Damian Lewis Double Feature (w/Friends
& Crocodiles/BBC DVD)/Heart Of The
Country (2012/Fox DVD)/Hilda Crane
(1956)/Me And My Gal (1932)/No
Highway
In The Sky (1951/Fox Cinema Archive DVDs)
Picture: C/C/C/C+/C+ Sound: C+/C/C+/C+/C+ Extras: C/D/C-/D/C- Films: C+/D/C/C+/C+
PLEASE NOTE: Hilda Crane, Me And My Gal
and No Highway In The Sky are only
available from online from Fox and can be ordered on the sidebar from
Amazon.com.
Now for
some various drams of interest you should know about…
The Damian Lewis Double Feature features two BBC telefilms with
the actor now known for the hit TV series Homeland
and was first noticed in the U.S. thanks to the HBO Mini-Series Band Of Brothers. What we get here is a modernized version of
William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing that is not pretentious and a good
supporting cast in Billie Piper, Sarah Parish and Tom Ellis. Then we get Friends & Crocodiles, a play
by Stephen Poliakoff (who directs here!) with Joshi May and Robert Lindsey that
takes place in the Thatcher 1980s and is a character study of the people and
how gender roles changed despite the odd politics of the beginnings of
Neo-Conservatism in Britain.
Both are
curios that deliver more than you might think and even if they were not shockingly
brilliant, they are quality telefilms worth a look for those interested and it
is nice the BBC issued them on one DVD.
Extras in
interviews on Nothing, plus three
interviews and a feature length audio commentary track Friends with Director
Stephen Poliakoff & Actress Jodhi May.
John
Ward’s Heart Of The Country (2012)
is the one dud here with Jana Kramer as a woman who lives the big city life
until her husband is in a big financial scandal, so she has to return home and
reintegrate into country living and make amends with her blood. Despite music involved, this is no musical,
but this is a prolonged bore including endless scenes with Gerald McRaney as
her father that seem like a break from any kind of narrative.
The film
does not blame her for her husband’s failures, but can she get her man
back? The politics are silly and this
seems much longer than its 89 dragged-out minutes. I never bought this for a minute, it starts
out as generic and stays that way. If
only Mr. Ed showed up, I might not have nearly fallen asleep.
There are
no extras.
Amazingly,
Philip Dunne’s Hilda Crane (1956)
has almost the same storyline as that film, but no goofy song is involved and
Jean Simmons’ title character simply goes back to her small town home after two
marriages fail. Not that the story is
more realistic than Heart Of The Country,
but the casting is better, the situations unintentionally funny and filmmaking
elaborate. Guy Madison, Gregg Palmer and
oddly, Jean Pierre Aumont (in the middle of a small town in the U.S.,
living there!?!) are among the makes in her life and between bad talk on her
and a highly dysfunctional mother (Judith Evans) who could destroy the whole
town.
No matter
how bad, like Love Is A Many Splendored
Thing (see the Blu-ray review elsewhere on this site), Fox really put the
money in this film and it was built to last.
Even on this DVD with its limits, it shows so this is a curio worth
checking out if you are interested, but only expect so much.
A trailer
is the only extra.
Much
better is an early, interesting drama from the legendary Raoul Walsh, Me And My Gal (1932) matches a young
Spencer Tracy with Joan Bennett (not bad) in a tale about a waitress involved
with gangsters and how our male lead inexplicably gets involved with some not
so savory happenings. The script is
decent, dialogue well-written and never quits being interesting for its short,
yet effective 79 minutes. I like some
scenes more than others and this is a Fox Studios product before the merger
with 20th Century, so it has a look and feel the later films did
not.
This also
has a consistent atmosphere that Walsh would quickly become known for, so it is
a little gem worth your time to check out at least once and Tracy has a great wardrobe to boot.
There are
no extras.
Last but
not least is Henry Koster’s No Highway
In The Sky (1951) pairing Jimmy Stewart with Marlene Dietrich in what is
really a British production about an airplane designer (Stewart) who is certain
a new airplane design has a defect that will cause it to fail, even landing up
on one of the new planes. His family is
in England
and wife is played by Glynis Johns, but the most interesting thing is that this
film is part of a cycle of British productions (extending to TV) that
celebrated British aeronautic innovations of the time, so this entry fits right
in.
The
result is a good drama that has dated in some ways and melds in strange ways
between a Hollywood
and British film production that showcases the differences and limitations of
both. Still, the cast is top rate
extending to the mostly-British cast and seeing the early flying technology
adds to the fun along with some suspense.
However, expect some sappy melodrama that holds the film back.
A trailer
is the only extra.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on both Lewis telefilms, the anamorphically enhanced 2 X 1 Country and the letterboxed 2.35 X 1
image on Hilda are all softer than
they should be or I would have liked, though Hilda should look great, but is from an older video master. Shot in 35mm film CinemaScope, it was likely
the last such Fox production to come from the Technicolor lab and might have
actually had most or all of its prints processed by Fox’s then-new DeLuxe
labs. Color here is mixed, though you
still can see the good color coming through.
You can see the money on the screen too.
The 1.33 X 1 black and white image on Gal and Highway are the
best performers here from decent prints in good transfers that are pretty
consistent for films their age.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on both Lewis
telefilms sound fine, but the same mix on Country
is oddly the weakest here with digitally harsh sound to boot, so be careful of
turning this one up too much. That means
the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on the rest fop the older films actually
sounds better by simply being well transferred.
Crane was originally issued
in 4-track magnetic stereo on the better 35mm film prints sent to theaters, but
that sadly is not the mix here. If they
make a Blu-ray version, hope they have that soundmaster.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
