Owen, Reginald

Mary Poppins (40th Anniversary Edition)

There is only one word that comes close to accurately describing the enchanting Mary Poppins, and that term was coined by the movie itself: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Even at 2 hours and 20 minutes, Disney's pioneering mixture of live action and animation (based on the books by P.L. Travers) still holds kids spellbound. Julie Andrews won an Oscar as the world's most magically idealized nanny ("practically perfect in every way," and complete with lighter-than-air umbrella), and Dick Van Dyke is her clownishly charming beau, Bert the chimney sweep. The songs are also terrific, ranging from bright and cheery ("A Spoonful of Sugar") to dark and cheery (the Oscar-winning "Chim Chim Cher-ee") to touchingly melancholy ("Feed the Birds"). Many consider Mary Poppins to be the crowning achievement of Walt Disney's career--and it was the only one of his features to be nominated for a best picture Academy Award until Beauty and the Beast in 1991. --Jim Emerson

Experience the extraordinary animation, dazzling special effects, and award-winning music of Walt Disney's MARY POPPINS in this fully restored and remastered 2-Disc 40th Anniversary Edition! Join the "practically perfect" Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews) for a "Jolly Holiday" as she magically turns every chore into a game and every day into a whimsical adventure. Along the way you'll be enchanted by unforgettable characters such as the multitalented chimney sweep Bert (Dick Van Dyke). Unpack Mary's magical carpetbag full of bonus features, including an all-new animated short, games, and a never-before-heard deleted song. You won't need "A Spoonful Of Sugar" to love every moment of this timeless Disney classic!

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (30th Anniversary Edition)

When a mail-order apprentice witch (Angela Lansbury) is saddled with three sibling refugees from London during World War II, the outlook is grim. But the kids soon discover her secret and sign on for adventure in the name of England. With the aid of a magical bed, they track down her fraudulent headmaster (David Tomlinson) to find the spell that will aid the Allies. Fascinated that she has actually achieved results with his lessons, he joins forces. The quintet does battle with corrupt booksellers, animated-lion royalty, and, eventually, invading Germans. Songs include Lansbury's Oscar-nominated "The Age of Not Believing." This film is often compared to director Robert Stevenson's earlier effort, Mary Poppins, and for good reason. In addition to Tomlinson, the movies share a fondness for magic at the hands of a good woman, light romance with an understanding male, and wide-eyed children. Stevenson also graces both films with interaction between humans and animated animals. Disney is wise to play up that aspect on its box this time around as both the underwater ball and the subsequent island soccer match are the most visually interesting and appealing parts of the film. Adults may find the 1971-vintage mixing of actors and animation a bit creaky, but kids used to a variety of animation quality will find the action a hoot. Ages 4 and up. The movie has been recut several times but was restored to the original length of 139 minutes for its 30th anniversary in 2001. --Kimberly Heinrichs

An Academy Award(R) winner for Best Visual Effects (1971), BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS is a magical blend of live action and animation that makes it one of Disney's most enduring classics. This magical 30th anniversary edition version of the film is now yours to enjoy in digital splendor on this remastered, fully restored DVD! BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS is the enchanting story of an amateur witch who, along with three precocious orphans, flies into one fantastic adventure after another aboard a bewitched bed. The legendary Angela Lansbury is charming as the witch, and the inimitable David Tomlinson (MARY POPPINS) delights as the amusing professor whose help Lansbury and the children enlist in order to find an ancient incantation that will save the country from hostile invaders! This special edition BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS DVD includes many bonus features and is sure to be a film the entire family will want to watch again and again!

The Thrill of It All!

No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: NR
Release Date: 4-FEB-2003
Media Type: DVD

James Garner substitutes for Rock Hudson in this hilarious Doris Day outing. Housewife Beverly Boyer (Day) happens by chance to give an executive of Happy Soap an honest appraisal of one of his company's products. Charmed by her forthright and honest manner, he makes Beverly the company spokesperson. When she becomes an advertising sensation, her husband (Garner) has to deal with the social ramifications of his wife making more money than he does. Day and Garner are both in good form, and Garner nicely portrays the mounting frustration of bewildered husband Gerald.

