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New on Disc: 'The Ghost and Mrs. Muir' and more …

20 Jan, 2014 By: Mike Clark

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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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