Fulvue Drive-In.com
Current Reviews
In Stores Soon
 
In Stores Now
 
DVD Reviews, SACD Reviews Essays Interviews Contact Us Meet the Staff
An Explanation of Our Rating System Search  
Category:    Home > Reviews > Comedy > Crime > Drama > Press > Journalism > Gambling > Romance > Rock Music > TV Situation Comedy > Mumble > Forbidden Hollywood, Volume 8 (1931 - 1934 w/Blonde Crazy, Strangers May Kiss, Hi, Nellie & Dark Hazzard/First National/MGM/Warner Archive DVD)/Frank (2013/Magnolia Blu-ray)/Happy Days: The Sixth Seas

Forbidden Hollywood, Volume 8 (1931 - 1934 w/Blonde Crazy, Strangers May Kiss, Hi, Nellie & Dark Hazzard/First National/MGM/Warner Archive DVD)/Frank (2013/Magnolia Blu-ray)/Happy Days: The Sixth Season (1978 - 1979/CBS DVD Set)/Let's Ruin It With Babies (2014/Cinema Epoch DVD)/Magic In The Moonlight (2014/Sony DVD)



Picture: C+/B-/C+/C+/C Sound: C+/B/C+/C+/C+ Extras: C-/C+/C-/C-/C Main Programs: B/C+/C+/C+/C+



PLEASE NOTE: The Forbidden Hollywood DVD set is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.


Here are a wide range of comedy releases for you to consider...



Forbidden Hollywood, Volume 8 (1931 - 1934) surprised us by not letting the last set be the last as was originally intended and it is as strong as any of them with four must-see gems that include some of the best performances by their stars you have likely not seen because the films were somewhat buried when the Production Code censorship put their shelf life on the back-burner. This is my favorite of these fine sets so far and include...


Roy Del Ruth's Blonde Crazy (1931) has James Cagney and Joan Blondell as employees working at a fancy hotel who land up becoming con artists at his behest, leading to all kinds of backstabbing, funny moments and wild plot twists. The script is incredible, sharp and has great dialogue throughout, plus a young Ray Milland turns up along with Noel Francis and Nat Pendleton. All serious film fans should see this one.


Then we get George Fitzmaurice's Strangers May Kiss (1931) from MGM with Norma Shearer in her glory as a modern woman not interested in marriage, falls for Neil Hamilton (a big leading man in the day, now know for his later work as Commissioner Gordon on the 1960s Batman series) though she also has a young Robert Montgomery interested in her. The drama has not aged much at all, but the ideas of alternatives to marriage would have never passed the code, so this film would have never been made otherwise. Glad it was. See it!


Many are used to seeing Paul Muni in the original Scarface (1932), including its revival interest thanks to the Brian De Palma/Al Pacino remake, but Mervin LeRoy's Hi, Nellie (1934) shows his comical and romanic leading man side as a newspaper editor who clashes so much with his owner that he is demoted and by contract forced to do the ladies' advice column, thus the film's title. However, he starts to catch wind of a serious murder crime case and risks his job and life to follow it. Glenda Farrell, Ned Speaks and Robert Barrat are among the great supporting cast and we get another film you should definitely see.


Last but not least is Alfred E. Green's Dark Hazzard (1934) with Edward G. Robinson terrific as a man who loves to gamble and can get on a roll for it, but tries to stop and settle down in a stable marriage when easy money comes calling in the form of dog racing. He loves his wife and they have a child, but he also loves an all-black fur racing dog that happens to be the name of the film, yet cannot afford to buy him. The title also refers to his gambling problems.


This is also as funny as it is serious, sometimes unintentionally so and the supporting cast is top rate here including Glenda Farrell (again and welcome!), Robert Barrat (also solid again), Genevieve Tobin, Gordon Westcott and Hobart Cavanaugh. Even a few Looney Tunes cartoons sent this one up, so see it just to see if you can make the connection.


Trailers appear on some of the film's respective discs, but there are no other extras.



Lenny Abrahamson's Frank (2013) is a comedy about a would-be band (think Art Of Noise meets The Replacements, et al, with zero direction) who picks up a lone keyboardist (Domhnall Gleeson) who is no success on his won, but happens to be there when their keyboardist tries to drown himself to death. Their lead singer (Michael Fassbinder) has the gimmick of wearing an oversized plastic character head that he talks, eats, drinks and sings through, as all the band members are not too happy with the new recruit. This includes the lone female musician (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who is particularly hostile, all of which gets worse when they go to a cabin in the middle of nowhere to record a new album.


