Milestone, Lewis

All Quiet on the Western Front (Universal Cinema Classics)

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Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 6-FEB-2007
Media Type: DVD

If a classic movie can be measured by the number of indelible images it burns into the collective imagination, then All Quiet on the Western Front's status is undisputed. Since its release in 1930 (and Oscar win for best picture), this film's saga of German boys avidly signing up for World War I battle--and then learning the truth of war--has been acclaimed for its intensity, artistry, and grown-up approach. Director Lewis Milestone's technical expertise is already stunning in the great opening sequence, as a professor exhorts his students to volunteer for the glory of the Fatherland while troops march past the windows. Erich Maria Remarque's novel is faithfully followed, but Milestone's superbly composed frames make it physical: the first battle scene, with the camera prowling the trenches as they fill with death and chaos, was surely the Saving Private Ryan of its day. The cast is strong, with little-known Lew Ayres finding stardom in the lead (Ayres became a pacifist and conscientious objector during World War II; although he served in battle as a medic, the stance harmed his career). This DVD has no extras beyond a vintage re-release trailer and Robert Osborne's useful introduction, but the main draw is the excellent picture and sound quality of the print--the movie looks better than it has in years. Those indelible images are now clear enough to cut glass: Ayres' lonely look back at the disappearing troop truck; the blinded soldier who runs into enemy fire at night; the fine pair of boots wasted on a boy with an amputated leg; and the final, devastating seconds, arguably the defining cinematic image of war in the 20th century. --Robert Horton

The Marlon Brando Collection (Julius Caesar / Mutiny on the Bounty 1962 / Reflections in a Golden Eye / The Teahouse of the August Moon / The Formula )

This collection of five interesting Brando movies from the Warner library includes some titles not available separately on DVD. Of interest to gay men is Reflections in a Golden Eye where Brando plays a repressed homo soldier.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569830110 Manufacturer No: 83011

As this five-film box set vividly demonstrates, Marlon Brando was, at least in the beginning of his legendary career, not one to rest on his laurels or emerging mythic status. Spanning 1953 to 1980, this collection gathers some of his most challenging and offbeat performances. Some naysayers doubted Brando, he of the Method and mumbles, could do Shakespeare justice, but he acquits himself impressively as Mark Antony in Joseph Mankiewicz's stellar adaptation of Julius Caesar. Though now dicey from a PC standpoint, Brando, unlike Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, rises above grotesque caricature as a wily Japanese interpreter in The Teahouse of the August Moon, one of his rare forays into comedy. In Mutiny on the Bounty, Brando daringly portrays Fletcher Christian so foppish that he makes Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow look like Errol Flynn in The Sea Hawk. John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye teams Brando with another screen icon, Elizabeth Taylor, in a nasty piece of Southern gothic about sordid doings on a military base. Brando portrays a latent homosexual fixated on young soldier Robert Forrter, who has a penchant for naked horseback riding and sneaking into Taylor's room while she sleeps to fondle her clothing.

Only The Formula, a still timely, yet confusing conspiracy thriller about synthetic fuel, is dispensable, although Brando is compelling to watch in his few scenes opposite fellow Oscar-holdout, George C. Scott. More entertaining than the film is the lively audio commentary with director John Avildson and screenwriter Steve Shagan. Suffice to say, they have little good to say about Scott, disgraced former studio head David Begelman, and, of all people, Christopher Lambert, who would star in another film that Shagan wrote. The Julius Caesar disc contains an excellent bonus, "The Rise of Two Legends," in which Laurence Fishburne refers to Shakespeare as "the Aaron Spelling of his day," and Dennis Hopper praises Brando for taking "the act out of acting." Mutiny is given the two-disc "Special Edition" treatment with a bounty of extras. Most concern the construction of the ship for the film, but we do get the original prologue and epilogue that were excised before the film's release and then restored for its 1967 television broadcast, and not seen since. The Teahouse disc contains an entertaining vintage featurette that follows cast and crew to Japan, while Reflections offers raw on-location footage. All five films are making their domestic DVD debuts. --Donald Liebenson

Have Gun Will Travel - The Complete First Season

Have Gun - Will Travel Wire Paladin San Francisco. It's the statement on a business card adorned with a chess-piece knight that heralds the professional services of Paladin (Richard Boone) in this wildly popular Western series from the Golden Age of television. Based at the Hotel Carlton in San Francisco and assisted by his manservant Hey Boy (Kam Tong) Paladin is an intelligent yet mysterious loner as well as a man of many talents including detective bodyguard courier sleuth and bounty hunter. When the situation is desparate Paladin is the man to wire. This premiere season of Have Gun - Will Travel showcases both Boone and such guest stars as Jack Lord Charles Bronson Angie Dickenson Claude Akins Strother Martin Mike Connors and June Lockhart in a keleidoscope of thrilling action-packed adventures featuring the heroic man in black!System Requirements: Running Time 1009 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 097368752344 Manufacturer No: 875234

