Log in
  


 

New on Disc: 'The Asphalt Jungle' and more …

19 Dec, 2016 By: Mike Clark


The Asphalt Jungle

Criterion, Drama, $29.95 DVD, $39.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, John McIntire, Marilyn Monroe.
1950.
The granddaddy of meticulously high-scale robbery pics remains as vital and robust as ever, though gender-wise, there’s nothing too daddy-ish about the way Marilyn Monroe wears a jumpsuit here in the role that jump-started her career.
Extras: Includes the 1983 documentary Pharos of Chaos about actor Sterling Hayden; it also includes featurettes with noir maven Eddie Muller and cinematographer John Bailey, plus brief archival material of John Huston discussing the film and an almost hour-long documentary of him on Canadian TV promoting the much subsequent Wise Blood. Scholar/academic Drew Casper’s commentary shared with an edited-in James Whitmore is carried over from the DVD.
Read the Full Review

The Best of Cinerama

Flicker Alley, Documentary, $39.95 Blu-ray/DVD, NR.
1963.
For an assemblage whose reason for being at the time was mostly to fill a temporary dearth of product, The Best of Cinerama (culled from five preceding travelogues dating back to 1952) plays so spectacularly well that if you need a “demonstration” disc to help show off the home system for which you forfeited your kids’ education, this could be the one.
Extras: Includes a commentary by Cinerama historian David Coles, a pair of 70mm featurettes about Shell Oil and NASA restored and saved from oblivion, heavy samplings of Dimitri Tiomkin music, a lengthy — and magnificent — photo montage of the process’s scores of pioneers, and a chronological theater-by-theater review of all the Cinerama theaters that opened worldwide up until about 1960.
Read the Full Review



Bookmark it:

About the Author: Mike Clark


Add Comment