Collector's Corner

February 2002

• Starring: Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, G.D. Spradlin, Harrison Ford, Christian Marquand, Aurore Clément
• Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
• Theatrical release: 1979/2001
• DVD release: 2001
• Video: Widescreen (anamorphic)
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

Ultimately, my aim with Apocalypse Now Reduxwas to achieve a richer, fuller and more textured film experience that, as with the original, lets audiences feel what Vietnam was like: the immediacy, the insanity, the exhilaration, the horror, the sensuousness and the moral dilemma of America's most surreal and nightmarish war.
-- Francis Ford Coppola, May 2001

Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) has been assigned to assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) because, as his General tells him, "he's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops." Kurtz had killed four VC for spying and refused to turn himself in, so Willard’s job is to kill Kurtz. Willard sees the insanity clearly and thinks to himself, "Shit . . . charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500." For the next three hours, Willard sets out on a journey into the heart of darkness. He’ll run across scared Navy kids, insane cavalry commanders, forgotten and leaderless outposts, shanghaied Playboy bunnies who have to sell sex for survival, French plantation owners trying to protect their land in the middle of a war, and finally a poet-warrior whose only strategy is to inject more horror into war than his adversaries.

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January 2002

The Godfather

• Starring: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, Richard S. Castellano, James Caan, Talia Shire, Sterling Hayden, Richard Conte, Abe Vigoda, John Cazale, Al Martino, Morgana King
• Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
• Theatrical release: 1972
• DVD release: 2001
• Video: widescreen (anamorphic)
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

The Godfather: Part II

• Starring: Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, John Cazale, Talia Shire, Lee Strasberg, Michael V. Gazzo, G. D. Spradlin
• Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
• Theatrical release: 1974
• DVD release: 2001
• Video: widescreen (anamorphic)
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

The Godfather: Part III

• Starring: Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Andy Garcia, Eli Wallach, Joe Mantegna, George Hamilton, Bridget Fonda, Sofia Coppola, John Savage
• Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
• Theatrical release: 1990
• DVD release: 2001
• Video: widescreen (anamorphic)
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

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November 2001

• Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Everett Sloane, Ray Collins, George Coulouris, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick
• Directed by: Orson Welles
• Theatrical release: 1941
• DVD release: 2001
• Video: fullscreen
• Sound: Dolby Digital Mono

The plot

Citizen Kane opens with three minutes of the most haunting and influential imagery ever committed to celluloid. A man dies, alone, in the dark, whispering the word "rosebud." We then switch to a newsreel about the death of wealthy publisher, Charles Foster Kane. Clearly a man of magnificent wealth and phenomenal egotism, we learn about his life from a reporter’s view. But one of the documentary directors wants to get more; he wants to get into the person and find out what made him tick. He sends reporters out to find the whole story from various individuals close to Kane.

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October 2001

• Starring: Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell, Cyd Charisse
• Directed by: Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen
• Theatrical release: 1952
• DVD release: 2000
• Video: fullscreen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 (remastered)

The Plot

Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagan) are the biggest stars in Hollywood during the silent-film era. Good looks and passable pantomime are all it takes to be a star -- that and studio backing. Then The Jazz Singer changes everything. Chaos. Everyone wants to see Don and Lina in a talkie. The problem is Lina’s voice sounds like the squeal of worn-out brakes on a Yugo and her accent is that lovely amalgamation of dialects from the southern part of Elizabeth, New Jersey. The studio knows they just can’t let the public hear how bad she sounds. The answer is simple: hire someone to be Lina’s voice. Enter Kathy Selden (19-year-old Debbie Reynolds in her breakthrough role). But Lina (who is so dumb she believes she and Don are engaged because she read it in a gossip column) wants to use her own voice. In the meantime, Don has fallen in love with Kathy. Will the picture be made? Will the boy get the girl?

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September 2001

• Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Pat O’Brien, Joe E. Brown
• Directed by: Billy Wilder
• Theatrical release: 1959
• DVD release: 2001
• Video: widescreen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

Cross-dressing musicians hunted by the mob

Sax player Joe (Tony Curtis) and bass player Jerry (Jack Lemmon) are Chicago musicians in a prohibition-era speakeasy. After witnessing Spats Colombo (George Raft) murder a squealer, they have to run for their lives. But the only jobs available during the hard economic times are for a couple of girl musicians in Florida with Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators. The solution (isn’t it obvious?) is for Joe and Jerry to become Josephine and Daphne and get out of town. As they are boarding the train, with one of the hottest entries in movie history, in slinks the perfectly named Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe). Daphne whispers to Josephine, "Look at that! Look how she moves! That's just like Jell-O on springs. Must have some sort of built-in motor or something. I tell you, it's a whole different sex!" And she is hot! Unfortunately, she has a penchant for sax players who steal her money and her heart. She has vowed to look only for rich, bookish guys who will treat her right.

