New on Disc: 'All That Heaven Allows' and more …
30 Jun, 2014 By: Mike Clark
All That Heaven Allows (Blu-ray)
Criterion, Drama, $39.95 Blu-ray/DVD, NR.
Stars Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson,
Agnes Moorehead.
1955. The best Douglas Sirk movies are domestic social commentaries couched as visually sumptuous soap operas — and this one is among his best, to be sure. The film is a follow-up to Sirk’s 1954 remake of Magnificent Obsession, a May-December romance casting Rock Hudson opposite Jane Wyman. There are several shots on this Blu-ray that almost took my breath away.
Extras: One of the nifty extras on the Criterion set is an interview with Sirk regular William Reynolds, who talks about the hours the director spent making certain the setups and lighting were just so. The package also includes a commentary, essays, a 1982 Sirk interview for French TV and a BBC Sirk documentary with more interview material. A major bonus is the feature-length Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, a clip-heavy “essay” by Mark Rappaport that looks for the gay or closeted subtext in the actor’s films.
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James Thurber: The Life and Hard Times
First Run, Documentary, $24.95 DVD, NR.
and
Top Hat & Tales: Harold Ross and the Making of ‘The New Yorker’
First Run, Documentary, $24.95 DVD, NR.
2000-01. Released a year apart, these two bio-docs are obviously related in a New Yorker magazine kind of way — respectively celebrating one of the writers and the first in a small group of chief editors who made the publication what it still is. Of the two, the Thurber portrait is a little richer and more fleshed-out.
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