Tag: pat and mike

Top 10 Disc Releases Of 2020

As has more or less been established here, I very much enjoy watching movies on physical media, whether Blu-ray or DVD (depending on what’s available). Of course, with some Blu-ray releases, I also enjoy getting to see the movies restored and looking better than they have in years! So, with regards to the many movies released on physical media in 2020, here’s my list of what I think are some of the best releases for the year!  Again, my thoughts are coming ONLY from what I have been able to see myself. I do NOT receive screeners of any kind (nor, quite frankly, would I want to), these are all movies I myself bought. These are chosen from among the 2020 releases I have seen, as of 11/25/2020. Admittedly, the list only includes stuff released up through October 2020, as my budget (and Christmas getting closer) didn’t leave me room for any November releases (or December, since, as I said before, I don’t get any screeners and therefore could not see any of those releases before their official release date). So, this list is what it is (but, I will give a shout-out to some of the others afterwards).  And if any of these appeal to you, be sure to click on the movie titles to use my affiliate links to go to Amazon and buy them!

  1. Sergeant York (1941) (Warner Archive Collection, Blu-ray, My Rating: 10/10)
    • Gary Cooper stars in this classic biographical film about World War I hero Alvin York. With the original camera negative long gone (possibly as far back as the 1950s), this movie hasn’t looked that great for some time. But, the good people at Warner Archive have put in a lot of effort and time (more than a year, from the sound of things) to get this movie looking better than it has in a LOOOONNNG time! And of course, it’s a wonderful movie, too (has to be, for a big musical fan like myself to claim it as the best release of the year over a number of other big musicals that I also like)! Full review here.
  2. Show Boat (1936) (Criterion Collection, Blu-ray and DVD, My Rating: 10/10)
    • The 1936 version of Show Boat, starring Irene Dunne and Allan Jones is considered to be the best version of the three. This year, it made it out on Blu-ray, featuring a new 4K restoration. That restoration brings this wonderful film to life, with its wonderful music, fun comedy, and all-around great performances from the cast. This new release was a treat to see, and certainly comes with some of my highest recommendations for the year! Full review here.
  3. Love Me Tonight (1932) (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, My Rating: 10/10)
    • The third of four movies pairing Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald (and the first to make it to Blu-ray), this pre-Code has Maurice as a tailor who has to impersonate a baron to get money owed him, but falls in love with the princess, played by Jeanette. The new Blu-ray from Kino looks fantastic with its new 4K remaster, and it’s extras are also quite interesting. A film I’ve looked forward to seeing after hearing it was coming, and neither the movie nor the presentation disappoints! Full review here.
  4. Girl Crazy (1943) (Warner Archive Collection, Blu-ray, My Rating: 10/10) (Full review here) &
  5. Strike Up The Band (1940) (Warner Archive Collection, Blu-ray, My Rating: 9/10) (Full review here)
    • This year, we finally got two of the Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland “let’s put on a show” team-up movies on Blu-ray! Strike Up The Band features Mickey Rooney as a high school orchestra leader, with Judy as a singer, and Girl Crazy features Mickey being sent out to a Western college to get away from girls (and, wouldn’t you know, Judy just happens to be the only one there). Both films are wonderful (obviously, everybody will get different mileage out of them), with wonderful new transfers that leave them both looking better than they have in years! I’d certainly suggest grabbing both of them (especially if you want to see at least their other two “let’s put on a show” films make the jump to Blu-ray, along with some of the other films they worked together on)!
  6. Pat And Mike (1952) (Warner Archive Collection, Blu-ray, My Rating: 10/10) (Full review here) &
  7. Without Love (1945) (Warner Archive Collection, Blu-ray, My Rating: 9/10) (Full review here)
    • Here we have another pair of films featuring a classic screen team, and this time, it’s Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn! In Pat And Mike, Katharine is a rising golf and tennis player, and Spencer Tracy is the sports promoter who helps her to get into all the tournaments where the big money is. In Without Love, they play a pair of scientists who decide to try a marriage without love, while they work on some stuff for the government. Both films give us that classic Tracy and Hepburn chemistry, and both films have been given new transfers that are sure to wow! Again, if you want more of the Warner-owned films they made together (or apart), I would certainly recommend looking into this pair of Blu-rays!
  8. Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) (Warner Archive Collection, Blu-ray, My Rating: 10/10)
    • Esther Williams stars in this biographical film about Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman. It’s considered one of her best films (partly because it doesn’t require as many plot devices to get her into the water), and I would definitely agree! And, of course, it’s been restored for Blu-ray, allowing us to see the color and detail in those swimming sequences even better now than before! One I think is certainly worth consideration! Full review here.
  9. Holiday (1938 and 1930) (Criterion Collection, Blu-ray and DVD, My Ratings: 10/10 for 1938 and 6/10 for 1930)
    • With this classic 1938 film, we have the third of the four films pairing up Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. Here, he plays a self-made man now engaged to one of the elite, but has to face off with their way of living as it clashes with his own ideas. The 1938 film has been restored for this release, and I’ll say that it certainly looks fantastic! And among the extras is the 1930 version (which, along with the 1938 film, features Edward Everett Horton as part of the cast)! See review for 1938 film here, 1930 film here and my comments comparing the two films here.
  10. Africa Screams (1949) (Classicflix, Blu-ray and DVD, My Rating: 9/10)
    • This Abbott and Costello film is a must on this list, in my opinion. While the film may not be Bud and Lou at their absolute best, it’s still close enough, especially with this newly restored Blu-ray or DVD! After a successful Kickstarter campaign in December 2019, this public domain film was restored by Bob Furmanek and his team the the 3-D Film Archive, and it looks better than it has in years! Throw in a host of fun extras, and this really is one of the best releases of 2020! One last note, though: this is a limited edition, and I’m hearing that this one is getting close to sold out, so, if you want it, don’t delay, or you’ll regret it! Full review here.

