Few ’30s classics have held up as well as this MGM blockbuster, a costume thriller that in spirit is quite faithful to the great Charles Dickens novel. Heroes don’t come more sophisticated or noble than Ronald Colman’s Sydney Carton, nor as vile as Basil Rathbone’s Marquis St. Evrémonde. David O. Selznick’s impeccable production hits all the right notes and even downplays the ‘save the royals’ sentiments. This is the one where the Bastille gets stormed and a chortling hag cheers every drop of a guillotine blade. The show even has a connection to producer Val Lewton. Just remember that activities like capitol-storming and public executions need to stay back in the 18th century where they belong.
A Tale of Two Cities
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1935 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 126 min. / Street Date February 9, 2021 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan, Edna May Oliver, Donald Woods,...
A Tale of Two Cities
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1935 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 126 min. / Street Date February 9, 2021 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan, Edna May Oliver, Donald Woods,...
- 2/6/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Ronald Colman in A Tale Of Two Cities (1935) will be available on Blu-ray February 2nd from Warner Archive – Ordering info can be found Here
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Charles Dickens’ tale of love and tumult during the French Revolution comes to the screen in a sumptuous film version by the producer famed for nurturing sprawling literary works: David O. Selznick. Ronald Colman (The Prisoner of Zenda) stars as Sydney Carton – sardonic, dissolute, a wastrel…and destined to redeem himself in an act of courageous sacrifice. “It’s a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done,” Carton muses at that defining moment. This is far, far better filmmaking too: a Golden Era marvel of uncanny performances top to bottom, eye-filling crowd scenes and lasting emotional power. Revolution is in the air!
Special Features: “Audioscopiks” (MGM short); Two Classic Cartoons “Hey,...
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Charles Dickens’ tale of love and tumult during the French Revolution comes to the screen in a sumptuous film version by the producer famed for nurturing sprawling literary works: David O. Selznick. Ronald Colman (The Prisoner of Zenda) stars as Sydney Carton – sardonic, dissolute, a wastrel…and destined to redeem himself in an act of courageous sacrifice. “It’s a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done,” Carton muses at that defining moment. This is far, far better filmmaking too: a Golden Era marvel of uncanny performances top to bottom, eye-filling crowd scenes and lasting emotional power. Revolution is in the air!
Special Features: “Audioscopiks” (MGM short); Two Classic Cartoons “Hey,...
- 1/18/2021
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
It’s hard to outdo the mix of humanity and tragedy in the conclusion of A Tale Of Two Cities, but David Simon and George Pelecanos sure try—and they put Sydney Carton’s trip to the guillotine in there to boot. Midway through the pilot of The Deuce, a prostitute and one of her regular clients watch the conclusion of…
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- 9/11/2017
- by Erik Adams
- avclub.com
Andrew Reynolds is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.
Sit down dear reader and let Brian Blessed, one time potential Second Doctor, Prince ‘Gordon’S Alive!’ Vultan and, to me at least, Sydney Carton in Roland Rat: The Series adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities; spin you a time-bending yarn about the time he thought he’d killed Peter Capaldi. When asked by...
The post When King Yrcanos Decked The Doctor! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.
Sit down dear reader and let Brian Blessed, one time potential Second Doctor, Prince ‘Gordon’S Alive!’ Vultan and, to me at least, Sydney Carton in Roland Rat: The Series adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities; spin you a time-bending yarn about the time he thought he’d killed Peter Capaldi. When asked by...
The post When King Yrcanos Decked The Doctor! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.
- 10/10/2014
- by Andrew Reynolds
- Kasterborous.com
You’re gonna want to sit down for this one, Roger. No baloney, it is dynamite. I’m not pitching it to anyone else. After what we did together on the Alan Colmes revenge fantasy I’m All That’s Left, I can’t imagine anyone else but you producing this one … though I’m meeting with Imagine tomorrow about something else. Anyway … Are you ready for this? Are you ready for this? It’s Trading Places meets Look Who’s Talking … Right? I know. Genius. Stay with me now.
You know how Kim Kardashian and Kate Middleton are pregnant?...
You know how Kim Kardashian and Kate Middleton are pregnant?...
- 6/12/2013
- by Jeff Labrecque
- EW.com - PopWatch
This week on Celebrity Apprentice the teams had a simple task: Create an interactive experience that perfectly captured the atmosphere of South Africa. The food. The culture. The music. The feeling. More specifically, the Romance and the Adventure. Plan B — reduced to the Power Trio of Penn, Lisa, and Uncle Gary — took Romance. Power handled Adventure, which in this case means “Guy in a Shark Suit” and “Marilu Henner Giving Everyone Rolling-Chair Rides.” I’m filling in for Dalton Ross this week, and my full recap will be up at 2 Am (Update: Click here for Darren’s full Celebrity Apprentice...
