West New York

Starring:Frank Vincent, Gian DiDonna, Gloria Darpino, Brian McCormack, Victor Colicchio, Vincent Pastore, Brian Burke, Dan Grimaldi, Benny Nieves, Henry LeBlanc, Trade Martin, Michael Squicciarini, Jack O'Connell (II), John Henry Cox, Liam Mitchell, Nelson Wakefield, Kathy Derry, Emelise Aleandri, Robert Bryson, Sal Alagna
Director: Phil Gallo
Studio: Mti Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Sessions at West 54th: Recorded Live in New York

Average customer rating:

Intimate
A fun evening with Mo'.
To all Keb' Mo' fans this is a must have...
Keb Mo' Is An Unsung Hero
Great Show!

Sessions at West 54th: Recorded Live in New York
Starring: Keb' Mo'
Manufacturer: Sony
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Blues | Styles | Music

General | Music Video & Concerts | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $14.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( S ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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The Blues Guitar Of Keb' Mo'
The Best of Sessions at West 54th, Vol. 1
The Door
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Slow Down

ASIN: B000053VAC
Release Date: 2000-12-05

Customer Reviews:

Intimate.......2007-03-24

What an excellent DVD. Not a concert..... a live session with an audience. These are the best shows to have on DVD in my opinion. Small venues lend to a more controlled atmosphere for the performer. The result is better sound quality, video quality and a more personable performance. Keb Mo is a very good musician and entertainer and he is ably if not excellently backed by his band. Highlights are "Every Morning" and "Love Yourself". Nice addition to the DVD collection.

A fun evening with Mo'........2006-08-21

My wife and I have only one singer or group that we both like together and that is Keb' Mo'. After watching this DVD we immediately hit the Internet looking for his concert schedule ... hoping he was going to sneak close enough for us to go see him live.

The quality of the sound is good, but I was a little disappointed that there wasn't a few more songs. It seemed to end all to soon for us. If you're a Keb' Mo' fan then this is must for your collection.

To all Keb' Mo' fans this is a must have..........2005-02-24

Not only is Keb' Mo' an exceptional musician he's an absolute delight to see perform. I was actually there that day and I just finally bought the DVD. The charm, humor, and gentleness of his style as a performer shines through. If you cannot see him live (which is a crying shame) or even if you have seen him live you must get this DVD. It's just like being there. The extra interview footage was great too!

Being there and watching him (and Dr. John!) in such an intimate setting was an exceptional experience but this DVD comes awfully close to the real thing.

Keb Mo' Is An Unsung Hero.......2004-10-19

I love Keb' Mo', so a bit biased. His soulful sound is clearly demonstrated on this DVD.

He should be counted among the great of his genre. The song 'Just Like You', which he wrote in his living room in LA, is a classic example of his beautiful writing style. The other cuts also stand for themselves...to enjoy.

Please experience this DVD!!!

John Buckner
Nashville

Great Show!.......2004-06-12

If you like Keb Mo at all, you'll love this DVD. A great selection of tunes from his first couple discs, but defnitely not carbon copies of the originals. If you get a chance to see him, do it, especially if it's just him and his guitar. Maybe not for blues purists, or those expecting screaming electric blues guitar, just great music.

Average customer rating:

Strong 3 star rating
CREATIVITY IS DOMINANT IN A PROMISING FIRST FEATURE.

West New York
Starring: Frank Vincent , Gian DiDonna , Gloria Darpino , Brian McCormack , and Victor Colicchio
Director: Phil Gallo
Manufacturer: Mti Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Crime | Action & Adventure | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Action & Adventure | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

Crime & Criminals | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

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DVDs Under $7.49 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

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ASIN: 6305728887
Release Date: 2000-02-29

Customer Reviews:

