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New on Disc: The Minnesota Twins 1991 World Series

1 Aug, 2011 By: Mike Clark

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•Magic in Minnesota: Remembering the 1991 World Series Championship
•The Minnesota Twins 1991 World Series Collector’s Edition

Street 8/2
A&E, Sports, Magic in Minnesota: $19.95 DVD, 1991 World Series: $69.95 seven-DVD set, NR.
1991. Five of the seven ’91 contests were decided by one run (and five of six after game one); four wins came in the final at-bat; three of the games went extra innings (a record); and the final two rose to special heights, with game seven an all-timer on multiple levels — but especially for containing one of the gutsiest pitching performances in Series annals. The 20th anniversary look-back Magic in Minnesota is an overview with lots of older (and, in some cases, heavier) Twins participants — including manager Tom Kelly, who always seemed to keep the franchise in there every year (the Twins won the Series in ’87, too). You can see from this Series why Braves manager Bobby Cox always seemed to be, whether he literally was or not, in the dugout chewing a Costco warehouse’s worth of antacids. The Braves went back to Minnesota with a 3-2 Series advantage and then lost the sixth game 4-3 (on a Kirby Puckett walk-off home run in the bottom of the 11th) and then game seven by a score of 1-0 when Twins ace Jack Morris went all 10 innings for the shutout with a “don’t even think about taking me out” attitude in what he called the most focused game of his career. I’ll bet.
Extras: The Magic DVD includes Puckett’s great Hall of Fame induction speech. The box of complete game broadcasts has a nice feature that allows you to hear the game via either its TV or radio feeds. And each individual disc jacket is splashed with trivia-fancier stats — including even the running time, attendance and (for completists) game-time temperature.
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Sands of the Kalahari

Street 8/2
Olive, Drama, $24.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Stanley Baker, Stuart Whitman, Susannah York, Harry Andrews.
1965. As a drama about the moral limitations of social Darwinism, Sands has its provocative moments. It centers on nature’s downing of a two-engine job that has been chartered after a regular commercial flight was delayed: There’s nothing like running into a five-mile swath of locusts. This is no hyperbole — it’s what the pilot, in fact, claims — resulting in the worst windshield wiper gunk you’ll ever see, a shot I’ve never forgotten after all these years. The Panavision is easy on the eye, and the story ends with one of the more memorable (and certainly uncompromised) endings from any movie of the era. The film generally is devalued as a lesser cousin of two tangentially related movies of the same era: 1964’s Zulu and The Flight of the Phoenix.
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Athena

Available via WBshop.com’s Warner Archive
Warner, Musical, $19.95 DVD, NR.
Stars Jane Powell, Debbie Reynolds, Vic Damone, Edmund Purdom.
1954. In one huge regard that makes it interesting viewing today, Athena was ahead of its time in its advocacy of a healthy lifestyle — which led to casting the studio’s professional cuties Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds with a cast of musclemen who included male-boomer icon Steve Reeves (the former 1950 Mr. Universe later immortalized by two Joe Levine “Hercules” epics). Though Powell was just coming off the biggest hit of her career (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers), the sea change in popular music at the time was so dramatic that her big-screen career would be over in four years and her MGM career in one.
Extras: This is a handsome release, and there are some raw musical outtakes included that are fun to watch.
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