8 Classic Films

Starring:Silver Screen Series
Studio: Platinum Disc
Product Type: DVD

The Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy: The Complete Collection, Vol. 8

Average customer rating:

Very enjoyable Laurel and Hardy silents
A piece of happiness
Silent Classics From Stan and Ollie
Best in Series
Contains some of their funniest

The Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy: The Complete Collection, Vol. 8
Starring: Stan Laurel , Oliver Hardy , Edgar Kennedy , Thelma Hill , and Ruby Blaine
Director: James Parrott , and Fred Guiol
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Classics | Genres | DVD | Video

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The Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy - The Complete Collection, Vol. 5
The Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy: The Complete Collection, Vol. 3

ASIN: 6305908028
Release Date: 2000-10-17

Description

Mastered from the original 35mm material, this eighth volume of lost films from the great comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy includes all silent shorts: "Two Tars" (1928, 21 min.), "The Second Hundred Years" (1927, 22 min.), "Slipping Wives" (1926, 23 min.), "From Soup to Nuts" (1928, 22 min.), plus the Stan Laurel solo shorts "Scorching Sands" (1923, 15 min.) and "Should Tall Men Marry?" (1927, 19 min., color tinted).

Customer Reviews:

Very enjoyable Laurel and Hardy silents.......2007-04-18

The above-average Volume Eight of THE LOST [SILENT] FILMS OF LAUREL AND HARDY has two of the funniest shorts the men ever made, TWO TARS and FROM SOUP TO NUTS (both 1928). In TWO TARS, they play two sailors out for a Sunday drive with two pretty women. They get involved in the greatest and funniest traffic jam in movie history, with everyone tearing apart pieces of everyone else's car. And FROM SOUP TO NUTS has Laurel and Hardy as klutzy waiters for a fancy mansion dinner, with hilarious results. Watch Stan serve lettuce in woolen underwear when told to serve the salad undressed. And watch how many times Ollie can trip, fall face first into a cake, and still make it funny. Both of these incomparable comedies have been mastered from the original nitrate camera negative from Hal Roach Studios.

I wish the other four shorts on Volume Eight were this stupendous; they are enjoyable and at least look great, masterered from 35mm camera negatives and with wonderful Jazz Age scores. In THE SECOND HUNDRED YEARS (1927), Stan and Ollie are convicts who escape from prison masquerading as painters who somehow end up pretending to be high society servants--before their French police hosts want to see the prison the boys have escaped from!

SLIPPED WIVES (also 1927) stars long-forgotten Priscilla Dean as a bored rich woman who hires Stan to make love to her to make her bored husband jealous. Hardy is a butler.

SCORCHING SANDS (1923), the weakest short in this set, is a one reel comedy with Laurel alone doing a parody of French Foreign Legion adventures. It somehow is not as funny for me as it should be. Maybe if I saw it with an audience.

Same with SHOULD TALL MEN MARRY (again 1927). The tinted archive print could not be more beautiful and the music score is wonderful. But the writing is lacking. In his last solo outing without Hardy, Laurel is working on a ranch with Jimmy Finlayson, his daughter Martha Sleeper, and a stubborn mule. Bad guys steal the daughter; Laurel and Finlayson rescue her. The movie is important because from now on every single film Stan made would have him starring as a team with "Babe" Hardy. But it isn't a very good movie for me. Again, maybe an art theatre audience would make it come alive.

The total running time for this volume is 119 minutes.

A piece of happiness.......2007-01-05

Every piece of those two guys work is only pleasure. I discovered them when I was 5 and now, more than 50 years later, they still make me laugh like a child.

Silent Classics From Stan and Ollie.......2006-05-19

A trio of classic Laurel and Hardy two-reelers highlight Volume 8 in "The Lost Films" series. "Two Tars" (1928), "The Second Hundred Years" (1927) and "From Soup to Nuts" (1928) remain masterpieces of comic invention and timing. The 35mm prints are very good, but the public-domain musical accompaniment becomes terribly repetitive. The remaining shorts in this collection -- the embryonic "Slipping Wives" (1926) and two Laurel solo efforts, "Scorching Sands" (1923) and "Should Tall Men Marry?" (1927) -- are worth seeing only from an academic standpoint. Hopefully, this series will be reissued with stronger music tracks while focusing solely on genuine L&H films.

