Tagged: DVD

It’s really a shame that any review of “On the Waterfront” is colored by Elia Kazan’s infamous friendly testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. By some accounts, including Kazan’s own on occasion, “On the Waterfront” was the director’s defiant gesture toward his critics. Now sixty years later, can it stand outside the controversy? I believe it can, as it’s a great film and an American classic. As brilliantly played by Marlon Brando, Terry Malloy stands up for what is right, not what his so-called friends would muscle him into doing. It’s as American as “Mr.

While the Lifetime and Hallmark networks will duke it out for weeks ahead of Christmas, airing competing schmaltzy movies in which divorcees find love under the mistletoe, there has long been a tradition of Christmas movies intended for the kiddies.  These movies usually assume that no adult will even attempt to watch the flick, and so all bets are off when it comes to bothering to appeal to anyone with more than two digits to their age.

Fela Kuti is considered the founder of the musical style known as Afropop, which employs a very large band with a jazzy horn section and African rhythms. Kuti is not only a composer, but multi-instrumentalist, human rights advocate and political agitator. 

The Fela Kuti Double Feature Documentary and Concert DVD is hypnotic watching, beginning with the chain smoking Fela introducing himself. 

Among movie musicals, “Singin’ in the Rain” stands as the greatest of them all. Its nearest competitors, “The Band Wagon” with Fred Astaire, or even Gene Kelly’s “An American in Paris,” produced a year before “Singin’ in the Rain,” are also just as entertaining today as when they were first released six decades ago. But something about “Singin’ in the Rain” gives it a snap that remains timeless.