TCM Vault: Midnight Lace (1960) with Doris Day & Rex Harrison

TCM will release Universal's Midnight Lace (1960) on March 4th as part of their TCM Vault line. Click here to read the full story.

The Agony and the Ecstasy (Blu-Ray) in March

Fox has scheduled The Agony and the Ecstasy (Blu-Ray) for a March 4th street date.

Click here to read the full story.

Cleopatra - 50th Anniversary Collection on Standard & Blu in May

WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE:

Cleopatra (50th Anniversary Collection) May 21st 20th Century-Fox Retail $14.98, Our: $12.99

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WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE:

Cleopatra (Blu-Ray) - 50th Anniversary Collection May 21st 20th Century-Fox Retail $24.99, Our: $19.99

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WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE:

Cleopatra (Blu-Ray Book) - 50th Anniversary Collection May 21st 20th Century-Fox Retail $34.99, Our: $30.99

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Fox has announced a May 21st street date for three 50th Anniversary releases of Cleopatra (1963).

All will be 2-disc sets, with the standard DVD having audio commentary as the sole bonus feature. Both the Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray Book wil have numerous bonus features that are listed below.


Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of this epic spectacle – its opulence and sweeping grandeur have never been more glorious.

Elizabeth Taylor stars as Cleopatra, the glamorous and cunning queen of Egypt. To secure her hold on power, she seduces the rulers of Rome, only to meet her match in Mark Antony, played by Richard Burton. Their passionate romance could decide the fate of the world's greatest empires.

BONUS FEATURES:

• Commentary with Chris Mankiewicz, Tom Mankiewicz, Martin Landau and Jack Brodsky
• Cleopatra Through The Ages: A Cultural History
• Cleopatra's Missing Footage
• Fox Movie Channel presents Fox Legacy with Tom Rothman
• The Cleopatra Papers: A Private Correspondence
• Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood
• The Fourth Star of Cleopatra
• Fox Movietone News
• Theatrical Trailers

CRITERION: David Lean Directs Noel Coward Standard & Blu in March

WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE: TITLES:

David Lean Directs Noel Coward March 27th Criterion Retail: $79.95, Our: $64.99 In Which We Serve (1942), This Happy Breed (1944), Blithe Spirit (1945), Brief Encounter (1945)

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WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE: TITLES:

David Lean Directs Noel Coward (Blu-Ray) March 27th Criterion Retail: $99.95, Our: $84.99 In Which We Serve (1942), This Happy Breed (1944), Blithe Spirit (1945), Brief Encounter (1945)

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Criterion has announced David Lean Directs Noel Coward for release on standard and Blu-Ray this March 27th.

Each 4-disc set will include the four titles above, with This Happy Breed (1944) making its DVD debut, and Blithe Spirit (1945) being resurrected after having been out of print for several years. Synopses and bonus features are below.


In the 1940s, the wit of playwright Noel Coward and the craft of filmmaker David Lean melded harmoniously in one of cinema’s greatest writer-director collaborations.

With the wartime military drama sensation In Which We Serve, Coward and Lean (along with producing partners Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan) embarked on a series of literate, socially engaged, and enormously entertaining pictures that ranged from domestic epic (This Happy Breed) to whimsical comedy (Blithe Spirit) to poignant romance (Brief Encounter). These films created a lasting testament to Coward’s artistic legacy and introduced Lean’s visionary talents to the world.

In Which We Serve (1942)
In the midst of World War II, the renowned playwright Noel Coward engaged a young film editor named David Lean to help him realize his vision for an action drama about a group of Royal Navy sailors (roles that would be filled by Coward himself, Bernard Miles, and John Mills, among others) fighting the Germans in the Mediterranean. Coward and Lean ended up co-directing the large-scale project—an impressive undertaking, especially considering that neither of them had directed for the big screen before (this would be Coward’s only such credit). Cutting between a major naval battle and flashbacks to the men’s lives before they left home.

In Which We Serve (an Oscar nominee for best picture) was a major breakthrough for both filmmakers and a sensitive and stirring piece of propaganda.

This Happy Breed (1944)
David Lean brings to vivid emotional life Noel Coward's epic chronicle of a working-class family in the London suburbs over the course of two decades.