The first season of Have Gun--Will Travel makes it easy to see why this Western series was an overnight success. Making its debut on September 14, 1957, the half-hour show ranked no. 4 in the ratings for its entire first season, which ran almost completely uninterrupted (minus a one-week preemption) until June of 1958--a punishing schedule unheard of in present-day television. (It ranked even higher in subsequent seasons, holding the no. 3 spot, behind Gunsmoke and Wagon Train.) Richard Boone was perfectly cast in the lead role of Paladin, a cultured gunslinger whose West Point education, impeccable style, literate sophistication, and distinguished Civil War service made him unique among Western heroes, and the prototype for many dashing figures to follow. Based in San Francisco's ritzy Carlton Hotel, he scans newspapers to locate trouble throughout the wild West, then cagily markets his services (via his legendary calling card, "Have Gun--Will Travel") as a hired gun, moral arbiter, voice of reason, and reluctant killer of badmen. Understanding the complexities of frontier justice, Paladin (whose full name is never revealed) could turn on those who hired him if he suspected dubious motivations. He wore black, but he traveled in an ethical gray zone.

Running about 25 minutes each, these 39 episodes are consistently good and economically plotted, since Have Gun boasted stellar talent on both sides of the camera. Each episode began with the memorable theme by legendary film composer Bernard Herrmann, and most of the first season was directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, who worked regularly on Gunsmoke, Rawhide, and Perry Mason before graduating to a prolific big-screen career. Regular writers included Gene Roddenberry (who created Star Trek six years later), and budding maverick Sam Peckinpah co-wrote episode #22, "The Singer." In addition to series regular Kam Tong as Paladin's Chinese-American manservant Hey Boy (a "Coolie" stereotype, but Tong handles it with dignity, especially in "Hey Boy's Revenge"), Have Gun offered a who's-who of 1950s and '60s guest stars, from genre stalwarts like Victor McLaglen (Andrew's father), John Carradine, Strother Martin, and R.G. Armstrong, to promising newcomers like Angie Dickinson, Warren Oates, and Charles Bronson (the last starring in "The Outlaw," one of the season's finest episodes). Each episode is accompanied by background information and guest-star profiles, and while picture quality is quite good overall, the audio quality suffers from a low-level mix with noticeable hiss from aged source materials. Fortunately, this won't prevent anyone from enjoying a first-rate TV series that thrived for another five seasons, until cancellation in 1963. --Jeff Shannon

Pork Chop Hill

Lt. Joe Clemons has been given the order: take Pork Chop Hill. If It"s taken by the Chinese U.S. negotiators at the Panmunjom peace conference would lose face with their Communist adversaries - and unthinkable outcome. And so Clemons leads his troops into combat to fight for an object that they know to be strategically pointless. But they also know that an order and they must take Pork Chop Hill - or die trying - so that millions can live in freedom tomorrow for what Clemons and his men will sacrifice today.System Requirements:ACTORS James Edwards Harry Guardino Gregory Peck George Peppard George Shibata Bob Steele Woody Strode Rip Torn Running Time: 1 hrs. 38 mins Classic Action / Adventure Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating:  UPC: 027616766922

This gritty, grim Korean war drama presents the grueling ordeal of a platoon charged with taking a hill of no military value during the final days of the war. While diplomats and generals argue over peace negotiations (in an appropriately wordless montage under the opening credits), tough but compassionate Lt. Joe Clemons (Gregory Peck) leads a unit of 135 men up a well-guarded hill while miscommunication--and at times no communication--cuts them off from reinforcements and regimental command. Shot against a bleak, battle-scarred mountain of white dust honeycombed with black trenches, director Lewis Milestone presents the devastating battle as a meaningless sacrifice of hundreds of lives spent in a political game of chicken. Peck leads a terrific cast of young talents and character actors, many of them just starting their respective careers: Rip Torn, Harry Guardino, Martin Landau, Norman Fell, George Peppard, Gavin MacLeod, Bert Remsen, Harry Dean Stanton, plus veteran stalwarts Woody Strode, James Edwards, Robert Blake, and Bob Steele. Milestone had previously directed the pacifist WWI classic All Quiet on the Western Front and the compassionate WWII platoon drama A Walk in the Sun. Pork Chop Hill adds one more antiwar classic to his résumé, the angry power of his drama overcoming the hollow patriotic voice-over (reportedly added by Peck) that concludes the drama. --Sean Axmaker

