American Flyers/Victory

Description

Before he stepped to the plate in Bull Durham or teed off in Tin Cup, Kevin Costner leaned into the curve and rode like the wind in American Flyers, an exciting tale set in the competitive world of elite bicycle racing. John Badham (Saturday Night Fever) directs from a script by Steven Tesich (Breaking Away). And a ragtag team of World War II Allied POWs takes on German all-stars in a soccer match intended to prove Aryan superiority in Victory. Legendary John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen) directs Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, Max von Sydow, real-life soccer greats (including Pele) and others. Go-o-o-o-oal!

Customer Reviews:

A HIPAA disaster.......2007-05-07

I remembered this movie as being good when I was a kid - it inspired me to cycle. Then I ordered it & watched it again...OMG...HIPAA!!! His brother the doctor gives him an MRI & all these medical tests but doesn't tell him why...then he wakes up from a medical procedure & stumbles around the hospital till he encounters his medical record laying there unattended & he can hear them in the next room talking about how he has a life-threatening brain tumor but they're not going to tell him until after the big race. Then everyone pretends he's ok, and he humors them by pretending he doesn't know, and still races his best, anyway.
They could use this movie to make an instructional film about what NOT to do with confidential medical information. They could throw popcorn at the screen every time there's a HIPAA violation.
What's chilling is that Lance Armstrong got a brain tumor & this movie was made way before Lance Armstrong's time.

2 Ways To Enjoy This Riotous Musical Classic!.......2005-03-06

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" is the story of Adam Pontipee (Howard Keel), the eldest of a rough and tumble breed of backwoodsmen living in Oregon. When Adam returns to his dilapidated cabin with Milly (Jane Powell) as his wife, he sets his brother's minds and hearts awhirl with convoluted notions of doing the same. There's just one problem: the troupe is about as couth and gentile as that proverbial bull in the china shop. So Milly sets to work on molding gentlemen out of these ruffians. MGM, the most lavish purveyors of musical entertainment quashed director, Stanley Donen's desire to film on anything beyond a soundstage, resulting in some pretty obvious looking sets and very claustrophobic staging. Regardless, the film abounds with riotous exuberance and rollicking charm. The outstanding sequence remains the "Barn-Raising Ballet" - a fifteen minute tour de force in which the brothers - newly polished up - take on the cultured town's men for the affections of the town's women and come up the undisputed winners.

So too is Warner Brothers newly minted two disc special edition of this classic musical a winner. Featuring both the Cinemascope original (this time anamorphically enhanced for 16:9 displays) and a recently discovered 1:85:1 print, we get to see twice as much as before. There are differences in both clarity and saturation. The lesser seen 1:85:1 print exhibits colors that are more rich, vibrant and bold than the Cinemascope original. This is partly due to the 1:85:1's lesser screenings - hence, better preservation of the original camera negative; but more to the point, because the 1:85:1's color was processed by Technicolor while the Cinemascope version has been struck from prints made by rival color process - Ansco. In both cases, contrast levels are bang on. Black levels are deep and solid. There's only the slightest amount of age related artifacts and minor edge enhancement. The Cinemascope version appears slightly less stable, with subtle flickering during darker scenes. Neither presentation will distract. The audio is dated by features a newly cleaned up and aggressive 5.1 mix. Extras include a new audio commentary track, the previously released documentary on the making of the film and the film's theatrical trailer. Bless your beautiful hide! This is one humdinger of a good show!

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