and all) of the lawman-criminal-brother-fortune hunter, director Lawrence Kasdan gains points for sheer scale, giving us a rich epic painted in dark colors with gritty settings. But the visual poetry and extensive foreshadowing ruin the dramatic drive. Some scenes have as much impact as stalker movies; you're just waiting for someone to get knocked off. As Earp, Kevin Costner is not afraid to look rumpled and play colorlessly (as in The Bodyguard), but it saps the energy of this 3-hour-plus film. The only relief is Dennis Quaid as a droll Doc Holiday, a much more engaging character. New faces Linden Ashby and Joanna Going (as an Earp brother and a lover, respectively) are solid finds, though the remainder of the female cast is barely given anything to do. Best is the first half, with Costner, as hip as he was in his Silverado days, going through a series of ups and downs until he accidentally finds his profession. Great set design (Ida Random) utilizes dozens of similar settings that always look distinctive. Recommended to fans of the star and the genre, but the story never justifies its length. --Doug Thomas

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The Searchers (Ultimate Collector's Edition)

Actors: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood
ASIN : B000F0V0LI
Sales Rank : 22064
Director : John Ford, Nick Redman
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0012569804333
UPC : 012569804333
Release Date : December 06, 2006
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 119

Description

Working together for the 12th time, John Wayne and director John Ford forged The Searchers into a landmark Western offering an indelible image of the frontier and the men and women who challenged it. Wayne plays an ex-Confederate soldier seeking his niece, captured by Comanches who massacred his family. He won't surrender to hunger, thirst, the elements or loneliness. And in his five-year search, he encounters something unexpected: his own humanity. Beautifully shot by Winton C. Hoch, thrillingly scored by Max Steiner and memorably acted by a wonderful ensemble including Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Natalie Wood and Ward Bond, The Searchers endures as "a great film of enormous scope and breathtaking physical beauty" (Danny Peary, Guide for the Film Fanatic).

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Commentary by Peter Bogdanovich
Documentaries:Behind the Cameras (4-parts): Meet Jeffrey Hunter, Monument Valley, Meet Natalie Wood, Setting Up Production
Documentary:A Turning of the Eart: John Ford, John Wayne, and the Searchers
Interviews:The Searchers: An Appreciation
Introduction:Intro by Patrick Wayne
Theatrical Trailer:The Searchers Trailer The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Trailer

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A favorite film of some of the world's greatest filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, John Ford's The Searchers has earned its place in the legacy of great American films for a variety of reasons. Perhaps most notably, it's the definitive role for John Wayne as an icon of the classic Western--the hero (or antihero) who must stand alone according to the unwritten code of the West. The story takes place in Texas in 1868; Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a Confederate veteran who visits his brother and sister-in-law at their ranch and is horrified when they are killed by marauding Comanches. Ethan's search for a surviving niece (played by young Natalie Wood) becomes an all-consuming obsession. With the help of a family friend (Jeffrey Hunter) who is himself part Cherokee, Ethan hits the trail on a five-year quest for revenge. At the peak of his masterful talent, director Ford crafts this classic tale as an embittered examination of racism and blind hatred, provoking Wayne to give one of the best performances of his career. As with many of Ford's classic Westerns, The Searchers must contend with revisionism in its stereotypical treatment of "savage" Native Americans, and the film's visual beauty (the final shot is one of the great images in all of Western culture) is compromised by some uneven performances and stilted dialogue. Still, this is undeniably one of the greatest Westerns ever made. --Jeff Shannon

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New Price: $33.90

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD]

Actors: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Mary-Louise Parker, Brooklynn Proulx
ASIN : B0010V616U
Sales Rank : 50280
Director : Andrew Dominik
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Binding : HD DVD
EAN : 0085391137627
UPC : 085391137627
Release Date : December 26, 2008
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 160

Description

Everyone in 1880s America knows Jesse James. He’s the nation’s most notorious criminal, hunted by the law in 10 states. He’s also the land’s greatest hero, lauded as a Robin Hood by the public. Robert Ford? No one knows him. Not yet. But the ambitious 19-year-old aims to change that. He’ll befriend Jesse, ride with his gang. And if that doesn’t bring Ford fame, he’ll find a deadlier way. Friendship becomes rivalry and the quest for fame becomes obsession in this virile epic produced in part by Ridley Scott and featuring gripping portrayals by Brad Pitt (winner of the Venice Film Festival Best Actor Award) as Jesse and Casey Affleck as the youth drawn closer to his goal…and farther from his own humanity.

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Of all the movies made about or glancingly involving the 19th-century outlaw Jesse Woodson James, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the most reflective, most ambitious, most intricately fascinating, and indisputably most beautiful. Based on the novel of the same name by Ron Hansen, it picks up James late in his career, a few hours before his final train robbery, then covers the slow catastrophe of the gang's breakup over the next seven months even as the boss himself settles into an approximation of genteel retirement. But in another sense all of the movie is later than that. The very title assumes the audience's familiarity with James as a figure out of history and legend, and our awareness that he was--will be--murdered in his parlor one quiet afternoon by a backshooting crony.

The film--only the second to be made by New Zealand–born writer-director Andrew Dominik--reminds us that Dominik's debut film, Chopper (2000), was the cunningly off-kilter portrait of another real-life criminal psychopath who became a kind of rock star to his society. The Jesse James of this telling is no Robin Hood robbing the rich to give to the poor, and that train robbery we witness is punctuated by acts of gratuitous brutality, not gallantry. Nineteen-year-old Bob Ford (Casey Affleck) seeks to join the James gang out of hero worship stoked by the dime novels he secretes under his bed, but his glam hero (Brad Pitt) is a monster who takes private glee in infecting his accomplices with his own paranoia, then murdering them for it. In the careful orchestration of James's final moments, there's even a hint that he takes satisfaction in his own demise.

