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Displaying records 1 through 10 of 555 |
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Price: $14.95
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Sale: $14.78
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Manufacturer: Paramount
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Number of Items: 1
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Description: In Common Ground director Donna Deitch (Desert Hearts) uses three stories to explore attitudes toward homosexuality in the fictional small town of Homer, Connecticut, over a period of almost half a century. "A Friend of Dorothy's" tells the story of a girl who returns to Homer in 1954 after leaving the Navy. When it emerges that she was discharged after being arrested in a gay bar, she is ostracized by everyone except the owner of a local diner, a woman who has her own reasons for wanting to help Dorothy to escape. "M. Roberts" is set in 1974, when a gay teacher (Steven Weber) has to decide whether to jeopardize his career in order to help a troubled pupil who has been targeted by homophobic bullies. Finally, in present-day Homer, "Andy & Amos" follows the preparations for a gay wedding. While protesters gather on the town commons, Amos's father (Ed Asner) has to choose between long-held prejudices and his love for his son. Thanks to a Harvey Fierstein script that combines sexual politics with humor and believable characters, this is the most successful part of Common Ground. Ed Asner's gradual realization that his son's monogamous, long-term gay relationship is more conventional than most heterosexual marriages is deftly handled, achieving a balance between message and drama that the other stories lack. Despite the credentials of their authors (playwrights Paula Vogel and Terrence McNally) the first two segments feel more like lectures than stories. Their impact is weakened by clumsy dialogue (Dorothy's mother actually says, "I have no daughter") and stereotypical characters. The film's message is an important one: the road to equality is built upon the struggles and sacrifices of past generations. Unfortunately Common Ground is too uneven to deliver that message with the force it deserves. --Simon Leake
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Price: $14.98
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Sale: $89.95
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Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
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Number of Items: 1
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Description: Jeremy Irons gives another superb and underrated performance in M Butterfly, an elegant adaptation of the Broadway hit by playwright David Henry Hwang. Irons plays a French diplomat in China in 1964 who falls in love with a star of the Beijing Opera, not realizing that the entrancing performer holds secrets that will ruin his life--that the singer is a spy for the Communist government is only the beginning of the diplomat's troubles. Though M Butterfly may seem like a departure for director David Cronenberg (best known for horror and science fiction flicks like The Fly and Scanners), the themes of desire and self-deception fit comfortably into his oeuvre, alongside his adaptations of difficult novels like Naked Lunch and Crash. M Butterfly, like the more popular movie The Crying Game, is a cunning examination of love and denial. Also featuring John Lone (The Last Emperor). --Bret Fetzer
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Price: $9.95
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Sale: $0.50
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Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
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Number of Items: 1
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Description: Philadelphia wasn't the first movie about AIDS (it followed such worthy independent films as Parting Glances and Longtime Companion), but it was the first Hollywood studio picture to take AIDS as its primary subject. In that sense, Philadelphia is a historically important film. As such, it's worth remembering that director Jonathan Demme (Melvin and Howard, Something Wild, The Silence of the Lambs) wasn't interested in preaching to the converted; he set out to make a film that would connect with a mainstream audience. And he succeeded. Philadelphia was not only a hit, it also won Oscars for Bruce Springsteen's haunting "The Streets of Philadelphia," and for Tom Hanks as the gay lawyer Andrew Beckett who is unjustly fired by his firm because he has AIDS. Denzel Washington is another lawyer (functioning as the mainstream-audience surrogate) who reluctantly takes Beckett's case and learns to overcome his misconceptions about the disease, about those who contract it, and about gay people in general. The combined warmth and humanism of Hanks and Demme were absolutely essential to making this picture a success. The cast also features Jason Robards, Antonio Banderas (as Beckett's lover), Joanne Woodward, and Robert Ridgely, and, of course, those Demme regulars Charles Napier, Tracey Walter, and Roger Corman. --Jim Emerson
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Price: $24.95
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Sale: $59.95
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Manufacturer: Homevision
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Number of Items: 1
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Description: An early feminist classic, Maedchen in Uniform was originally banned in Germany and censored in the U.S. Set in a strict boarding school, the tale of a lonely girl's crush on a female teacher proved too sensual for many. With Eleanor Roosevelt's help, U.S. condemnation was reversed, and the film was later named best film of the year by the New York press. Today considered one of Germany's greatest films, the all-female production stands out for its sensitive acting and tender portrayal of female love.
