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Looney Tunes - Golden Collection, Volume One

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Looney Tunes - Golden Collection, Volume One

Actors: Mel Blanc, Arthur Q. Bryan, Vincent Price, Stan Freberg, Billy Bletcher
ASIN : B0000AYJXS
Sales Rank : 142
Director : Abe Levitow, Arthur Davis, Chuck Jones, Constantine Nasr, Friz Freleng
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Animated, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780790781761
ISBN : 079078176X
UPC : 085392791828
Release Date : December 28, 2003
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
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Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 411

Description

They're the crown princes of animation. They're the international ambassadors of cartoon comedy. They're the fabulously funny friends you grew up with! And now, 56 of the very best animated shorts starring the very wackiest Warner Bros. cartoon characters have been rounded up on DVD for the first time ever in The Looney Tunes Golden Collection! Just barely contained in four special edition discs, each specially selected short has been brilliantly restored and re-mastered to its original, uncut, anvil-dropping, laughter-inducing glory! Featuring some of the very earliest, ground-breaking on-screen appearances of many all-time Looney Tunes favorites, it's an unprecedented celebration for cartoon-lovers eager to re-live the heady, hilarious, golden age of Warner Bros. animation! Sparkling with one unforgettable, landmark animated marvel after another, there's that icon of carrot-crunching aplomb, Bugs Bunny, in a dazzling assortment of his very best classic shorts. Also highlighted in their own delightfully zany series of cartoon gems: the ever-flustered Daffy Duck and eternal straight-man Porky Pig. Plus, all the rest of the beloved Looney Tunes lineup starring in some of the most wildly imaginative cartoon shorts ever created! Including an array of exclusive bonus DVD features from expert commentaries to insights into the evolution of these classic characters, this is the ultimate animated experience for anyone who's ever thrilled to the timeless query: "Ehhh? what's up, Doc?"

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For years, animation buffs have waited impatiently for the Warner Bros. cartoons to appear on DVD. The Warner shorts never commanded the budgets and prestige of the Disney and MGM films, and won fewer Oscars than they deserved. But decades after the best ones were created, they remain the quintessential Hollywood cartoons: brash, fast-paced, aggressively funny and uniquely American. Virtually everyone in the U.S. under the age of 60 grew up on these films, in theaters and on TV. The 56 cartoons in the set (out of a studio output of over 1,000) were transferred from good prints--which means the viewer can see dust, scratches, and occasional mistakes by the cel painters. The films are all presented uncut, in defiance of the killjoys who have insisted on censoring alleged "violence" in the versions shown on television. Warner Bros. is obviously testing consumer response with this set. Although the erratic selection includes many classics, purists will argue (correctly) that it offers neither a fair representation of the directors' oeuvres, nor anything approaching a coherent history of the characters or studio style. (Nearly half the films were directed by Chuck Jones; only three are by Bob Clampett, and there's nothing by Tex Avery or Frank Tashlin.) But it seems petty to carp about omissions and biases when the discs offer excellent, uncensored prints of some of the funniest films ever made in the U.S.--or anywhere else. (Rated G, suitable for all ages: cartoon violence) --Charles Solomon

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Louis L'Amour's The Sacketts

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Louis L'Amour's The Sacketts

Actors: Sam Elliott, Tom Selleck, Jeff Osterhage, Glenn Ford, Ben Johnson
ASIN : B000EOTUSK
Sales Rank : 1603
Director : Robert Totten
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0012569721807
UPC : 012569721807
Release Date : December 30, 2006
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
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Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 240

Product Description

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 05/30/2006 Run time: 193 minutes Rating: Nr

