Wood, Edward D

Marjorie Morningstar

Natalie Wood and Gene Kelly make a cute (if not exactly convincing) couple in this Hollywood soap-opera version of Herman Wouk's coming-of-age romance. French/Russian Natalie Wood is decidedly non-ethnic as Marjorie Morgenstern, the starry-eyed Jewish college girl who falls in love with summer resort small-timer Gene Kelly (who never quite sells himself as a show-biz dreamer with limited talent). A stolid mix of modern, clear-eyed romance and old-fashioned melodrama, it nonetheless manages to slip in some frank (for 1958) discussions of sex and the single girl and sketch out an intriguing portrait of Jewish life in New York's upper crust between the romantic complications. Everett Sloane and Claire Trevor are excellent as Marjorie's success-obsessed parents, pre-Adam 12 Martin (Marty) Milner offers his boy-next-door charm as the former flunky turned Broadway success, and Ed Wynn is delightful as her eccentric uncle. --Sean Axmaker

The Ed Wood Collection - A Salute to Incompetence

Studio: Koch International Release Date: 03/13/2007 Run time: 450 minutes

The Dawn Patrol

The Dawn Patrol is a beautiful title for two very good movies Warner Bros. made eight years apart, in 1930 and 1938. Both tell the same World War I story (which won a 1930 Academy Award for John Monk Saunders), about a succession of flight commanders at a British air base in France. Each officer in turn has to keep sending pilots out on dangerous, often insane missions in flimsy, patched-up planes, then pray that even half get back alive. The job is soul-killing for the commandants and deadly for their comrades and friends. Make that former friends.

It's the later, Errol Flynn version of The Dawn Patrol that's won DVD release. The original is rarely shown because, despite direction by Howard Hawks, it suffers from the stiffness and some overly declamatory acting characteristic of the early talkie era. Perhaps more to the point, the remake's cast has greater marquee value: Flynn and David Niven as hotshots Courtney and Scott; Basil Rathbone as Major Brand, the tortured commander whom Flynn will be obliged to succeed; Donald Crisp, Melville Cooper, and Barry Fitzgerald as staff officers and noncoms. Edmund Goulding's direction is proficient, if also impersonal.

So the remake has the edge as smooth entertainment, though not the original's raw power (or Griffith veteran Richard Barthelmess's tender, anguished performance as Courtney). And the best parts of the 1938 version are the original film: all the aerial footage--bombings, crashes, breathtaking low-level flying, and wobbly takeoffs in the glow of early morning--is Hawks's. Ideally, Warner Video should have issued both films, and in one box. --Richard T. Jameson

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 03/27/2007 Run time: 103 minutes Rating: Nr

The Little Vampire

The Little Vampire is excellently acted and great to look at. Stuart Little's Jonathan Lipnicki carries, on his pint-sized shoulders, his every scene as 8-year-old Tony, befriender of vampires, and the Scottish setting lends itself nicely to spookiness. But where this video earns most points is in the plot department. A continent away from his native California, Tony's having a tough time making new friends when a band of vagabond vampires enters his life through his bedroom window. The encounter seems pure coincidence at first, but then the scary truth surfaces: Tony, though he's not a vampire himself, has "sympathy for our kind," as the dad of the bat-linked brood puts it. Visions of vampire happenings from generations past invade the third-grader's consciousness, and they hold the key to the clan's current gypsy-like predicament. Through his clairvoyance and, by extension, the discovery of a long-lost amulet, the mostly benevolent bloodsuckers are able to reclaim their rightful status as proper cave dwellers in their homeland. Clueless-parent predicaments abound and are cleverer than most--Tony's mom and dad smirk at their son's vampire-obsessed imagination until the cape-draped heads of the clan drop by for a visit--and the gang's adventures eluding a bumbling vampire hunter are genuinely chuckleworthy. At-home Twizzler munchers ages 8 and older won't soon tire of this charmer of a Transylvanian transplant. --Tammy La Gorce

Nine-year-old tony thompson has it tough. Hes in a new country a new school and now every night vampires show up in his dreams. But everythings about to change when tony meets a real vampire and the two become friends right off the bat. Studio: New Line Home Video Release Date: 09/26/2006 Starring: Jonathan Lipnicki Richard E. Grant Run time: 94 minutes Rating: Pg

Night Moves

An LA detective leaves his marital woes behind to pursue a missing person case the Florida Keys and reopens an old murder investigation.Running Time: 101 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569688728

