About this product: When the days get short and cold, and the land is cloaked in white, that is when we come out to play. We are beckoned by the thrill of speed, the joy of air and unclimbed mountains asking for someone to stand atop them and declare, Winter is open for business.
Deep powder. Huge airs. World-class cinematography. Awe-inspiring soundtrack. It is all part of Warren Miller Entertainments 59th feature film, Children Of Winter. The worlds greatest action sports filmmaker showcases spectacular footage shot in Japan, Austria, British Columbia, Alaska and Iceland with jaw-dropping performances by an impressive assembly of world-class athletes, including Jonny Moseley, Daron Rahlves, Marco Sullivan, Seth Wescott, Gerry Lopez and Wendy Fisher.
About this product: When the days get short and cold, and the land is cloaked in white, that is when we come out to play. We are beckoned by the thrill of speed, the joy of air and unclimbed mountains asking for someone to stand atop them and declare, Winter is open for business.
Deep powder. Huge airs. World-class cinematography. Awe-inspiring soundtrack. It is all part of Warren Miller Entertainments 59th feature film, Children Of Winter. The worlds greatest action sports filmmaker showcases spectacular footage shot in Japan, Austria, British Columbia, Alaska and Iceland with jaw-dropping performances by an impressive assembly of world-class athletes, including Jonny Moseley, Daron Rahlves, Marco Sullivan, Seth Wescott, Gerry Lopez and Wendy Fisher.
About this product: Warren Miller's Bloopers, Blunders and Bailouts is a slapstick compilation of earlier Miller programs celebrating extreme klutziness and silliness in sundry winter wonderlands. Miller plays droll host for a feast of archival footage revealing the human body's capacity to bounce and bounce (and bounce) down endless ski runs after a loss of footing. The question of how many rocks and trees a man can hit before he's broken is never quite resolved, but less agonizing comedy can be found in ordinary mishaps on rope tows and first-time skier panic on gentle bunny runs. Then there's the human impulse to attempt the truly stupid, such as skiing down steep hills of weeds and riding bikes down ski trails. Novel activities include skiing with dogs, skiing in bikinis (both genders), and skiing on furniture. If the measure of a man is whether he can rappel down a steep hill in skis, well, heroes await within. --Tom Keogh
About this product: THE MOST EXTROADINARY WINTER SPORTS ACTION IS NOW ON BLU-RAY! In their 58th feature film, Playground, narrated by Olympic Gold Medalist Jonny Moseley, Warren Miller Entertainment chronicles the latest in extraordinary winter sports action with their mind-blowing cinematography and a killer soundtrack to match. From an indoor ski park in Dubai and mystique of the Japanese mountains, to the frigid northern reaches of Sweden, Playground follows the planets leading skiers of the freeride movement Jon Olsson, Sean Petit, Dan Treadway, Peter Olenick and others to destinations of freedom and fun where anything is possible. For more than half a century, Warren Miller has featured the world’s most intense skiers and snowboarders from around the globe ... and they found them all in the same place ... THE PLAYGROUND.
About this product: Warren Miller Entertainment’s latest film, Off The Grid, narrated by World Champion mogul skier and Philadelphia Eagle Jeremy Bloom, presents the world’s best winter sports athletes embarking on a global mission to discover the deepest snow, the steepest mountains and the world’s gnarliest snowball fight. Shot in hi def around the world, this film demonstrates the true Off The Grid experience, exposing the undiscovered side of winter from Kashmir, India, to Kicking Horse, Canada. Olympic 2006 medalist Toby Dawson and X Games Gold Medalists Zach and Reggie Crist pack the notable cast of this adrenaline filled film that takes viewers out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary.
About this product: One needn't be an extreme snow-sports enthusiast to enjoy the beauty, wit, and endlessly inventive action-cinematography of Warren Miller's films. A pioneer in sports filmmaking, Miller began his career--as we find out in this excellent, four-title boxed set--shooting 8mm footage in 1947 Sun Valley, Idaho, keeping body and soul together with ketchup soup and wild rabbits. A half-century-plus later, Miller produces, narrates, and occasionally provides a cameo in his films; three of them, included here, are travelogues set in some of the wildest, most dazzling, and even exotic places on Earth.
