Westerns on DVD and 31 Days of Oscar
Burbank, California—A fancier two-disc version of the movie that was passed over in last year's Best Picture Oscar race, Brokeback Mountain, premieres on DVD this week. Handsome packaging, eight collectible postcards—including the pivotal one from the movie—and new stuff make it an all-around better deal than the sparse first edition.
Besides the original's extras, new features consist of a slide show, a ten-minute piece on the evocative soundtrack and the 16-minute A Groundbreaking Success, which briefly includes star Heath Ledger and director Ang Lee and spends more time with industry insiders and gay press types talking about the movie's impact. Notably absent from the add-ons: the writer, Annie Proulx, whose short story sparked the movie, screenwriter Larry McMurtry (though his writing partner, Diana Ossana, appears) and the rest of the cast.
The new material is produced in the subdued style of Brokeback Mountain, which remains a deeply moving motion picture. Another powerful epic spanning years set in the West is available on a more advanced DVD. Director John Ford's classic Western with John Wayne, The Searchers, ought to be part of every movie lover's library.
We're talking about last summer's 50th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition, boxed in a hard case with two discs, a colorful reproduction of Dell's ten-cent comic book tie-in, a booklet of the Warner Bros. promotional campaign and vintage memos about the 1956 drama. The remastered and restored movie is captivating, shot in the jaw-dropping VistaVision with John Wayne in his prime against a virgin landscape. With shaded characters, themes of race and morality—Natalie Wood portrays a white girl seized by Indians—and a prolonged conflict, The Searchers seeks and explores.
Director Peter Bogdanovich (What's Up, Doc?, Mask) provides an insightful audio commentary track and there's also a trailer, a feature about Hollywood's legendary Western team John Ford and John Wayne, behind-the-scenes in vast Monument Valley and ten collectible picture cards (rare, black and white shots). The press book includes text—squint to read the small print—about Mr. Wayne, co-star Jeffrey Hunter selling sporting goods at his Canoga Park store and Vera Miles (Psycho), whom the notes remind us had played a girl raised by Indians three years earlier in The Charge at Feather River.
An inter-office memorandum about a 1955 test screening in San Francisco is noteworthy. Besides the content, memo stationery is imprinted with the Burbank studio's reminder "verbal messages cause misunderstandings and delays (please put them in writing)."
Next week, Fox releases 15 episodes of the second season of ABC's mid-Sixties television Western, The Big Valley, on three discs. Without extras and using those awful doubled-sided discs with print you need a microscope to read, this is bare bones Fox but it's still The Big Valley. Stars Linda Evans, Lee Majors and Peter Breck should have been brought in to remember the family soap series with Barbara Stanwyck and Richard Long.
Let's hope the wait's not too long for new seasons of ABC's other TV hits with Evans (Dynasty) and Majors (The Six Million Dollar Man) to come out on DVD. Classy Peter Breck recalled performing on the show last year for the inaugural DVD release of The Big Valley.
Television Notes
Starting Feb. 1, TV's best programming for those who love great movies airs with the annual launch of Turner Classic Movies' 31 Days of Oscar. From the raucous Western The Big Country (2/6) with Burl Ives and Gregory Peck to the battle between faith and reason in Stanley Kramer's biting courtroom drama Inherit the Wind (2/7), TCM, hosted by Robert Osborne, delivers the goods.
Other gems to make time for: Only Angels Have Wings (2/10), Out of Africa (2/24) and, on Feb. 25, Oscar telecast day, you might be better off watching TCM for Casablanca, Gone with the Wind and Edison, The Man. A personal favorite is Stanley Kramer's three-hour post-Nazi drama Judgment at Nuremberg (2/2) with Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift. This picture dares to judge, not merely address, whether people are accountable for what their nation becomes. Judgment at Nuremberg, not bothering with the Nazi side of the story, is a piercing, relevant moral drama.
