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Wyatt Earp [Blu-ray]

Actor: Kevin Costner
ASIN : B000U1ZV3U
Sales Rank : 1789
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Binding : Blu-ray
EAN : 0085391142683
UPC : 085391142683
Release Date : December 25, 2007
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 190

Product Description

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 09/25/2007 Run time: 219 minutes Rating: Pg13

Amazon.com

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 Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford [Blu-ray]

Actors: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard, Mary-Louise Parker, Brooklynn Proulx
ASIN : B0010V60XE
Sales Rank : 3100
Director : Andrew Dominik
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 0
Format : AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Binding : Blu-ray
EAN : 0012569829725
UPC : 012569829725
Release Date : December 05, 2008
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
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.

Amazon.com

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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James Stewart - The Signature Collection (The Cheyenne Social Club / Firecreek / The FBI Story / The Naked Spur / The Spirit of St. Louis / The Stratton Story)

Actor: James Stewart
ASIN : B000FTCLRQ
Sales Rank : 2470
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0012569816183
UPC : 012569816183
Release Date : December 15, 2006
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 683

Description

In his early years, Jimmy Stewart came to personify the Everyman. "Hollywood dishes out too much praise for small things,'' Jimmy once said. "I won't let it get me, but too much praise can turn a fellow's head if he doesn't watch his step.'' - Through a Hollywood career spanning 50 years James Stewart has thrilled, touched and delighted audiences with over 80 films. Six of those films are now available on DVD in the all new James Stewart: The Signature Collection.

Amazon.com

Few Hollywood stars have the reservoir of goodwill that James Stewart enjoys; even in his so-so vehicles he's delightfully worth watching. That premise is tested by James Stewart: The Signature Collection which, with one exception, contains none of Stewart's really important pictures. The box does present a collection of movies mostly new to DVD, which gives the set whatever urgency it has from an otherwise mixed bag.

The one important Stewart title is The Naked Spur, arguably the best of the superb series of Westerns the actor made in collaboration with director Anthony Mann in the 1950s (which also include Winchester 73 and The Man from Laramie). The nervous, hard character who emerged in those films is perfected in Stewart's amazingly raw performance in The Naked Spur. He plays an embittered bounty hunter attempting to bring captured outlaw Robert Ryan to the authorities while also dealing with Ryan's companion (Janet Leigh) and two associates who want in on the reward (Ralph Meeker and Millard Mitchell). Mann's command of locations that reflect the emotional lives of the characters is unerring, and Stewart goes all the way with a performance that suggests he is as unbalanced as his villainous quarry.

Two other Westerns are included, both teaming Stewart with Henry Fonda: Firecreek, a grim 1968 High Noon imitator with Jimmy as a small-town farmer defending the place from Hank's band of desperadoes; and The Cheyenne Social Club, a comedy that has Stewart inheriting a bordello, as saddle pal Fonda tags along for the laughs. If director Gene Kelly's approach weren't so crass, the movie might be a lot funnier than it is.

The Stratton Story, a big hit from 1949, casts Stewart in the true tale of pitcher Monty Stratton, who enjoyed some big-league success before a hunting accident cost him his leg. The cornball script is rife with baseball nostalgia, and audiences loved the gee-whiz chemistry of lanky Stewart and tiny, indomitably perky June Allyson. Equally square is The FBI Story, an account of the Bureau's growth from the 1920s onward, with especially lavish reverence for J. Edgar Hoover (who appears in a cameo). Stewart is the agent through whose eyes we see the decades roll by.

The Spirit of St. Louis is one of the most atypical titles in Billy Wilder's career, standing as a straightforward account of Charles Lindbergh's legendary solo flight from the U.S. to Europe. Stewart may have been apt casting for the Lone Eagle in some ways, but he looked far too old to play the young aviator in this 1957 picture. The film has some nagging storytelling problems, but the aviation footage--especially Lindbergh's thrilling liftoff for his record flight--is beautifully shot. Taken together, this set does provide different angles on James Stewart's American Hero (a more complex personality than he's usually given credit for). But it's not his top-drawer work. --Robert Horton

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Calamity Jane

Actors: Doris Day, Howard Keel, Allyn Ann McLerie, Philip Carey, Dick Wesson
ASIN : B0007QS2Z2
Sales Rank : 3482
Director : David Butler
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9781419810831
ISBN : 1419810839
UPC : 012569705982
Release Date : December 26, 2005
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 101

Product Description

The legendary sharpshooter mends her ways for the man she loves. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 04/26/2005 Starring: Doris Day Philip Carey Run time: 101 minutes Rating: Nr Director: David Butler

Amazon.com essential video

This 1953 musical is very much a vehicle for Doris Day, in the title role, as a wild cowgal who can outshoot and outsing any boy on the range. When an actress arrives in Deadwood and uses her feminine charms on Jane's secret love, Wild Bill Hickock (Howard Keel), Jane tries to mend her tomboy ways. Not exactly up to the feminist code of honor, this is still energetic and Day is very perky. Of course, one could almost detect a homosexual undercurrent with the cross-dressing Jane, but this was Hollywood in the 1950s, so we best not. This won an Oscar for Best Song--"Secret Love," by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster. --Rochelle O'Gorman

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Gary Cooper - The Signature Collection (Sergeant York / The Fountainhead / Dallas / Springfield Rifle / The Wreck of the Mary Deare)

Actors: Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, Walter Brennan, Charlton Heston, Raymond Massey
ASIN : B000HWZ4EI
Sales Rank : 4206
Director : André De Toth, Howard Hawks, King Vidor, Michael Anderson, Stuart Heisler
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0012569829930
UPC : 012569829930
Release Date : December 07, 2006
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 538

Product Description

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 11/11/2008

Amazon.com

Springfield Rifle, one of five films included in this set, may miss the bullseye as a true Gary Cooper classic, but there's a line that speaks to his enduring status as a screen icon and "American Legend." In this 1952 Western, his follow-up film to High Noon, Cooper's character has been drummed out of the army and branded a coward. Suffice to say that all is not what it seems, and an observer is asked how Coop will handle the pressure. The response: "He'll stand up." That is quintessential Cooper. He's a stand-up guy, and the "dang swangest hero," as he is hailed in Sergeant York, this collection's calling card. Directed by Howard Hawks and co-written by John Huston, Sergeant York earned Cooper an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Alvin York, a Tennessee mountain hellraiser who finds religion after surviving a lightning strike. His newfound pacifist beliefs are put to the supreme test when he is forced to enlist in WWI. Cooper also displays the (Frank Lloyd) Wright stuff as architect Harold Roark in The Fountainhead (1949), adapted for the screen by Ayn Rand from her towering and controversial bestselling novel about a "fool visionary" who refuses to compromise his principles or conform his work to popular taste. The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959), his penultimate film, finds Cooper desperately trying to clear his name before an inquiry determines what really happened aboard the mysteriously abandoned eponymous ship. Costar Charlton Heston gives him a run for Most Piercing Blue Eyes honors. Last, and least, but still entertaining, is Dallas (1950), in which Cooper stars as a Confederate outlaw who impersonates a sheriff to settle an old score. Cooper is not the most chameleon-esque of actors, but in these representative films, he displays intriguing shadings to his heroic persona. Roark in The Fountainhead has a definite dark side, while his "Reb" Hollister in Dallas is something of a rascal.

Of the DVD presentations, Sergeant York gets the two-disc "Special Edition" treatment, with dry, but informative commentary by film historian Jeanne Basinger, a made-for-cable TV special about Cooper hosted by Clint Eastwood, and a welcome Warner Bros. cartoon, Tex Avery's "Porky's Preview" and short subject, "Lions for Sale," that replicate an old fashioned night out at the movies. The Fountainhead DVD includes a featurette about the making of the film. Cooper stands alone among Hollywood's leading men, but beyond his formidable presence, classic film buffs will bask in the nostalgic pleasures of Max Steiner's music in four of the five films, and appearances by great character actors (Walter Brennan and George Tobias in Sergeant York, a young Richard Harris in Mary Deare). --Donald Liebenson