Best in Series.......2005-06-16

This volume is one of the best of the "lost silent films" collection, comprised of three solid performances from 1928 that illustrate the diversity and sophistication of Laurel and Hardy's comic style. Two Tars implements the vintage L&H formula of orchestrated chaos (repeated in Your Darn Tootin, Big Business, and many other films) to perfection. Two Tars has an appealing breeziness that results from the story's premise: the boys are seamen on leave egged on to perform "senseless acts of violence" by two delectable flappers, inflicted on cars stranded in a traffic jam. The wave of destruction builds to a crescendo of twisted metal until the boys are exposed as the perpetrators, and a short chase ends the film.

The Second Hundred Years, by contrast, has a comic formula that explores fertile new ground for the duo's humor. They are prisoners (shaved heads and all) who through their incompetence can't quite adjust to prison routine. They pull off not one but two disguises, one as painters in order to escape prison, the other as French officials inspecting the very prison they have recently escaped from! The best scene is their attempt to convince a suspicious cop that they are real painters by literally "painting the town" -- including cars, street lamps, and a flapper's derriere. The ballet-like grace with which Oliver Hardy, especially, tries unsuccessfully to imitate a professional painter is priceless. Rotund Hardy has clearly learned from Fatty Arbuckle's ability to mine comic moments from being dexterous in spite of his girth. One leaves this film with the sense that the rich comic situations here could have been developed further, and indeed the basic structure of the film was repeated later in Pardon Us (1931) expanded into a feature length film.

From Soup to Nuts is the weakest of the three, but still entertaining, as the boys are hired by a "nouveau riche" family to serve dinner to a collection of distinguished friends. Most of the happenings are funny because of their predictability -- laws of nature dictate that when Hardy carries a large cake to a dining room, he must somehow fall into it, and the laws of nature are confirmed repeatedly here. The film also contains the popular and voluptuous L&H supporting case member Anita Garvin who performs the same gag with an uncooperative cherry that Laurel does in Second Hundred years.

Each volume in the series contains additional short films either by Laurel or Hardy alone, or by other comics in the Hal Roach factory, and this volume is no exception. These films tend to be at best of purely of historical interest to L&H fans, and at worst, worthless filler. But overall this volume in the series is one of the best.

Contains some of their funniest.......2005-03-26

This disc showcases some of Laurel and Hardy's funniest and best silent shorts, and I also found there was more variety in the backing music than in some of the other discs in this series. 'From Soup to Nuts' is hands-down the best and funniest one on here, their funniest silent short I've seen so far. Part of what makes their sound shorts so funny is the fact that their voices just totally matched their personalities and physical appearance, adding to already funny situations, but in 'From Soup to Nuts' the gags and situations are so hilarious they don't even need speech to add to the hilarity. 'Two Tars' and 'The Second Hundred Years' are also hilarious and classic, very strong material. The fourth L&H short on here, 'Slipping Wives,' features them together but not really a proper team, though they have more interaction here than in some of their other shorts where they appeared together before being officially teamed. That one is also very strong and funny. Of the two Stan solo shorts featured, 'Under Two Jags' (which admittedly might be a mislabeling of a different film, 'Scorching Sands') is the stronger and funnier, despite the fact that there's not a single intertitle besides the introductory one. In my opinion the weakest one is Stan's final solo short, 'Should Tall Men Marry?' It's well-written and well-acted enough, but just not as interesting, funny, or solid as the other five.

Bruckner - Symphony No. 8 / Mehta, Israel Philharmonic

Average customer rating:

Zubin Mehta saves the day
nothing wrong
Not worth to make a DVD out of it
Not this one, buy the Herbert Von Karajan instead !
Shallow reading.