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Louis L'Amour's easy voice with its gentle rhythm sets the tone and pace of the film in a spoken introduction to this loping, rambling three-hour-plus TV-movie adaptation of his novels The Daybreakers and Sackett. Sam Elliot stars as the elder Sackett, a nomad hunting and trapping in the mountains who happens upon an ancient treasure. Tom Selleck and Jeff Osterhage are his younger siblings, forced to leave home to avoid a Hatfield and McCoy situation. As the Sackett brothers wind their way across the Midwest prairies and mountains we join them on cattle drives and gold hunts, in gunfights and fistfights, and in a climactic showdown as they find their place in the world. This 1979 film rambles and meanders like a lazy river winding through a beautiful landscape of peaks and plains and forests, punctuated by the occasional gunfight and enlivened by a story that celebrates both the open range and the taming of the towns. Elliot looks almost young but flashes his savage eyes behind a thick black beard, while Selleck's easygoing manner is backed up with a stony-faced determination. The excellent cast includes a veritable who's who of Western character actors: Glenn Ford, Ben Johnson, Gilbert Roland, Gene Evans, Jack Elam, Slim Pickens, L.Q. Jones, Mercedes McCambridge, and Pat Buttram. Followed in 1982 by The Shadow Riders, which reunited the three stars and even a few members of the supporting cast in a tale of three different brothers. --Sean Axmaker

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The Man with No Name Trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)

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The Man with No Name Trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)

Actors: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volontè, Aldo Giuffrè
ASIN : 0792842502
Sales Rank : 1202
Director : Monte Hellman, Sergio Leone
Brand : EASTWOOD,CLINT
Studio : MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code : 1
Format : Subtitled, Color, Letterboxed, Widescreen
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780792842507
ISBN : 0792842502
UPC : 027616785923
Release Date : December 05, 1999
Publisher : MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer : MGM (Video & DVD)
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Label : MGM (Video & DVD)
Running Time : 392

Description

Disc 1: FISTFUL OF DOLLARS Disc 2: FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE Disc 3: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

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Sergio Leone's trilogy of operatic spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood made the former TV star into an international sensation as the scraggly, silent Man with No Name, a wandering rogue with a scheming mind and a sense of humor drier than the dusty, wind-scoured desert. With A Fistful of Dollars, a blatant rip-off of Kurosawa's cynical samurai hit Yojimbo, Leone transforms the Western hero into a crafty mercenary. The follow-up, For a Few Dollars More, teams Eastwood up in an uneasy alliance with Lee Van Cleef in a tale of revenge, but the masterpiece of the set is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, an epic scramble for buried gold set against the violence of the Civil War. In this film good is a relative term as three criminals make a series of tenuous partnerships broken in double-crosses and betrayals in Leone's epic vision of the American southwest as endless deserts and clapboard towns infested with gunmen. This was a new kind of Western: cynical, violent, stylish, and austere. Eastwood's rough face and squinting eyes fill the widescreen frame in massive close-ups while Leone stages action in bold compositions on empty streets and stark landscapes. The guns ring out in cartoonish exaggeration, and the music, an eclectic, electric mix of buzzing guitar, human voice, and harmonica by Ennio Morricone, sets the whole thing in a world pitched between myth and modernity. Leone's shot-in-Spain trilogy ushered in a flood of Italian spaghetti Westerns, but none hold a candle to Leone's stylish classics. --Sean Axmaker

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James Stewart - The Western Collection (Destry Rides Again / Winchester ‘73 / Bend of the River / The Far Country / Night Passage / The Rare Breed)

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James Stewart - The Western Collection (Destry Rides Again / Winchester ‘73 / Bend of the River / The Far Country / Night Passage / The Rare Breed)

Actors: James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich, Shelley Winters, Maureen O'Hara, Brian Donlevy
ASIN : B00157OICS
Sales Rank : 2938
Director : Anthony Mann
Brand : Universal
Studio : Universal Studios
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0025195018456
UPC : 025195018456
Release Date : December 20, 2008
Publisher : Universal Studios
Manufacturer : Universal Studios
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Label : Universal Studios
Running Time : 565

Description

Hollywood legend James Stewart takes the law into his own hands with 6 action-packed adventures in James Stewart: The Western Collection. Celebrate this Academy Award®-winning screen icon's 100th Anniversary with some of his most daring roles ever in Destry Rides Again, Winchester '73, Bend of the River, The Far Country, Night Passage and The Rare Breed. Co-starring silver screen favorites Marlene Dietrich, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Maureen O'Hara and Shelley Winters, this essential collection showcases one of Hollywood's most versatile actors at his best.