Gerald's refusal to accept that Beverly's new career infringes on her duties as housewife is, of course, outdated thinking today. Nevertheless, the film works and is sincerely funny. No wonder: comedian Carl Reiner cowrote the script. --Mark Savary

National Velvet

This classic family film made a star of 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor in the title role as spunky Velvet Brown, a girl who's determined to enter her horse, Pie, in the Grand National Steeplechase. Critic Pauline Kael called it "One of the most likeable movies of all time." Mickey Rooney costars as a young man who helps Velvet train Pie for the big race. At the last minute, Velvet herself has to ride Pie in the tournament and cuts her hair to pass for a jockey. Anne Revere won an Oscar as Velvet's mother, as did editor Robert J. Kern, who cut together a terrifically exciting horse race. Donald Crisp and Angela Lansbury are also featured as members of the Brown family. --Jim Emerson

Enchantingly beautiful Elizabeth Taylor became a movie star at age twelve after starring in this classic about a girl and her jockey pal (Mickey Rooney) who transform an unruly horse into a champion.

Mrs. Miniver

Winner of six Academy Awards including Best Picture this memorable spirit-lifter about an idealized England that tends its prize-winning roses while confronting the terror of war struck a patriotic chord with American audiences and became 1942's #1 box-office hit. Greer Garson gives a formidable Oscar-winning performance in the title role comforting children in a bomb shelter capturing an enemy parachutist and delivering an inspirational portrait of stiff-upper-lip British resolve. When Hitler did his worst Mrs. Miniver did her best. Year: 1942Running Time: 134 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/CLASSICS UPC: 012569519626 Manufacturer No: 65196

A movie doesn't win seven Oscars for nothing. A glowing Greer Garson (Best Actress) commands the screen as Mrs. Miniver, a middle-class British housewife whose strength holds her family together as World War II literally hits their home. Walter Pidgeon as her architect husband seems to be the prototype for future TV dads in this affecting portrait of love--familial and romantic--during war. But the relationship between Mrs. Miniver's college-age son (Richard Ney) and the upper-crust Carol (Best Supporting Actress Teresa Wright) is filled with inherent drama--as the war speeds up their young love, it also has the potential to doom it. The 1942 film, which also won for Best Picture and Best Director, is filled with colorful characters, snappy dialogue, and sensational plot twists. Although you spend much of the movie dreading that one of the Minivers will become a casualty of war, when it finally happens, it's not what you anticipated. Exactly what you'd expect from a legendary film that lives up to its billing. --Valerie J. Nelson

Random Harvest

Paula Smith (Greer Garson) is the secretary of industrialist Charles Rainier (Ronald Colman). She's also his wife which Charles does not know. Shell-shocked during World War I he doesn't recall his days as her husband John Smith. Advised not to endanger Charles' fragile mental state Paula cannot openly reveal her identity. She must find other ways to help him remember their life together. From the novel by James Hilton (Goodbye Mr. Chips Lost Horizon) comes one of the great sentimental romance movies. Garson's Paula alongside her same-year triumph as Mrs. Miniver established her persona as the strong self-sacrificing wife. Random Harvest gathered seven Academy AwardO nominations* (including Best Picture and Colman as Best Actor) and also reaped a box-office harvest as the year's #4 hit.Running Time: 126 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569525122

The ultimate tearjerker, this 1942 romance classic directed by Mervyn LeRoy (based on a novel by James Hilton) stars Ronald Colman as a British army officer suffering from amnesia after World War I. After falling in love with and marrying a dance-hall singer (Greer Garson), Colman's happy character begins a career as a writer and doesn't seem to mind that he doesn't remember who he is. A car accident changes all that, however, causing the hero's memory to return and making him forget all about his lovely cottage and bride. LeRoy modulates the obvious suspense element in the story (for example, is Colman going to remember Greer or not?) extremely well, building ever-so-deliciously slowly toward a huge payoff. This is one of the great date movies of all time. --Tom Keogh

The Pirate

A girl is engaged to the local richman but meanwhile she has dreams about the legendary pirate Macoco. A traveling singer falls in love with her and to impress her he poses as the pirate.Running Time: 101 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MUSICALS/MUSICALS UPC: 012569795228 Manufacturer No: 79522

A Tale of Two Cities (1935)

