Mickey Rooney: The Long & Short Of It - This career-spanning collection features Mickey Rooney at his finest. "Mooch Goes to Hollywood" (1971) has Rooney, Vincent Price, and others following the adventures of a pooch trying to make it big in Tinseltown. Deranged Hollywood make-up artist Mickey abducts a young actress (Luana Anders) and holds her in an abandoned studio in "The Manipulator" (1971). AKA: "B.J. Lang Presents." And inept detectives John Candy and Lawrence Dane try to nab a kidnapper (Rooney) in "Find the Lady" (1976). AKA: "Call the Cops," "Kopek and Broom." Two of child star Rooney's "Mickey McGuire" shorts--"Mickey's Surprise" (1929) and "Mickey's Revolution" (1931)--are featured with the "best of" compilation "Mickey the Great" (1946), along with a 1954 episode of "The Mickey Rooney Show," the "Playhouse 90" drama "The Comedian," the WWII short "Show Business at War" (1943), and trailers from classic Rooney films. Six-disc set also includes "Officer 13," "The Big Chance," "The Lost Jungle," "Little Pal," "Little Lord Fauntleroy," "Hoosier Schoolboy," "Love Laughs at Andy Hardy," "The Big Wheel," "Quicksand," and "My Outlaw Brother." 23 hrs. total. Standard; Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital stereo.
Make Way For Tomorrow (1937) - Serving as an inspiration for Yasujiro Ozu's classic character study "Tokyo Story," this classic melodrama from director Leo McCarey tells the heart-tugging story of an elderly couple (Victor Moore, Beulah Bondi) who are forced to live apart when the bank forecloses on their home. While their grown children treat them as a burden, Moore and Bondi continue to express their profound love for each other. With Thomas Mitchell, Fay Bainter. 92 min. Standard; Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital mono; interviews.
George Bernard Shaw On Film - George Bernard Shaw's "Major Barbara" (1941) offers a pointed look at capitalism and social "do-gooders," starring Rex Harrison as a teacher smitten with heiress-turned-Salvation Army worker Wendy Hiller. Robert Morley co-stars as Hiller's father, owner of a munitions factory and target of his daughter's anti-business crusades. With Deborah Kerr, Robert Newton. Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh are "Caesar and Cleopatra" (1945) in an epic adaptation of Shaw's witty look at life in Ancient Egypt, politics, and the romance between the stalwart Roman commander and the seductive Queen of the Nile. With Flora Robson, Stewart Granger, Ernest Thesiger; co-scripted by Shaw. Travel back to Ancient Rome in "Androcles and the Lion" (1952), the filmed adaptation of Shaw's classic fable of a stalwart slave who removes a thorn from a lion's paw and gains a friend. But will their friendship carry them through a bout at the Colosseum? Alan Young, Jean Simmons, and Victor Mature star. 5 3/4 hrs. total on three discs. Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital mono.
British Film Noir: Twilight Women (1952)/The Slasher (1953) - This pair of dark mysteries from "across the pond" opens with "Twilight Women," in which a singer left homeless after her boyfriend is arrested for murder winds up in a squalid boardinghouse for unwed mothers whose owner sells the babies to childless couples. Rene Ray, Laurence Harvey, Freda Jackson, Lois Maxwell star. AKA: "Women of Twilight." Next, James Kenney is a blackjack-wielding juvenile delinquent in post-WWII London who leads his gang into increasingly violent doings in the controversial drama "The Slasher." With Robert Ayres, Hermione Baddeley, and Joan Collins as Kenney's girlfriend. AKA: "Cosh Boy." 150 min. total. Standard; Soundtrack: English mono.
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