Pravda, George

Thunderball

The thrills never let up as James Bond dives into this riveting adventure filled with explosive confrontations and amazing underwater action sequences! Sean Connery brings his characteristic style humor and magnetism to Agent 007 as he travels to Nassau to track down villainous criminal Emilio Largo who's threatening to plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust. From Bond's thrilling jetpack flight to his heart-stopping clash with Largo's killer sharks Thunderball is a stupendous mixture of action romance and edge-of-your-seat suspense!System Requirements:Running Time: 126 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: PG UPC: 027616066497 Manufacturer No: M106649

James Bond's fourth adventure takes him to the Bahamas, where a NATO warplane with a nuclear payload has disappeared into the sea. Bond (Sean Connery) travels from a tiny health spa (where he tangles with a mechanized masseuse run amuck) to the casinos of Nassau and soon picks up the trail of SPECTRE's number-two man, Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), and his beautiful mistress, Domino (Claudine Auger), whom Bond soon seduces to his side. Equipped with more gadgets than ever, courtesy of the resourceful "Q" (Desmond Llewelyn), agent 007 escapes an ambush with a personal-size jet pack and takes to the water as he searches for the undersea plane, battles Largo's pet sharks, and finally leads the battle against Largo's scuba-equipped henchmen in a spectacular underwater climax. This thrilling Bond entry became Connery's most successful outing in the series and was remade in 1983 as Never Say Never Again, with Connery returning to the role after a 12-year hiatus. Tom Jones belts out the bold theme song to another classic Maurice Binder title sequence. --Sean Axmaker

Hopscotch - Criterion Collection

Walter Matthau is in peak form in Hopscotch, a featherweight spy-game comedy in which he plays a CIA agent who's way smarter than his dimwitted superiors. That's the fantasy part--this amusing cat-and-mouse game is so lopsided that you can't take it seriously. The movie's charm is derived from the sardonic pleasure with which Matthau makes his pursuers look like idiots, after they've targeted him for "termination" for publishing a tell-all memoir about his tenure in "the Company." He's no stool pigeon, however; it's his boss (played with blustery thick-headedness by the great Ned Beatty) who's abusing his power, so Matthau recruits an old lover (Glenda Jackson) to join him in a globetrotting game of clandestine cleverness. Under Ronald Neame's too-casual direction, this is a not-so-wild goose chase, but Matthau and Jackson (reuniting after they had fun making the 1978 comedy House Calls) have an easygoing chemistry that's nicely balanced with Matthau's cantankerous shenanigans. --Jeff Shannon

Miles Kendig knows too much. One of the CIA's top international operatives, he suddenly finds himself relegated to a desk job in an agency power play. Unwilling to go quietly, Kendig, with the aid of a chic Viennese widow, puts himself back in the game by writing a memoir exposing the innermost secrets of every major intelligence agency in the world. The CIA wants Kendig dead, but he refuses to cooperate—he's having too much fun. Based on Brian Garfield's best-selling novel, and starring the inimitable comic team of Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson, Ronald Neame's Hopscotch is a smart and stylish tale of international intrigue and a cat-and-mouse comedy.

James Bond Ultimate Edition - Vol. 2 (A View to a Kill / Thunderball / Die Another Day / The Spy Who Loved Me / Licence to Kill)

James Bond tries to stop a nuclear blackmail threat from Spectre, looks for the connection between a Korean terrorist and a supposedly reputable diamond merchant, investigates the disappearance of submarines carrying nuclear missiles, faces a plot to dest
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: NR
Release Date: 6-NOV-2007
Media Type: DVD

The Shoes of the Fisherman

If you find during the 160-minute running time of The Shoes of the Fisherman that you don't like the plot, wait 10 minutes. It will surely change and there will be another story thread to entice you. The screenplay is literally all over the map: Siberia, where Archbishop Kiril Lakota, played splendidly by Anthony Quinn, has been exiled to a work camp in the oppressive Soviet regime; Moscow, where a genially scene-chewing Laurence Olivier plays a Soviet ruler with history with Lakota; China, where famine threatens to bring the world of the late '60s to the brink of World War III; and Rome, where Lakota travels after being freed (and where dissolute reporter David Janssen does his best to groove on the Swinging Sixties). Yet despite its flaws, the movie's central drama is riveting: the current Pope dies suddenly, and for a good bit of the film, viewers are treated to the Vatican's inner workings on the election of a new Pope. The events unfold at a leisurely pace, which allows you to drink in the spectacle and wonder of the ancient traditions. The Alex North Oscar-nominated score is lovely, and Quinn's performance is the somber-with-a-humble-twinkle glue that holds the film together. Anyone interested in the traditions and rituals of the Vatican will find plenty to savor. --A.T. Hurley

All eyes are focused on the Vatican hoping to see the traditional puffs of white smoke that signal the selection of the next Pope. But this time much more is at stake. The new pontiff may be the only person who can bring peace to a world hovering on the edge of nuclear nightmare. Year: 1968 Director: Michael Anderson Starring: Anthony Quinn Oskar Werner David Janssen Vittorio De Sica Leo McKern Sir John GielgudRunning Time: 162 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569517424 Manufacturer No: 65174

