New on Disc: 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' and more …

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (Blu-ray)

Criterion, Comedy, $49.95 Blu-ray/DVD combo, NR.
Stars  Spencer Tracy, Jonathan Winters, Ethel Merman, Milton Berle, Dorothy Provine, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Terry-Thomas, Edie Adams, Dick Shawn, Jim Backus, Peter Falk, Jimmy Durante, Buster Keaton.
1963. Criterion’s release is the second attempt to piece together what remains of scrapped footage into something resembling the original road-show cut. Overall, I prefer the more-common shorter version (which also is included), but it’s still a treat to see what was cut.

Criterion has gone all out with this one: three standard DVDs for both versions of the film and copious extras plus two Blu-rays that replicate the same material.

To go along with its A-team cast, Criterion has assembled a gang of bonus-section backgrounder personnel. Lou Lumenick nails it when he says that “part of the genius” of the movie “is that while each of the main stars is given plenty of room to do his or her own thing, they also come together brilliantly as a team.”
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Wadjda

Sony Pictures, Drama, B.O. $1.35 million, $40.99 Blu-ray/DVD combo, ‘PG’ for thematic elements, brief mild language and smoking.
In Arabic with English subtitles.
Stars Waad Mohammed, Reem Abdullah.
2013. The irrepressible 10-year-old Saudi Arabian sass-giver here longs to own a bicycle. So she rebels against everyone who says that bikes are only for boys — something akin, perhaps, to what writer-director Haifaa Al Mansour must have done as well because this is the first feature film made by a Saudi female. This is another of those releases where the production’s backstory rivals what’s on screen.
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New on Disc: 'The Ghost and Mrs. Muir' and more …

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Blu-ray)

Fox, Fantasy, $24.99 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, George Sanders.
1947. Lovely, and that’s really the word for it, Ghost was one of the handful of movies directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz that he didn’t script, though the screenwriter, Philip Dunne, was first-rate (he of How Green Was My Valley and Kiss of Death). But this very affecting movie is pretty well made by Bernard Herrmann’s score, which is one of his best. Rex Harrison plays a deceased sea captain who is rumored to be hanging around as a spirit in the seaside cottage he formerly owned. This is indeed true, as the widow who rents the place (Gene Tierney) is soon to learn. A subsidiary character (very small role) is Tierney’s character’s daughter played by Natalie Wood, whose breakthrough child role in Miracle on 34th Street hit screens the very same month.
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Our Nixon

Docurama, Documentary, B.O. $0.02 million, $29.95 DVD, NR.
2013. Documentarian Penny Lane’s political-junkie catnip, which offers an irresistible look at Richard Nixon’s presidency up to April 30, 1973, couldn’t even exist without a couple miracles (or at least highly unusual occurrences). First of all, there are the famous Nixon White House tapes, which provide a significant amount of the audio. As for the visuals here, they only exist because White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and fellow senior officials John Erlichman and Dwight Chapin were home-movie addicts in the pre-video days. After Haldeman and domestic affairs chief Erlichman resigned on April 30, the home movies (and thus this documentary) stop, but there are moments just in what’s captured that qualify as privileged. Nixon has often been called the gift that keeps on giving, and so are Nixon documentaries.
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New on Disc: 'North to Alaska' and more …

North to Alaska (Blu-ray)

Fox, Comedy, $24.99 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars John Wayne, Stewart Granger, Ernie Kovacs, Fabian, Capucine.
1960. A transitional movie in John Wayne’s career, this Henry Hathaway Western farce is broad even by Donovan’s Reef standards, though you probably haven’t lived until you’ve seen Ernie Kovacs (the heavy of the piece) completely covered in mud after a free-for-all. As the great Johnny Horton title song explains, Wayne’s “Big Sam” is prospecting gold with partner George (Stewart Granger) and brother Billy (1950s pop idol Fabian), at least when George isn’t pining for a French babe he met in Seattle. It’s all kind of poignant in a handsome Blu-ray that looks better than any theatrical print I’ve seen.
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Good Ol’ Freda

Magnolia, Documentary, B.O. $0.14 million, $26.98 DVD, $29.98 Blu-ray, ‘PG’ for some thematic material and smoking.
2013. Freda Kelly was a teenager plucked from a typing pool  to become an indispensable aide and even friend to the Beatles — a union extending a little beyond the time when the Liverpool lads finally broke up. For all this, Kelly has remained unassuming and unpretentious for 50 years — finally, just this once, agreeing to tell her story for benefit of any grandchildren who may come to think she was just some old woman who had never accomplished much in life. She doesn’t tell all she knows here — in fact, she won’t even say if she ever dated any of her employers — but this is quite a story just the same. Basically a talking heads documentary augmented by good music and some largely unseen Beatles photos that will likely short-circuit the brains of fans, Freda shows how watchable a purely functional narrative can be if the material is there.
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New on Disc: 'All the President's Men' and more …