Bruckner - Symphony No. 8 / Mehta, Israel Philharmonic

Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Musicals & Performing Arts | Genres | DVD | Video

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

( B ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
ASIN: B0000214FK
Release Date: 1999-12-28

Amazon.com

Listening to Bruckner's monumental Eighth Symphony, here running some 88 minutes, is like scaling Everest. The summit doesn't come into sight until well into the third, slow movement, then it's not until the third approach via other vistas that we arrive with a clash of cymbals at the peak. En route there are diversions into Alpine meadows where it's not too fanciful to suggest edelweiss is in flower. Zubin Mehta recorded Bruckner's Ninth Symphony early on in his career, but neither his name nor that of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra has been much associated with the Austrian composer. In this 1987 performance, Mehta pleads and cajoles his orchestra to give their all, but ultimately the demands of the music and the unsympathetic acoustic of the Alte Oper Frankfurt defeat them. One senses that the conductor's forward pacing of the music takes its toll on the precision within the huge waves of sound Bruckner launches throughout the work. --Adrian Edwards

Description

A live 1987 recording from the Alte Oper Frankfurt. Internationally acclaimed Indian conductor Zubin Mehta conducts the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in the four movements of Anton Bruckner's massive Symphony No. 8. 87 minutes.

Customer Reviews:

Zubin Mehta saves the day.......2006-06-24

The other reviewers are correct. This is not the best possible Bruckner 8th. Yet it has one exceptional good point: Zubin Mehta seems passionately involved in this performance.

Whatever shortcomings this performance may have, we can certainly not fault Mehta's enthusiasm. He begins the concert very crisply attired, but by the end of the Adagio movement, he is already sopping wet. The finale pushes him to the limits of human endurance.

In spite of the various negative comments others have made, this is still a moving Bruckner, and the Frankfurt audience appreciated it. The applause continued for many minutes after the music had ended.

Yes, there are better performances (Karajan with the Vienna Philharmonic) but, if you enjoy Bruckner, or Zubin Mehta, you will still find much to enjoy in this performance.

nothing wrong.......2005-09-27

I didn't find anything wrong with this perfomance. You can like it or not, but it's very good and highly professional.

Not worth to make a DVD out of it.......2005-06-18

I would not say it the way others do in reviews, an orchestra that is not from german speaking soil can shure play Bruckner as good as a Berlin Philarmonic. The problem with this orchestra from Israel is that it simply is not a top level orchestra. When I hear the many missed tones from the brass section (the wagner tubas even miss the tones in the first measures) and the bad pitch of the strings, I would say for an amateur-village-orchestra they play pretty good. The conductor swings his lower jaw around it seems he could loose it any moment. His conducting is very theatralic, I dont understand much about conducting but he does not make a good impression.

Not this one, buy the Herbert Von Karajan instead ! .......2005-06-08

This is NOT nearly as good a perfomance as the SONY DVD with
Herbert Von Karajan conducting the Weiner Philhrmonic. Zuben Mehta must have been sick that day, and coughes as crutial moments. The Israel Philharmonic plays timidly, when majestic playing is required: THEY SEEM LIKE THEY JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING ! The Wiener Philharmonic is TRUELY better able to handle Brucker, and Karajan IS the "papa" of recording this kind of music.

Shallow reading........2002-09-01

At the risk of sounding nationalistic. I have always felt that Bruckner was best served by conductors of the Austro/German pedigree. And this DVD of the 8th by the Israel PO and Mehta goes a long way to prove my point. In a nutshell, Mehta has no grasp of the music and certainly has nothing credible to transmit to the orchestra. All in all, a waste of time.
I hear that Sony is preparing their immensely valuable recordings of Celibidache's 6, 7 and 8th Bruckner symphonies for release on DVD.

Average customer rating:

8 Classic Films
Starring: Silver Screen Series
Manufacturer: Platinum Disc
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0007N1JW8
Release Date: 2005-02-15

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