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Victor Borge was a master at combining two seemingly disparate elements: comedy and classical music. While the Dane's dapper dignity fit the image of "longhair" music, Borge undercut it with broad physical comedy, clever spoofs, and off-the-cuff wit. A pioneer in the field of live comedy recordings, Borge is nevertheless best appreciated on video, and The Best of Victor Borge Acts One and Two captures a 90-minute concert that includes many of his most famous routines. He chides late-arriving members of the Minneapolis audience ("I come from Copenhagen and was here before you!"), falls off the piano bench, and reads his sheet music upside down. There are a few unwitting guests: a stagehand drafted to turn Borge's pages, soprano Marylyn Mulvey who tries to sing a Verdi aria through Borge's teasing and scolding, and Sahan Arzruni as he and Borge play a two-piano Hungarian rhapsody on a single piano by climbing over and around each other. Borge also presents an opera "written by Mozart but credited to Salieri" ("so you can imagine what kind of opera it is") and proves that he's not merely a clown by skillfully performing a set of waltzes and lullabies. In addition, two of his best-loved sketches are nonmusical: Inflationary Language, in which numbers in language, like the economy, are increased ("I'll go back to Elevenessee.... Three-dleoo."), and Phonetic Punctuation, in which a period is read aloud to sound like fft and an exclamation point fsss fft. Like Anna Russell and PDQ Bach, Victor Borge helped make classical music accessible to a wide audience by showing that it could be laugh-out-loud funny. --David Horiuchi

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Great routines, but truncated recording disappointing

Victor Borge is as funny as ever in this 90-minute live performance. He is thoroughly engaged, very lively, and manages to deliver even his most common routines with such energy and humor that you feel as if you're seeing them for the first time.

That said, the recording has some flaws. The first you will notice is that the video quality, though not distracting, is nevertheless poor. It's painfully obvious that this DVD was mde from a VHS cassette. The one that most disappointed me most, though, is that "The Best of Victor Borge Acts I and II" is just that--the best of them, not the whole thing. Seven years ago, I purchased a videocassette of this same concert. Since the tape has gotten worn to the point of being unusable, I purchased this DVD expecting to have all of Acts I and II. Sadly, several routines are fully removed, including Borge's birthday sketches and his performance of the Moonlight Sonata. His performance of "Clear the Saloon" and several other pieces have also been cut from the recording. For this reason, although I don't outright regret the purchase, I'm profoundly disappointed with it.

A musical upstart - Excellent

Comedy with a difference. What!? No swearing????
Todays comedian often resort to expletives to get their humour across. Victor is old school, very talented musically and is funny to all ages. For the young a very funny introduction to the classics.

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William Marshall, a Shakespearean actor with a rich baritone voice, enriches this otherwise bland blaxploitation vampire film with his strong, seductive performance. He's Manuwalde, a European-educated 18th-century African prince who appeals to the Count Dracula for help in ending the slave trade. Dracula, never known as a great emancipator, puts the bite on Manuwalde's troubles, dubs him "Blacula" (the only time the name is uttered in the film), and imprisons him in a casket. Stirred to life, so to speak, centuries later in Los Angeles by gay antique hunters, he steps into the soulful '70s and splits his energies between feeding his bloodlust and wooing a young beauty (Vonetta McGee), a dead ringer for his long-dead wife. Thalmus Rasulala (Friday Foster) is a modern medical professor turned urban Van Helsing, and Elisha Cook Jr. has a bit part as a coroner with a hook for a hand. The potential for a clever urban black twist on the European vampire myth is lost in this dull, thoroughly conventional tale. Marshall is under enough sloppily applied facial hair to make him a wolfman, and his victims walk around with a plastic blue pallor. But despite the limitations, Marshall creates a magnetic, aristocratic character and infuses his monster with a sense of loss and sadness in the climax. It was followed by a sequel, Scream, Blacula, Scream, and inspired Blackenstein. For a more interesting and thoughtful African American take on the vampire legend, look to Ganja and Hess. --Sean Axmaker

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Yes, he's back, and he's still hungry. Ten years after The Silence of the Lambs, Dr. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins, reprising his Oscar-winning role) is living the good life in Italy, studying art and sipping espresso. FBI agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore, replacing Jodie Foster), on the other hand, hasn't had it so good--an outsider from the start, she's now a quiet, moody loner who doesn't play bureaucratic games and suffers for it. A botched drug raid results in her demotion--and a request from Lecter's only living victim, Mason Verger (Gary Oldman, uncredited), for a little Q and A. Little does Clarice realize that the hideously deformed Verger--who, upon suggestion from Dr. Lecter, peeled off his own face--is using her as bait to lure Dr. Lecter out of hiding, quite certain he'll capture the good doctor.

