Editorial Product Review: :Andy Griffith burst to stardom with this surprisingly funny film adaptation of the Broadway comedy (by, of all people, Ira Levin of Rosemary's Baby fame). Griffith plays a hillbilly who is drafted into the army where, among other things, he has to wear shoes regularly for the first time. Griffith brings an engaging glee to the role of this likable bumpkin, whose happy-go-lucky demeanor is impervious to insult. Ask him to clean the latrines and he rigs the toilet seats to stand up and ...
Editorial Product Review: :Andy Griffith burst to stardom with this surprisingly funny film adaptation of the Broadway comedy (by, of all people, Ira Levin of Rosemary's Baby fame). Griffith plays a hillbilly who is drafted into the army where, among other things, he has to wear shoes regularly for the first time. Griffith brings an engaging glee to the role of this likable bumpkin, whose happy-go-lucky demeanor is impervious to insult. Ask him to clean the latrines and he rigs the toilet seats to stand up and ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:This restored, animated valentine to the Beatles offers viewers the rare chance to see a work that's been substantially improved by its technical facelift, not just supersized with extra footage. Recognizing that its song-studded soundtrack alone makes Yellow Submarine a video annuity, United Artists has lavished a frame-by-frame refurbishment of the original feature, while replacing its original monaural audio tracks with a meticulously reconstructed stereo mix that actually refines legendary original album versions. What emerges is a vivid time capsule of the ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:George Cukor, Hollywood's legendary 'woman's director,' had his hands full with the all-female cast of this 1939 film adaptation of the Clare Boothe play. The story finds a group of catty, competitive friends destroying reputations at social gatherings. The dialogue sparkles, Joan Crawford's performance as a husband stealer is still a classic, the film looks wonderful in Cukor's hands, and the Technicolor fashion-show scene is a one-of-a-kind Hollywood experience. --Tom Keogh
Editorial Product Review: essential video:George Cukor, Hollywood's legendary 'woman's director,' had his hands full with the all-female cast of this 1939 film adaptation of the Clare Boothe play. The story finds a group of catty, competitive friends destroying reputations at social gatherings. The dialogue sparkles, Joan Crawford's performance as a husband stealer is still a classic, the film looks wonderful in Cukor's hands, and the Technicolor fashion-show scene is a one-of-a-kind Hollywood experience. --Tom Keogh
Editorial Product Review: :Cheating? Who's cheating? When an egghead chemistry professor (Ray Milland) stumbles upon a formula for making baseballs resistant to the touch of wood, he sneaks a little onto a pitcher's glove and for a time has a career throwing from a major league mound. Set aside ethical concerns: this light comedy is in an Absent-Minded Professor mold, with balls clownishly, impossibly dancing around the swing of batters. (Besides that, the climax requires an act of minor heroism on the prof's part when the magic ...
Editorial Product Review: :Cheating? Who's cheating? When an egghead chemistry professor (Ray Milland) stumbles upon a formula for making baseballs resistant to the touch of wood, he sneaks a little onto a pitcher's glove and for a time has a career throwing from a major league mound. Set aside ethical concerns: this light comedy is in an Absent-Minded Professor mold, with balls clownishly, impossibly dancing around the swing of batters. (Besides that, the climax requires an act of minor heroism on the prof's part when the magic ...
Editorial Product Review: :Decades before Brad Pitt starred in Meet Joe Black, the story of a vacationing Grim Reaper was adapted for the screen from a popular play. Frederick March, playing Death, disguises himself as a European prince and spends three days with an amenable duke at his palatial estate. Women are instantly attracted to the Lord of the Underworld, but back off when they sense his true nature--that is, all women except for the beautiful young innocent (Evelyn Venable), who is destined to marry the duke's ...
Editorial Product Review: :After her long and wholesome run as America's Sweetheart, Doris Day quit movies with this well-scrubbed picture. With Six You Get Eggroll--oof, what a title--caught the wave of blended-family comedies, coming just after Yours, Mine and Ours and just before TV's The Brady Bunch. Doris has three sons, and new beau Brian Keith has an 18-year-old daughter (the still-baby-faced Barbara Hershey). It's family-friendly sitcom stuff, with both Day and Keith doing their comfortable, patented thing; when the two of them are onscreen together it's ...
