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Category:    Home > Reviews > Music > Instrumental > Jazz > Pop > Easy Listening > Showtunes > Backstage Musical > Comedy > Fantasy > Brit > Acker Bilk: Stranger On The Shore (2008/Intermusic/Top Music International/Super Audio CD/SACD/SA-CD Hybrid)/The Boy Friend (1971/EMI/MGM/Warner Archive Blu-ray)/Dancing Lady (1933/MGM/Warner Archive

Acker Bilk: Stranger On The Shore (2008/Intermusic/Top Music International/Super Audio CD/SACD/SA-CD Hybrid)/The Boy Friend (1971/EMI/MGM/Warner Archive Blu-ray)/Dancing Lady (1933/MGM/Warner Archive DVD)/Finian's Rainbow (1968/Seven Arts/Warner Archive Blu-ray)/How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (1967/United Artists/MGM/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)



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



PLEASE NOTE: The How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying Blu-ray is now only available from our friends at Twilight Time, is limited to only 3,000 copies and can be ordered while supplies last, Acker Bilk is available from the Top Music website directly and The Boy Friend Blu-ray, Finian's Rainbow Blu-ray & Dancing Lady DVD are now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series. All can be ordered from the links below.



Here's our latest music offering, mostly Film Musicals, but a few other releases in the same ballpark....



Acker Bilk: Stranger On The Shore (2008) is the newest release here, from the man born Bernard Stanley Bilk, an exceptional clarinet player. This album's title song is a remake of his smash 1952 hit, joined by a selection of covers of well known recent hits like This Masquerade (a good fit), Memory (The Theme From 'Cats'), Always On My Mind, Arthur's Theme, I Just Called To Say I Love You, Truly, Just When I Need You Most, Three Times A Lady, Do That To Me One More Time, To All The Girls I've Loved Before, I Want To Know What Love Is and If Ever You're In My Arms Again contributing to the 18-track tally for this Super Audio CD reissue of the album.


Top Music, a big backer of the underrated format, has delivered another demo-quality release, albeit two-channel stereo only. For tech fans, the transfer by Povee Chan included...


32Bits/192kHz High Resolution Mastering

SADiE DSD Digital Precision

Mastering Monitor: Almarro M

Monitor Amplifier: Octave Jubilee Preamp

Power System: Isoclean Power Conditioning System

Mastered with Fap Cable

Hybrid Stereo, Plays on all SACD and CD Players

Made in by Sonopress


I was amused by the mix of choices to record, but Mr. Bilk does a good job on these songs, with the underrated #1 Randy Van Warmer hit Just When I Need You Most and Foreigners' laid-back smash I Want To Know What Love Is particularly interesting choices and performances. This was overall a pleasant surprise and one music lovers will enjoy if it is their kind of songs.


A paper pullout with an essay on the album is the only extra.



Ken Russell's The Boy Friend (1971) is the eccentric director's larger-than-life feature film adaptation of the most popular stage Musical in British theater history. We reviewed the DVD release a little while ago at this link...


http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13177/The+Boy+Friend+(1971/MGM/Warner+Archive+DV


Warner Archive has now reissued it on Blu-ray in a brand-new HD master, remastered and it only increases the impact of the surreal world Russell and company (with more of a limited budget than it looks) created. I like the density, quirkiness and eccentricity, even if it does not always work in 2+ hours of screen time. Still, I'd rather see Russell go for broke than not and I cannot imagine a film version better of this classic than the one he made. Blu-ray delivers is more vividly and that makes it more enjoyable.


A vintage featurette on the making of the film that was also on the DVD version is repeated here.



Robert Z. Leonard's Dancing Lady (1933) sounds like it would be an outright musical and with its plot of a young Joan Crawford (in her pre-Noir sound film glamour phase) the title character trying to go from low-rent dancing to a big stage hit, you would think Backstage Musical. However, until the last few minutes, it is a comedy/drama in which she is being beckoned by a rich young Franchot Tone. However, there is another man in her life, maybe, the rough, streetwise stage director played by Clark Gable. Even that triangle only occasionally offers any conflict as Gable is turned off by Crawford stalking him for a mere audition, but the film is sort of an event release from MGM with big stars then and to come.


One moment comes from an early appearance of The Three Stooges when they were still with comic Ted Healy, who has a big supporting part here, as well as before the tiro landed up at Columbia Pictures. Crawford and the other women trying for the lead in Gable's stage musical are going to co-star with ''Freddie'' as Gable calls him, or ''Mr. Astaire'' on the verge of immortal success at RKO.


David O. Selznick produced this little gem and Warner Archive has issued it on DVD in time for La La Land to hit home video, so it is definitely worth a look.


Extras include two Musical shorts with Ted Healey & his (Three) Stooges: Plane Nuts and Roast Beef & Movies, plus an Original Theatrical Trailer.



Francis Ford Coppola's Finian's Rainbow (1968) is the director's first big film for a major studio, though Warner Bros. had remarkably just been bought out (including their TV and record company divisions) by the Seven Arts company, who had just had a string of hits through various distributors. Recycling sets from Warner's big budget musical Camelot, Coppola loved the music (but had not read the book) connected to this musical, then set to make it into a big screen feature film (they shot 35mm film knowing they'd do 70mm blow-up prints, copies Coppola says cut off parts of the dancing, especially for Fred Astaire; they didn't letterbox those prints then) but it still has a nice sense of largesse.