Taking the basic plot contraptions from Thomas Harris's baroque novel, Hannibal is so stylistically different from its predecessor that it forces you to take it on its own terms. Director Ridley Scott gives the film a sleek, almost European look that lets you know that, unlike the first film (which was about the quintessentially American Clarice), this movie is all Hannibal. Does it work? Yes--but only up to a point. Scott adeptly sets up an atmosphere of foreboding, but it's all buildup for anticlimax, as Verger's plot for abducting Hannibal (and feeding him to man-eating wild boars) doesn't really deliver the requisite visceral thrills, and the much-ballyhooed climatic dinner sequence between Clarice, Dr. Lecter, and a third unlucky guest wobbles between parody and horror. Hopkins and Moore are both first-rate, but the film contrives to keep them as far apart as possible, when what made Silence so amazing was their interaction. When they do connect it's quite thrilling, but it's unfortunately too little too late. --Mark Englehart

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With a voracious trio of mako sharks wreaking havoc, Deep Blue Sea dares to up the ante on Jaws, but director Renny Harlin trades the nuanced suspense of Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster for the trickery of the digital age. In other words, why build genuine terror when you can show ill-fated humans getting torn into bloody chunks? The aforementioned makos have been lab rats in an effort to harvest a miracle cure for Alzheimer's disease from the brains of sharks, but the research has an unfortunate side effect: the sharks get smarter, and they're determined to break out of Aquatica, the deep-sea complex where they've been penned.

Model-actress Saffron Burrows plays the researcher; Thomas Jane pulls double-duty as shark expert and action hunk; Samuel L. Jackson's the corporate sponsor who chooses the worst time for an Aquatica tour; and rapper LL Cool J is nicely cast as Aquatica's cook and comic relief. Michael Rapaport, Jacqueline McKenzie, and Stellan Skarsgård round out the cast, most of whom are turned into shark food as the makos turn Aquatica into a floating junkyard. Harlin takes devilish pleasure in providing sudden, unexpected shocks--no small feat in such a derivative thriller--and as a series of action set-pieces, Deep Blue Sea never disappoints. It's inevitable that Burrows should end up in her underwear like Sigourney Weaver in Alien, but even then the movie offers a credible reason for the strip-down; that Deep Blue Sea can be simultaneously ridiculous and sensible is just another one of its shlocky charms. --Jeff Shannon

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Like the hit album that inspires its name, Supernatural Live brings journeyman guitarist Carlos Santana back into the mainstream by surrounding him with younger superstars eager to bask in his formidable musical presence. Resuscitating stardom through sheer proximity can translate to forced pairings or superfluous music making, but credit Santana himself with minimizing such missteps. A fusion artist before the term was coined, the erstwhile Mexican street musician long ago extended his technical reach and broadened his stylistic palette by hungrily assimilating different styles of music. Accordingly, he shifts gears easily, whether soloing behind Dave Matthews, trading lines with legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter, or spicing up a hip-hop excursion with Lauryn Hill.

Santana justifiably taps into the late '90s' breakout for Latin pop, hardly surprising in light of his early identification with Latin-rock via his 1968 recording debut. His early reworking of Tito Puente's classic "Oye Como Va" thus pops up as the set closer, while the concert kicks off with a frenetic, horn-powered "(Da Le) Yaleo," given added spectacle by a swaying corps of lissome female dancers in feathered headgear. Elsewhere, the guitarist hosts a procession of the stars that added their marquee value to the Supernatural album, including Rob Thomas (the massive hit, "Smooth," here performed as a medley with "Dame Tu Amor") and Everlast. But a duet with label colleague Sarah McLachlan on "Angel" yields the concert's only anticlimax--on a ballad built from spare piano and a poignant lyric, Santana's innate taste leaves him little to contribute beyond a delicate tracery of classical guitar.