Some moments work, but the script is on the inconsistent side, with many jokes not working and the directing is as spotty and predictable. Everyone is making a mumblecore film, though Gyllenhaal seems to realize this is a Rock Music film and is acting in that film instead, stealing every scene she is in, which is many. The result is this does not add up like it should and even Fassbinder can make his role only work so well against all this. Worth a look for the interested, but a little disappointing considering they were partly on the right track.


Extras include a feature length audio commentary track with Director Abrahamson, lead Gleeson & Composer Stephen Rennicks, AXS-TV piece to promote the film, four Behind The Scenes/Making Of featurettes and Deleted Scenes.



Happy Days: The Sixth Season (1978 - 1979) may not be the disaster some would call it as the show continued with high ratings, but the show had dully developed by the time the Jump The Shark silliness of the previous season (reviewed elsewhere on this site) happened. The cast still had its energy and chemistry in tact, but the show was already beginning to repeat itself. Still, everyone seems to be having fun, along with the studio audience, even if some viewers (like those who liked the early seasons more) were not as pleased. The money is still in the show too and look is consistent, but the show was really peaking round this time, whether fans and the makers realized it or not. Now you can see for yourself.


A 5th Anniversary Mork Returns show has been added and that is more amusing than expected from 1979, but what it really turns out to be is one of those occasional cheat shows where (pre-home video) they shows bits of dozens of episodes to hype the series. In this case, it was for two hits.



Kestrin Pantera's Let's Ruin It With Babies (2014) starts out flatly, but then started to surprise me with some good scenes that landed up popping up throughout this comedy about a couple who decides they could have some unique success by building a karaoke party machine on wheels via a big Winnebago-type vehicle and make money on the venture. However, the boyfriend is soon absent and too far away, then the maiden voyage starts running into various technical and personal issues.


I like the character study moments best and the unknowns here are really trying, so we get some nice moments. Running 80 minutes, this quits while its ahead, but manages to get more out of its time than many similar recent releases, so you might want to give this one a look.


A trailer is the only extra.



Woody Allen's Magic In The Moonlight (2014) is another one of the director's intellectual romantic comedies that has its moments, but does not always work despite an amazing cast. This time, starting in Berlin 1928, a magician dressed as an Asian stereotype (Colin Firth) is moving along well with his commercial success when a young, pretty woman (Emma Stone) turns up claiming (with the assistance of her mother, played perfectly by Marcia Gay Harden) that she has actual psychic powers and they intent to prove this to the skeptical magician out of his pseudo-exotic clothes.


A young rich kid (Hamish Linklater) likes her so much he starts serenading her (not always well) as she has come to visit his family to help his widowed mother (Jacki Weaver) communicate with her late husband in a séance. Eileen Atkins plays Firth's mother and the actors are all up to this, as is the production design and locales, but it did not stay with me and is not one of the longtime filmmakers better outright comedies. Fans and those wanting a few laughs out of a rare smart comedy will want to see it once, but others are likely to be disappointed.


Extras include two featurettes: Behind The Magic and On The Red Carpet: Los Angeles Film Premiere.



The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Frank is not an extraordinary shoot, but it is the best playback performer on the list with some nice shots and others that are not as good. The 1.33 X 1 image on the four black and white films from the Forbidden DVD set may show the age of the materials used, but they look really good for their age and more since they were taken care of, though there are missing frames and print damage. Still, they look really good for the format and that makes them all more watchable.


The full color 1.33 X 1 image on Days come from great prints (35mm) of all the episodes, even if the shows can be a little soft here and there. They all look superior to previous transfers of these episodes, making even the lesser ones more watchable. The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Ruin is not as consistently shot, but looks as good to my surprise.


So ironically, the anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Magic that is shot by the brilliant Director of Photography Darius Khondji, ACS, AFGC, (Alien: Resurrection, Evita, Se7en) that uses the very widescreen frame to a very full extent and has as much style as anything here is the softest presentation on the list because of the format transfer. I know this would look as good as anything here on Blu-ray and Khondji has worked with Allen before in another one of Allen's rare uses of scope filmmaking (Anything Else), as well as a few others (Midnight In Paris, To Rome With Love) and are working together for their next feature film.


As for sound, Frank has some very impressive sonic moments with its DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix, some of the best for a comedy of its type, even when the sound goes back to being normal. Often well mixed and presented, it takes great advantage of the multi-channel possibilities many similar films do not. The rest of the releases have lossy Dolby Digital mixes and land up tying for second place from the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on the Forbidden films and Days episodes (all better than you might expect for their age) to stereo and practically stereo sound on the feature films.



To order Forbidden Hollywood Warner Archive DVD set, go to this link for it, previous volumes still in print (most reviewed elsewhere on this site) and many more great web-exclusive releases at:


https://www.warnerarchive.com/



- Nicholas Sheffo


Marketplace


 
 Copyright © MMIII through MMX fulvuedrive-in.com