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The Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2 (A Woman's Face / Flamingo Road / Sadie McKee / Strange Cargo / Torch Song)

Actors: Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Zachary Scott, Clark Gable, Michael Wilding
ASIN : B000XNZ7NO
Sales Rank : 6206
Director : Charles Walters, Clarence Brown, David Miller, Frank Borzage, Friz Freleng
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Black & White, DVD-Video, Restored, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0012569647459
UPC : 012569647459
Release Date : December 12, 2008
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 495

Description

TORCH SONG (1953): Musical comedy legend Jenny Stewart, who has been hardened by the worst life has to offer, finds romance when blinded war- veteran Tye Graham becomes her new piano accompanist. STRANGE CARGO (1940): When eight prisoners escape from a New Guinea penal colony, they are picked up by another escapee named Verne and his girl friend Julie. Among the fugitives is Cambreau, a soft-spoken, messianic character who has a profound effect on his comrades. SADIE MCKEE (1934): As working girl Sadie McKee, Joan Crawford wears a maid’s uniform. And as any Crawford fan knows, she’ll shortly swap her white apron for black sable – even (or especially) if it means heartbreak along the way. In this rags-to-riches tale, Sadie wins the affections of the singer (Gene Raymond) she loves, the tycoon (Edward Arnold) she marries and the lawyer (Franchot Tone) she grew up with. That’s a lot of on-screen romantic fire, not all of it may be due to acting ability alone: The year after Sadie McKee was filmed, Crawford became Mrs. Franchot Tone. FLAMINGO ROAD (1949): Life in a small Southern town heats up when a sexy, savvy dancer is stranded there by a traveling carnival. She wins the hearts of two men and gets a taste of local politics when she butts heads with a corrupt sheriff. Apparently Crawford only accepted the role after Jack Warner ordered rewrites and spruced up the production. A WOMAN'S FACE (1941): Anna Holm is scheming con woman and blackmailer, a bitter woman shut off from society because of a disfiguring scar. The opportunity to undergo an operation to remove her scars presents her with a choice: open herself up to a whole new life or return to her old ways and the only life she's ever known.

Amazon.com

Those looking for heavy doses of melodrama, good old-fashioned storytelling, and--of course--more Joan, look no further. The Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2 offers up a fine assortment of some of Crawford's popular second-tier titles that helped secure this unstoppable actress’ well-deserved seat in the court of Hollywood royalty. Spanning from 1934 to 1954, the five films take viewers on a journey over peaks and valleys of Miss Crawford’s tumultuous but often spectacular career and permits a glimpse into the star’s adeptness to the changing times of movie making. The first film, 1934’s Sadie McKee, captures a radiant Crawford, still riding high as the queen of MGM, playing the eponymous poor cook’s daughter who struggles to keep her principles intact through her rocky romances and unexpected rise to riches. Nobody plays an unlikely do-gooder like Crawford, and this splendidly entertaining film is one of her finest. 1940’s Strange Cargo features Crawford as a dive-bar singer and frequent co-star Clark Gable as a gritty prison escapee joining forces to flee a remote island. A religious parable, jungle adventure, and prison escape movie in one, Strange Cargo maintains suspense and action surprisingly well. A Woman Face (1941) is beautifully directed by one of cinema’s best, George Cukor, who provides Crawford with one of her most accomplished dramatic roles: Anna Holm, a woman whose face is horribly disfigured as a child. Anna’s physical appearance drastically alters her destiny, and becoming full of spite and bitterness, she turns to a life of crime. When the opportunity to correct her scars presents itself, the story takes a sharp turn into suspense-thriller and courtroom drama territory, eventually making its way to a totally improbable and predictable but equally exciting finale. Flamingo Road (1949), which went on to become a nighttime television soap opera in the ‘80s, sees Crawford as Lane, a hardened carnival dancer who finds herself stranded in a small town facing crooked men and parochial hypocrisy. Lane’s a tough cookie and unsurprisingly manages to cross the bridge from rags to riches while triumphing over her foes in a delicious reversal of fortune. The story may be hackneyed, but Crawford’s histrionics provide a juicy good time. This was her first foray into playing roles that are clearly too young for her, yet her portrayal is so earnest one simply doesn’t dare question the rather enormous leap in realism. Like pieced-together leftovers from much finer musicals, 1953’s Torch Song is the weakest movie of the bunch but still worth a gander. Here, Crawford plays an embittered and aging musical stage star whose unlikely romance with a blind pianist might turn around her lifetime of heartache. The film probably isn’t one of her career highlights but offers up some surprisingly poignant, all-too-real moments.

Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2 comes with an abundance of extras including several interesting featurettes covering her career at Warner Brothers and her work with Clark Gable as well as several entertaining old-fashioned cartoons. There’s also some amusing Torch Song outtakes of Crawford aspiring to sing. (Once you’ve heard them you may understand why her voice was dubbed.) Many of Crawford's characters have been described as being only slight manipulations of the real Joan; a tough woman looking for a little respect and trying to make it in a man’s world. This collection should help vindicate her efforts. -- Matt Wold

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You Know My Name

Actors: Sam Elliott, Arliss Howard, Carolyn McCormick, James Gammon, R. Lee Ermey
ASIN : B000EOTUSU
Sales Rank : 5985
Director : John Kent Harrison
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Turner Home Ent
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0053939758122
UPC : 053939758122
Release Date : December 30, 2006
Publisher : Turner Home Ent
Manufacturer : Turner Home Ent
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Turner Home Ent
Running Time : 94

Description

In six months, the population of Cromwell, Oklahoma, has climbed from 500 to 10,000. Boom times have come to the oil-rich town. So has a new breed of criminal. You Know My Name is the fact-based story of Bill Tilghman, a lawman and former partner of Wyatt Earp confronted by an emerging era when outlaws run whiskey instead of cattle and are likely to tote a tommy gun as carry a six-gun. An ideally cast Sam Elliott plays Tilghman, whose life takes on a newfangled wrinkle of its own. Tilghman makes a moving picture of his Old West exploits; and the success of that silent film, The Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws, spreads his reputation like a brushfire. But that reputation may mean nothing to a thug (Arliss Howard) who hides behind a badge.

Amazon.com

Cromwell, Oklahoma, 1924: an oil boomtown full of saloons, cathouses, mud-and-crude-oil streets, bootleg whisky, and gun-toting roughnecks. Technology had overpassed the Old West, in the form of Model T's and oil rigs, but the mentality had stayed much the same. Add to that a population that's a bit tweaky from a combination of cocaine and morphine that had been going around, and you have a recipe for trouble. Enter Marshall Bill Tilghman, a contemporary of Wyatt Earp. Tilghman had made a silent film, The Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws, and on the strength of his reputation had been called into service as chief of police in the hopes of restoring order to a lawless community. In this fact-based story, Sam Elliott plays Tilghman, a larger-than-life character who was one of the last of a dying era. Many Prohibition agents became renegades in the '20s; Tilghman's nemesis was Wiley (Arliss Howard), a rogue agent strung out on drugs and dealing in bootleg liquor himself. Howard's performance is as overwrought as Elliott's is restrained; together the two offset each other well. The flinty Elliott brings a measure of warmth to his role, especially in his relationship to his wife and kids; he's perfectly cast as the man on the cusp of a new age. As a modern-era Western, You Know My Name rises well above its made-for-cable roots to stand as a good character study and action picture. --Jerry Renshaw

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The Paul Newman Collection (Harper / The Drowning Pool / The Left-Handed Gun / The Mackintosh Man / Pocket Money / Somebody Up There Likes Me / The Young Philadelphians)

Actors: Paul Newman, Pier Angeli, Lauren Bacall, Joanne Woodward, Dominique Sanda
ASIN : B000HWZ4DE
Sales Rank : 3851
Director : Arthur Penn, Jack Smight, John Huston, Robert Wise, Stuart Rosenberg
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0012569816763
UPC : 012569816763
Release Date : December 14, 2006
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 779

Product description

Includes: Harper (1966), Drowning Pool (1975), The Left Handed Gun (1958), Pocket Money (1972), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), and The Young Philadelphians (1959).

Amazon.com

Paul Newman's career slipped onto an unstoppable track with Somebody Up There Likes Me, his 1956 biopic about boxer Rocky Graziano. Of course that was his second picture, the first being the oft-joked-about bungle The Silver Chalice. Newman's Method-y intensity and dazzling good looks brought him stardom, and his intelligence and uncommon seriousness as an actor kept his movies interesting, especially as he tackled some of the best roles of the "antihero" era--an era he helped create.

Somebody Up There Likes Me is included in The Paul Newman Collection, a bulging seven-DVD package that shakes out thusly: three late-1950s titles from the beginning of his career, one mid-sixties hit, and three lesser films of the early 1970s. It's by no means a "best of" compilation, being limited to Warners and MGM titles, but it gives a flavor of Newman in his prime time. He got the Graziano role after James Dean died, and his performance is a very busy, post-Brando jumble of tics and mumbles. The movie holds up nicely as a boxing picture, and the location NYC shooting won an Oscar for cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg (you can see why director Robert Wise got hired to do West Side Story after this). Sal Mineo and Steve McQueen are in the cast as Newman's fellow j.d.s.

The Left-Handed Gun (1958), based on a teleplay by Gore Vidal, is a truly weird, compulsively watchable artifact from the psychological-Western genre. Newman plays Billy the Kid, glowering and grimacing like a rebel without a cause. It's one of those films that has much more to do with the time it was made than the time it is set; also notable as the big-screen debut for stage and TV director Arthur Penn. The Young Philadelphians (1959) is more conventional, an entertaining soap opera about a young lawyer (Newman) with an old-money Philly name but no money, who gets burned by love and decides to connive his way to the top. Young Robert Vaughn snagged an Oscar nomination for a showy turn as an alcoholic society lad.

Harper (1966) is chockfull of kooky mid-Sixties design and Rat Pack patter (courtesy screenwriter William Goldman). But it must be said that Newman is miscast as the melancholic private eye of Ross Macdonald's literary world, here re-imagined as a wisecracking hepcat who mugs his way through a missing-persons investigation. The supporting cast is a weird over-the-hill gang including Lauren Bacall, Janet Leigh, and Shelley Winters. That film's hero, Lew Harper (renamed from Macdonald's "Archer"), returned in 1976's The Drowning Pool, a more bearable if somewhat humdrum whodunit set in New Orleans. Newman's wife, Joanne Woodward, has a supporting part, but the picture is most notable for an early Melanie Griffith nymphet role.

Pocket Money (1972) is one of those only-in-the-seventies movies that pairs Newman with Lee Marvin in a drowsy, nearly plotless comedy. Both actors give elaborate performances: Newman plays a numbskull two-bit cattle broker who takes absolutely everything literally, and Marvin is his buddy in Mexico who signs on for an ill-considered cattle-buying job. One of the credited screenwriters is Terrence Malick, and the movie has a highly eccentric feel for language. Finally, The Mackintosh Man (1973) is one of the periodic duds that director John Huston would crank out in his otherwise starry career, with Newman as a spy on an incomprehensible case in England. The first half is a red herring, and Dominique Sanda (more recently of The Conformist) is out of depth with the English language. It's a bleak film with a kind of grinding fascination, and the Maurice Jarre score is catchy but fatally overused. --Robert Horton

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The Horse Soldiers

Actors: John Wayne, William Holden, Constance Towers, Judson Pratt, Hoot Gibson
ASIN : B000059TFU
Sales Rank : 5996
Director : John Ford
Brand : TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
Studio : MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code : 1
Format : Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780792849551
ISBN : 0792849558
UPC : 027616861054
Release Date : December 08, 2001
Publisher : MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer : MGM (Video & DVD)
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : MGM (Video & DVD)
Running Time : 115