All the President’s Men: Two-Disc Special Edition

Warner, Drama, $19.98 Blu-ray, ‘R.’
Stars Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards.
1976. The brand new Blu-ray of a benchmark of newspaper-pic royalty includes the automatically essential All the President’s Men Revisited documentary, which aired earlier this year on the Discovery Channel. Revisited’s standout “wow factor” is the reunion we get between Men leads Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman plus another one with Redford, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, plus former Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, the bullet-biter Jason Robards won an Oscar for portraying. Everyone I knew spent a minimum of 90 minutes every day reading the Post Watergate coverage, and the movie brings it all back with an immediacy that still touches anyone who was there.
Extras: The documentary extras from the previous Men Blu-ray are carried over.
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Baby Peggy: The Elephant in the Room

Milestone, Documentary, $24.95 DVD, NR.
2012. Vera Iwerebor’s main-event documentary chronicles the story of Diana Serra Cary — stage name Baby Peggy — a child star who, unlike so many, didn’t let the downward spiral of her career destroy her life. Cary, who is still alive at 95, was born a couple weeks before the World War I armistice and became one of the biggest movie stars of the early 1920s. The elephant part of the title refers to Peggy’s vanished stardom and its effect on the rest of her family — a subject that was apparently and incredibly never discussed at the dinner table or anywhere else.
Extras: The bonuses include three shorts and the 1924 feature Captain January.
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New on Disc: 'The Bells of St. Mary's'

The Bells of St. Mary’s

Street 11/19
Olive, Drama, $19.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman, Henry Travers.
1945. Leo McCarey’s Oscar-winning Going My Way for Paramount was the most popular movie released during all of World War II, and this all-but-immediate sequel became the biggest box office movie in RKO history. This goes a long way to explain why Bing Crosby, whose film career was arguably subordinate to his Decca waxings, was easily the show-biz figure from the first half of the 20th century. Though this said, co-star Ingrid Bergman was also at the peak of her career and, in fact, both performers had just won Oscars. Olive’s print is much heavier on grain than I’m accustomed to seeing in their black-and-white releases. But I’m delighted that film historian R. Emmet Sweeney’s essay, quoting boxofficemojo.com, notes that adjusting for inflation, Bells made more money at the box office than The Dark Knight Rises.
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Blackfish

Magnolia, Documentary, B.O. $2.07 million, $26.98 DVD, $29.98 Blu-ray, ‘PG-13’ for mature thematic elements including disturbing and violent images.
2013. This almost unanimously praised documentary is the story of the orca (named Tilikum) who killed trainer Dawn Brancheau at Orlando’s SeaWorld in 2010, an episode that got a lot of play at the time because, for one thing, dramatic footage existed of the incident. There are dreadful tales related here by shamed participants in the capture of orcas and separating them from their mothers. The next step finds them utilized as fodder for kiddie amusement. This is a very powerful documentary, riveting all the way.
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New on Disc: 'American Experience: The War of the Worlds' and more …

American Experience: The War of the Worlds

PBS, Documentary, $24.99 DVD, NR.
Narrated by Oliver Platt.
2013. The broadcasting legend we’re speaking of is Oct. 30, 1938’s still famous Orson Welles/John Houseman production of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds for CBS Radio’s Mercury Theater of the Air — a Halloween lark that went wrong (though hardly for Welles’ reputation). This is because more people than you’d guess took the program at face value and convinced themselves that the world was about to end, courtesy of invading martians. The gripe I have with this documentary, which does put across a lot of keen history in digestible form, is its transparent re-creations, in which professional
actors portray listeners who reacted in panic and/or wrote letters to CBS or congressmen. Oddly, War’s filmmakers seem pleased with themselves over this phony approach in the disc’s bonus material (a rare instance of a PBS disc having supplemental materials in the first place). The time might have been better spent examining the broadcast’s legacy.
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Red Garters

Available at online retailers via
Warner Archive
Warner, Musical, $21.99 DVD, NR.
Stars Rosemary Clooney, Guy Mitchell, Jack Carson, Pat Crowley.
1954. Whatever else you want to say about this Western-motifed drug trip before its time, there has never been anything quite like it. Guy Mitchell and Gene Barry play a duo in competition for the same lady, and their relationship grows even more complex when it comes out that one killed the other’s brother, which sets up a gunfight that competes with a slew of musical numbers in the second half.
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New on Disc: 'Fantastic Voyage' and more …

Fantastic Voyage (Blu-ray)

Fox, Sci-Fi, $24.99 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Arthur Kennedy, Edmond O’Brien.
1966. A dual Oscar winner for art/set decoration and special effects in a far more primitive technological era, Fox’s hit howler about a journey through a human body is a prime example of a mostly terrible movie being sometimes mistaken for a better one simply because it is what it is (i.e. something any movie lover would covet, at least on paper). A world-renowned scientist with unique knowledge barely survives an assassination attempt, and to save him, a small crew of experts must be miniaturized along with their submarine and injected into the victim’s bloodstream. But there’s a hitch — if the participants, who include Raquel Welch in her first major role, can’t accomplish the feat in an hour, they begin reverting to normal size. You just have to go with it because it was a remarkable achievement for the day, and at least Leonard Rosenman’s score remains effective. Fox’s Blu-ray is a notable leap over the old DVD version. 
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Plunder Road

