The first film in the set is A Night at the Opera, arguably one of the Marx Brothers best films of their career. It was the first film after they were pushed out of Paramount Studios because of the commercial and critical failure of Duck Soup.
Opera was a huge hit and put the Marx Brothers back on the map. They wisely...
To help clear up some of the confusion ...
As mentioned elsewhere, this collection does not include any of the complete films, but rather tv & misc. other clips. Since I will probably return the item, I haven't yet broken the seal and cannot comment on the quality. However, I should note that the total run-time is approx. 5 hours -- much less than one would assume for a 5-disc set.
If you are looking for more content information, don't bother with Koch Vision Entertainment's site. They are clearly not enthuastic about revealing more details about this release.
The discs are:
#1 "Inside the Marx Brothers" (this is sold separately, as well)
#2 "You Bet Your Life" TV Pilot
#3 "Papa Romani" and "Person-to-Person"
#4 "The Marx Brothers Radio Days" (is this just an audio CD?)
#5 "Marx Brothers Mixed Nuts"
For the price, perhaps it's not all that bad, but there still isn't a good set of their films out there yet.
The amazon.co.uk set DOES contain complete films (four of them, I believe), but the...
So disappointed
The title is VERY misleading
I was expecting a collection of the movies but instead it is comprised of old clips
Don't buy if you are expecting the movies
Click to Editorial Reviews
Seita And Setsuko (the boy and His little sister) aren't Heros and their abusive aunt isn't the villian. Neither for that matter is either side of the war protrayed as good or bad in these movie. This is just a story of people being people. some kind, some indiffrent and some compleatly harsh. Seita makes mistakes that many children in his position would.
Although fifteen years old this film is still very beatiful. The images it portrays are quiet and...
Emotionally powerful, hauntingly poetic, anti-war anime
"Grave of the Fireflies" ("Hotaru no haka") is one of the most powerful anti-war films I have ever seen, which means that it has no competition when it comes to emotional impact in terms of animated films. The death of Bambi's mother was a traumatic shock, but nothing like the sense of despair and grief that overwhelms you by the end of this film. The film begins with the spirit of a young boy showing us his death in a train station, after which we follow the fireflies into the past to see his story. At the beginning of the original movie of "Brian's Song" we were told: "All true stories end in death. This is a true story." So is "Grave of the Fireflies" because I have no problem granting the legitimacy of "truth" to fiction.
In the last months of World War II an American fire bomb raid destroys the port city of Kobe, where almost all of the buildings are made of wood. Seita (Tsutomu Tatsumi/J. Robert Spencer) is a 14-year old boy who survives along with his 4-year...
A Powerful And Relevant Anime Classic: A Journey Of True Love And Heartbreak Remastered For A New Generation
Note: It seems a crime that this classic has been off the DVD market. Now this digitally remastered and restored version will be able to reintroduce the film to a new generation.
"Grave of the Fireflies" is a film that I'd heard about for years before I finally got around to viewing it. As one of the most well-respected early anime classics--of course, I expected great things. I knew vaguely what the picture was about and knew that its tone strove for realism as opposed to fantasy. But what I didn't really comprehend is that it would be such a mature story geared toward adult audiences. The sophistication, complicated subject matter, and sorrow contained within "Grave of the Fireflies" made it one of the more surprisingly moving films that I'd seen in quite some time.
The story is simplistic. Set in war-torn Japan near the end of the World War II, two kids must deal with the unexpected death of their mother in a bombing attack. With no one to care for them and...
Click to Editorial Reviews
The standard "This film has been modified from its orginal version. It has been reformatted to fir your TV." shows up. What it SHOULD say is: "This film has been radically altered from its original version. All adult situations have been cut...
An Old Favorite---Ruined
A travesty that key sections of this movie were cut in the video release. I wanted desperately to replace my well-worn copy. Now will not even consider a purchase of this video. The events that were cut are artfully portrayed and so key to the character played by Bissett that her role may as well have been eliminated entirely. So...I wonder whether Ted Turner's company has had a go at editing the film "Barbarella?"
Click to Editorial Reviews
Ray Miland, and the rest the cast give good performances. Ray Milland typically did serious roles like his award winning "Lost Weekend", but he does a fine job in this slightly zany comedy. I am sorry to see this is out of print and the scalpers here want your first born to buy it. We can only hope the studio puts this out on DVD soon. Until then I will keep a sharp eye out for it being televised. Great movie or not I'm not paying thirty-five plus dollars for a VHS tape.
PLAY BALL...!!
Even if you're not a big baseball fan, this good-natured comedy should still grab you. Ray Milland stars as a mild-mannered, but all-American college professor who has a secret passion for baseball, and gets a little nutty every Spring, when the season starts up. His twin passions -- baseball and chemistry -- collide when he accidentally invents a substance that repels wood... just the thing to use if you want to become a major-league pitching star overnight, and rake in the big bucks when every hitter you come up against gets dusted when you use the super goo.
What's weird about this Truman-era film is that Milland is never confronted as being a fraud or a cheat, even though he's obviously behaving unethically and taking unfair advantage of friends and foes alike. He's worried about getting caught by his fiancee (the reason he's trying to raise the money is so he can settle down with her), but when he becomes a national sensation, everybody jumps on the bandwagon and...
HILARIOUS BASEBALL COMEDY.
Ray Milland was a rather underrated actor who was equally adept at comedies as he was in dramas. Here, Milland shines as a professional scientist-turned-baseball-wizard in a side-spitting comedy that has since become a minor classic. Valentine Davies, who wrote the marvelous script for MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET, came up with another winner here. Ray is a mild-mannered chemistry professor in love with the lovely Jean Peters. Milland's meager salary won't suffice in supporting her however, and he keeps putting off marriage. While developing a bug repellant for trees, he invents a solution that repels any kind of wood it comes in contact with. Being an avid baseball fan, Milland concocts a clever scheme to earn additional money...There are many hilarious moments in this little gem, such as Paul Douglas mistaking the solution for hair tonic - his hair does the St. Vitus dance when he uses a wooden brush to comb it! The hilarious scenes in the baseball fields are terrific because the...
Click to Editorial Reviews