After being on DVD for a good while, Warner Archive has issued the film in a very upgraded Blu-ray from a new HD master. Astaire had not done a Musical in years, but he loved the idea of this one as the title character and this time, his leading lady would be his daughter. The next coup for the film is that they got longtime singer (she was a child singing star back in the day) Petula Clark for that role, all because she had just had an amazing adult run of international hit records in the later 1960s including Downtown, Don't Sleep In The Subway and I Know A Place. She was in rare peak from for the film, a red hot artist commercially, a perfect match for Astaire and to everyone's shock, she could even act!!!


So they are literally traveling across the United States (by walking!!!) and land up in a mysterious valley threatened by greed (Keenan Wynn is great as the greedy Southerner still stuck in some pre-Civil War ways) backed by local police that can be inept (save Dolph Sweet of TV's Gimme A Break, as the most formidable cop) all threatening the integrated community our father/daughter team from Ireland have arrived at by taking it away from them in a land-stealing plot. Al Freeman., Jr is the scientist/community leader helping to save then with the arrival of guitar-playing and also-political Woody (Don Francks) and Finian it turns out has some stolen gold of his own... from a leprechaun (Tommy Steele)!


This is long at 145 minutes in this longer version that includes an Intermission, opening and closing instrumentals to get audiences in and out of the theater, but even Coppola admits he'd have cut this down had he know what final cut for a director was. Warner ought to allow him to do just that as an alternate cut for a 4K version, but offer both cuts in the same release. As it stands there's still enough energy, joy, music and fine dancing (down to ballet by a silent woman played by Barbara Hancock) and the film's Irishness always rings true. Definitely see this one, but be sure to prepare for a long film.


Extras include an intro by Coppola along with a feature-length audio commentary track he created for the DVD release of the film years ago, plus a full color vintage featurette of the film's premiere in New York City and an Original Theatrical Trailer. For more on Clark's hits, try this Super Audio CD (with regular CD tracks) of her hits entitled Kiss Me Goodbye, which also happens to be issued by our friends at Top Music and remains the best release version of those hits to date at this link...


http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10092/Petula+Clark+%E2%80%93+Kiss+Me+Goodbye+(I



Finally we have David Swift's How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (1967), adapting another stage musical that also needed some updating, with Robert Morse (recreating his stage role) as a window cleaner who starts reading the paperback of the title (humorously narrated by an unidentified voice with comic irony throughout) and all of the sudden, he finds himself working at a ridiculous corporation with wacky workers, beautiful women, quirks and some silly secrets.


The Mirisch Corporation in their contract with United Artists go all out to bring the material alive and I think they did a pretty decent job, though some moments are more dated than others (though the time capsule aspect is nice) with Michelle Lee (later of TV hit Knots Landing) his eventual love interest (the joke is he's too distracted by his instant success to pay attention to her like she does instantly to him) and she looks great!


The supporting cast of character actors is also impressive including singer Rudy Vallee, Maureen Arthur, Anthony Teague, Ruth Kobart, Sammy Smith, Robert Q. Lewis, Jeff DeBenning and underrated John Mythers. MGM, who now own United Artists, has decided to issue this via Twilight Time as a Limited Edition Blu-ray and it is a fine special edition all fans will want to snag while they last.


Extras include an illustrated booklet on the film including informative text and yet another excellent, underrated essay by the great film scholar Julie Kirgo, while the Blu-ray adds an Isolated Music Score with select Sound Effects, new, separate on-camera interviews with Morse and Lee and an Original Theatrical Trailer.



Onto picture performance. All three Musicals on Blu-ray are presented in 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers in full color that offer fresh new HD masters. Boy Friend seems to have been retransferred since the DVD a few years ago and the improvements are fine, Rainbow is also a new HD master as is Business, so they too look better than they ever have on home video and not just in incidental improvements. Each was also issued in a different color format. Boy Friend was in MetroColor and I cannot imagine it looking much better, Rainbow was issued in dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor and this copy has enough fine moments that you can see that kind of color and Business was from the DeLuxe lab showing off some great color few its own, but it has a few spots with slight fading or off-color. All three were also shot in real 35mm anamorphic Panavision, making for three fine widescreen viewings, so they have that tying them together as well.


The 1.33 X 1 black & white on Lady is from a fine print with few flaws and I as good as this film is going to look on DVD, a top rate MGM production where the money is definitely on the screen.


In the sound department, the lossless DSD (Direct Stream Digital) 2.0 Stereo on Bill is as fine-sounding as any presentation here, very strong for a two-channel presentation with some demo sonics and the audio champ with ease. However, it PCM 16/44.1 2.0 Stereo tracks are not bad and are a bit of a comedown from the lossless tracks, but solid just the same.


The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on Boy Friend and Rainbow are well mixed and presented upgrades from their 6-track magnetic soundmasters with traveling dialogue and sound effects from their 70mm blow-up presentations, but parts of the audio (on set dialogue, other elements) can sound more dated than others (pre-recorded, studio recorded singing) so that holds the mixes back a bit. Business has DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 and DTS-MA 2.0 Stereo lossless mixes, but it seems to have only been a monophonic theatrical release, so they are both fine, but show their age as much as the other Musicals. Wonder if a six-track master existed for 70mm blow-ups never produced?


That leaves the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Lady, which is not bad, but a little weaker than I expected for even a film of that age, but I have a feeling it is in the transfer and not the available soundtrack. A lossless upgrade would help here.



You can order the Acker Bill SA-CD from Intermusic at this link...


http://www.topmusic.com/ud-sacd8932.2.htm


...to order How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying limited edition Blu-ray, buy it and other great exclusives while supplies last at these links:


www.screenarchives.com


and


http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/


and to order The Boy Friend Blu-ray, Finian's Rainbow Blu-ray and/or Dancing Lady DVD, go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases at:


http://www.wbshop.com/



- Nicholas Sheffo


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