About this product: This film is incredibly thorough! The documentary takes the viewer through the naughty years of pre-censorship Hollywood. There are countless rare film clips and even more rare photos, of Mae West, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Jean Harlow and many more that we all love, including Valentino and Dietrich. There are interview clips that are priceless! It would take an extraordinary amount of money and time to ever gather all of these wonfderful clips on our own (and near impossible to get hold of the rare vintage photos shown onscreen) and so this DVD is highly recommended.
About this product: As it turns out, Kirby Dick's eye-opening documentary isn't rated. When he submitted it to the Motion Picture Association of America, they slapped it with an NC-17 (though he had always intended to release it unrated). This is fitting since he sheds much-needed light on the inner workings of a secretive organization that wields great power over the movies the public gets to see (since most mainstream media won't touch the dreaded NC-17). It's just as well since This Film Is Not Yet Rated focuses on the more controversial films of the past three decades. Aside from the stories of filmmakers who have tussled with the MPAA, Dick hires a private investigator to determine who sits on the board, since this information isn’t in the public domain. With her assistance, he solves the mystery. Directors include Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream), Mary Harron (American Psycho), and Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry). Though frequently humorous, This Film Is Not Yet Rated should be required viewing for serious film fans, because the MPAA doesn't just affect what gets seen--but what gets made. If it has a flaw, it's this: In his attempt to generate transparency, Dick (Twist of Faith) arguably crosses the line. It's one thing to identify the board members; it's another to divulge their vital statistics. Whether or not these "guardians of morality" are working for the common good, they're still entitled to a little privacy. That said, this is vital stuff for anyone concerned about First Amendment issues. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
About this product: Taped on April 10, 1967A discussion of artistic freedom and censorship with a leading producer, one of whose films (The Moon Is Blue) had run into trouble with the Motion Picture Production Code. A spirited discussion with a man who, despite the modern-Americanness of his films (including Anatomy of a Murder and The Man with the Golden Arm), retains, however unpresciently, an Old World sense of the order of things: "I have said that an immoral film could not be successful. I think there is morality built into any dramatic medium, whether it's a play or a television show. You cannot mention one successful play or film where the bad principle won." Summary by Firing Line staff.
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About this product: Cinema Paradiso's complex, interwoven tales of wartime Italy, a boy's coming of age, and the history of cinema can be viewed in their entirety on the Director's Cut included in this Deluxe Edition. Director Giuseppe Tornatore's additional 50 minutes of footage provides closure for the saga's detailing Alfredo's death, and Salvatore Di Vita's lost relationship with his teenage love, Elena. Most of the 50 minutes serves as a continuation of the story, rather than as previously deleted scenes. The original, already celebrated Cinema Paradiso follows Toto (Jacques Perrin), a Sicilian boy who persuades the town projectionist, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), to teach him how to show films. Spanning nearly 50 years, the film craftily draws parallels between Toto's life and those lives he sees on screen. As Toto matures into Salvatore, a successful Italian filmmaker, the Cinema Paradiso ages as well. Salvatore's return home for Alfredo's funeral is also a goodbye to his Paradiso, demolished to become a parking lot. The film's heightened sense of nostalgia subtly mirrors our humanistic love of movies, making it a tribute to cinema as an artistic genre. The Director's Cut can be fulfilling if one felt unsatisfied by the more ambiguous ending of the theatrical release, but it also feels slightly overwrought. Two documentaries in this package feature fans and critics praising Cinema Paradiso, proving its endurance as a classic. However, as Salvatore discovers over the course of the film, there is no need to improve a masterpiece. --Trinie Dalton
