The Classic Musicals Collection - Broadway to Hollywood (Easter Parade Two Disc Special Edition /...

The Classic Musicals Collection - Broadway to Hollywood (Easter Parade Two Disc Special Edition / The Band ... | Gene Kelly, Van Johnson | Five of the Best Color Musicals Ever Made

DVDs:

The Classic Musica...

	The Classic Musicals Collection - Broadway to Hollywood (Easter Parade Two Disc Special Edition / The Band ... Gene Kelly, Van Johnson Warner Home Video, 2005 average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Broadway to Hollywood: The Classic Musicals Collection is a five-film set of fondly remembered, mostly MGM musicals: Easter Parade (1948), The Band Wagon (1953), Bells Are Ringing (1960), Finian's Rainbow (Warner, 1968), and Brigadoon (1954). Four of the films are making their DVD debut, all are available separately (for a higher price), and the two best films, Easter Parade and The Band Wagon, come in two-disc special editions complete with commentary tracks, new and vintage documentaries, and musical outtakes. Both of those films star Fred Astaire following his return from premature retirement. Easter Parade is a Pygmalion-like tale of a Vaudeville veteran (Astaire) who attempts to develop an act with a small-timer (Judy Garland) after his partner (Ann Miller) leaves him. Favorite songs include the title tune, "Steppin' Out with My Baby," and "We're a Couple of Swells." The Band Wagon was a sort of career retrospective for Astaire, as he plays an aging film star trying to resurrect his career by returning to the Broadway stage. Costars include Cyd Charisse, Jack Buchanan, Oscar Levant, and Nanette Fabray, and favorite numbers include "Dancing in the Dark," "By Myself," "Triplets," and "A Shine on Your Shoes."

Bells Are Ringing is a charmingly dated Vincente Minnelli film starring Judy Holliday, in a reprise of her Tony-winning Broadway role as an employee at an answering service who finds herself falling for a client (Dean Martin). Favorite songs include "Just in Time" and "The Party's Over." Finian's Rainbow is a bloated oddity directed by a young Francis Ford Coppola and starring Astaire as a leprechaun and '60s pop icon Petula Clark as his daughter. It does have some great songs, however, including "How Are Things in Glocca Mora," "When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love," and "Old Devil Moon." Brigadoon has been out on DVD twice before, but appears now in its best version yet, remastered, anamorphically enhanced, and with musical outtakes. It stars Gene Kelly and Van Johnson as Americans who stumble across a Scottish village that only appears on Earth one day every 100 years, which is a problem when Kelly falls in love with one of its residents (Cyd Charisse). Favorite songs include "Almost Like Being in Love," "The Heather on the Hill," and "I'll Go Home with Bonnie Jean."

While none of the films in the Broadway to Hollywood collection are absolutely top-tier MGM (and Astaire, Garland, and Kelly all made better films in their careers), all have their charms and are welcome additions to the DVD catalog. Trivia note: The title of the set isn't 100% correct. Easter Parade did not originate as a Broadway musical, but Tommy Tune made an unsuccessful attempt to adapt the movie into a Broadway show in the late 1990s. --David Horiuchi

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Thank You, WB!

The wonderful folks at Warner Home Video have outdone themselves recently with several amazing boxed sets of great films. We now have definitive batches of the best of Film Noir, Classic Comedy, Gangster Films--and this beauty, my favorite so far. The sheer brilliance of the technical work that went into restoring these classic musicals is reason enough to pounce on Amazon's bargain price while it lasts.

What can you say about the films themselves that hasn't already been said? THE BAND WAGON is the crown jewel here, of course, but the others are excellent. EASTER PARADE is terrific. BELLS ARE RINGING, though not the strongest story or score around, has B'way legend (and Oscar-winner) Judy Holliday in her final star vehicle. And BRIGADOON has all that dancing in the heather, not to mention the stunning score of Lerner & Loewe.

For me, the most pleasant surprise in the box is FINIAN'S RAINBOW. I'm familiar with all the other titles here, but I'd never really looked at this one all the way through before, and it's visually impressive and surprisingly charming. Astaire, Petula Clark, Tommy Steele, Don Francks, and an energetic supporting cast of singer/dancers do wonders with the dated story and timeless score. And young Francis Ford Coppola had some fresh and interesting visual ideas (montage, cross-cutting, swooping aerial shots, etc.) to keep it all humming along. Coppola is unnecessarily self-effacing throughout his commentary track--he has no reason to apologize. With its restored widescreen picture and 5.1 stereo soundtrack, this film is really quite beautiful.

All in all, this is yet another must-have collection for all serious film buffs. Thanks again, Warner Home Video!

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Five of the Best Color Musicals Ever Made

BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD is Warner Home Video's blanket title for five of the splashiest and most tuneful color MGM musicals ever made: THE BAND WAGON, EASTER PARADE, BRIGADOON, BELLS ARE RINGING, and FINIAN'S RAINBOW.