Production values are excellent, with crisp camera work and sound mixing. A special remote camera, mounted on the neck of Santana's guitar, presents his intricate fretwork in nifty close-ups that are wisely held to just a few songs. --Sam Sutherland

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Filming on Blood for Dracula began on location in Italy on the same day that filming of Flesh for Frankenstein ended, and knowing this enhances one's appreciation of director Paul Morrissey's delightfully twisted--and defiantly artistic--approach to violent, campy horror. Originally titled Andy Warhol's Frankenstein and Andy Warhol's Dracula, both films are blessed by Morrissey's opulent visual style (he and his Italian cinematographer worked wonders with modest budgets), and both showcase Udo Kier and the languorous hunk Joe Dallesandro in opposing roles. Here we find Udo Kier as Count Dracula, looking even more ashen than usual and desperate for the blood of virgins to restore his waning health. He travels to Italy and stays at the fading estate of a once-wealthy family, and the presence of four lovely, sexually inexperienced daughters turns out to be a recipe for disaster. It so happens that only the youngest daughter is actually a virgin, and by process of elimination Dracula discovers that non-virgin blood makes him violently ill! Dallesandro plays the resident handyman--handy in more ways than one, as the daughters have learned--who dares to protect the remaining virgin from the Count's bloodsucking exploits, and as usual director Morrissey finds ample opportunity to combine sex and gore with outrageous sensibility and logic of plot. As in the case of Flesh for Frankenstein, this Criterion Collection DVD restores the film to its original director's cut, presented in its original aspect ratio with a supplemental commentary by Morrissey, Kier, and critic Maurice Yacowar. Kier is particularly delightful, observing during one gruesome scene that "vomiting looks great when you've got a tuxedo on." --Jeff Shannon

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The Dark Star's crew is on a 20-year mission to destroy unstable planets and make way for future colonization. The smart bombs they use to effect this zoom off cheerfully to do their duty. But unlike Star Trek, in which order prevails, the nerves of this crew are becoming increasingly frayed to the point of psychosis. Their captain has been killed by a radiation leak that also destroyed their toilet paper. "Don't give me any of that 'Intelligent Life' stuff," says Commander Doolittle when presented with the possibility of alien life. "Find me something I can blow up." When an asteroid storm causes a malfunction, Bomb Number 20 (the most cheerful character in the film) has to be repeatedly talked out of exploding prematurely, each time becoming more and more peevish, until they have to teach him phenomenology to make him doubt his existence. And the film's apocalyptic ending, lifted almost wholly from Ray Bradbury's story "Kaleidoscope," has the remaining crew drifting away from each other in space, each to a suitably absurd end. Absurd, surreal, and very funny. John Carpenter once described Dark Star as "Waiting for Godot in space." Made at a cost of practically nothing, the film's effects are nevertheless impressive and, along with the number of ideas crammed into its 83 minutes, ought to shame makers of science fiction films costing hundreds of times more. The DVD contains both the original 68-minute release and the director's full version. --Jim Gay

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George Cukor helped transform a moody Victorian stage melodrama (previously filmed in Britain in 1939) into a gothic Hollywood romantic thriller. Ingrid Bergman stars as a meek, uncertain heiress courted and married in a whirlwind romance by the debonair Charles Boyer, but when they move back into her childhood home she begins losing her grip on reality and becomes convinced that her husband is trying to drive her insane. Joseph Cotten, rather stiff and colorless next to the anguished Bergman and charming and lively Boyer, is the heroic Scotland Yard detective who becomes enamored of the skittish woman who is slowly succumbing to madness. The grand, glorious sets and elegant photography recall Hitchcock's Rebecca, another lush Hollywood gothic melodrama of a retiring young wife overwhelmed by the history of her abode, and Gaslight is still assumed by some to be a Hitchcock film (the Bergman connection doesn't help the confusion). It's really a rather straightforward thriller with a forced plot device, but under Cukor's control the tightly constructed script is given the full MGM treatment, then reined in for intimate moments of harrowing suspense. Boyer brilliantly played off his continental lover reputation by adding an undercurrent of malevolence and Bergman won an Oscar for her haunted performance. It also marks the memorable debut of Angela Lansbury as a saucy maid unwittingly drawn into Boyer's master plan. --Sean Axmaker

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Combining peculiar whimsy with elements of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Barefoot in the Park, and Love Story, this enjoyably nonsensical romantic comedy has built a small but loyal following since its release in 1968. Like Somewhere in Time on a modest scale, Sweet November was a well-kept secret among hopeless romantics until a remake in 2001 (starring Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron) made it ripe for rediscovery. Rarely have sweet schmaltz and tear-jerking melodrama been so delicately employed, and the whole thing would be utterly ridiculous if it weren't for the delightful casting of Sandy Dennis and Anthony Newley--both at the height of their popularity, and both irresistible in their fairy-tale roles. (The costars reportedly battled off camera, which might explain their oddly energetic chemistry.)