Special Honorable Mention:

Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 1 (Warner Archive Collection, Blu-ray)

While not a set of movies, this collection is still a lot of fun. It includes nineteen shorts directed by animation legend Tex Avery, with nine of his one-shots alongside series including Screwy Squirrel, George & Junior and Droopy. All of the shorts have been given restorations from 4K scans of the best available elements, with the results juts about as good as you can hope for! And, just as good, Volume 2 has just been announced, so if you haven’t got the first volume yet, be sure to look into it (and be prepared to laugh at all the screwball antics)! Full review here.

Honorable Mentions: Kentucky Kernels (1934) (Warner Archive, Blu-ray), Romance On The High Seas (1948) (Warner Archive, Blu-ray), Murder, He Says (1945) (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray)

While 2020 has been a very tough year because of the pandemic, for classic film fans, it has been a great year of releases on physical media! For me personally, the pandemic hitting certainly forced me to step back and re-evaluate the types of movies I was willing to look into. In my mind, Warner Archive Collection won the year again, after a somewhat slow start (that admittedly did have a few titles that I was glad to see make it out on Blu-ray). They really upped their output of pre-1954 films, throwing in three-strip technicolor movies, musicals, and other big, long-awaited classics on Blu-ray. As I said, I can only claim to have seen some of this year’s releases up through October, but November has a few that I look forward to seeing, including Libeled Lady and the finally restored to its original glory The Pirate with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly. And, oh, what a December it will also be, with a few Christmas holiday classics coming, like The Shop Around The Corner, It Happened On Fifth Avenue and Holiday Affair, plus The Harvey Girls (I don’t think they’ve released enough Judy Garland on Blu-ray this year, do you? 😉 ), Mister Roberts (1955), and more! With all their musical output this year, I’m certainly a happy camper (I wish Fred Astaire could have been represented, but they said in one of their podcasts earlier in the year that they were working on one of his films, so I guess that gives me something to look forward to in 2021)! And, while it’s not a title I myself am interested in, due to its genre, I do want to plug Warner Archive’s Blu-ray release of the 1933 film The Mystery Of The Wax Museum. A film originally made in the Two-Color Technicolor process but considered, for a time, to be lost, it has been restored in collaboration with UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Film Foundation (and is the only way to see the restoration, as Warner Archive’s reissue of the later 1953 remake House Of Wax still includes the old transfer as an extra, and not the new restoration).

And Warner Archive were hardly the only label to have a good year of releases, either! Kino Lorber has been digging further into Universal’s catalog, both through films licensed through a second deal, as well as a few releases that they worked on remastering/restoring from the first one, all of which resulted in a number of three-film boxsets featuring various actors and actresses and a couple different film genres, like noir and westerns. Criterion has, through their licensing deals with all the studios, managed to get a few wonderful releases out, including two Warner-owned Buster Keaton silent comedies, as well as one Show Boat, plus a number of other big films. And Classicflix has been busy, releasing many Hal Roach streamliners (movies with shorter runtimes, usually about an hour) on DVD only, along with their Blu-ray and DVD releases of Africa Screams, Zenobia (1939) and the Marx Brothers film A Night In Casablanca. Despite the pandemic, 2020 has been filled with MANY wonderful releases on Blu-ray and DVD (and not enough funds to get them all), and I can only hope that 2021 manages to be better yet (both in terms of getting past the pandemic and getting more classic movie releases on disc)!

Previous years:

2019

2018

What’s Old Is A New Release Again (2020) with… Pat And Mike (1952)

As you can tell from the title, this time around, we’re here for the classic 1952 movie Pat And Mike, starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn!