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Manufacturer: Columbia/Tri-Star
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Number of Items: 1
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Description: Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil, and director André Téchiné collaborate for the second time (following their outstanding My Favorite Season) in a powerful story about a Paris cop (Auteuil) who comes from a criminal family. When his father and brother are murdered, suspicion shifts to his lover (actress Laurence Côté), who then disappears. Auteuil's character reluctantly teams up with her lesbian girlfriend (Catherine Deneuve) both to find her and clear her name. The gripping story is told in a nonlinear series of overlapping chapters taking place before, during, and after the killing. Time bends and shifts, forcing the action to ripple through an ever-widening pool of neuroses and tragedy. The best part of the film, however, is the always- mesmerizing cold-fusion chemistry between Deneuve and Auteuil, two great actors who never wear their hearts on their sleeves. --Tom Keogh
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Price: $14.98
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Sale: $0.75
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Manufacturer: New Line Home Video
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Number of Items: 1
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Description: Sometimes grace and hope come in surprising packages. The title character of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a would-be glam-rock star from East Germany, undergoes a botched gender-change operation in order to escape from the Soviet bloc, only to watch the Berlin Wall come down on TV after being abandoned in a trailer park in middle America. Hedwig gets involved with Tommy, an adolescent boy who steals her songs and becomes a stadium-filling musical act. Suffering from a broken heart and a lust for revenge, Hedwig follows Tommy's tour, playing with her band (the Angry Inch) at tacky theme restaurants. Into this simple storyline, writer-director-star John Cameron Mitchell packs an astonishing mix of sadness, yearning, humor, and kick-ass songs with a little Platonic philosophy tucked inside for good measure. A visually dazzling gem of a movie. --Bret Fetzer
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Price: $19.98
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Sale: $4.74
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Manufacturer: Saliva Films
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Number of Items: 1
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Description: This is the movie that made John Waters famous, and quite possibly the film that made bad taste cool. Yes, Virginia, a large transvestite actually eats dog feces as a kind of dizzying denouement to this frequently illogical and intentionally disgusting movie, but by the time that happens, you're already numb ... and you've possibly laughed to the point of losing bladder control. The plot revolves around two vile families laying claim to the title "The Filthiest People Alive." You've got pregnant women in pits, you've got grown men getting sexual satisfaction from chickens, you've got people licking furniture to perform trailer-park voodoo, and you've got classic lines like: "Oh my God! The couch ... it ... it rejected you!" Waters, who went on to direct genuine pop-culture classics such as Hairspray and Serial Mom, made this celluloid sideshow with one aim--to make a name for himself. It worked. He does have a genuine eye for filmmaking (when the trailer burns down, you feel the white heat of Divine's pain and anger). On the other hand, you won't notice any disclaimers about stunt doubles and animals not being mistreated. There weren't, and they were. Welcome to the filthiest film in the world. --Grant Balfour
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Price: $19.98
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Sale: $58.75
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Manufacturer: New Line Home Video
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Number of Items: 1
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Description: Set in L.A. over the course of one crazy day, this film surveys the emotional and sexual turmoil experienced by a multiracial, pan-sexual group of adolescents.
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Price: $9.98
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Sale: $9.99
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Manufacturer: Hallmark
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Number of Items: 1
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Description: This faithful broadcast TV remake of the classic Jule Styne/Stephen Sondheim musical looms as a career triumph for top-lined Bette Midler--and a bittersweet measurement of how far mainstream film and TV have retreated from the glories of musical theater. By the time Midler, as the mother of all stage mothers, observes, "I was born too early and started too late," it's only too obvious that the star's words are an ironic inversion. Had Midler been born earlier, she certainly would have reigned as a major musical comedy star. In a role form-fitted to Ethel Merman's brassy persona and brassier voice, Midler more than holds her ground musically and, especially, dramatically. Titled partly for its source, the life of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, Gypsy alludes as well to the itinerant life of her family. The show's focal point isn't the titular character, but rather her manipulative mother, Mama Rose (Midler), who channels her own frustrated dreams of stardom into Baby June, the curly blonde daughter who always eclipses sister Louise. The story follows Rose's machinations as she tirelessly reinvents June to defy the passage of time and even puberty itself. By the time Louise herself conquers the marquee as Gypsy Rose Lee, Rose's single-minded focus has alienated her long-suffering lover and agent, Herbie (a well-cast Peter Riegert), and surrendered to the inherent compromise of burlesque. Midler's Rose reveals glimpses of vulnerability and a delusional monstrousness that provide a dark, gritty subtext. Studded with wonderful songs, the Styne/Sondheim score underlines those themes deftly, especially in Sondheim's multileveled lyrics. This Gypsy also benefits from uniformly nifty casting: in addition to Reigert (Crossing Delancey, Local Hero), Cynthia Gibb slowly blooms as Louise, and Jennifer Rae Beck, Andrea Martin, Christine Ebersole, and erstwhile new-wave singer Rachel Sweet are delights. --Sam Sutherland
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Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
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Number of Items: 1
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Displaying records 1 through 10 of 555
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