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Years in the making! The glory of MGM on parade! Enough studio resources to film twenty pictures were expended on this paean to showman Florenz Ziegfeld. It’s really Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s Technicolor valentine to itself, showing off the studio’s enormous stable of musical talent, along with various of its comic performers. Arthur Freed and Louis B. Mayer’s notion of ‘something for everyone’ results in weird stack of grandiose musical numbers and mostly weak comedy. The biggest draw is the incredible color cinematography that peeks through in three or four jaw-droppingly elaborate musical spectacles. The picture is a workout to find the artistic limits of the Technicolor system.

Ziegfeld Follies

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1945 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 117 110 min. / Street Date June 15, 2021 / 21.99

Starring: (alphabetically): Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Lucille Bremer, Fanny Brice, Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, Victor Moore, Red Skelton, Esther Williams. Also...

Rko's final in-house production is a good end-of-an-era film, a spirited and well-made musical comedy. Bright-eyed Jane Powell can't stop accepting marriage proposals, from nerdy Tommy Noonan, dreamboat kisser Cliff Robertson and zillionare Keith Andes. She imagines her future with each man in musical terms, through production numbers staged by Gower Champion. The Girl Most Likely DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1956 / Color / 1:78 enhanced widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date November 17, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Jane Powell, Cliff Robertson, Keith Andes, Kaye Ballard, Tommy Noonan, Una Merkel, Kelly Brown, Judy Nugent, Frank Cady, Joseph Kearns, Marjorie Stapp, Robert Banas. Cinematography Robert H. Planck Film Editor Doane Harrison Original Music Nelson Riddle Choreographer Gower Champion Written by Devery Freeman, Paul Jarrico (uncredited) Produced by Stanley Rubin Directed by Mitchell Leisen

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

From roughly 1925 to 1957, the powerful men in charge of the big studios controlled most aspects of production. That...

The 1981 military drama movie Taps starring Timothy Hutton (The Ghost Writer), George C. Scott (Patton) and hot-young-actors-on-the-scene Sean Penn (Fair Game) and Tom Cruise (Knight and Day) will make its Blu-ray debut on May 3 from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Tom Cruise (r.), Timothy Hutton (ctr.) and Sean Penn are military cadets in Taps.

Directed by Harold Becker (The Boost) and based on the 1979 novel Father Sky by Devery Freeman, the film tells the story of cadets at a military academy who take extreme measures to insure the future of their institution when its existence is threatened by local condo developers. Said “extreme measures” translate into the kind of military resistance the cadets have been trained for.

The Blu-ray disc will carry a list price of $24.95.

No official announcements have been made regarding bonus features, but here’s a list of what appeared on Fox’s standard DVD from 2006 (which...