Pat Pemberton (Katharine Hepburn), the women’s athletic coach at Pacific Technical College, is dragged into a game of golf with a potential donor and his wife. Pat’s fiance, Collier Weld (William Ching), wants her to partner with the donor in hopes that he will win and donate to the college. However, Collier unnerves her, which results in her and the donor losing. After listening to the unsolicited golfing advice from the donor’s wife, Pat forces her to sit and watch her hit several good shots in a row. Afterwards, she is approached by Charles Barry (Jim Backus), who asks her to consider going pro. When Collier comes in, she tells him about it. He’s not thrilled, and tries to dissuade her, but she decides to quit her job at the college and go pro. At her first tournament, she does really well. Watching her is sports promoter Mike Conovan (Spencer Tracy), who suggests she could make some serious money by fixing it to come in second, to which she refuses. However, as it comes down toward the end, she sees Collier watching and, unnerved, makes enough mistakes to come in second. Undaunted, she goes to Mike, asking him to manage her, especially since she can do a few other sports, like tennis. After she signs with him, he starts up training her, forbidding smoking, drinking, men, etc. In various tennis matches, she does really well. However, in one match against Gussie Moran, Collier comes to watch her, and she gets rattled again, losing the match. Afterwards, Collier and Mike get into an argument about whether she should stay or go, angering Pat as she believes nobody else “owns” her. She joins Mike at his training camp, where he is also training boxer Davie Hucko (Aldo Ray) and his racehorse. There, she is able to admit to Mike that seeing Collier is what keeps getting to her. The two start getting closer, and Mike tries to get Collier to stay away from her. Right before the next golf tournament, some of Mike’s investors come, with the intention of convincing Pat to lose on purpose since they were betting against her. She refuses, and even helps Mike fight back. More trouble comes, though, as Collier arrives, and tries to convince Pat to leave. The question is, will she leave, or will she be able to overcome her problem?

Pat And Mike is the seventh of nine films that Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn made together. The movie was written by Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon specifically for Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. They particularly gave Katharine Hepburn a chance to show off her own natural athletic abilities, considering she herself was a very good golfer and tennis player. The movie featured a number of sports stars playing themselves, including Gussie Moran, Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Frank Parker (who also acted as a technical advisor and coached Katharine Hepburn).

While I have only had occasion to see this movie a few times, it’s one that I will readily admit to enjoying whenever I do! Obviously, the script is wonderful, but the performances are what make the movie worthwhile. William Ching does a great job as Collier, with his constant negging that undermines Pat’s self-confidence, effectively “jinxing” her whenever he is watching. And, we can see that, as Spencer Tracy’s Mike says, he doesn’t want an equal partnership, as he keeps trying to tell Pat what to do instead of letting her decide. Aldo Ray as the boxer Davie Hucko is pretty hilarious, especially when he obsesses over the attention Mike is giving to Pat instead of him, and then, when he talks about “fighting” himself (after he talked with Pat). Of course, considering the later reputation of one actor in this film, there is some more humor that wouldn’t have meant as much at the time. Charles Bronson, billed under his birth name of Charles Buchinsky (even thought the credits mis-spell it as “Buchinski”), plays a thug, but is beaten up and becomes afraid of Katharine Hepburn’s Pat. Of course, we also get the great Jim Backus in an all-too-brief appearance as another golf pro, who suggests Pat become a pro herself.

But, obviously, we’re here for the two leads, as they continue to display the chemistry that had brought them together for six films before this! Katharine Hepburn is wonderful here, as we see her character struggle with her self confidence, especially when dealing with her fiance, yet we see that she is strong enough to try fighting for her own life instead of just giving in to him completely. Then there is Spencer Tracy, whose character starts out somewhat corrupt and thinks himself a pretty macho guy, although he is willing to treat Pat as a partner. Of course, as the movie goes on, he becomes less corrupt and has to come to terms with his own issues, especially when Pat takes down the two thugs causing him trouble. A wonderful pair of performances, with a great story and great support from the rest of the cast. I certainly have no problem whatsoever with recommending this fun movie!

This movie is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Warner Archive Collection. For the new Blu-ray, they used a 4K scan of the original camera negative, and it looks fantastic! Again, I have limited experience with this movie (and don’t remember how it looked in standard definition), but I like this transfer! With all the dirt and debris cleaned up, and a picture devoid of scratches, this is easily the best way to view this fantastic movie!

Film Length: 1 hour, 35 minutes

My Rating: 10/10

Audience Rating:

*ranked #6 in Top 10 Disc Releases Of 2020

List Of Actor/Actress Filmographies/Collections

Father Of The Bride (1950) – Spencer Tracy – Desk Set (1957)

The Philadelphia Story (1940) – Katharine Hepburn – Desk Set (1957)

Coming Up Shorts! with… Hasty But Tasty (1969)

(available on Blu-ray and DVD as part of The Ant And The Aardvark from Kino Lorber)

Welcome to my new feature on various theatrical shorts! Sometimes my comments will be on shorts included as extras on a disc set I am reviewing, and other times, they will be completely unrelated to the movie being reviewed (and I will try to indicate which). Hope you enjoy!

(Length: 6 minutes, 16 seconds)

The aardvark tries to catch the ant, who is using a small motorcycle to get the food away from the picnic.  A bit of fun here, particularly with a recurring gag of a portable hole the aardvark tried to use, which keeps floating in and out.  The formula of predator vs. prey is still here, obviously, but the fun is still in watching the aardvark’s plans and traps fail Wyle E. Coyote-style!   Worth a few good laughs, anyway!

And stay tuned for more of Coming Up Shorts! featuring more of the Ant And The Aardvark (and the eventual post on the entire set), along with other shorts!