Strong 3 star rating.......2007-04-20

Director Phil Gallo makes impressive creative use of the "fly on the wall"-documentary style, if you will, and has two powerful actors to make it real. Frank Vincent and Vincent Pastore, one conflicted, sorrowful, but determined to pick up the pieces of his personal life all in one motion by selectively releasing bonds meant for the shredder, so as to provide something for his daughter who shares his grief, but not guilt, in his wife's passing.
Vincent's stoic expressions in close-up, against the New York backdrop, show Gallo's technique in the best tradition and relatable for the generation who studiously follow Martin Scorsese and "The Sopranos". Fans of the cable Tv series will enjoy seeing cast members work together about a decade back.
Trade Martin has some very good scenes. The famous songwriter ("Take Me For A Little While", many others), record Producer (for B.B. King, most notably), now adds the title of (movie) Executive Producer. His fans will be delighted to hear his *singing* voice on the soundtrack, also featuring Mike Boldt, another prominent New Jersey artist.

CREATIVITY IS DOMINANT IN A PROMISING FIRST FEATURE........2005-02-23

Tom Coletti (Frank Vincent), after losing his career as a police detective ,as well as his marriage, due to alcoholism has defeated that demon and is employed supervising the shredding of corporate bonds issued on a New Jersey bank, but when Tom becomes a victim of temptation he removes some of the negotiable issues to sell and becomes trapped between purchasing gangsters to whom he turns, and a local syndicate boss resentful that a lucrative transaction has not been offered to him. This low budget production, originally titled PAPERBLOOD, is the first effort from director Phil Gallo, also responsible for much of its script, editing, and scoring, and despite the typical visual characteristics stemming from an original 16mm. print, it is an encouraging debut for Gallo, who takes risks throughout by shifting prominence of his characters, employing frequent closeups of the New York based cast, frequently utilizing naturalistic dialogue, while even including a touch of Magical Realism for a characterization propelled plot wherein back stories have true importance and where a perception of intensity provided by all engaged moderates the melodramatic effects of some scenes.

King Lear / Jones, New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive)

Average customer rating:

"As Good As It Gets"
Bravo for James Earl Jones and for Joe Papp
OF ALL THE KING LEAR'S THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE BEST RECORDED
The Best I've Seen
Superb

King Lear / Jones, New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive)
Starring: John R. Tobinski , Robert Stattel , Anthony Chisholm , Rosalind Cash , and James West III
Director: Edwin Sherin
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

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King Lear
Hamlet / Kline, New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive)
King Lear
Much Ado About Nothing / New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive)
Macbeth / McKellen, Dench (Thames Shakespeare Collection)

ASIN: B00005NG0D
Release Date: 2001-09-18

Amazon.com

Brilliant performances from an amazing cast highlight this piece of modern theater history. James Earl Jones stars as Lear in this digitally remastered recording of a live performance in the park. (If you've ever wished you could see one of Joseph Papp's legendary New York Shakespeare Festival productions, this is your chance.) The crowd reactions add a layer to the play by helping to bring the excellent production to life. The direction is vibrant, keeping both a reverence for Shakespeare's work and the importance of entertaining a crowd in mind. The astonishing supporting cast includes Rosalind Cash, Paul Sorvino, Rene Auberjonois, and Raul Julia, and a remarkable performance by Douglass Watson as Kent. --Ali Davis

Description

The formidable James Earl Jones reprises his critically-acclaimed King Lear in this television adaptation of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival production. Of Jones's performance, The Washington Post wrote, "Jones has the qualities of mind, body, voice and movement which enable him to make us care deeply about the spectacle of an old man brought to grief by his folly. The magnitude Jones project is not a matter of mere physical size, but of largeness of soul."

Customer Reviews:

"As Good As It Gets".......2007-04-11

The earlier reviewers here are certainly on target in calling this the finest "King Lear" on DVD. While the supporting cast is never less than adequate, James Earl Jones is by himself one titanic show. He's able to do something rarely seen, excel in all aspects of this most demanding of roles. Pride, bluster, anger, genuine rage, madness, growing self knowledge, and then, at last, tenderness, even delicacy - all of these are convincingly and movingly played by this large, majestic actor. He's giving what add up, in fact, to acting lessons as he plays this part so skillfully.

