Editorial Product Review: :Wings, the first movie to win an Academy Award for Best Picture and the only silent film to win, is still remarkably enjoyable to watch. The story is a fairly conventional one--two flyboys, both in love with the same girl, go off to fight World War I, and male bonding and heartbreak ensue. It's a perfectly serviceable plot, except for the key logical flaw that both young men have inexplicably fallen in love with the boring girl down ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Gary Cooper plays the oldest of three brothers who join the French Foreign Legion to cover a mysterious theft, and are soon caught up in high adventures. The opening scene in a fort full of corpses sticks in the memory forever, and Brian Donlevy's role as a sadistic sergeant makes a striking impression as well. Director William Wellman (Wings), a veteran pilot of World War I, drew--as he often did--upon the authenticity of his own experiences ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Gary Cooper plays the oldest of three brothers who join the French Foreign Legion to cover a mysterious theft, and are soon caught up in high adventures. The opening scene in a fort full of corpses sticks in the memory forever, and Brian Donlevy's role as a sadistic sergeant makes a striking impression as well. Director William Wellman (Wings), a veteran pilot of World War I, drew--as he often did--upon the authenticity of his own experiences ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:F.W. Murnau changed the name and ghastly appearance of his villain, but this unauthorized version of Bram Stoker's Dracula couldn't fool the Stoker estate, and it became the center of a lawsuit that almost resulted in its complete destruction. Thankfully this masterpiece survives (though in a somewhat altered form), for despite its liberties with the novel, this 1921 horror classic remains the most beautiful and resonant interpretation of Stoker. Though the plot remains essentially the same--naive ...
Editorial Product Review: :Made in 1928 while he was in the middle of a painful divorce case, Charlie Chaplin's The Circus was so associated with bad memories for its maker that he refused even to mention it in his 1964 autobiography. Consequently, it has enjoyed less of a reputation than such films as The Gold Rush (1925) and City Lights (1931). However, while it's not quite in their league, The Circus undoubtedly deserves to be rescued from relative obscurity. Here, Chaplin's ...
Editorial Product Review: :Originally running an astonishing 10 hours when it was produced in 1925, Greed suffered one of Hollywood's unkindest cuts. Much to the devastation of its Austrian creator, Eric von Stroheim, MGM slaughtered his ambitious silent epic based on Frank Norris' solemn novel, McTeague, reducing it from 42 reels to 10 with a running time of just over two hours (von Stroheim broke down upon watching the finished piece). Yet, it's a testament to the director's vision and talent ...
Editorial Product Review: :Originally running an astonishing 10 hours when it was produced in 1925, Greed suffered one of Hollywood's unkindest cuts. Much to the devastation of its Austrian creator, Eric von Stroheim, MGM slaughtered his ambitious silent epic based on Frank Norris' solemn novel, McTeague, reducing it from 42 reels to 10 with a running time of just over two hours (von Stroheim broke down upon watching the finished piece). Yet, it's a testament to the director's vision and talent ...
Editorial Product Review: :Ernst Lubitsch brought his famous touch to this sentimental romantic drama, a famous operetta about a young prince who falls in love with a commoner. A kindly tutor (Jean Hersholt) effectively raises the boy in a splendorous kingdom of rolling hills and vast forests while his distant father rules in the cold, tradition-bound palace. When he turns 18, Prince Karl Heinrich (Ramon Novarro) is sent to Heidelberg for an education, in more ways than one. He enrolls incognito ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:One of Mel Brooks's weaker vehicles, this 1976 feature finds a movie producer (Brooks) deciding that the public is ready for the silent film form again. Reasonably ambitious and promising, the film ultimately doesn't do for silent cinema what Brooks did for atmospheric horror (by reviving it while parodying it) in Young Frankenstein. Lots of famous faces pass through Silent Movie, to varying effect. Perhaps the best joke in the movie is the one performer who ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:One of Mel Brooks's weaker vehicles, this 1976 feature finds a movie producer (Brooks) deciding that the public is ready for the silent film form again. Reasonably ambitious and promising, the film ultimately doesn't do for silent cinema what Brooks did for atmospheric horror (by reviving it while parodying it) in Young Frankenstein. Lots of famous faces pass through Silent Movie, to varying effect. Perhaps the best joke in the movie is the one performer who ...
India expects to see rough diamond supplies fall by up to a fourth after the Diamond Trading Co (DTC), the distribution arm of De Beers, cuts down on Indian clients, an industry body said on Wednesday.
Hundreds of internet users from across the globe are signing an online condolence book offering their tributes to the slain former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto,