CRITERION: Harold Lloyd's Speedy Debuts on Blu This December

Criterion has announced a December 8th street date for both versions of Harold Lloyd's Speedy on DVD and Blu-Ray. Click here for details.

CRITERION: The Freshman (Blu-Ray / DVD Combo) This March

Criterion has scheduled a March 25th street date for their Blu-Ray / DVD Combo of Harold Lloyd's The Freshman (1925).

Click here to read the full story.

CRITERION: Safety Last! & Things to Come - Standard & Blu in June

WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE:

Safety Last! June 18th Criterion Retail: 29.95, Our: $23.99

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WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE:

Safety Last! (Blu-Ray) June 18th Criterion Retail: 39.95, Our: $31.99

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WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE:

Things to Come June 18th Criterion Retail: 29.95, Our: $23.99

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WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE:

Things to Come (Blu-Ray) June 18th Criterion Retail: 39.95, Our: $31.99

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Criterion has announced a June 18th release date for standard DVD and Blu-Ray versions of Safety Last! (1923) and Things to Come (1936).

Both are making their Blu debut and come with plenty of bonus features (below).

The comic genius of silent star Harold Lloyd is eternal. Chaplin was the sweet innocent, Keaton the stoic outsider, but Lloyd—the modern guy striving for success—is us. And with its torrent of perfectly executed gags and astonishing stunts, Safety Last! is the perfect introduction to him.

Lloyd plays a small-town bumpkin trying to make it in the big city, who finds employment as a lowly department-store clerk. He comes up with a wild publicity stunt to draw attention to the store, resulting in an incredible feat of derring-do on his part that gets him started on the climb to success.

Laugh-out-loud funny and jaw-dropping in equal measure, Safety Last! is a movie experience par excellence, anchored by a genuine legend.

BONUS FEATURES:

• Introduction by Suzanne Lloyd, Lloyd’s granddaughter and president of Harold Lloyd Entertainment
• Audio commentary featuring film critic Leonard Maltin and director and Harold Lloyd archivist Richard Correll
• Musical score by composer Carl Davis from 1989, synchronized and restored under his supervision
• Alternate score by organist Gaylord Carter from the late 1960s
• Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius, a 104-minute documentary from 1989
• Three newly restored Lloyd shorts:
  
  • Take a Chance (1918)
  • Young Mr. Jazz (1919)
  • His Royal Slyness (1920), with commentary by Correll and film writer John Bengtson
• Locations and Effects, a new documentary featuring Bengtson and special effects expert Craig Barron
• New interview with Carl Davis
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Ed Park

A landmark collaboration between writer H. G. Wells, producer Alexander Korda, and designer and director William Cameron Menzies, Things to Come is a science fiction film like no other, a prescient political work that predicts a century of turmoil and progress.

Skipping through time, Things to Come bears witness to world war, dictatorship, disease, the rise of television, and finally, utopia. Conceived, written, and overseen by Wells himself as an adaptation of his own work, this megabudgeted production, the most ambitious ever from Korda’s London Films, is a triumph of imagination and technical audacity.

BONUS FEATURE:

• Audio commentary featuring film historian and writer David Kalat
• Interview with writer and cultural historian Christopher Frayling on the film’s design
• Film historian Bruce Eder on Arthur Bliss’s musical score
• Audio recording from 1936 of a reading from H. G. Wells’s writing about the “wandering sickness,” the plague in Things to Come
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien

Top 20 Actors

Laura posted a top 20 Actors list, so I thought I'd chime in too.

I thought this would be easier than the actresses list, but as I started jotting actors who came to mind, it turned out I could probably list a top 50 without much effort. After whittling them down, it seems hard to believe who didn't make the the cut (John Garfield, Errol Flynn and Danny Kaye among others).

The Top 10 are in order with the rest in no particular order. Favorites are listed as well.

1. James Stewart (Harvey, The Naked Spur, The Shop Around the Corner)
   
2. Cary Grant (His Girl Friday, My Favorite Wife, North by Northwest)
   
3. Humphrey Bogart (The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Treasure of the Sierra Madre)
   
4. Bob Hope (Road to Morocco, Ghost Breakers, Princess and the Pirate)
   
5. Harold Lloyd (Safety Last, Speedy, The Freshman)
   
6. James Cagney (Angels with Dirty Faces, Public Enemy, White Heat)
   
7. Claude Rains (Mr. Skeffington, Crime Without Passion, Casablanca)
   
8. Thomas Mitchell (Stagecoach, It's a Wonderful Life, The Fighting Sullivans)
   
9. Spencer Tracy (Adam's Rib, Captain's Courageous, Fury)
   
10. Edward G. Robinson (Little Caesar, Double Indemnity, Five Star Final)
    
11. William Powell (Thin Man Series, Libeled Lady, Mister Roberts)
    
12. Mickey Rooney (Boys Town, Andy Hardy Series, Mickey-Judy Films)
    
13. Joseph Cotten (Citizen Kane, Shadow of a Doubt, The Steel Trap)
    
14. Gary Cooper (Ball of Fire, Meet John Doe, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town)
    
15. John Wayne (The Quiet Man, Red River, Rio Bravo)
    
16. Clark Gable (Gone With the Wind, Wife vs. Secretary, Key to the City)
    
17. Charlton Heston (Lucy Gallant, Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments)
    
18. Charles Laughton (They Knew What They Wanted, Mutiny on the Bounty, Les Miserables)
    
19. Joel McCrea (Wells Fargo, Foreign Correspondent, Sullivan's Travels)
20. Burt Lancaster (Brute Foce, The Killers, Criss Cross)
    

Didn't make it, but all come to mind as faves:

George Sanders, Kirk Douglas, Errol Flynn, Gene Kelly, William Holden, Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark, Peter Lorre, Ward Bond, Bing Crosby, Henry Fonda, Walter Brennan, Jack Carson, Jack Benny, Ronald Colman, John Garfield, Lee J. Cobb, Sydney Greenstreet, Charles Coburn, Lee Marvin, Fredric March, Orson Welles, Herbert Marshall, Randolph Scott, Danny Kaye, Walter Huston, Frank Morgan, Donald O'Connor, James Mason, Robert Ryan, Alan Ladd, Ray Milland, Fred Astaire, Lionel Barrymore, Marlon Brando, Glenn Ford.

David