Olive, Drama, $24.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Gene Raymond, Wayne Morris, Jeanne Cooper, Elisha Cook Jr.
1957. This is hardly a film to be oversold, but it easily fills the bill if you like your ‘50s cinema grimy and kind of gamey. It deals with a motley assemblage of not-quite-hoods who rob a train of government gold and split the stash into the back of large highway-bound trucks. Director Hubert Cornfield shot this fairly taut little toughie in about two weeks, and indeed, it’s mostly minimalist aside from the visual excitement cinematographer Ernest Haller brings to the imposing trucks that dominate his Regalscope framing. 
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New on Disc: 'From Here to Eternity' and more …

From Here to Eternity (Blu-ray)

Sony Pictures, Drama, $19.99 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Frank Sinatra, Donna Reed.
1953. The film’s five principal actors represent one of the ultimate historical examples of white-heat star power, having earned merited Oscar nominations (with wins for Frank Sinatra and Donny Reed), before we even get to the fact that the story’s standout heavy is played by Ernest Borgnine. Daniel Taradash’s script remains a model of how to telescope a sprawling literary source into a two-hour movie. Eternity got the Oscar for Burnett Guffey’s black-and-white cinematography, and the Blu-ray has significant grain but doesn’t overdo it and is especially effective in some of the close-ups.
Extras: The Blu-ray includes a super-nifty new picture-in-picture feature in which on-the-ball younger historians guide us through the entire production. There’s also a carried-over making-of featurette and a vintage short about director Fred Zinnemann.
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A Letter to Three Wives (Blu-ray)

Fox, Drama, $24.99 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Jeanne Crain, Ann Sothern, Linda Darnell, Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas.
1949. Delivering on what is essentially a plotting gimmick, the movie traces the Saturday afternoon gut-punches three suburban wives receive when they get a joint letter from a so-called friend informing them that she has run off with one of their unnamed husbands — setting off a trio of flashbacks to explain how any one of the men might credibly be the unfaithful party. The Blu-ray essentially upgrades the standard Fox DVD, and it gets a nice, if not staggering, boost in the superior format.
Extras: Includes the “Biography” episode devoted to Linda Darnell.
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New on Disc: 'Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie' and more …

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (Blu-ray)

Shout! Factory, Comedy, $29.93
Blu-ray/DVD, ‘PG-13’ for some sexual humor.
1996. This is the first home release I can recall that takes considerable pains to rectify the historical damage the movie it showcases perpetrated when playing (however briefly) theatrically, in this case 17 years ago. But to momentarily go the other way, let’s not put too fine a point on any mea culpa aspects here because the target of the snarky MST3K commentators in this case — Universal-International’s This Island Earth from 1955 — is, on certain levels, undeniable cheese. At only 74 minutes, MST3K is a spotty affair, but what makes the disc interesting are a couple supplements. The filmmakers are surprisingly frank about how studio suits watered down the hipness that made the TV show so great and persistently failed to get the wisecracking cultural references.
The other key extra devotes 36 minutes to director Joe Dante and several more to defend the ’55 Earth and lambast what MST3K did to it.
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Me and My Gal

Manufactured on demand via online retailers
Fox, Drama, $19.98 DVD, NR.
Stars Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, Marion Burns.
1932. For a cop-in-love comedy filmed before the repeal of Prohibition, which is easy to forget during its rapidly paced unreeling, this cult Raoul Walsh jewel is immersed in suds. Walsh and enough screenwriters to fill a saloon take an anything-goes approach to the narrative, which casts Spencer Tracy as a lovably lunkish Irish New York cop, and the result has a marvelous loosey-goosey feel that is the antithesis of MGM during the period.
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New on Disc: 'The Big City' and more …

The Big City

Criterion, Drama, $29.95 DVD, $39.95 Blu-ray, NR.
In Bengali with English subtitles.
Stars Anil Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee, Jaya Bhaduri.
1963. City is one of a half-dozen or so titles from Satyajit Ray, India’s greatest director, that got restored in the 1990s. Set in Calcutta during a time of social upheaval fostered by Indian Prime Minister Nehru (he of the jacket), this 2¼-hour domestic drama with compelling sojourns outdoors deals with a crowded household indebted to the wife (Madhabi Mukherjee) who makes things happen. 
Extras: On one of the bonus features, titled “Satyajit Ray and the Modern Woman,” scholar Saranjan Ganguly discusses City, 1964’s Charulata and 1965’s The Coward in terms of feminist cinema. The Coward is included as a bonus movie in its entirety.
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Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye

Olive, Drama, $19.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars James Cagney, Barbara Payton, Helena Carter, Ward Bond.
1950. Based on a novel by Horace McCoy, this is an extremely zippy chunk of nastiness from James Cagney’s production company, though it’s about as preposterous as even melodramas come. The actor, who was 50 and showing it, plays a chain-gang escapee with the ability to make comely young things fall for him in a minute or so — to say nothing of a knack for pretty well taking over the corrupt wing of a town almost immediately after blowing in. Ward Bond’s performance as a crooked professional servant is very impressive and nuanced, and it reinforces what a good actor he was. Olive’s print is typically no frills but looks pretty decent.
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