Purple Heart

This is the story of the crew of a downed bomber captured after a run over Tokyo early in the war. Relates the hardships the men endure while in captivity and their final humiliation: being tried and convicted as war criminals.System Requirements:Run Time: 99 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 024543432920 Manufacturer No: 2243292

One of Hollywood's most striking films of World War II has very little war in it, yet it whips up a fearsome power. A U.S. bomber that took part in the Doolittle raid on Tokyo crash-lands in Japanese-occupied China afterward. Captured, the officers and crew are hauled before a Japanese court and tried for war crimes. The trial is illegal and stacked against the Americans from the outset. But that doesn't stop it from developing into a fierce duel of nerves and icy politesse, especially between the U.S. commander (Dana Andrews) and the Japanese general (Richard Loo), who is the chief architect of the strategy to break the Americans and learn how the raid was carried out.

The story for The Purple Heart was written by none other than 20th Century-Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck, resurrecting one of his pseudonyms--Melville Crossman--from the days when he used to crank out gangster pictures and Rin Tin Tin movies for Warner Bros. Did it have any corollary in fact? Home front audiences in 1944 were ready to believe the worst, and what The Purple Heart asked them to believe was both terrible and inspiring. The film was directed, pungently, by Lewis Milestone, a two-time Oscar winner and Hollywood's most honored chronicler of the horrors of war (e.g., All Quiet on the Western Front); cinematographer Arthur Miller, Fox's master of black and white, worked wonders with the claustrophobic interiors. The solid cast also includes Richard Conte, Sam Levene, and Farley Granger. --Richard T. Jameson

Have Gun Will Travel - The First Three Seasons

Professional gunfighter Paladin (Richard Boone) was a West Pointe graduate who, after the Civil War, settled into San Francisco's Hotel Carlton where he awaited responoses to his business card: over the picture of a chess knight "Have Gun - Will Travel...Wire Paladin, San Francisco."

Of Mice and Men

Truly one of the unsung triumphs of 1939, this heartfelt adaptation of John Steinbeck's morality tale of two itinerant migrant workers seems just as fresh and powerful decades after its release. Lon Chaney Jr. gives the performance of a lifetime as the sweet yet feeble-minded Lennie, who is befriended by the weary Burgess Meredith. They both would be lost without each other in a rather mixed-up world. Sensitively directed by Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front), the film features the first pre-credit sequence in American film history. There's also a nice score by Aaron Copland. --Bill Desowitz

Have Gun Will Travel - The Complete Second Season

Professional gunfighter Paladin (Richard Boone) was a West Pointe graduate who after the Civil War settled into San Francisco s Hotel Carlton were he awaited responses to his business card: over the picture of a chess knight "Have Gun" "Will Travel"Wire Paladin San Francisco."System Requirements: Running Time 960 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 097368877740 Manufacturer No: 887774

Episode for episode, the second season of Have Gun, Will Travel (1958-59) is even better than the first. With a bona fide hit on their hands, CBS didn't mess with success, and these 39 episodes pushed ratings even higher with sharp direction (mostly by first-season veteran Andrew V. McLaglen), a wide variety of attention-grabbing plots, and intelligent, sensible dialogue. All of the first season's strengths are carried over, and while 41-year-old star Richard Boone (as the refined gunslinger-for-hire Paladin) is rarely given a serious test of his talents, he commands his role with depth, humor, and impressive displays of physical agility. (By comparison, series regular Kam Tong had almost nothing to do this season; he's relegated to routine duty as Paladin's Chinese hotel valet "Hey Boy.") Future Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry hit his stride this season, writing nearly a dozen episodes including the playfully spooky "The Monster of Moon Ridge," and other contributors included novelist Irving Wallace and Bruce Geller, who would later create Mission: Impossible! And while McLaglen helmed the vast majority of episodes, Have Gun set a TV milestone when Ida Lupino (with "The Man Who Lost," featuring Jack Elam) became the first woman to direct for a TV Western series.