This vastly underrated Arthur Penn film from the mid-1970s ranks as one of the era's nastiest and most fascinating pieces of business, a detective story that shuttles back and forth between Hollywood and the Florida Keys, with a plot nearly as complex as Chinatown. Gene Hackman stars as a tired, aging private eye who, as a favor to a friend, agrees to track down a runaway teen. But the case turns out to be something much larger: a smuggling ring of Mayan antiquities. The human impulses get darker and darker and Hackman's character gets pulled in deeper and deeper, even as his own life is falling apart. Ultimately, in one of his best and most unsung performances, Hackman winds up hurting the people he is trying to help. A great cast includes Susan Clark, Jennifer Warren, a young James Woods, and a very young Melanie Griffith. --Marshall Fine

Plan 9 from Outer Space

Sometimes a movie achieves such legendary status that it can't quite live up to its reputation. Plan 9 from Outer Space is not one of these movies. It is just as magnificently terrible as you've heard. Plan 9 is the story of space aliens who try to conquer the Earth through resurrection of the dead. Psychic Criswell narrates ("Future events such as these will affect you in the future!") as police rush through the cemetery, occasionally clipping the cardboard tombstones in their zeal to find the source of the mysterious goings-on. More than just a bad film, Plan 9 is something of a one- stop clearinghouse for poor cinematic techniques: The time shifts whimsically from midnight to afternoon sun, Tor Johnson flails desperately in an attempt to rise from his coffin, and flying saucers zoom past on clearly visible strings. Fading star Bela Lugosi tragically died during filming, but such a small hurdle could not stop writer-producer-director Ed Wood. Lugosi is ingeniously replaced with a man who holds a cape across his face and might as well have "NOT BELA LUGOSI" stamped on his forehead. Plan 9 is so sweetly well- intentioned in both its message and its execution that it's impossible not to love it. And if you don't, well, as Eros says, "You people of Earth are idiots!" --Ali Davis

This is it! The most popular Atomic Age cult film of the twentieth century. Winner of two Golden Turkey Awards for Worst Picture and Worst Director of All Time, the immortal Edward D. Wood, Jr.! It's all here, the not-so-special effects, aliens in skating skirts zooming around in string-powered flying saucers to implement the ninth plan of Earth's conquest (the first eight failed) with an army of zombies (well, three actually), Vampira, Tor Johnson and Bela Lugosi in his legendary "postmortem" performance (with Ed's chiropractor standing in for Bela after his death). This truly original movie, Ed Wood's "Citizen Kane," is a hymn to all those who have ever tried to create something intelligent and meaningful, only to fail miserably every step of the way.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - Indecision 2004

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is so laugh-out-loud funny that Indecision 2004--which could have been a dated recap of a time many would rather forget--is instead a hilarious time capsule of the follies and foibles of the 2004 presidential election. What also helps is that many of the issues being lampooned, such as the Iraq war, are still in the news in 2005. The 10 episodes included in the three-disc set are the four reporting on the Democratic National Convention, the four from the Republican National Convention, the episode following the first Bush-Kerry debate, and the hourlong election-night episode, subtitled "Prelude to a Recount." The Daily Show mimics the format of a news program, with Stewart as the anchor and his troupe of "senior correspondents/analysts"--Stephen Colbert, Rob Corddry, Samantha Bee, and Ed Helms--filing their "reports" from the field. Stewart is always quick to dismiss his show as "fake news," but an increasing number of people have taken to the Comedy Central staple as the way to get their news. Political news is mostly sound bites anyway, so Stewart piles the video clips together at their most incongruous or contradictory, then follows up with a wisecrack or a marvelously deadpan look of disbelief. As further proof of its impact, The Daily Show won a 2005 Peabody Award for electronic media excellence for its "satire that deflates pomposity on an equal opportunity basis." (Stewart admitted during the campaign that he himself was voting for Kerry, and his audience is very anti-Bush, but he takes the opportunity to skewer anyone who deserves it.) He also attracts a number of "legitimate" guests. Appearing on these episodes are Ted Koppell, Joe Biden, Chris Matthews (shortly after he'd been challenged to a duel by Zell Miller), Al Sharpton on election night, and a wry John McCain not looking like the combative party zealot that had appeared at the convention podium the night before.

In addition to the 10 episodes, the three-DVD set has more reports by Colbert (whose survey of Democratic minority groups has something to offend anyone), Corddry, Bee, and Helms. There's also John Edwards's 2003 announcement of his presidential candidacy on The Daily Show, the Schoolhouse Rock! spoof about midterm elections, a surprisingly musical four-correspondent rendition of the national anthem, and other lunacy. --David Horiuchi

The 2004 race for the White House was one of the most memorable presidential elections of the last five years. Now relive it again - and again - and, that's enough - with this exquisitely packaged heirloom collection. This 3-DVD set brings together some of the most repackageable moments from "Indecision 2004."

Keane

Director Lodge Kerrigan and actor Damian Lewis execute a breathtaking balancing act in Keane, an amazing film that will probably connect with a much wider audience on DVD than it did its feeble theatrical distribution. William Keane, played by Lewis, is an unbalanced man who shows up at the New York Port Authority one day demanding information on the kidnapping of his daughter. Well, no wonder he's unbalanced, right? But as Keane's odyssey stumbles on, we begin to wonder just how unstable he always was, and what exactly the circumstances of the missing girl might have been--if she ever existed. Kerrigan keeps his nervous camera within a few feet of Keane, so locked into the character's tunnel-vision view of things that the audience begins to share his lack of perspective. This movie is raw and startling in all the best ways, and it's destined to encourage post-movie chatter of the Memento variety. Amy Ryan is touching as a slattern Keane meets at a rooming house, and Abigail Breslin is superb as her 7-year-old daughter. But it's Damian Lewis's tour de force that carries every scene. Lewis, who made such a strong impression in the miniseries Band of Brothers, never asks the audience to like Keane, or to understand every motivation. He's simply inside the man, and so are we. --Robert Horton

On the DVD:
Included is a full-length alternate cut of the film by executive producer Steven Soderbergh, shorter by 15 minutes than Kerrigan's final cut. It re-arranges things considerably and has a slower-building start--an intriguing companion piece to a movie that invites different interpretations. --Robert Horton

A man in his early 30s (keane) struggles with the supposed loss of his daughter from port authority bus terminal in new york while fighting serious battles with schizophrenia. we can never be sure if the loss is real or imaginary; or whether his overt interest in helping young girls is innocent and of a fatherly nature or is of a darker scarier motive. the film is about a search for family belonging and the overwhelming need for human connection. it is a disturbing and thought provoking story about real characters dealing with every day life. keanes quest for his daughter and kiras (kira is a young girl he befriends)longing for a nuclear family is what connects them and the audience to a heartbreaking story...System Requirements:Running Time: 100 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 876964000079 Manufacturer No: 10007

Female Trouble

John Waters expands the definition of female trouble in this mutant tribute to good-girl-gone-bad drive-in melodramas. The girl is, of course, cross-dressing cult icon Divine, Waters's plus-sized muse. Divine is at her most gleefully outrageous as teenage brat Dawn Davenport, who runs away from home and into a life of wanton hedonism all because she didn't get cha-cha heels for Christmas. Almost immediately she's molested by a sleazy motorcycle thug (also played by Divine--is this Waters's idea of "love thyself"?), but she doesn't let motherhood interfere with her plans of stardom and turns herself into an unlikely fashion statement in an apocalyptic fashion show. Waters's fourth feature, a follow-up to the midnight movie hit Pink Flamingos, is just as cinematically primitive and even more gleefully vulgar, right down to the electric climax of Dawn's road to everlasting fame. --Sean Axmaker

Plan 9 from Outer Space

Sometimes a movie achieves such legendary status that it can't quite live up to its reputation. Plan 9 from Outer Space is not one of these movies. It is just as magnificently terrible as you've heard. Plan 9 is the story of space aliens who try to conquer the Earth through resurrection of the dead. Psychic Criswell narrates ("Future events such as these will affect you in the future!") as police rush through the cemetery, occasionally clipping the cardboard tombstones in their zeal to find the source of the mysterious goings-on. More than just a bad film, Plan 9 is something of a one- stop clearinghouse for poor cinematic techniques: The time shifts whimsically from midnight to afternoon sun, Tor Johnson flails desperately in an attempt to rise from his coffin, and flying saucers zoom past on clearly visible strings. Fading star Bela Lugosi tragically died during filming, but such a small hurdle could not stop writer-producer-director Ed Wood. Lugosi is ingeniously replaced with a man who holds a cape across his face and might as well have "NOT BELA LUGOSI" stamped on his forehead. Plan 9 is so sweetly well- intentioned in both its message and its execution that it's impossible not to love it. And if you don't, well, as Eros says, "You people of Earth are idiots!" --Ali Davis

Studio: Koch International Release Date: 12/10/2002