Ronald Colman isn't even on screen for the most famous lines of his career ("It's a far, far better thing I do..."), but such is the power of the moment and the performance that everybody remembers it anyway. A Tale of Two Cities was the follow-up for producer David O. Selznick and high-class studio MGM to their hit adaptation of another Charles Dickens novel, Great Expectations. While not scaling the heights of that impeccable production, Tale gives a tight, straightforward reading of Dickens' story of the French Revolution. Colman plays the drunken romantic Sydney Carton, who pines for the lovely Lucie Manette (Elizabeth Allan) even though she marries former French aristocrat Charles Darnay (Donald Woods). Meanwhile, back in Paris, the Revolution erupts, and Darnay is fated for the guillotine... perhaps. Along with Colman's expert study in melancholy, the film is crammed with fragrant supporting players, such as Edna May Oliver, Reginald Owen, and the uniquely unsettling Blanche Yurka as the endlessly-knitting Madame Defarge. In a handful of scenes, Basil Rathbone makes the Marquis de Evremonde the quintessence of clueless privilege ("With what I get from these peasants, I can hardly afford to pay my perfume bill"). Journeyman director Jack Conway doesn't have the lovely touch that George Cukor brought to Copperfield, but Selznick hired him because "the picture is melodrama, it must have pace and it must 'pack a wallop.'" It still does. Footnote to film history: Selznick's assistant, Val Lewton, supervised the Revolutionary montage, and hired director Jacques Tourneur for the job; later they would team up on Lewton's great run of B-horror pictures, beginning with Cat People. --Robert Horton

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." Charles Dickens' tale of love and tumult during the French Revolution comes to the screen in a sumptuous film version by the producer famed for nurturing sprawling literary works: David O. Selznick (David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, Gone with the Wind). Ronald Colman (The Prisoner of Zenda) stars as Sydney Carton ? sardonic, dissolute, a wastrel...and destined to redeem himself in an act of courageous sacrifice. "It's a far, far better thing I do than I've ever done," Carton muses at that defining moment. This is far, far better filmmaking, too: a Golden Era marvel of uncanny performances top to bottom, eye-filling crowd scenes (the storming of the Bastille, thronged courtrooms, an eerie festival of public execution) and lasting emotional power. Revolution is in the air!

DVD Features:
Other:Oscar?-Nominated Short Audioscopicks 2 Classic Cartoons: Hey, Hey Fever and Honeyland Audio-Only Bonus: Radio Show Adaptation Starring Colman
Theatrical Trailer

The Three Musketeers

A classic tale set during the reign of Louis XIII. A young man joins the musketeers to foil an evil cardinal's plot to seize control of France.Running Time: 126 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE UPC: 012569795099 Manufacturer No: 79509

The Great Ziegfeld

Flo Ziegfeld's midway attraction isn't drawing flies. "How's business Ziggy?" a rival taunts. This winner of three Academy Awards including Best Picture provides the career-chronicling answer. Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.'s business was good (with Broadway's legendary Follies and more) bad (including times the showman could scarcely rub two nickels together) and rarely lacking optimistic excess. Year: 1936Running Time: 186 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MUSICALS/MUSICALS UPC: 012569512429 Manufacturer No: 65124

Winner of three Academy Awards including Best Picture, The Great Ziegfeld stars William Powell in a biopic "suggested by romances and incidents in the life of America's greatest showman, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr." With admirable accuracy, the film follows Ziegfeld's career from small-time sideshow barker to creator of the famous Ziegfeld Follies, the collection of singing, dancing, and comedy vaudeville acts that launched the careers of such luminaries as Fanny Brice, Ray Bolger, and Harriet Hoctor, all of whom play themselves in the film. In the title role, Powell offers a believable combination of ambition and hucksterism, and his Thin Man costar Myrna Loy makes a late appearance as his second wife, but it's large-eyed Luise Rainer who has the showier role (and won an Oscar) as Ziegfeld's first big star and first wife. The musical numbers, however, don't hold up quite as well as the plot, and the film is overlong at 185 minutes. It's fascinating, though, to see the vintage stars performing, and the eight-minute spectacle "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" is an eye-popper, with an elaborate revolving set supporting a large cast singing and dancing to the Irving Berlin tune while throwing in some Puccini, Strauss, Leoncavallo, and Gershwin for good measure. --David Horiuchi