Two of these are sleeper gems. Vincente Minnelli's BRIGADOON (1954), with an army of musical numbers by Lerner and Loewe, has travelers Gene Kelly and Van Johnson coming upon a Scottish village that can only be seen once every hundred years; Cyd Charisse is the lovely leading lady. The movie has been criticized for its sound stage re-creation of a Scottish village, but that is a plus for me. Along with CinemaScope, one gets the feel for what this show was like on Broadway. A dozen songs, choreographed by Kelly, include "The Heather on the Hill" and "It's Almost Like Being in Love." BRIGADOON is a lovely movie, with remastered color and sound. Bonuses include three outtake musical numbers and several original theatrical trailers.

Francis Ford Coppola does brand-new audio commentary on his own fabulous FINIAN'S RAINBOW (1968), in Technicolor and letterboxed Panavision. Again, we are mostly on a soundstage, with Fred Astaire and Tommy Steele as leprechauns and Petula Clark at her loveliest as Astaire's daughter. This E.Y. Harburg-Fred Saidy-Burton Lane musical has songs I cannot get out of my head weeks later, including "Look to the Rainbow,""That Old Devil Moon," "How Are Things In Glocca Mora?" and Steele's show-stopper: "If I'm Not With the Girl I Love, I'll Love the Girl I Am With." The movie is glorious and very underrated, from a late 1960's era of underrated movie musicals, including STAR! and HELLO, DOLLY!

BELLS ARE RINGING.(1960), with Vincente Minnelli directing a delightful Betty Comden-Adolph Green screenplay, with Jule Styne music, is a great musical vehicle for wonderful Judy Holliday, re-creating a Tony winning stage role. She is a switchboard operator named Melasande at Susanswerphone in a lower-depths part of Manhattan. She is not supposed to get personally involved with the clients, but as "Mom" falls in love with songwriter Dean Martin. She also does not know that bookie Eddie Foy, Jr. is using the answering service as a gambling front. Terrific songs here include the legendary "Just in Time" and "The Party's Over". DVD bonuses, in addition to remastered color and sound, include outtake musical numbers and a filmmaking documentary. You also get to see a CinemaScope movie at its right aspect ratio.

The two crown jewels of the BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD set are double disks of Charles Walters' EASTER PARADE (1948) and Vincente Minnelli's THE BANDWAGON (1953). Both have magnificently remastered sound and picture to look and sound brand new. EASTER PARADE has about fifteen old and new Irving Berlin songs, performed by the incomparable Fred Astaire and Judy Garland. Its magnificent bonuses include the finest Garland documentary, two full hours from PBS, that I have ever seen; a filmmaking documentary; and audio commentary by Astaire's daughter Ava and Garland biographer John Fricke. This is an all-time favorite musical of mine, and I have never enjoyed it more.

Last and probably best (which is saying a lot!) is THE BANDWAGON (1953), which several movie musical experts feel is the best movie musical of all time. It is certainly one of the most sophisticated and stylish color ones, with a wonderful Oscar-nominated Comden and Green screenplay about putting on a Broadway show. Astaire stars this time with lovely Cyd Charisse, never better than in "Dancing in the Dark." Other hit songs include "By Myself," "Shine on My Shoes." "Triplets," "Louisiana Hayride," the gorgeously-designed Mickey Spillane climax, and "That's Entertainment!" Comden and Green have a delightful time spoofing themselves as the Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant characters. The biggest bonus here is audio commentary by a very happy and friendly Liza Minnelli and Michael Feinstein, along with a filmmaking documentary and an hour-long "Men Who Made the Movies" documentary on Vincente Minnelli.

If you'd like to own this DVD boxed set, BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD, it retails for about $60, but sells from Amazon for about $45, less than an orchestra ticket for a downtown San Francisco stage show. Happy viewing!

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brigadoon is short-changed

This set was given to me a few months ago. My personal interest is in Brigadoon. Cyd and Hugh are probably the greatest dancers to ever crossover (and Mr Kelly doesn't count since he was never really on the other side). What angers me about the transfer of the film version to dvd is that it was edited. DVD transfer is an opportunity to realize a film's full life. The version of Brigadoon in this collection is clearly formatted for some kind of commercial-tv presentation. The beautiful and crucial number "Come to Me Bend to Me" is formatted as an outtake, as if there wasn't time for it in the tv format. I remember when the film was released in 1964. All of us in the production had a sense that this was a show that could delight and move people who would never see a stage production. I cannot fathom why the people that gained the rights to the dvd transfer did nothing more than dump a tv-commercial-edited version onto a piggy-back of a multi-dvd set--they don't know the show, or don't give a damn

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Old Gold...

While all the musicals in this collection are well worth the price my favorites are The Band Wagon and the incomparable Bells Are Ringing. Have Fun!

reviews: page 1, 2

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