About this product: Horns and Halos is a fascinating, unexpectedly tragic story about one man's downfall in the brutal world of perception-driven media and politics. In the late 1990s, author James Hatfield wrote Fortunate Son, a biography of then-candidate George W. Bush that alleged, among other things, that the future president used cocaine during the '70s. St. Martin's Press fast-tracked the project, but recalled the book when Hatfield's earlier prison time for murder conspiracy became known. Horns and Halos follows what happened next: Fortunate Son was picked up by tiny Soft Skull Press, run by a passionate, Mohawk-topped young man named Sander Hicks, but the long, uphill battle to restore credibility to the work proves ruinous. The film is notable for access to the anxiety and roller-coaster emotions of Hatfield and Hicks, and there's plenty more despair in deleted scenes offered on this two-DVD set. Special features are especially important and useful here for added context, including raw footage of protests at Bush's inauguration, performances by Hicks and his band White Collar Crime, a profile of the film created by public television's KCET, and much else. --Tom Keogh
About this product: The cult pin-up idol Bettie Page gets the full-fledged biopic treatment in The Notorious Bettie Page, a movie that somehow seems as tame and innocent as the naughty photographs Bettie made in the 1950s. After a few scenes of Bettie growing up, the film quickly leads us to her more-or-less glory years, when she posed for countless peekaboo photos and some nudie films. These would make her an underground star for decades--long after she gave up modeling for religion, in fact. Gretchen Mol, a premature starlet in a redemptive role, does nicely at suggesting Bettie's too-trusting nature, maintaining her equipoise in a sleazy world. Her nude scenes are as liberated and no-sweat as those old nudist films always wanted people to believe. Director Mary Harron plays most of the film in the black-and-white that Bettie thrived in, which seems fitting enough (although the Kodachrome-bright color interludes are welcome). There's an air of "Ed Wood" about the project, and Harron maintains a similarly jovial tone, but the film does have a tendency to fall into the and-then-this-happened metronome rhythm of film biography. Even a promising venture into the Senate hearings on pornography is a minor joke. Jared Harris and Lili Taylor, veterans of Harron's "I Shot Andy Warhol," play colorful characters out of the grindhouse world, but few supporting players get a chance to make an impression. The main draw is Mol's commitment to the role and the film's goofy re-creation of a most peculiar subculture at an unlikely time. --Robert Horton
About this product: Barry Levinson (Wag the Dog) directed this comedy-drama about an Armed Forces Radio disc jockey (Robin Williams) whose manic, hilarious delivery from a studio in 1965 Saigon gives U.S. troops in the field a morale boost (while upsetting military brass). Based on the real-life experiences of deejay Adrian Cronauer, the film is actually more concept than story: put Williams in front of a microphone and let him go nuts. Still, the surrounding stuff about the influence upon Cronauer of the endless deaths among his listeners--as Cronauer tries to stay funny while feeling the mounting losses--is affecting. Williams got a much-deserved Oscar nomination for his work. --Tom Keogh
About this product: The classic science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury was a curious choice for one of the leading directors of the French New Wave, François Truffaut. But from the opening credits onward (spoken, not written on screen), Truffaut takes Bradbury's fascinating premise and makes it his own. The futuristic society depicted in Fahrenheit 451 is a culture without books. Firemen still race around in red trucks and wear helmets, but their job is to start fires: they ferret out forbidden stashes of books, douse them with gasoline, and make public bonfires. Oskar Werner, the star of Truffaut's Jules and Jim, plays a fireman named Montag, whose exposure to David Copperfield wakens an instinct toward reading and individual thought. (That's why books are banned--they give people too many ideas.) In an intriguing casting flourish, Julie Christie plays two roles: Montag's bored, drugged-up wife and the woman who helps kindle the spark of rebellion. The great Bernard Herrmann wrote the hard-driving music; Nicolas Roeg provided the cinematography. Fahrenheit 451 received a cool critical reception and has never quite been accepted by Truffaut fans or sci-fi buffs. Its deliberately listless manner has always been a problem, although that is part of its point; the lack of reading has made people dry and empty. If the movie is a bit stiff (Truffaut did not speak English well and never tried another project in English), it nevertheless is full of intriguing touches, and the ending is lyrical and haunting. --Robert Horton
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