Robert Newton and Celia Johnson are surpassingly affecting as Frank and Ethel Gibbons, a couple with three children whose modest household is touched by joy and tragedy from the tail end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second.

With its mix of politics and melodrama, This Happy Breed is a quintessential British domestic drama, featuring subtly expressive Technicolor cinematography by Ronald Neame and a remarkable supporting cast including John Mills, Stanley Holloway, and Kay Walsh.

Blithe Spirit (1945)
Blithe Spirit, David Lean’s delightful film version of Noel Coward’s theater sensation (onstage, it broke London box-office records before hitting Broadway), stars Rex Harrison as a novelist who cheekily invites a medium (Margaret Rutherford) to his house to conduct a seance, hoping the experience will inspire a book he’s working on.

Things go decidedly not as planned when she summons the spirit of his dead first wife (Kay Hammond), a severe inconvenience for his current one (Constance Cummings). Employing Oscar-winning special effects to spruce up Coward’s theatrical farce, Blithe Spirit is a sprightly supernatural comedy with winning performances.

Brief Encounter (1945)
Adapting Noel Coward's play Still Life, legendary filmmaker David Lean deftly explores the thrill, pain, and tenderness of illicit romance during the dour, gray Britain of 1945. From a chance meeting on a train platform, a middle-aged married doctor (Trevor Howard) and a suburban housewife (Celia Johnson) enter into a quietly passionate, ultimately doomed love affair set to a swirling Rachmaninoff score.

BONUS FEATURES:

• Audio commentary on Brief Encounter by film historian Bruce Eder
• New interviews with Noël Coward scholar Barry Day on all of the films
• Interview with cinematographer-screenwriter-producer Ronald Neame from 2010
• Short documentaries from 2000 on the making of In Which We Serve and Brief Encounter
• David Lean: A Self Portrait, a 1971 television documentary on Lean’s career
• Episode of the British television series The Southbank Show from 1992 on the life and career of Coward
• Audio recording of a 1969 conversation between Richard Attenborough and Coward at London’s National Film Theatre
• Trailers
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by Ian Christie, Terrence Rafferty, Farran Smith Nehme, Geoffrey O’Brien, and Kevin Brownlow

My Fair Lady (Blu-Ray) in November

WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE:

My Fair Lady (Blu-Ray) November 15th Paramount Retail: $29.99, Our: $23.99

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Paramount has announced a November 15th release date for My Fair Lady (Blu-Ray).

The single disc Blu-Ray will retail for 29.99, but is available at ClassicFlix.com for only $23.99. Bonus features (below) will carry over from the standard edition released by Paramount in 2009.

NOTE: My Fair Lady is one of the few titles we carry multiple standard versions of. We carry the aforementioned Paramount release, but also the 2004 Warner release. Normally, for the sake of clarity as well as wanting the best version for our members, we only carry one version of a particular title. However, the Warner version contains bonus features that the newer Paramount title does not. For this reason, you'll find both standard versions available for rent.


SYNOPSIS:
At one time the longest-running Broadway musical, My Fair Lady was adapted by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe from the George Bernard Shaw comedy Pygmalion. Outside Covent Garden on a rainy evening in 1912, dishevelled cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) meets linguistic expert Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison). After delivering a musical tirade against "verbal class distinction," Higgins tells his companion Colonel Pickering (Wilfred Hyde-White) that, within six months, he could transform Eliza into a proper lady, simply by teaching her proper English.

The next morning, face and hands freshly scrubbed, Eliza presents herself on Higgins' doorstep, offering to pay him to teach her to be a lady. "It's almost irresistible," clucks Higgins. "She's so deliciously low. So horribly dirty." He turns his mission into a sporting proposition, making a bet with Pickering that he can accomplish his six-month miracle to turn Eliza into a lady.

This is one of the all-time great movie musicals, featuring classic songs and the legendary performances of Harrison, repeating his stage role after Cary Grant wisely turned down the movie job, and Stanley Holloway as Eliza's dustman father. Julie Andrews originated the role of Eliza on Broadway but producer Jack Warner felt that Andrews, at the time unknown beyond Broadway, wasn't bankable; Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961). Andrews instead made Mary Poppins, for which she was given the Best Actress Oscar, beating out Hepburn. The movie, however, won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Harrison, and five other Oscars, and it remains one of the all-time best movie musicals.

