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Mrs Santa Claus (Clam)
: :Much closer to Hello, Dolly! than your usual Christmas special, Mrs. Santa Claus joins two distinct genres: holiday family fare and the Broadway musical. This song-studded extravaganza was especially designed for TV by Broadway legend Jerry Herman, whose songs are just as incorrigibly catchy on the small screen as they are on the stage. Herman uses one of his favorite leading ladies from the theater, Angela Lansbury, in a tale of Santa's 'invisible wife,' who takes the reindeer off for an impulsive week-long adventure in New York City. Unexpectedly becoming a ...
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Apollo 13
: essential video:NASA's worst nightmare turned into one of the space agency's most heroic moments in 1970, when the Apollo 13 crew was forced to hobble home in a disabled capsule after an explosion seriously damaged the moon-bound spacecraft. Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton play (respectively) astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise in director Ron Howard's intense, painstakingly authentic docudrama. The Apollo 13 crew and Houston-based mission controllers race against time and heavy odds to return the damaged spacecraft safely to Earth from a distance of 205,500 ...
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Purple Hearts
:Description:During the Vietnam War, a doctor and nurse meet and fall in love.
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A Bug's Life
: :There was such a magic on the screen in 1995 when the people at Pixar came up with the first fully computer-animated film, Toy Story. Their second feature film, A Bug's Life, may miss the bull's-eye but Pixar's target is so lofty, it's hard to find the film anything less than irresistible. Brighter and more colorful than the other animated insect movie of 1998 (Antz), A Bug's Life is the sweetly told story of Flik (voiced by David Foley), an ant searching for better ways to be a bug. His colony ...
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Lord of Flies (1963)
:Description:The brilliant theater director Peter Brook brings William Golding's macabre novel to the screen in the original film adaptation of Lord of the Flies. Stranded on a remote and desolate island, a group of British schoolboys try to organize themselves into a law-abiding society: 'After all, we're not savages--we're English,' one of them proclaims. Civilization is quickly forgotten as the band of boys descend into savagery and anarchy. Brute force and blind authority become the standards of behavior in this brilliantly sardonic tale of lost innocence. Digital transfer supervised by cinematographer ...
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Voyage of the Damned
:Description:The brilliant theater director Peter Brook brings William Golding's macabre novel to the screen in the original film adaptation of Lord of the Flies. Stranded on a remote and desolate island, a group of British schoolboys try to organize themselves into a law-abiding society: 'After all, we're not savages--we're English,' one of them proclaims. Civilization is quickly forgotten as the band of boys descend into savagery and anarchy. Brute force and blind authority become the standards of behavior in this brilliantly sardonic tale of lost innocence. Digital transfer supervised by cinematographer ...
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Gladiator
: essential video:A big-budget summer epic with money to burn and a scale worthy of its golden Hollywood predecessors, Ridley Scott's Gladiator is a rousing, grisly, action-packed epic that takes moviemaking back to the Roman Empire via computer-generated visual effects. While not as fluid as the computer work done for, say, Titanic, it's an impressive achievement that will leave you marveling at the glory that was Rome, when you're not marveling at the glory that is Russell Crowe. Starring as the heroic general Maximus, Crowe firmly cements his star status both ...
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Nixon
: essential video:Oliver Stone's controversial drama about the Nixon years in the White House stars Anthony Hopkins in a genuinely great performance as the scandal-plagued president. The film attempts to wed suggestions of Nixon's formative experiences as a boy to his political connections with shady movers and shakers and finally to his self-destructive tenure in the Oval Office. The Watergate scandal is revisited rather impressionistically--it may be hard for viewers who weren't alive then to get a sense of what the crisis was about. The parade of stars playing figures in ...
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Massacre of Burkittsville 7: Blair Witch Leg
: essential video:Oliver Stone's controversial drama about the Nixon years in the White House stars Anthony Hopkins in a genuinely great performance as the scandal-plagued president. The film attempts to wed suggestions of Nixon's formative experiences as a boy to his political connections with shady movers and shakers and finally to his self-destructive tenure in the Oval Office. The Watergate scandal is revisited rather impressionistically--it may be hard for viewers who weren't alive then to get a sense of what the crisis was about. The parade of stars playing figures in ...
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Fisher King
: essential video:Arthurian mythology and modern day decay seem perfect complements to each other in this Terry Gilliam drama/comedy/fantasy. Shock jock Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) makes an off-handed radio remark that causes a man to go on a killing spree, leaving Lucas unhinged with guilt. Lucas's later, chance meeting with Parry (Robin Williams), a homeless man suffering from dementia, gets him involved in the unlikely quest for the Holy Grail. The rickety, and patently unrealistic stand that insanity is just a wonderful place to be, and that the homeless are all ...
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