The best of the lot, Cold Fusion, involves serious globe-hopping through four continents: Join a long, long hike through Kenya to ski what remains of a disappearing glacier, and later watch the surreal ballet of multiple "aerialists" launched high on the slopes at Colorado's Winter Park Big Air Expedition. Scale up--and snowboard down--an impossibly steep peak in Waddington, U.K., and then, believe it or not, ski Iran, a place "between dreams and awakening, of hot tea and cherry tobacco."
Ride provides its own thrills, traipsing after Whistler's avalanche hunters as they launch explosives clearing landslides before landslides clear skiers. Stick around for stops in New Zealand and France, plus helicopter skiing in the North Cascades, snowboarding the bouncy trail of the Breckenridge Bumps, and cross a war zone in Russia to reach (via creaky cable cars and choppers) the top of Europe.
Storm continues the fun in British Columbia's Blue River, Aspen's Roaring Fork Valley, Lake Tahoe, and Antarctica's South Georgia Island, the haunting first site of Ernest Shackleton's legendary, ill-fated voyage. Rounding out this DVD collection is the retrospective Fifty, an album of highlights (e.g., snowboarding in the Chugach Range, near the site of the Valdez crash) that takes a fun, then-and-now approach. --Tom Keogh
About this product: A guilty, guilty pleasure, perhaps not one a left-wing feminist should be admitting to in public. Female boomers should recall yearly TV reruns of this Rodgers and Hammerstein production, featuring such delights as "Impossible" and "Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful?" It may appear a bit stark to younger viewers, but part of the charm of this 1964 network TV special, a remake of the live 1957 telecast originally built around Julie Andrews, is its utter simplicity. An extremely young Lesley Ann Warren and Stuart Damon (of General Hospital fame) are joined by Ginger Rogers, Walter Pidgeon, and Celeste Holm. Warren is all sweetness and innocence without a hint of saccharine artificiality, while Damon is a clear-eyed romantic. This very handsome love story is a bit of an oddity, but worth owning just for the memorable score. --Rochelle O'Gorman
About this product: Suffice to say, Mrs. Warren's profession is not Amway, but its illicit gains have allowed her estranged and unwitting daughter, Vivie, to live a life of affluence and higher education. Bernard Shaw's witty attack on "the hypocrisy of the world" and "fashionable morality" is given a compelling staging in this impeccably acted 1972 BBC production starring the venerable Coral Browne (Auntie Mame ) as the "wicked" Mrs. Warren and Penelope Wilton (The Norman Conquests, Match Point) as the thoroughly modern Vivie, who herself confounds family friends and suitors (by turns incorrigible or lecherous) with her own unconventional mercenary attitudes. Shaw's play, written in 1893, but banned until 1925, is undoubtedly tame by today's standards, but its ideas, passionately debated by mother and daughter, are still provocative. The ironic use of period parlor songs ("That old fashioned mother of mine" is a sample lyric) add to the scandalous fun. --Donald Liebenson
About this product: You can hear the big gears clank in this glossy, oh-so-watchable remake of the classic 1939 film (and the popular An Affair to Remember). Instead of updating the story with contemporary attitudes (as Warren Beatty did so successfully with Heaven Can Wait), this is a virtual carbon copy of the other films. The early scenes succeed as the two love birds (Beatty and real-life wife Annette Bening) banter with smart, fun talk. But the dramatics never really work in the modern era and romance doesn't blossom. Do we have to visit the Empire State Building again? Why couldn't the man be the victim? Everything looks wrapped for Christmas: a lovely score, nice use of old songs, rich designer clothes, familiar faces popping up everywhere, all surrounded by ace Conrad L. Hall's glowing, luscious light. It comes off like a big still-life, no zeal with two big exceptions: Garry Shandling's comic portrayal of lawyerhood as Beatty's agent and the reappearance of Katharine Hepburn. Seen for maybe 10 minutes, she packs more magic in her work than the entire rest of the movie. --Doug Thomas
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