Bravo for James Earl Jones and for Joe Papp.......2007-02-19

I agree completely with all of the reviewers that this is indeed the best recording of "King Lear", not only because James Earl Jones is to my mind the definitive Lear (and because this cast and production magnify and clarify everything there is to be seen and heard in this play), but also because it is a recording of a live performance in a theater, rather than a movie or TV-studio taping. What a difference this makes! Movie versions are always rescripted, truncated and sometimes oddly cast to make a play more saleable. (Orson Welles' "Othello" and "Macbeth" are gorgeous pieces of cinema, but they are much more Welles than Will.) The productions of the 1980s BBC series stick pretty close to the text and happily have made the entire Shakespeare canon available for home viewing. But their visual and aural effect is claustrophobic, and the colors are fading. It was a wonderful change for me to experience the sweep and power of Papp's "King Lear" DVD, proving that, in the end, the best venue for a Shakespeare play is the one it was written for: the stage. Fortunately for those of us who could not be at Central Park's Delacorte Theater in the summer of 1974, Joseph Papp had the historical sense to take on the hassle and expense of preserving this marvelous production on videotape. Would that there were enough of a market out there to encourage more theater angels to do the same!

OF ALL THE KING LEAR'S THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE BEST RECORDED.......2006-08-11

and that includes Ran.

In order of preference from my personal library:

This Joe Papp/ James Earle JOnes production is tops
then the early Peter Brooks/ Orson Welles tremendous adaptation
THen Olivier's gentler production (Olivier's best recorded Shakespeare)
THen the 1970's cardboard BBC production
THen the Ian Holms version

This James Earle Jones presentation is the best of all, despite a few technical flaws of miking and camera angle (I cringe that they have no footage of his final "Howl, howl, howl, howl; Oh! Ye be men of stone" entry- the greatest line in the play yet we see him not!)

Any other complaints here recorded - including hair style! are irrelevant and trivial. In any way this is the best production you can get of this intense play. Okay, well, Sorvino could have had a better wig and fake beard, and a stronger voice as an opera singer (which stands him in good stead during the eye-outing) but remember the actors were playing more to the enormous CEntral PArk audience than to the cameras. For this reason alone the subtlety of their presentation is especially remarkable, even if broad stage blocking is required, and minimal sets. THIS IS A LIVE PRESENTATION and makes you recall how great our world class theatre ONCE was.

Please do remember this is a live production. It is great to see Mr. Jones practicing lines while dressing during the miserable Hal Holbrook introduction. This is LIVE THEATRE, yet Mr. JOnes carries his lines tremendously. There is no memorizing lines scene by scene like for a movie. He had hundreds of lines to remember, and he makes each word TRUE and real and meaningful as no other actor does despite all sorts of grimacing. This is the younger Jones, long before becoming the voice of CNN, etc. He is a force of nature and of spirit and of soul and of INTELLECT such as Welles and such as we shall never again see.

It is a great production as well for the young and vibrant Raul Julia and REne D'Aubojoinois (SPELLING?) as the half-brother sons of Edmund. Incredible acting by both whose bright light outshines ANYTHING in their later very fine television and cinema opus. TO see Julia as a passionate male lead rather than world weary of as Mr. Addams is amazing.

All in all a great interpretation and a faithful presentation of this complex play. Get it. Compare it to the others, and watch which one you reach for when in a King Lear kind of a mood.

kindly overlook my limited superlatives and get this production.

The Best I've Seen.......2006-04-28

"Lear" is not an easy play to watch by any standard, or in any medium. Anyone who has ever wished that he or she had more money or property to leave to his or her children would do well to watch this one. Poor families get along better, believe me.

