Pinocchio (Disney Gold Classic Collection)
by Hamilton Luske
from Walt Disney Video
This Disney masterpiece from 1940 will hold up forever precisely because it doesn't restrain or temper the most elemental emotions and themes germane to its story. Based on the Collodi tale about a wooden puppet who wants to become a real boy, Pinocchio is among the most magical, mythical, and frightening films to come from the studio in its long history. A number of scenes make permanent impressions on young minds (just ask Steven Spielberg, who quoted the film more than once in Close Encounters of the Third Kind), and the songs ("When You Wish upon a Star") can't be beat. --Tom Keogh
Disney's second full length movie after Snow White. Delightful, hand-drawn images.
Shirley Temple - America's Sweetheart Collection, Vol. 1 (Heidi / Curly Top / Little Miss Broadway)
by Allan Dwan
from 20th Century Fox
You Can't Take It With You
by Frank Capra
from Sony Pictures
Frank Capra's 1938 populist spin on the George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart play about a family of happy eccentrics is a great deal of fun, though it significantly rewrites the original work and doesn't represent Capra (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) at his best. Jean Arthur plays a member of the blissful Vanderhof household who falls in love with a rich man's son (James Stewart) and brings him into her nutty home. Lionel Barrymore, who played such a bad guy eight years later in Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, is the wonderful Grandpa Vanderhof, who addresses God during the dinner prayer as "sir" and speaks plainly and beautifully of why it's good to be alive. Capra took this opportunity to rail against big business and champion the common man, but the overall tone of the film--typical for the director's comedies--is buoyant and snappy. --Tom Keogh
Heidi
by Allan Dwan
from 20th Century Fox
No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film Family
Rating: G
Release Date: 30-AUG-2005
Media Type: DVD
One thing Shirley Temple did extremely well (besides sing, dance, and act) was turn the cranky cuddly. She'd done it effectively, two years prior, in 1935's The Little Colonel with grandfather Lionel Barrymore. Now in Heidi she turns her reclusive grumpy grandfather, Adolf (Jean Hersholt), into the loving sort she knows he really is. Heidi is an orphan, dumped into the Swiss Alps by self-centered Aunt Dete (Mady Christians) onto a grandfather she's never known, but they soon learn to love each other. Heidi's mercenary aunt returns and sells (!) Heidi to a cruel woman, appropriately named Fraulein Rottenmeier (Mary Nash). Adolf sets out on a quest to find his granddaughter. Meanwhile, Heidi charms Klara Sesemann (Marcia Mae Jones), the wealthy handicapped girl in Fraulein Rottenmeier's care. Look for a delightful Arthur Treacher as the Sesemann butler. There's a cute fantasy production number, "In Our Little Wooden Shoes," featuring Temple in various period costumes. Throughout Heidi, Temple is, as always, wonderfully joyful. This is perhaps the best-known rendering of the popular children's story by Johanna Spyri (it's been filmed some 10 times). --N.F. Mendoza
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
by Frank Capra
from Sony Pictures
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is Frank Capra's classic screwball comedy about a village innocent who inherits $20 million, only to discover it's more trouble than it's worth. The screwball in question is Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper), a small-town greeting-card poet and tuba player transplanted to the big city to administer his newly inherited wealth, where fast-pattering, wised-up cynics, sneering society denizens, and corrupt lawyers lord it over the ingenuous and straightforward. Deeds's idiosyncrasies are amply magnified in the tabloids by journalist "Babe" Bennett (Jean Arthur), dating Deeds as a cover, only to discover she's the sap when she falls irresistibly for him. But the damage has been done, when Babe's column is used by a pack of corrupt lawyers, Cedar, Cedar, Cedar & Budington, to prove Deeds mentally unfit. The miracle of this unforgettable comedy is how it embraces dark material, calling into question some common assumptions about capitalism while maintaining an approachable atmosphere of light comedy, and deceptively so. You'll be so pixilated by its charm, you won't rest until you've doodled your way to a rhyme for "Budington." --Jim Gay
Treasure Island
by John Farrow
from Warner Home Video
For many people, this 1934 version is the definitive Treasure Island: the great chemistry between Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper, the rousing pirate anthems, and the stubborn parrot on the shoulder. The pairing of the actors was a cinch, coming three years after their tremendously popular teaming in The Champ. Cooper plays Jim Hawkins, the English boy who discovers a treasure map amongst the possessions of one Billy Bones (Lionel Barrymore in a robust extended cameo), a pirate visitor to the Admiral Benbow Inn. Beery, indelibly, is the one-legged, parrot-toting seadog known as Long John Silver, who joins up on the treasure-hunting expedition by pretending to be a humble cook--though the audience knows he is a fearsome pirate captain. Victor Fleming was just the right director for this manly voyage, holding the MGM luster at bay and allowing the crew of characters actors (among them Otto Kruger, Lewis Stone, and "Chic" Sale) to find their sea legs. At times, the relationship between Jim and Silver is closer to The Champ than to Robert Louis Stevenson's marvelous novel, but it's still true in spirit to the bond between boy and surrogate father. The story has been remade many times, notably in 1950 with Robert Newton as Silver, but this one inspires the longest memories. --Robert Horton
Avast, mates, and heed a pirate's tale. Billy Bones, bless his cursed soul, has hefted his cutlass and grog for the last time, leaving behind scarcely a doubloon. Aye, but he has left a map to a fabled, buried treasure.... The unforgettable stars of 1931's The Champ reunite for a rousing adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's tale. Jackie Cooper is Jim Hawkins, a lad living the kind of adventure every child dreams about. Treasure map in hand, Jim and his backers set sail for realms and riches unknown aboard the Hispaniola. But beware, me hearties: Notorious, one-legged Long John Silver (Wallace Beery) has signed on to the voyage by posing as a cook. Will the treasure fall into his scheming grasp? Will the Hispaniola soon be a-flying the dreaded skull and bones? Drop anchor and watch. A pirate's life for ye!