BONUS FEATURES:

• Audio commentary with restoration experts Robert Harris and James Katz, art director Gene Allen, and singer Marni Nixon
• Vintage 1963/4 Featurettes, Footage & Audio
• Alternate Audrey Hepburn Vocals
• Show Me Galleries
• Comments on a Lady
• Trailers

CRITERION: Night Train to Munich in June

WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE:

Night Train to Munich (1940) June 22nd Criterion Retail: $29.95, Our: $23.99

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Criterion has announced a June 22nd release date for Carol Reed's Night Train to Munich (1940).

The war-time thriller stars Margaret Lockwood, Rex Harrison and Paul Henreid. Bonus features and synopsis are below.

It will retail for $29.95, but is available at ClassicFlix.com for only $23.99.

SYNOPSIS:
A twisting, turning, cloak-and-dagger delight, Night Train to Munich is a gripping, occasionally comic confection from writers Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat and director Carol Reed.

Paced like an out-of-control locomotive, Night Train takes viewers on a World War II–era journey from Prague to England to the Swiss Alps, as Nazis pursue a Czech scientist and his daughter (Margaret Lockwood), who are being aided by a debonair British undercover agent, played by Rex Harrison. This captivating, long-overlooked adventure—which also features Paul Henreid—mixes comedy, romance, and thrills with enough skill and cleverness to give the master of suspense himself pause.

BONUS FEATURES:

• New video conversation between film scholars Peter Evans and Bruce Babington about director Carol Reed, screenwriters Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, and the social and political climate in which Night Train to Munich was made
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Philip Kemp

My Fair Lady in October

WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE:

My Fair Lady (1964) October 6th Paramount Retail: $19.99, Our: $14.99

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Formerly in Warner's hands, with several releases including a 2-Disc Special Edition, My Fair Lady (1964) is being given a brand new release from its new rights holder Paramount.

All new special features are listed below, but at this time remain vague. It will retail for $19.99, but is available at ClassicFlix.com for only $14.99.

NOTE: It is rare that we keep two versions of the same film as we usually stick with the superior version of any DVD. However, in this case we'll keep the 2-Disc Special Edition available for rent as it holds many bonus features that this release will not.

EDITORIAL NOTE: With the DVD market flooded with the film, it may seem premature for Paramount to release My Fair Lady. However, it is likely they are trying to gauge consumer reception for a potential Blu-Ray release.

SYNOPSIS:
At one time the longest-running Broadway musical, My Fair Lady was adapted by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe from the George Bernard Shaw comedy Pygmalion. Outside Covent Garden on a rainy evening in 1912, dishevelled cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) meets linguistic expert Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison). After delivering a musical tirade against "verbal class distinction," Higgins tells his companion Colonel Pickering (Wilfred Hyde-White) that, within six months, he could transform Eliza into a proper lady, simply by teaching her proper English.

The next morning, face and hands freshly scrubbed, Eliza presents herself on Higgins' doorstep, offering to pay him to teach her to be a lady. "It's almost irresistable," clucks Higgins. "She's so deliciously low. So horribly dirty." He turns his mission into a sporting proposition, making a bet with Pickering that he can accomplish his six-month miracle to turn Eliza into a lady.

This is one of the all-time great movie musicals, featuring classic songs and the legendary performances of Harrison, repeating his stage role after Cary Grant wisely turned down the movie job, and Stanley Holloway as Eliza's dustman father. Julie Andrews originated the role of Eliza on Broadway but producer Jack Warner felt that Andrews, at the time unknown beyond Broadway, wasn't bankable; Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961). Andrews instead made Mary Poppins, for which she was given the Best Actress Oscar, beating out Hepburn. The movie, however, won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Harrison, and five other Oscars, and it remains one of the all-time best movie musicals.

BONUS FEATURES:

• Commentary
• Vintage 1963/4 Featurettes, Footage & Audio
• Alternate Audrey Hepburn Vocals
• Show Me Galleries
  
• Comments on a Lady