The "Wire Paladin" production notes provided with each episode are thoroughly researched, providing extensive guest-star credits and making wide-ranging connections between Have Gun and many other TV series, films, and serials of the '40s, '50s, and '60s, especially Roddenberry's Star Trek. Among the noteworthy guest stars are Lon Chaney Jr., Charles Bronson, Harry Morgan, Joseph Calleia, Harry Carey Jr., Suzanne Pleshette, Morey Amsterdam, Vincent Price, Edward Platt, and many stalwart character players from TV's golden age. The season starts well with "The Manhunter" (in which Paladin is forced to kill a young gunman and faces the wrath of his vengeful family), and Paladin's unique brand of frontier justice is memorably dispensed (along with generous quotes from Shakespeare, Milton, etc.) in such highlights as "The Man Who Wouldn't Talk" (with Bronson), "The Ballad of Oscar Wilde," "The Moor's Revenge" (with Price), "The Scorched Feather" (with Chaney) and several others. The opening credits are slightly modified as the season progresses, and Paladin's travels take him into the mountains (for some outdoor adventures late in the season) and even to Alaska, the series' most distant destination. Image quality suffers in later episodes (some mastered from vintage kinescopes or murky syndication prints), but the fact that all 39 episodes are fully intact is a blessing to anyone with fond recollections of this superior TV Western. --Jeff Shannon

Have Gun Will Travel - The Complete Third Season

Have Gun - Will Travel Wire Paladin San Francisco. It's the statement on a business card adorned with a chess-piece knight that heralds the professional services of Paladin (Richard Boone) in this wildly popular Western series from the Golden Age of television. Based at the Hotel Carlton in San Francisco and assisted by his manservant Hey Boy (Kam Tong) Paladin is an intelligent yet mysterious loner as well as a man of many talents including detective bodyguard courier sleuth and bounty hunter. When the situation is desparate Paladin is the man to wire. This premiere season of Have Gun - Will Travel showcases both Boone and such guest stars as Jack Lord Charles Bronson Angie Dickenson Claude Akins Strother Martin Mike Connors and June Lockhart in a keleidoscope of thrilling action-packed adventures featuring the heroic man in black!System Requirements:Running Time 848 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/CLASSICS Rating: NR UPC: 097368885844 Manufacturer No: 888584

Improved ratings, superior writing and prestigious guest stars make the third season of Have Gun--Will Travel the best in the series' six-year history. Here we see all of the show's popular elements reaching peak efficiency, with series star Richard Boone perfecting his role as Paladin, the high-class San Francisco-based "soldier of fortune" who, for $1,000, will take on any job, no matter how dangerous, with his trademark panache and impeccable skills as a gunslinger, wild west philosopher, and lightning rod for a wide variety of moral and ethical quandaries. Along with veteran series directors Andrew V. McLaglen and actress-turned-director Ida Lupino, Boone would also direct some of this season's finest episodes as he continued to use his star leverage to refine the show's already proven quality. Given the daunting challenge of a third consecutive season of 39 half-hour episodes (beginning with episode #79, the excellent "First, Catch a Tiger" on September 12, 1959, and concluding with episode #117, "The Search," on June 18, 1960), it's amazing how each episode retains a distinct identity in terms of plot, character, and overall tone. While cinematographer Stuart Thompson successfully maintained visual variety within standard limitations of budget, location, and recycled sets, Paladin's third-season exploits ranged from conventional mercenary assignments (like transporting prisoners) to more unusual outings like "The Ledge" (a somewhat surreal test-of-courage fable) and "The Lady on the Wall" (ep. #101), a haunting spin on the "The Picture of Dorian Gray" written by future Twilight Zone regulars Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson.

Ongoing connections between Have Gun and Star Trek can be found in several fine episodes written by Trek creator Gene Roddenberry (the best being "Les Girls," "Charley Red Dog," and "The Golden Toad") and/or featuring guest stars who would later appear in Roddenberry's sci-fi series. Other noteworthy talents appearing here include James Coburn, Strother Martin, Patrick Wayne, and Werner Klemperer (who would later star as Col. Klink in Hogan's Heroes, in addition to a wide variety of TV stalwarts from the '40s, '50s and '60s. (Vigilant credit-watchers will also notice veteran stunt coordinator Hal Needham, sometime credited as "Harold," appearing in a few of these episodes.) As with the first two Have Gun DVD sets, these episodes vary considerably in terms of sound and image quality, since many of the transfers were taken from 16-millimeter syndication prints that betray their age with scratches and soundtrack hiss. Overall, however, these DVDs revive a great show with adequate or (in some cases) near-pristine quality, and Boone's jovial, intelligent, and agelessly macho presence remains a major attraction, all these decades later. --Jeff Shannon

Ocean's 11

Leave it to the Chairman of the Board to rope in a great director for the first Rat Pack movie. Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front) indeed directed this 1960 caper movie starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop; but the results now seem like more of a historical artifact than a good time. The tone of the film is curiously serious--one somehow expected that the Rat Pack would have made a more buoyant first picture. But it is something to see these guys together, if largely for nostalgia reasons. --Tom Keogh