DVD Features:
Other:Vintage Dramatic Short The Spectacle Maker Oscar?-Nominated Short Strikes and Spares Classic Cartoon Tale of the Vienna Woods
Theatrical Trailer
Crooked Circle
by H. Bruce Humberstone
from Gotham Distribution
Once Upon a Time
by Alexander Hall
from Sony Pictures
Cary Grant is, irrefutably, the greatest movie star of all time. For evidence, take a look at Once Upon a Time, an airy soufflé of a movie about a once-hot Broadway producer named Jerry Flynn (Grant), now on a cold streak, who discovers a young orphan boy with a dancing caterpillar. Convinced this will save his theater from being reclaimed by the bank, Flynn skillfully turns the caterpillar into a media sensation and becomes a substitute father for the boy--but he plans to sell the caterpillar to the highest bidder, even though he promised the boy that he wouldn't. The surprise in the movie is not how impossibly charming Grant is, but how willing he was to take chances; Flynn becomes more of a villain than you'd ever expect before he sees the right path, and Grant doesn't shy away from it. A slight movie, but a superb performance. --Bret Fetzer
Heidi
by Allan Dwan
from 20th Century Fox
One thing Shirley Temple did extremely well (besides sing, dance, and act) was turn the cranky cuddly. She'd done it effectively, two years prior, in 1935's The Little Colonel with grandfather Lionel Barrymore. Now in Heidi she turns her reclusive grumpy grandfather, Adolf (Jean Hersholt), into the loving sort she knows he really is. Heidi is an orphan, dumped into the Swiss Alps by self-centered Aunt Dete (Mady Christians) onto a grandfather she's never known, but they soon learn to love each other. Heidi's mercenary aunt returns and sells (!) Heidi to a cruel woman, appropriately named Fraulein Rottenmeier (Mary Nash). Adolf sets out on a quest to find his granddaughter. Meanwhile, Heidi charms Klara Sesemann (Marcia Mae Jones), the wealthy handicapped girl in Fraulein Rottenmeier's care. Look for a delightful Arthur Treacher as the Sesemann butler. There's a cute fantasy production number, "In Our Little Wooden Shoes," featuring Temple in various period costumes. Throughout Heidi, Temple is, as always, wonderfully joyful. This is perhaps the best-known rendering of the popular children's story by Johanna Spyri (it's been filmed some 10 times). --N.F. Mendoza
Heidi
from 20th Century Fox
One thing Shirley Temple did extremely well (besides sing, dance, and act) was turn the cranky cuddly. She'd done it effectively, two years prior, in 1935's The Little Colonel with grandfather Lionel Barrymore. Now in Heidi she turns her reclusive grumpy grandfather, Adolf (Jean Hersholt), into the loving sort she knows he really is. Heidi is an orphan, dumped into the Swiss Alps by self-centered Aunt Dete (Mady Christians) onto a grandfather she's never known, but they soon learn to love each other. Heidi's mercenary aunt returns and sells (!) Heidi to a cruel woman, appropriately named Fraulein Rottenmeier (Mary Nash). Adolf sets out on a quest to find his granddaughter. Meanwhile, Heidi charms Klara Sesemann (Marcia Mae Jones), the wealthy handicapped girl in Fraulein Rottenmeier's care. Look for a delightful Arthur Treacher as the Sesemann butler. There's a cute fantasy production number, "In Our Little Wooden Shoes," featuring Temple in various period costumes. Throughout Heidi, Temple is, as always, wonderfully joyful. This is perhaps the best-known rendering of the popular children's story by Johanna Spyri (it's been filmed some 10 times). --N.F. Mendoza
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