Operation Amsterdam

Oscar® winner* Peter Finch (Network) Eva Bartok and Tony Britton lead an all-star cast in this "brisk and exciting" (The Film Daily) WWII thriller that plunges headlong into the dangerous world of espionage!In a daring life-or-death mission three British agents enter Amsterdam to take as many of the city's industrial diamonds as they can before the impending Nazi invasion. As the bombs drop and the clock ticks will these brave agents complete their mission and bring the diamonds to Mother England or will they find themselves trapped in a volatile city full of enemies with no means of escape?*1976: Actor NetworkSystem Requirements:Running Time: 105 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: NR UPC: 027616885784 Manufacturer No: 1004527

Submarine X-1

Academy Award® nominee* James Caan commands a covert naval operation in this riveting drama inspired by an amazing true story discovered in declassified British War Office files. With "first-class underwater photography" (Variety) and taut suspense this tale of heroism paved the way for films like The Hunt for Red October.Commander Bolton (Caan) has lost his submarine the Gauntlet in a sea battle with the Nazis in 1943. Although the survivors still blame him he's cleared of charges and assigned to lead a top-secret training program with three experimental miniature X-1 subs each manned by a crew of only four. Their mission: to sink the mighty battleship Lindendorf the same ship that destroyed the Gauntlet!System Requirements: Running Time 90 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: G UPC: 027616921727 Manufacturer No: 1008134

Dan Curtis' Dracula

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

Peter Cushing delivers his most cold-blooded portrayal of the mad Baron in his fifth turn as Dr. Frankenstein. Abandoning his latest experiment after a drunk stumbles into his secret lab (upsetting a severed head) he hurriedly finds new lodgings with a sweet young thing (Hammer glamour babe Veronica Carlson) whose boyfriend (Simon Ward, in his film debut) works in the local sanitarium. Frankenstein blackmails the lovers into complicity with his latest experiment, resorts to kidnapping and murder for his subjects, turns accomplice Ward into a killer, and even rapes Carlson in a coldly brutal scene. The goriest film of the series kicks off with a flamboyant beheading with a scythe (seen only as a spray of blood across a window) and is full of bloody brain surgery, conveniently offscreen but vividly suggested in the slurping sound effects of surgical saws and drills and the gallons of blood left in their wake. Freddie Jones is heartbreaking as Frankenstein's latest creature, a once-insane scientist who awakens to find himself cured but trapped in a grotesque, alien body. When he attempts to communicate with his wife, half hiding in a dark corner while she peers around and sees only a monster, director Terence Fisher offers the most affecting moment of pathos in the entire series. Cushing and Fisher reunited for one more film together, the seventh and final film in the series, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. --Sean Axmaker

Another take on the classic tale. This one's a British version from 1969 with a more heartless version of the mad scientist. Instead of having a lab assistant to do his dirty work, this Dr. Frankenstien pushes a young doctor and his betrothed to kidnap the next victim. They must capture the mentally ill Dr. Brandt so that hi sbrain may be used in Dr. Frankenstein's experiments.

Inspector Clouseau

The world's favorite Pink Panther super-sleuth is back and at it again in this outrageous comedy caper, starring Alan Arkin as the beloved but brainless Inspector Clouseau. When a nation's in trouble, criminal masterminds don't stand a chance against the French detective with a knack for recklessinvestigation. Tension is building at Number Ten Downing Street when it's discovered that the money stolen in the Great Train Robbery is merely operating capital for a bigger criminal plan. Never to fear, Clouseau is here! The bumbling detective sets out on a clumsy crusade to catch the crooks.But the case takes a riotous twist when Clouseau's face is seen masquerading from Swiss bank to Swiss bank for the heist of the century. Will Clouseau manage to save the day, or will the case of mistaken identity end his crime fighting forever?

Thunderball

James Bond's fourth adventure takes him to the Bahamas, where a NATO warplane with a nuclear payload has disappeared into the sea. Bond (Sean Connery) travels from a tony health spa (where he tangles with a mechanized masseuse run amuck) to the casinos of Nassau and soon picks up the trail of SPECTRE's number-two man, Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), and his beautiful mistress, Domino (Claudine Auger), whom Bond soon seduces to his side. Equipped with more gadgets than ever, courtesy of the resourceful "Q" (Desmond Llewelyn), agent 007 escapes an ambush with a personal-size jet pack and takes to the water as he searches for the undersea plane, battles Largo's pet sharks, and finally leads the battle against Largo's scuba-equipped henchmen in a spectacular underwater climax. This thrilling Bond entry became Connery's most successful outing in the series and was remade in 1983 as Never Say Never Again, with Connery returning to the role after a 12-year hiatus. Tom Jones belts out the bold theme song to another classic Maurice Binder title sequence. --Sean Axmaker