- 4/22/2013
- by Darren Franich
- EW.com - PopWatch
Ah, France — good wine, great mimes, the best accordion players you could ever find. It's a bastion of culture in an uncultured world; just ask anyone from France and they'll tell you. And as the new international blockbuster "Les Misérables" (now on DVD and Blu-ray) proves, it's also a country filled with amazing history that is perfectly suited for big-screen epics.
Which got us thinking: Is there any place on Earth that has had more historical dramas than France? Sure, there have been plenty of good old-fashioned American period pieces — what with Hollywood being in America and all — but there's just something about France and its complicated history that keeps bringing filmmakers back for more.
So with that in mind, we've put together our ultimate guide to the history of France as told through through the movies. Viva la cinema!
'Henry V' (1989)
Well, this is probably a bit...
Which got us thinking: Is there any place on Earth that has had more historical dramas than France? Sure, there have been plenty of good old-fashioned American period pieces — what with Hollywood being in America and all — but there's just something about France and its complicated history that keeps bringing filmmakers back for more.
So with that in mind, we've put together our ultimate guide to the history of France as told through through the movies. Viva la cinema!
'Henry V' (1989)
Well, this is probably a bit...
- 3/25/2013
- by Scott Harris
- NextMovie
Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises completes not only his personal trilogy focusing on socialite Bruce Wayne and his alter ego, Gotham City's caped crusader, but also a cycle of popular culture that began in May 1939 when Batman was added to Detective Comics' pantheon of superheroes.
Batman's creator Bob Kane and his fellow comic-strip artists were all admirers of Fritz Lang's German movies, the forerunners of film noir, but this did not prevent them from becoming the object of a ferocious assault by Eisenhower-era moralists bent on suppressing horror comics during a crusade led by the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham. His 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent, attacked Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson's menage as a covert celebration of homosexuality. Ten years later, however, when Susan Sontag's seminal essay Notes on Camp promoted kitsch and the idea of "it's good because it's bad", Batman became a TV...
Batman's creator Bob Kane and his fellow comic-strip artists were all admirers of Fritz Lang's German movies, the forerunners of film noir, but this did not prevent them from becoming the object of a ferocious assault by Eisenhower-era moralists bent on suppressing horror comics during a crusade led by the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham. His 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent, attacked Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson's menage as a covert celebration of homosexuality. Ten years later, however, when Susan Sontag's seminal essay Notes on Camp promoted kitsch and the idea of "it's good because it's bad", Batman became a TV...
- 7/23/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
“Don’t be afraid.” Those were the dying words of Thomas Wayne, said to his traumatized young son after being shot behind a theater by a thug named Joe Chill. The scene in Batman Begins resonates anew with eerie irony — and hopefully, a little inspiration — one day after the opening of The Dark Knight Rises and the tragedy in Aurora. Despite the terror felt nationwide following the violence in Colorado, and even in spite of it, moviegoers packed into multiplexes yesterday to watch the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy of Batman movies. And now, you have questions, opinions, quibbles,...
- 7/21/2012
- by Jeff Jensen
- EW.com - PopWatch
Farewell, My Queen (Les adiex à la reine) Cohen Media Group Reviewed for Shockya by Harvey Karten Grade: B- Director: Benoît Jacquot Screenwriter: Gilles Taurand, Benoît Jacquot, from Chantal Thomas’s novel of historical fiction Cast: Diane Kruger, Léa Seydoux, Virginie Ledoyen Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 6/21/12 Opens: July 13, 2012 Every schoolboy used to know that in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton, a drunken lawyer who never accomplished anything meritorious in his life, sacrificed himself to the guillotine to benefit Lucie, the unrequited love of his life, thereby allowing her to marry the aristocrat whose place he assumed on the final page of the novel. [ Read More ]...
- 6/24/2012
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
There have been more than 400 film and TV adaptations so far, and counting, some brilliant, some memorably awful
The opening credits of BBC1's new three-part adaptation of Great Expectations (27-29 December) show a chrysalis cracking open to reveal a pair of trembling wings. A few seconds later this delicate emergence is replaced on screen by the escaped convict Magwitch (Ray Winstone) erupting from the stagnant waters of the Essex marshes. Covered in blood and slime, he is at once the monster of nightmares and a huge misshapen baby gasping its first breath.
In a single sequence, the director Brian Kirk gets to the heart of Dickens's novel as a fable of rebirth and renewal. Together with Sarah Phelps, the screenwriter, he has created a world in which characters are forever seeking to transform themselves – or each other. A spookily young Miss Havisham (Gillian Anderson), still cocooned in her tatty wedding dress,...