Affleck and Pitt (who co-produced with Ridley Scott, among others) are mesmerizing in the title roles, but the movie is enriched by an exceptional supporting cast: Sam Shepard as Jesse's older, more stable brother Frank; Sam Rockwell as Bob Ford's own brother Charlie, whose post-assassination descent into madness is astonishing to behold; Paul Schneider, Garret Dillahunt, and Jeremy Renner as three variously doomed gang members; and Mary-Louise Parker, who as Jesse's wife Zee has few lines yet manages with looks and body language to invoke a wellnigh-novelistic backstory for herself. There are also electrifying cameos by James Carville, doing solid actorly work as the governor of Missouri; Ted Levine, as a lawman of antic spirit; and Nick Cave, composer of the film's score (with Warren Ellis) and screenwriter of the Aussie "Western" The Proposition, suddenly towering over a late scene to perform the folk song that set the terms for the book and movie's title.

Still, the real costar is Roger Deakins, probably the finest cinematographer at work today. The landscapes of the movie (mostly in Alberta and Manitoba) will linger in the memory as long as the distinctive faces, and we seem to feel the sting of its snows on our cheeks. Interior scenes are equally persuasive. Few Westerns have conveyed so tangibly the bleakness and austerity of the spaces people of the frontier called home, and sought in vain to warm with human spirit. --Richard T. Jameson

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Ned Kelly

Actors: Mick Jagger, Clarissa Kaye-Mason, Mark McManus, Ken Goodlet, Frank Thring
ASIN : B00018YC3W
Sales Rank : 51145
Director : Tony Richardson
Studio : MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code : 1
Format : Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0027616907240
UPC : 027616907240
Release Date : December 16, 2004
Publisher : MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer : MGM (Video & DVD)
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : MGM (Video & DVD)
Running Time : 99

Description

Rock superstar Mick Jagger makes his dynamic screen debut in this explosive tale from Academy AwardÂ(r)-winning* director Tony Richardson. Based on the fascinating true-life story of the 19th-century Australian Armored Bandit, Ned Kelly is a powerful, action-packed adventure that thrillingly captures a bold and lawless era. When their mother is unfairly persecuted by police, Ned Kelly (Jagger) and his brother Dan earn money for her defense by selling homemade liquor. But what begins as a simple moonshine operation quickly escalates into a series of armed robberies, desperate pursuits and deadly confrontations. Soon, Ned finds himself revered throughout the country as a larger-than-life sagebrush hero even as the law closes in and prepares for an all-out war. *1963: Best Picture, Director, Tom Jones

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Mick Jagger had one of his rare sizable acting roles, as the famed Australian outlaw, in this atmospheric biopic (remade in 2004 with Heath Ledger). The movie has the look and spirit of other Vietnam-era counterculture Westerns, with Irishman Ned Kelly a rebel against the unjust Establishment. Tony Richardson's direction has the free-for-all laxity of the era, though the general sense of mess is tidied up by the often stunning location photography by ace DP Gerry Fisher. What makes the film memorable is the soundtrack, a heavy portion of which is made up of Western ballads written by witty Shel Silverstein and sung by Waylon Jennings; elsewhere, the Amish-bearded Jagger croons "The Wild Colonial Boy." A charitable assessment of Jagger's performance would conclude that he brings an intriguing Pirandellian presence to the role; a more clear-eyed view would say that he simply doesn't have the acting chops to carry it off. --Robert Horton

List Price: $14.98
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The Last Ride of the Dalton Gang

Actors: Cliff Potts, Randy Quaid, Larry Wilcox, Sharon Farrell, Matt Clark
ASIN : B0000EMYMI
Sales Rank : 78283
Director : Dan Curtis
Studio : Mpi Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780788605765
ISBN : 0788605763
UPC : 030306758695
Release Date : December 25, 2005
Publisher : Mpi Home Video
Manufacturer : Mpi Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Mpi Home Video
Running Time : 146

Description

The Dalton brothers rode hard, lived fast and played for high stakes. In this acclaimed production, Emmet Dalton recounts the wild and wooly exploits that made his gang legendary. Starting out as lawmen, deputized by Judge Isaac Parker, the Daltons discovered that stealing horses was more to their taste than chasing horse thieves and they soon found themselves on the wrong side of the law with a $25,000 reward posted for their capture. The Last Ride of the Dalton Gang is a powerful drama of the Old West as it really might have been -- a vivid, exciting saga of colorful characters that traces the rise and fall of the last major outlaw gang to make its reputation infamous before law and order stretched coast to coast.

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Warner Legends Collection (The Adventures of Robin Hood / Yankee Doodle Dandy / The Treasure of the Sierra Madre / Here's Looking at You, Warner Bros.) - Two-Disc Special Edition

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Star Power Pack (Legends of the Fall / A River Runs Through It / The Devil's Own)

Prisoner of Shark Island (The Ford at Fox Collection)

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Chisum

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Wyatt Earp [HD DVD]

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The Searchers (Ultimate Collector's Edition)

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Buffalo Bill

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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD]

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Ned Kelly

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The Last Ride of the Dalton Gang

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