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RELATED ARTICLES
• Scott Holleran: The Big Valley Season One on DVD
• Review: Brokeback Mountain
• Index of Scott Holleran's Columns
RELATED LINKS
• DVD: Brokeback Mountain 2-Disc Collector's Edition
• DVD: The Searchers
• DVD: The Big Valley, Season 2, Volume 1
• Web Site: Turner Classic Movies
Besides the original's extras, new features consist of a slide show, a ten-minute piece on the evocative soundtrack and the 16-minute A Groundbreaking Success, which briefly includes star Heath Ledger and director Ang Lee and spends more time with industry insiders and gay press types talking about the movie's impact. Notably absent from the add-ons: the writer, Annie Proulx, whose short story sparked the movie, screenwriter Larry McMurtry (though his writing partner, Diana Ossana, appears) and the rest of the cast.
The new material is produced in the subdued style of Brokeback Mountain, which remains a deeply moving motion picture. Another powerful epic spanning years set in the West is available on a more advanced DVD. Director John Ford's classic Western with John Wayne, The Searchers, ought to be part of every movie lover's library.
We're talking about last summer's 50th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition, boxed in a hard case with two discs, a colorful reproduction of Dell's ten-cent comic book tie-in, a booklet of the Warner Bros. promotional campaign and vintage memos about the 1956 drama. The remastered and restored movie is captivating, shot in the jaw-dropping VistaVision with John Wayne in his prime against a virgin landscape. With shaded characters, themes of race and morality—Natalie Wood portrays a white girl seized by Indians—and a prolonged conflict, The Searchers seeks and explores.
Director Peter Bogdanovich (What's Up, Doc?, Mask) provides an insightful audio commentary track and there's also a trailer, a feature about Hollywood's legendary Western team John Ford and John Wayne, behind-the-scenes in vast Monument Valley and ten collectible picture cards (rare, black and white shots). The press book includes text—squint to read the small print—about Mr. Wayne, co-star Jeffrey Hunter selling sporting goods at his Canoga Park store and Vera Miles (Psycho), whom the notes remind us had played a girl raised by Indians three years earlier in The Charge at Feather River.
An inter-office memorandum about a 1955 test screening in San Francisco is noteworthy. Besides the content, memo stationery is imprinted with the Burbank studio's reminder "verbal messages cause misunderstandings and delays (please put them in writing)."
Next week, Fox releases 15 episodes of the second season of ABC's mid-Sixties television Western, The Big Valley, on three discs. Without extras and using those awful doubled-sided discs with print you need a microscope to read, this is bare bones Fox but it's still The Big Valley. Stars Linda Evans, Lee Majors and Peter Breck should have been brought in to remember the family soap series with Barbara Stanwyck and Richard Long.
Let's hope the wait's not too long for new seasons of ABC's other TV hits with Evans (Dynasty) and Majors (The Six Million Dollar Man) to come out on DVD. Classy Peter Breck recalled performing on the show last year for the inaugural DVD release of The Big Valley.
Television Notes
Starting Feb. 1, TV's best programming for those who love great movies airs with the annual launch of Turner Classic Movies' 31 Days of Oscar. From the raucous Western The Big Country (2/6) with Burl Ives and Gregory Peck to the battle between faith and reason in Stanley Kramer's biting courtroom drama Inherit the Wind (2/7), TCM, hosted by Robert Osborne, delivers the goods.
Other gems to make time for: Only Angels Have Wings (2/10), Out of Africa (2/24) and, on Feb. 25, Oscar telecast day, you might be better off watching TCM for Casablanca, Gone with the Wind and Edison, The Man. A personal favorite is Stanley Kramer's three-hour post-Nazi drama Judgment at Nuremberg (2/2) with Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift. This picture dares to judge, not merely address, whether people are accountable for what their nation becomes. Judgment at Nuremberg, not bothering with the Nazi side of the story, is a piercing, relevant moral drama.
$
RELATED ARTICLES
• Scott Holleran: The Big Valley Season One on DVD
• Review: Brokeback Mountain
• Index of Scott Holleran's Columns
RELATED LINKS
• DVD: Brokeback Mountain 2-Disc Collector's Edition
• DVD: The Searchers
• DVD: The Big Valley, Season 2, Volume 1
• Web Site: Turner Classic Movies