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True Grit (Special Collector's Edition)

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True Grit (Special Collector's Edition)

Actors: John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glen Campbell, Jeremy Slate, Robert Duvall
ASIN : B000O179FY
Sales Rank : 1980
Director : Henry Hathaway
Brand : Paramount
Studio : Paramount Pictures
Region Code : 1
Format : Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Extra tracks, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0097361207742
UPC : 097361207742
Release Date : December 22, 2007
Publisher : Paramount Pictures
Manufacturer : Paramount Pictures
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Label : Paramount Pictures
Running Time : 127

Product Description

Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 02/05/2008 Run time: 127 minutes Rating: G

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A wonderful/rueful running gag in El Dorado involves the Edgar Allan Poe line "Ride, boldly ride" being mangled by toupee-wearer Wayne into "Ride, baldy, ride." Two years later, in True Grit, Wayne put the joke in italics by donning an eyepatch and several inches of girth to play cantankerous territorial marshal Rooster Cogburn. Critics belatedly noticed that he could be a marvelously entertaining actor, and Hollywood finally gave him the Oscar they'd failed to nominate him for in Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, et al. But make no mistake: True Grit is a splendid movie, with lovingly textured storytelling and sturdy characters, Henry Hathaway's finest high-country action set-pieces, intoxicatingly ornate frontier language, and a couple of formidable bad guys (Jeff Corey's Tom Cheney and Robert Duvall's "Lucky" Ned Pepper). It's a compliment to say that, from a technical standpoint, the movie could have been made any time in Hathaway's 40-year career, yet its feeling for the reality of violence ceded no ground to The Wild Bunch, released around the same time. Still, the film's most sublime passage falls between bursts of gunplay: Rooster sitting on a hilltop at night recounting his life story, as John Wayne metamorphoses ineluctably into W.C. Fields. --Richard T. Jameson

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Once Upon a Time in the West

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Once Upon a Time in the West

Actors: Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards, Gabriele Ferzetti
ASIN : B0000AUHPG
Sales Rank : 2294
Director : Sergio Leone
Brand : Paramount
Studio : Paramount
Region Code : 1
Format : Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780792172727
ISBN : 0792172728
UPC : 097360683042
Release Date : December 18, 2003
Publisher : Paramount
Manufacturer : Paramount
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Label : Paramount
Running Time : 175

Product Description

An outlaw working for a railroad magnate fights a stranger for a new orleans widows land. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 02/13/2007 Starring: Henry Fonda Frank Wolff Run time: 165 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Sergio Leone

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The so-called spaghetti Western achieved its apotheosis in Sergio Leone's magnificently mythic (and utterly outlandish) Once upon a Time in the West. After a series of international hits starring Clint Eastwood (from A Fistful of Dollars to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), Leone outdid himself with this spectacular, larger-than-life, horse-operatic epic about how the West was won. (And make no mistake: this is the wide, wide West, folks--so the widescreen/letterboxed version is strongly recommended.) The unholy trinity of Italian cinema--Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Dario Argento--concocted the story about a woman (Claudia Cardinale) hanging onto her land in hopes that the transcontinental railroad would reach her before a steely-eyed, black-hearted killer (Fonda) does. (The film's advertising slogan was: "There were three men in her life. One to take her ... one to love her ... and one to kill her.") Meanwhile, Leone shoots his stars' faces as if they were expansive Western landscapes, and their towering bodies as if they were looming rock formations in John Ford's Monument Valley. --Jim Emerson

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The Magnificent Seven (Special Edition)

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The Magnificent Seven (Special Edition)

Actors: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach, Robert Vaughn
ASIN : B000059TFW
Sales Rank : 2498
Director : John Sturges
Brand : TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
Studio : MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code : 1
Format : Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780792849575
ISBN : 0792849574
UPC : 027616861078
Release Date : December 08, 2001
Publisher : MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer : MGM (Video & DVD)
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Label : MGM (Video & DVD)
Running Time : 128

