This stunning box set features 3 of the finest movies to feature the 'First Lady of Film' Bette Davis. All About Eve (1950): It's all about women.... and their men! From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door Eve Horrington (Anne Baxter) moves relentlessly towards her goal: taking the reins of power from the great actress Margo Channing (Bette Davies). The cunning Eve manoeuvres her way into Margo's Broadway role becomes a sensation and even causes turmoil in
What more is there to say about Orson Welles? One of the most talented and enigmatic artists that Hollywood has ever seen this box set gathers several films in his oeuvre for your viewing pleasure. Citizen Kane (Dir. Orson Welles 1941): In May of 1941 RKO Radio Pictures released a controversial film by a 25-year-old first-time director. That premier of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane was to have a profound and lasting effect of the art of motion pictures. It has been hai
The Will Hay Collection is a nine-disc box containing the following films: Ask a Policeman / Boys Will Be Boys Oh, Mr Porter! / Convict 99 Old Bones of the River / Where There's a Will Good Morning Boys / Hey! Hey! USA! Windbag the Sailor (exclusive to this box set): dating from 1936 this is the first film to unite Will Hay, Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt. The hapless trio find themselves as the crew of a decrepit ship.
A pair of society women dressed in all their finery stand in the middle of an abattoir, animal carcasses hanging behind them and blood splashed across the floor. Giggling and fidgeting, they drink their prescribed glass of ox blood. The startling, unreal image of high-society manners in the midst of gore and death pitches Jean Rollin's 1979 feature Fascination into a turn-of-the-century culture come unhinged. When a well-dressed rogue, fleeing from angry partners he double-crossed, takes refuge in a lavish, moat-protected mansion, servant girls Franca Mai and Brigitte Lahaie cajole, tease and seduce him into staying for their night-time soiree. "You have stumbled into Elizabeth and Eva's life, the universe of madness and death", mutters one of them as they await the cabal where he is the guest of honour. Shot on a starvation budget and populated with stiff performers, Rollin's direction is arch and at times sloppy and his story never more than an outline. It's the mix of dreamy and nightmarish imagery that gives Fascination its fascination: blonde Lahaie stalking victims with a scythe, the bourgeois blood cult swarming over a fresh victim like wild animals, alabaster faces streaked in blood. While it lacks the delirious spontaneity of his earlier vampire films Shiver of the Vampires and Requiem for a Vampire, the languid pace and austere beauty creates an often-mesmerising fantasy. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com
Mozart's third and final opera with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, the hugely ambitious dramatic comedy Così fan Tutte (roughly translated as: "They're All Like That"), is brought passionately to life in a first-class production conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and featuring one of the great starring roles for Cecilia Bartoli. Filmed live at the Zurich Opera House in February 2000 on a set which visualises the subtitle "The School for Lovers", the plot revolves around two army officers arguing about the fidelity of their brides, then setting out to test their chastity. Despite the often playful humour, this is not only psychologically telling music-making, but reveals Mozart exploring the structure of opera, discarding convention to mix large ensemble sections with arias for as many different combinations of singers as possible. With Liliana Nikiteanu attractively contrasted with Bartoli, and thoroughly convincing performances by Roberto Sacca (Ferrando) and Oliver Widmer (Guilelmo), this Così has a freshness and flow which, coupled with the timeless romantic themes, feels very contemporary. On the DVD: the presentation, which includes an interesting 22-minute behind-the-scenes documentary, is spread over two DVDs. There is a multi-language booklet minus libretto, though there is the option to watch with English subtitles. Given the difficult live stage lighting conditions the 16:9 anamorphically enhanced picture is as good as can be expected. There are both stereo and Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks, though the latter gives the voices a disconcertingly disembodied character, leaving the former to be preferred. The total running time is approximately 213 minutes, not 275 minutes stated on the packaging. --Gary S Dalkin
1. Beatrice di Tenda: Ah! Se un'urna e a me concessa (Vincenzo Bellini)2. Kiss Me Kate: So in love with you (Cole Porter)3. Manon: En fermant les yeux (Jules Massenet)4. Rusalka: Mesicku na nebi hlubokem (Song to the Moon) (Antonin Dvorak)5. Excelsior: Obscurantism (Romualdo Marenco)6. Cosi fan tutte: Non siate ritrosi...E voi ridete? (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)7. War and Peace: Kakoye pravo oni imyeyet (Sergei Prokofiev)8. Don Pasquale: Tornami a di che m'ami (Gaetano Donzetti)9. Lulu: Wenn sich die Menschen (Lulu's Song) (Alban Berg)10. Coppelia; Mazurka (Leo Delibes)11. Platee: Formons les plus brillants concerts (Jean-Philippe Rameau)12. Carmen: Les voice! Voici la quadrille! (Georges Bizet)13. Otello: Oh! Mostruosa colpa! (Giuseppe Verdi)14. Siegfried: Was strahlt mir dort entgegen? (Richard Wagner)15. Lucie de Lammermoor: Qu'une letter en ma misere (Gaetano Donizetti)16. Giselle: Pas de deux - Scene (Adolphe Adam)17. Turandot: Non piangere Liu (Giacomo Puccini)18. Paquita: Pas de deux (E. Deldevez and L. Minkus)19. Adriana Lecouvreur: Io son l'umile ancella (Francesco Cilea)20. Don Quichotte: Duel Don Quichottte & Gamache (Ludwig Minkus)21. Gotterdammerung: Ungeheure Macht wird dir (Richard Wagner)22. Le Coq d'Or: Otwets mne sorko swetilo (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov)23. Le nozze di Figaro: Gente gente all'armi all'armi! (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
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