Description

John Wayne teams with William Holden and eminent western director John Ford for this frontier actioner "packed with laughter, romance and thrills" (The Hollywood Reporter)! Written by John LeeMahin and Martin Rackin, this faithful representation of one of the most daring cavalry exploits inhistory is both a moving tribute to the men who fought and died in that bloody war and a powerful, action-packed drama.Based on an actual Civil War incident, The Horse Soldiers tells the rousing tale of a troop of Union soldiers who force their way deep into Southern territory to destroy a rebel stronghold at Newton Station. In command is hardbitten Colonel Marlowe (Wayne), a man who is strikingly contrasted by the company's gentle surgeon (Holden) and the beautiful but crafty Southern belle (Constance Towers) who's forced to accompany the Union raiders on perhaps the most harrowing mission in the war.

Amazon.com

This latter-day sort-of Western from John Ford--falling midway between The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--is a crisp retelling of a true-life episode from the Civil War. In 1863 a Union colonel named Grierson (Marlowe in the film, and John Wayne by any name) led his cavalry several hundred miles behind Confederate lines to cut the railroad between Newton Station and soon-to-be-embattled Vicksburg. Grierson's Raid was as successful as it was daring, and remarkably bloodless. Never fear that the screenplay makes up for that un-Hollywood lapse--as well as supplying amatory distraction for the colonel in the form of a feisty Southern belle (Constance Towers) who has to be dragged along to protect secrecy.

There's a certain amount of bombast in the running arguments about wartime ethics between Marlowe and the new regimental surgeon (William Holden), who don't take to each other at all. But Ford more than makes up for it with such tasty scenes as an encounter with a couple of redneck Rebel deserters (Denver Pyle and Strother Martin), an ethereal swamp crossing led by a cornpone deacon (Hank Worden), and above all the famous skirmish with a hillside full of grade-school cadets from a venerable military academy. The film ends rather abruptly because Ford abandoned a climactic battle scene--the veteran stunt man and bit player Fred Kennedy having been killed in a horse fall. Golden-age cowboy star Hoot Gibson, who acted in Ford's directorial debut, Straight Shooting, appears as Sergeant Brown. --Richard T. Jameson

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Geronimo - An American Legend

Actors: Jason Patric, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Wes Studi, Matt Damon
ASIN : 0767817672
Sales Rank : 7457
Director : Walter Hill
Brand : Sony
Studio : Sony Pictures
Region Code : 1
Format : Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780767817677
ISBN : 0767817672
UPC : 043396587090
Release Date : December 17, 1998
Publisher : Sony Pictures
Manufacturer : Sony Pictures
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Sony Pictures
Running Time : 115

Product Description

Studi gives a stunning performance as the fearless warrior who was the last indian leader to surrender to the white man. Betrayed by the armys legendary indian fighter general george crook geronimo leads a small band of warriors in escape. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 04/22/2008 Starring: Robert Duvall Gene Hackman Run time: 115 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Walter Hill

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Walter Hill's revisionist take on the American cavalry's campaign to capture renegade Chiricahua Apache warrior Geronimo (Wes Studi) is, like Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, a dark tale that both celebrates and critiques myths of the American West. Despite its title, Geronimo is really about the American cavalry officers who undertake the responsibility of recapturing the warrior, in particular the young narrator Lt. Charles Gatewood (Jason Patric), a Civil War hero who respects the great Geronimo and brokers a treaty with the Chiricahua, only to see it collapse when the army kills the tribal medicine man. Gene Hackman plays Gen. George Crook, the proud but sympathetic officer charged with bringing in the renegades who take to hills after the killing. Robert Duvall, the tough, racist army scout and Indian fighter Charlie Sieber, practically steals the picture with his cagey, underplayed performance. More complex and complicated than most Westerns, this is a Walter Hill film through and through: lean, ironic, beautiful to look at (it was shot on location against the astounding landscape of southeastern Utah), and driven by a wonderful Ry Cooder score. Don't confuse this with the 1993 TNT cable film by the same name; it confounded many viewers at the time of its release and may have been at least partially responsible for its box-office disappointment. --Sean Axmaker