Description

Spectacular gun battles, epic-sized heroes and an all-star cast that includes Academy AwardÂ(r) winners Yul Brynner* and James Coburn**, together with Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach and Charles Bronson, make The Magnificent Seven a legend among westerns. Spawning three sequels and a successful television series, and featuring Elmer Bernstein's OscarÂ(r)-nominated*** score, thisstunning remake of The Seven Samurai is "a hard-pounding adventure" (Newsweek) and "an enduringly popular" (Leonard Maltin) cinematic classic. Merciless Calvera (Wallach) and his band of ruthless outlaws are terrorizing a poor Mexican village, and even the bravest lawmen can't stop them. Desperate, the locals hire Chris Adams (Brynner) and six other gunfighters to defend them. With time running out before Calvera's next raid, the heroic seven must prepare the villagers for battle and help them find the courage to take back their town or die trying!

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Akira Kurosawa's rousing Seven Samurai was a natural for an American remake--after all, the codes and conventions of ancient Japan and the Wild West (at least the mythical movie West) are not so very far apart. Thus The Magnificent Seven effortlessly turns samurai into cowboys (the same trick worked more than once: Kurosawa's Yojimbo became Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars). The beleaguered denizens of a Mexican village, weary of attacks by banditos, hire seven gunslingers to repel the invaders once and for all. The gunmen are cool and capable, with most of the actors playing them just on the cusp of '60s stardom: Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn. The man who brings these warriors together is Yul Brynner, the baddest bald man in the West. There's nothing especially stylish about the approach of veteran director John Sturges (The Great Escape), but the storytelling is clear and strong, and the charisma of the young guns fairly flies off the screen. If that isn't enough to awaken the 12-year-old kid inside anyone, the unforgettable Elmer Bernstein music will do it: bum-bum-ba-bum, bum-ba-bum-ba-bum.... Followed by three inferior sequels, Return of the Seven, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, and The Magnificent Seven Ride! --Robert Horton

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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)

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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
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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.

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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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Fox Western Classics (Rawhide / The Gunfighter / Garden of Evil)

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Fox Western Classics (Rawhide / The Gunfighter / Garden of Evil)

Actors: Gregory Peck, Tyrone Power, Gary Cooper
ASIN : B0014BQR1A
Sales Rank : 3399
Director : Henry Hathaway, Henry King
Brand : Fox
Studio : 20th Century Fox
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0024543512585
UPC : 024543512585
Release Date : December 13, 2008
Publisher : 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer : 20th Century Fox
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Label : 20th Century Fox
Running Time : 272

Description

Disc 1: Garden of Evil (1954) Feature Film Disc 2: The Gunfighter (1951) Feature Film Disc 3: Rawhide (1951) Feature Film

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One of these three new-to-DVD Westerns is a universally esteemed classic, well worth the price of the set. But in happy fact, the whole package delivers the goods: sturdy genre entertainment from the Western's peak decade, the 1950s; solid Fox studio craftsmanship in every department; and breathtakingly crisp restorations that make you feel you've been time-warped back to a loge seat in your Bijou of choice on opening day. Henry King's The Gunfighter (1950) is the crown jewel--the film that deserves the credit (often awarded to High Noon) for ushering in the "adult Western," the '50s subgenre that emphasized psychological intensity over action and spectacle. Gregory Peck (topping his acclaimed performance in King's WWII drama Twelve O'Clock High) is excellent as Jimmy Ringo, a notorious shootist grown middle-aged and mortally weary of having to defend his legend. His trail takes him to a frontier town where an old comrade (the great Millard Mitchell) now serves as marshal, and where Ringo's estranged wife and the son he has never seen also reside, under an assumed name. Over one night and one day, Ringo dares to dream of a normal life. But there are avengers not far behind, and other threats yet to be counted. Although hailed by critics, The Gunfighter lost money for Fox; studio head Darryl F. Zanuck blamed the soup-strainer mustache--a stroke of period realism--director King ordered Peck to grow for the role. Well, a little red ink is a small price to pay for a masterpiece. Incidentally, the impeccable black-and-white cinematography is by three-time Oscar-winner Arthur Miller, capping a career that reached back to The Perils of Pauline.