In a nutshell: An old king creates the worst living trust plan of all time (this was before estate planning attorneys). In a fit of fatigued grandiosity, he divests himself of his kingdom, disinherits his loyal daughter and entrusts himself to the care of his two greedy, grasping daughters. It's all downhill from there, with a "B" plot which also follows the theme of fillial vs. unfilial adult children. At the end, of course, there is a pile of bodies and a few stunned survivors.

What makes this Lear so special is the cast and the audience. It was filmed in front of a live New York audience, and so you can hear the audience laughing at the jokes and applauding a particuarly good speech. This gives the production a sense of immediacy.

In some ways, this production is sort of like watching an all-star baseball game - the players are so good, and it's a real treat to watch them. A very young and sexy Raoul Julia plays Edmund - the seductive bad guy, and you can really see how Lear's two wicked daughters would get into a cat fight over him. And as Edmund's good half-brother Edgar, Rene Auberjonois is wonderful. Edgar has to go from naif to feigned insanity to righteous warrior - quite a character arc, and Auberjonois does a fabulous job.

An unexpected favorite, though, is an actor I've never seen in anything else - Douglass Watson as the Earl of Kent. Kent is a loyal supporter of the King who risks death to follow Lear through all his trials and tribulations. I've always loved Kent for his loyalty - heck, I'd marry him if he wasn't fictional. This actor brings a tremendous amount of spirit and pepper to the part - I think it's the best Kent I've ever seen.

The female roles are generally quite well acted as well, although the actress who plays Regan (I think) has kind of an annoying squeaky voice - it sounds like she's swallowed helium. Too bad, as she's good in all other ways.

And what can you say about James Earl Jones? There isn't much I can add to the other reviews except to say that I would be very interested to see him do another production of this same play now, thirty years later. This Lear is quite physical, storming around the stage, frustrated by his own weakness - he can't even throw a chair in a fit of rage without falling down, but that doesn't stop him from trying. And Jones' voice is Jones' voice - is there anyone who wouldn't recognize his deep and mellow tones, even if only as Darth Vader? It is a wonderful treat to be able to hear Jones act this role. He brings a gravitas to the part which is necessary for it to be truly tragic. But then James Earl Jones can bring gravitas to a toilet paper commercial, that's why he's The Man.

All in all, of the many Lears I have endured, this is the strongest, and I wish there were more than five stars available.

Superb.......2005-11-21

This Movie gave me an actual reason to like shakespears writing and plays. There was superb acting by all the actor and actresses and mainly Mr. James Earl Jones. Just watching his anger and how it progressed through the play just gave a new meaning to acting, the way he used his facial expressions and when his saliva came pouring out of his mouth just showed how hard he worked to perfect his perfromance. As for the Director he could not have got a better cast. This is why i gave this mvie FOUR STARS

Average customer rating:

Great Animation Vol. 2

Manufacturer: East West Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Animation | Genres | DVD | Video
Product Features:

All Regions DVD

ASIN: B000KH94NW

Product Description

Award winning short films from around the world, including SUNDAE IN NEW YORK, PARIS SCENES and many more!

Average customer rating:

West New York
Starring: Frank Vincent , Gian DiDonna , and Gloria Darpino
Director: Phil Gallo
Manufacturer: Sterling Ent
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

Crime & Criminals | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video

4-for-3 Drama | 4-for-3 DVD | Stores | DVD | Video

4-for-3 All DVDs | 4-for-3 DVD | Stores | DVD | Video

( W ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
ASIN: B000G2YCYM
Release Date: 2006-06-05

Average customer rating:

Strong 3 star rating
CREATIVITY IS DOMINANT IN A PROMISING FIRST FEATURE.

West New York
Starring: Frank Vincent , Gian DiDonna , Gloria Darpino , Brian McCormack , and Victor Colicchio
Director: Phil Gallo
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( W ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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Wannabes
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ASIN: B00006LSF1

Customer Reviews:

Strong 3 star rating.......2007-04-20

CREATIVITY IS DOMINANT IN A PROMISING FIRST FEATURE........2005-02-23

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