DVD Collectors Online

Mädchenjahre einer Königin, a review by Tom

Now I have to start to stretch the Cinderella theme a little.
This movie is an old "kitsch" classic in Austria and Germany from the year 1954. This is the first collaboration of Romy Schneider with writer/director Ernst Marischka. The following year they started making the famous Sissi trilogy. This movie is in the same vain as that trilogy.
The story: A young queen does not want to wed into an arranged marriage and therefore flees. On the run she meets a young man in a pub and falls in love with him. What she doesn't know: The young fellow she falls in love with is the prince she is supposed to marry. But both do not know of each others real identity yet.

(From Weekend Movie Marathon: Cinderella Stories on January 20th, 2008)

Grand Hotel, a review by Rich

Academy Award Best Picture winner 1932

Grand Hotel



The creme de la creme of MGM's pantheon gathers at the luxurious GRAND HOTEL, where "nothing ever happens." Greta Garbo is at her most radiant and poetic as the melancholy ballerina who finds a reason to dance again after she falls for the down-and-out Baron (John Barrymore) who planned to rob her. In another room a ravishing young secretary (Joan Crawford) succumbs to the advances of an arrogant industrialist (Wallace Beery). In yet another, a fatally ill office clerk (Lionel Barrymore) spends his life savings in a desperate effort to derive some pleasure from this bleak and brief existence. Downstairs at the bar, a disfigured doctor (Lewis Stone) dispenses wry commentary as people come and go. This precedent-setting ensemble piece of frothy, bubbly, tear-jerking super soap cemented the A-list status of its director, Edmund Goulding. It's an oft-imitated, never duplicated spectacle; the old Hollywood star system lighting up the sky with all the wattage at its disposal.

For such an expensive Hollywood epic and an Oscar winner, this was pants. Yawnsville all the way through, 1932 must have been a very lean year for releases if this was the best offering. Even trying to put everything in context regarding when this movie was produced, I could not warm to it at all, neither was it a comedy or a drama.
The plot does not stand modern day examination, I found the storyline stiff, the acting wooden, Garbo wanders around in a trance looking depressed, wanting 'to be alone', and the murder scene laughable even considering the rules regarding showing violence at the time of production. Perhaps the only escapee is Crawford as the stenographer, who shines above the rest.
Most interesting part when watching this film was a phone call I received from a double glazing salesman trying to cold sell me new windows, I wouldn't let him go for fear of having to press play again to watch the rest of movie!


(From Riches Random Reviews on February 4th, 2009)

My PILOT Marathon, a review by Rich

CSI: NY: The Complete First Season

Blink
The team finds three young women, all of whom appear to have been brutalized in the same way. With a possible serial killer on hand, the only witness they have is the one of the three who survived, but she can only communicate through blinking. Photographs found at one of the crime scenes lead the team to a couple that had sponsored one of the victims, the boyfriend who claims he hasn't spoken to her in weeks, and the owner of one of the buildings a photo was taken from.



The third edition of the "CSI" franchise sets up shop in the Big Apple, where taciturn Detective Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) and his partner, Detective Stella Bonasera (Melina Kanakaredes), lead a crime-solving team. Like his counterparts in Las Vegas and Miami, Taylor knows that people may lie, but the evidence rarely does.

A vast improvement over the CSI Miami 1st episode, this felt slicker, and the major improvement was a convincing lead actor in Gary Sinise backed up by some good support cast.
The downside is what I found in the other pilot, the solving of the case was just too easy, quick use of lasers to re-fingerprint, and the killer confesses up with no pressure at all, in a Hollywood version of "it's a fair cop guv, you got me banged to rights". In fact I'd go as far as saying based on the 2 pilots of CSI viewed that the suspense and mystery is akin to a scooby doo cartoon. Neither have I warmed to the cast as I did with shows such as NCIS.
But as this is such a popular show with so many people, I am sure that it must develop and the characters become more interesting, so i will definately give the whole series a try in the near future.
 

(From My PILOT Marathon on September 27th, 2009)