The 1951 Rawhide (no relation to the later TV series) is a trim, satisfying Henry Hathaway picture that blends the leathery trappings of the Western with the claustrophobic atmosphere and intensity of a noir suspense film. At a remote swing station for the transcontinental stagecoach, several no-goods aim to help themselves to a gold shipment. But the next coach isn't carrying gold, so the intruders hold the stationmasters (Tyrone Power and Edgar Buchanan) and some stranded passengers captive while they wait. Power and Susan Hayward handle the heroics without larger-than-life posturing; Dean Jagger, Hugh Marlowe, and George Tobias relish the rare opportunity to play villainous or ambiguous types; and Jack Elam is, well, Jack Elam, reliably oozing viciousness from every pore. Screenwriter Dudley Nichols knew the territory, having scripted John Ford's Stagecoach thirteen years earlier. Hathaway also directed Garden of Evil (1954), Fox's first Western in the new CinemaScope process. (Very wiiiiide CinemaScope--the DVD preserves the 2.55:1 format, which was later modified to 2.35:1.) The story involves several fortune-seeking Americanos accidentally thrown together in Mexico and enlisted to help rescue a fellow countryman injured at his remote gold mine. Much of the film unreels as a journey Western exploring tensions among the strangers, especially those inspired by dreaming of gold and the man's redheaded wife (Susan Hayward). The dialogue reaches for profundity and comes up short, but Richard Widmark as a self-designated "poet" and Gary Cooper as a retired lawman give satisfaction as they one-up each other. The movie's distinction lies in Hathaway's no-sweat adaptation to the widescreen format, the awe-inspiring Mexican settings--a deserted village, a valley of black sand, a mountain town buried under volcanic ash--and the only music score ever composed for a feature Western by Bernard Herrmann.

Herrmann is just about the only thing the four commentators on Garden of Evil talk about (there's also a separate "making of" featurette). Nobody does commentary on The Gunfighter or Rawhide, but the disc for the former includes a featurette on master cameraman Arthur Miller, while a Rawhide addendum highlights the oft-used movie location of Lone Pine, Calif., and another pays tribute to gutsy leading lady Susan Hayward. Talking heads include some half-dozen film historians (e.g., David Biographical Dictionary of Film Thomson) plus Henry Hathaway's son and Gary Cooper's daughter. --Richard T. Jameson

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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Actors: John Wayne, James Stewart, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Edmond O'Brien
ASIN : B00005ASGG
Sales Rank : 3969
Director : John Ford
Brand : Paramount
Studio : Paramount
Region Code : 1
Format : Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780792172666
ISBN : 0792172663
UPC : 097360611441
Release Date : December 05, 2001
Publisher : Paramount
Manufacturer : Paramount
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Label : Paramount
Running Time : 123

Product Description

A tenderfoot lawyer and a powerful rancher are rivals in lovet who stand together against a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 04/11/2006 Starring: James Stewart Vera Miles Run time: 123 minutes Rating: Nr Director: John Ford

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"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." That's more than the code of a newspaperman in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; it's practically the operating credo of director John Ford, the most honored of American filmmakers. In this late film from a long career, Ford looks at the civilizing of an Old West town, Shinbone, through the sad memories of settlers looking back. In the town's wide-open youth, two-fisted Westerner John Wayne and tenderfoot newcomer James Stewart clash over a woman (Vera Miles) but ultimately unite against the notorious outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). Ford's nostalgia for the past is tempered by his stark approach, unusual for the visual poet of Stagecoach and The Searchers. The two heavyweights, Wayne and Stewart, are good together, with Wayne the embodiment of rugged individualism and Stewart the idealistic prophet of the civilization that will eventually tame the Wild West. This may be the saddest Western ever made, closer to an elegy than an action movie, and as cleanly beautiful as its central symbol, the cactus rose. --Robert Horton

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