Sandy is Sara Deever, nearly 23 and hiding a secret that will eventually explain her strategy of inviting a new man to live with her--with platonic affection--for one month at a time. It's romance on an installment plan, and Charlie Blake (Newley) is Sara's catch for November--a British businessman and aspiring poet who takes up residence in Sara's quirky Brooklyn Heights apartment. He's quick to fall in love, and his devotion grows touchingly intense when Sara's secret is revealed. Some will reach for Kleenex, others will roll their eyes, but Sweet November--like Sara, in all her eccentric vulnerability--has the courage of its convictions. Just when you think it's going to end predictably, it throws a curve ball that's memorably poignant. --Jeff Shannon

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November is the Sweetest Month

How wonderful there are reviews by customers who so much like this movie. who have also longed to see it again and who have waited for it to be available. I too love it, have remembered it vividly ever since it was first released, and think it a great thing to have it finally here.

Anthony Newley and Sandy Dennis worked beautifully together. Theodore Bikel is so comforting, strong and protective. It is a tender, sad and beguiling story by Herman Raucher, every bit the equal of his "Summer of '42" and that is complimenting it indeed. A rare and heady blend of deepest emotion, of what love can do to persons, and what the terrible thrusting of the end of the world causes--the bittersweet romance, the gone away, but not in the heart ever leaving, the one special romance that aches the soul is always the finest, the most cherished.

Unabashedly bigger than life, very much an old fashioned "romantic film," filled with happiness and passion, and captivating. I've loved Anthony Newley for most of my life. Sandy Dennis is one of my favorite actresses. It needed no remake. Keneau Reeves in the Newley role? Oh, please, no. There is just this one and only classic November. It is impossible not to weep when Charlie so desperately wants Sweet November to stay, to capture the fleeting time, and to make a calander with only that month forever on it, caught in amber.

Which is what this film has done. How can anyone not fall in love with a story in which Charlie names the sweater Sarah makes for him, because he loves it, "Rex"? New York has never been more captivating. Michel LeGrand's music is sublime. Fall and Thanksgiving and Sarah and Charlie and a most creatively sided box, and snow falling on the skylight. What more could a person wish for? The final magnificent song by Newley and Leslie Bricusse, sung in that electrifying Newley voice that will never be equaled, as the snow comes falling down around him on a park bench, his final goodbye, encompassing all the knowledge Sarah has given to him, for all hellos are goodbyes in disguise, breaks my heart every time I hear it. There can be no better, wiser "sentimental education."

Even if Sandy Dennis did not look like my first love, I would have liked her immensely--tender, sad and trembly always it seemed, a delicate rose at the beginning of Fall, all the more lyrical for that. But November can't stay; it's why autumn is so magical. Now that both actors are so sadly gone, we have this gift of love and innocence to remember them by; a study of the kind of affection that counts, that gets into the bones, and joyous memories edged with the patina of sadness. New York in autumn has always seemed the best place in the world to me. This film has proven me right.

Forever bless Anthony Newley, a giant of the musical stage, a sad sweet wise clown whose heart always seemed to be breaking; nevermore so than here. And Sandy Dennis, "mostly woman, mostly child."

The heart remembers, for that way, November is never "wintry and gray". Thanks to grand films like this, we see firmly, just why.

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Maybe "nobody's perfect," as one character in this masterpiece suggests. But some movies are perfect, and Some Like It Hot is one of them. In Chicago, during the Prohibition era, two skirt-chasing musicians, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), inadvertently witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. In order to escape the wrath of gangland chief Spats Colombo (George Raft), the boys, in drag, join an all-woman band headed for Florida. They vie for the attention of the lead singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a much-disappointed songbird who warbles "I'm Through with Love" but remains vulnerable to yet another unreliable saxophone player. (When Curtis courts her without his dress, he adopts the voice of Cary Grant--a spot-on impersonation.) The script by director Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is beautifully measured; everything works, like a flawless clock. Aspiring screenwriters would be well advised to throw away the how-to books and simply study this film. The bulk of the slapstick is handled by an unhinged Lemmon and the razor-sharp Joe E. Brown, who plays a horny retiree smitten by Jerry's feminine charms. For all the gags, the film is also wonderfully romantic, as Wilder indulges in just the right amounts of moonlight and the lilting melody of "Park Avenue Fantasy." Some Like It Hot is so delightfully fizzy, it's hard to believe the shooting of the film was a headache, with an unhappy Monroe on her worst behavior. The results, however, are sublime. --Robert Horton

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