The opening credits of BBC1's new three-part adaptation of Great Expectations (27-29 December) show a chrysalis cracking open to reveal a pair of trembling wings. A few seconds later this delicate emergence is replaced on screen by the escaped convict Magwitch (Ray Winstone) erupting from the stagnant waters of the Essex marshes. Covered in blood and slime, he is at once the monster of nightmares and a huge misshapen baby gasping its first breath.
In a single sequence, the director Brian Kirk gets to the heart of Dickens's novel as a fable of rebirth and renewal. Together with Sarah Phelps, the screenwriter, he has created a world in which characters are forever seeking to transform themselves – or each other. A spookily young Miss Havisham (Gillian Anderson), still cocooned in her tatty wedding dress,...
- 12/24/2011
- by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
- The Guardian - Film News
Moments before attempting to shove a foam pie in the face of embattled News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch, a British comic and activist known online as Jonnie Marbles tweeted, “It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before #splat.”
Quoting A Tale of Two Cities’ martyr Sydney Carton to justify a pie in the face demonstrates gross delusions of grandeur, but there is some historical precedence for the provocative act. A pie in the face may have its origins in the slapstick films of Mack Sennett, Laurel & Hardy, and the Three Stooges, and...
Quoting A Tale of Two Cities’ martyr Sydney Carton to justify a pie in the face demonstrates gross delusions of grandeur, but there is some historical precedence for the provocative act. A pie in the face may have its origins in the slapstick films of Mack Sennett, Laurel & Hardy, and the Three Stooges, and...
- 7/19/2011
- by Jeff Labrecque
- EW.com - PopWatch
Johnny Marbles, Wendi Deng Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch Where was the News of the World when you most needed it? During Britain's political circus known as hackergate, comedian Johnny Marbles apparently felt News Corp. ruler Rupert Murdoch, though a "greedy billionaire," looked hungry and wanted to offer him a little pie. However, Marbles' kindly act was cut short by The Woman in Grey (British spelling) in the Channel 4 News Twitpic posted above. I'm assuming she was starving — those hackergate hearings are to salivate over — and wanted the pie for herself. She must have reasoned: Murdoch, whose octopus-like company has more than enough dough to bribe police and buy political votes from all the whores in the British Parliament (and elsewhere), can certainly afford to buy his own pie. Perhaps sensing that The Woman in Grey (TWiG) was going to run away with the pie without offering anyone a slice, The...
- 7/19/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
They're Happy To Be Hooked
By Agnes Eckhardt Nixon
Chief writer of the current serial Another World and creator of One Life To Live, which starts July 15
New York Times
July 7, 1968
Time after tedious time, when critics suffer an aridity of fresh, inventive phrases with which to denigrate a film, play or book, they fall back on "soap opera"; it has become the classic cliché of derogation.
But the critic cannot be singly criticized when his attitude is shared by a good part of the television industry itself. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, for example, did not simply fail to give an Emmy to any soap opera: by having no award category for them, it failed to recognize their existence.
Of course, after viewing the recent fiasco of the Emmy awards, it may well be considered a mark of distinction to have been ignored by this group.
By Agnes Eckhardt Nixon
Chief writer of the current serial Another World and creator of One Life To Live, which starts July 15
New York Times
July 7, 1968
Time after tedious time, when critics suffer an aridity of fresh, inventive phrases with which to denigrate a film, play or book, they fall back on "soap opera"; it has become the classic cliché of derogation.
But the critic cannot be singly criticized when his attitude is shared by a good part of the television industry itself. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, for example, did not simply fail to give an Emmy to any soap opera: by having no award category for them, it failed to recognize their existence.
Of course, after viewing the recent fiasco of the Emmy awards, it may well be considered a mark of distinction to have been ignored by this group.
- 7/15/2011
- by Roger Newcomb (We Love Soaps)
- We Love Soaps
In the current age of remakes and sequels and prequels and reboots and preboots, resurrecting a classic film from the viewpoint of the original’s villain sometimes qualifies as “outside the box” thinking. For example, there’s Malificent, Disney’s plan to tell the Sleeping Beauty tale from the point of view of the sorceress; and Pan, in which Aaron Eckhart’s Captain Hook will be a hero detective on the trail of child killer. (Heck, the entire Star Wars prequels were about getting to the heart of Darth Vader!)
Now Fox Animation is planning an animated version of King Kong,...
Now Fox Animation is planning an animated version of King Kong,...
- 6/7/2011
- by Jeff Labrecque
- EW.com - PopWatch
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