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August 2001

• Starring: Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, Cathy O’Donnell, Harold Russell and Hoagy Carmichael
• Directed by: William Wyler
• Theatrical release: 1946
• DVD release: 1998/2000
• Video: fullscreen (1.33:1)
• Sound: Dolby Digital Mono

The plot

WWII has just ended. Three military men, Captain Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), Sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March), and Sailor Homer Parrish (Harold Russell), are all heading home to their families and loved ones in Boone City. Although they have never met, they carry the camaraderie of men at war and a shared hometown. All three are aware that, having lived through war, they see the world in a different way, and they worry how they will fit in. Homer has a high-school girlfriend who waited for him through the war, but he has lost his hands and is afraid to touch her with his "hooks." Fred got married just before shipping off and hasn’t seen his wife since. Al was a bank executive with a wife and two children. He’s more worried about how he’ll fit in with his family than he was while facing enemy fire. For all three men, the flight home is filled with apprehension, expectation, and anxious excitement.

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July 2001

• Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, Francois Truffaut, Bob Balaban
• Directed by: Steven Spielberg
• Theatrical release: 1977
• DVD release: 2001
• Video: anamorphic widescreen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1

Close Encounters of the First Kind: Sighting of an Unidentified Flying Object
Close Encounters of the Second Kind: Physical Evidence of a UFO
Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Actual Contact

A short history

Mid 1977: Erstwhile TV director Steven Spielberg’s second movie, Jaws, had been a huge hit. He is in the finishing stages of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, prepping it for a summer-1978 release. The cash-strapped Columbia executives come to Spielberg and direct him to get the movie out by Christmas. They tell him that without the movie, Columbia will crash. Thirty-year-old director Steven Spielberg is given the task of saving the studio.

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June 2001

• Starring: Peter O’Toole, Alec Guiness, Omar Shariff, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy
• Directed by: David Lean
• Theatrical release: 1962
• DVD release: 2001
• Video: anamorphic widescreen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time. I do not see his like elsewhere. His name will live in English letters; it will live in the annals of war; it will live in the legends of Arabia.
-- Winston Churchill on T. E. Lawrence

The plot

World War I. T. E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) is stuck with a desk job in Cairo, coloring maps. Something of a scholar, he believes that the Arabs are potential allies in the struggle against the Axis powers. His commanding officers think he’s daft, unpleasant, impolite, and not at all a proper gentleman. Happily for Lawrence, Mr. Dryden (Claude Rains), from the political team wants to assess the value of utilizing the Arabs. Lawrence is seconded to the politicos to search out Prince Feisal (Alec Guiness) and determine whether the British can enlist the Arabs. Lawrence falls in love with the desert and the Beduin lifestyle ("going native" as the officers referred to it) and decides that he will deliver an independent Arab republic to his friends. While his overt strategy is to overthrow the Turks, his covert mission is to beat the Brits. Being an intelligent and sensitive man, he falls victim to hubris. In the chess game of life, Lawrence’s fundamental aspiration was to be a knight; he unexpectedly grew to be a king, but ultimately, he was transformed into a pawn. The experience breaks him. Lawrence of Arabia is, finally, a tragedy.

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May 2001

• Starring: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh, Daryl Hannah, William Sanderson, Brion James, and Joanna Cassidy
• Directed by: Ridley Scott
• Theatrical release: 1982 (Blade Runner), 1992 (Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut)
• DVD release: 1997
• Video: widescreen (anamorphic), fullscreen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround

The plot

The Tyrrell Corporation has created the perfect android, the Nexus 6 Replicant. These androids are perfect, at least until they become mutinous and kill a cluster of humans on another planet. From that point on, Replicants are outlawed on Earth under penalty of death, with the Blade Runners serving as police-sanctioned assassins. Cut to Los Angeles, November, 2019. Six Replicants have escaped and made their way to Earth. For unknown reasons, they are trying to get into the Tyrrell Corporation. One dies. Retired Blade Runner, Deckard (Harrison Ford), is recruited (read forced) by his ex-boss, Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh), to kill the remaining Replicants. We know immediately who four of them are. Killing the fifth will pose a dilemma for Deckard.

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