The
Affairs Of Cellini
(1934)/Alex & The
Gypsy (1976)/Everything
Happens At Night
(1939/Fox Screen Archive DVDs)/The
Goldbergs: The Complete First Season
(2013 - 2014/Sony DVD Set)
Picture:
C/C/C+/C+ Sound: C/C/C+/C+ Extras: D/C-/D/C Main
Programs: C/C+/C+/C
PLEASE
NOTE:
The
Affairs Of Cellini,
Alex &
The Gypsy
and Everything
Happens At Night
are web-only exclusive releases from Fox through their Fox Screen
Archive Series and can be ordered from form Amazon via the right hand
side of our website.
Here
are some new comedy releases for you to know about...
Gregory
La Cava's The Affairs Of Cellini
(1934) tries to be an early sound spoof of costume dramas with a
young Fredric March in the title role, upsetting the kingdom and
everyone in it trying to keep order, et al. Frank Morgan is an inept
king exhibiting some of his same humorous flaws he later made
legendary in the 1939 MGM Wizard
Of Oz and we get
Constance Bennett and Fay Wray (only a year after King
Kong was a massive hit)
as the female lead and Rory Calhoun doing more than his usual role as
the King's assistant.
The
good moments are mixed with muddy ones and maybe the ladies are a bit
underutilized in this early Darryl F. Zanuck production, but it is
worth seeing for the ambitions and early performances of some major
movie stars and it is nice to have it in print on DVD for the time
being.
There
are no extras.
John
Korty's Alex & The
Gypsy (1976) is a
lesser-seen Jack Lemmon film where he is a bailbondsman who has to
help out a troublemaking woman (Genevieve Bujold) who keeps getting
into criminal trouble. Yes, she is a gypsy and is known among the
local gypsy crowd, but she is free-spirited enough despite her
crossings with the law, while straight-jacketed Lemmon is overworked
and stressed out... until he falls for her.
Bujold
is beautiful and still manages to be convincing in her wild side. Of
course, the idea is that they'll change each other whether the
relationship can work or they prove that opposites do attract. Henry
Mancini did the music score and James Woods turns in an amusing early
performance. A mature work that is not bad if not perfect, everyone
should see this one at least once.
A
trailer is the only extra.
Irving
Cummings' Everything
Happens At Night (1939)
is a love triangle comedy with Robert Cummings in rare form and Ray
Milland vying for the affections of a beautiful Sonya Henie, the
famous ice skater who gets to show off in grand sequences where the
narrative comes to a sudden stop. The guys are competing reporters,
starting off looking for her father to out scoop each other, but they
had no idea how she was, how she was or what she looked like. They
do now!
It
is a charming film with some good moments and when the story has
issues, the casting and chemistry help out. Not a great film, but
still entertaining enough and worth a look.
There
are no extras.
Not
to be confused with the classic 1950s groundbreaking sitcom reviewed
elsewhere on this site, The Goldbergs: The Complete First Season
(2013 - 2014) is actually a semi-biographical show too, but loosely
based on the life of actor Adam Goldberg, a good character actor who
narrates each episode. Jeff Garlin and George Segal are the most
known of the cast and though it has a few amusing moments in the 23
half-hours here, the style is a mish-mash of Modern Family,
Arrested Development, Wonder Years and any bad 1980s
sitcom (it takes place on that decade) that you can name.
The
result is a highly commercialized and compromised look at Goldberg's
young life that only rings so true. We'll see if the show gets
better as it has been renewed for another season, but if it stays in
this formulaic mode, how much longer can it last?
Extras
include audio commentary tracks on select episodes and 5 Behind The
Scenes/Making Of featurettes.
The
1.33 X 1 image on all the movies show their age, but the black &
white Affairs is particularly soft and the print has more wear
than I would have liked, while Night looks cleaner and
clearer, if not sparkling. The color image on Alex is
inconsistent, but there is a disclaimer at the beginning that the
film has been reformatted for old 1.33 X 1 analog TVs. Looking, are
the sides missing or was it shot soft matte 1.33 X 1, then masked for
1.85 X 1 in theaters. Either way, color is inconsistent and it too
could use some work, though the nicer shots look good. That leaves
the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on the Goldberg
episodes shot in HD looking a little soft, but at least being
consistent and as good as anything here despite a sitcom flatness.
The
lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on the Goldberg
episodes are also flat, but still sounds as good as the older films
here, all in lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on the Fox DVDs, with Night
sounding the best and the rest sound down a generation or two.
-
Nicholas Sheffo