Not a good effort from Warner Archive
923614
"Dipomaniacs" is one of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey's best pre-code comedies. There are lots of surreal gags along with several dance numbers populated with dancing girls in scanty costumes. My favorite is the "Oompah" dance routine performed by "Indian maidens" (direct from the RKO casting office) at the beginning of the movie.

Wheeler and Woolsey are a couple of clueless barbers on an Indian reservation who are hired by the chief of the "Indian Nation" to go to the Geneva Convention and represent Native Americans' oil interests in the United States. Granted, the chief could have selected a couple of representatives with brains, but then there would not have been a movie.

This wacky 1933 RKO film was the brainchild of the legendary Joseph L. Mankiewicz who also wrote the screenplay. "Diplomaniacs" also has a dream cast including Louis Calhern as a diplomatic spy, Phyllis Barry as a "Dragon Lady" type and leader of a band of cutthroats, and Hugh Herbert as a Chinese sidekick to Calhern.

In one memorable scene, Herbert decides to row back to China from Geneva (over 2,000 miles), When he arrives on the shores of China (that looks a lot like Santa Monica beach), he is greeted by his not-too-happy wife. This domestic exchange ensues:

Wife: "Where have you been for five years? Your dinner is cold."

Herbert: (Looking around and seeing several children below the age of five) "Where did these children come from?"

Wife: "Don't ask questions. Come eat your dinner."

Herbert: (Looks at the camera, shrugs his shoulders, then wraps his arms around everyone and says) "Come along Madame Butterfly. Come along children."

But the real scene-stealer in the movie is cute, perky blonde Marjorie White who has been recruited by the spies to "vamp" Bert Wheeler. Instead, she quickly falls in love with him and will stop at nothing to get him to the alter.

In one early scene, Marjorie is attempting to "vamp" Bert Wheeler on the deck of the ship headed for Geneva.
In typical pre-code comedy banter:

Marjorie: (whispering in Bert's ear) "Let's sing a song."

Bert: "How about 'One Hour With You'?"

Marjorie: "Okay, but let's sing a song first."

Years ago, I owned this film in the VHS format and the picture and sound were great. I was expecting the same thing when I ordered this DVD produced by Warner Archive. I'm sad to say, that the picture quality of this film is fair at best. For the most part, the picture is dark all the way through.

Also, there are lots of dirt specks and even a few splices. I can live with those, but the dark picture is something that could have been corrected before Warner Archive released "Diplomaniacs." It shows a real lack of respect by Warner Archive for this film and for the people who buy it.

But if you don't mind sitting through a film that is far from TCM quality, then it may be worth the time and effort to see this wonderfully crazy pre-code Wheeler and Woolsey comedy.
2302494
Terrible DVD transfer with non-stop flicker that appears to be due to built-in copy protection.  It was fun to see this (rather poorly made in the first place) movie after all these years, but damn, the transfer is bad.  Even worse its six years after Space: 1999 revolutionized effects for films like this and this looks like they never saw or learned from a single episode.  It just looks cheap and silly, as it did when it premiered in theaters.

For a remake of High Noon in space it's okay, but it could have been so much more.  That said, it's great to see a young Frances Sternhagen (Bunny McDougall from Sex and the City).  This is the first film I ever saw her in and I've enjoyed her screen exploits ever since.

The two stars are for the film itself.  The DVD quality should be a negative star.
3970591
At paying full price at $29.99 at Barnes & Noble and reading that it was a restored print from George Eastman House, I was expecting a lot more than what I saw.  The DVD from a few years ago was better than this, though still flawed and needing further restoration.  I give 2 stars only that the story is still one of the greatest regarding Hollywood of yesteryear.  The transfer to Bluray is a shear disappointment, sound & picture, especially when one of the trailers for "Nothing Sacred" with Carole Lombard that is included in the Features portion is in so much better shape than this film.  That film was restored.  Someone needs to call Martin Scorcese, Thelma Schoonmaker & their teams to get this one back into pristine condition.  I'm not wasting money on this classic again until it is fully remastered the way "Gone With The Wind" was done.  Flawlessly.
4736815
First off, my rating is for the movie itself and not the form it came in.  A bunch of people have rated these new copies of the XMEN movies with 1 star because they think that it supposedly says on the back cover that it's a two disc edition but when opened, it's only one disc. THIS IS FALSE. The new slipcovers and the case itself say bluray+digital.  I read both the slipcover and the case artwork (even the fine print) and nowhere does it say it's two discs.  Digital copies are exactly that. Digital, not physical. You do get two copies of the movie but not on two discs.  First copy is a physical disc, second copy is a code to redeem the movie for free on VUDU.com.  I'm not sure why this is so complicated for some to understand.

Now for the movie itself: if XMEN Days of Future Past had not completely rewritten the past, I would have given this movie 1 star.  At the time, this was the worst third sequel EVER in my opinion. XMEN and X2 were both brilliant so The Last Stand was a HUGE disappointment.  But now, since Bryan Singer has taken back over, I can give this movie a solid 3 stars as it is just another step in the story that doesn't end with nearly everyone being murdered by evil Jean Grey/Phoenix.  Still my least favorite one, but I can deal with it now.

I would never watch this movie as a stand alone, like I would with any of the other XMEN movies (the Wolverine movies are not included in this as they both suck) but when I decide to have an XMEN marathon, The Last Stand will be included in the marathon now.
4639576
Note to WB and all DVD producers who edit/redub/"PC"-tamper with any and all film/cartoon/tv/music productions:  This set and its predecessor have convinced me NOT to buy them--I'll simply transfer my "Art Of Tom & Jerry" Laserdisc box sets from the 90s (which are the true unedited works) to DVD myself.  With the technology we have today, I can create a decent product (albeit without any "extras").  I paid a premium price for the Laserdiscs way back when, so I have no problem with transferring these classic toons myself for my own purposes.  I'd gladly buy them again on DVD to avoid all the trouble and headache of transferring them myself, but NOT when they are presented like this.
3280498
Its sad that a space reserved for reviews of a fantastic movie instead gets taken over by complaints about the crime that is Ultraviolet Digital Copy.  UVDC is totally unacceptable.  Warner Brothers should really offer customers some sort of recourse.  It really should't be difficult.  You buy a personal license when you buy a movie.  You load the digital copy in iTunes.  You then load the movie on your devices for personal use.  That is the way it should be done.  Its not difficult.  Thanks so much for totally destroying whats supposed to be a very easy process.  There is absolutely no excuse for UVDC.
2006432
This is an extremely disappointing copy of 3 great original movies.  Looks as if it was duplicated on poor dvd equipment from old, used VHS tapes.  No wonder it's hard to find out who made this.  I wouldn't want to take credit for it, either.  Hard to enjoy in this poor format. My delivery took place in February, 2006.
1275753
having pre-ordered the 2 disc dvd i wasn't sure why the release day was more than a month after the single disc and blu-ray release. but i thought it would be worth the wait to get the special feature about artist Jim Lee and his comic career.
after the wait was over as soon as my dvd arrived i put in the special features disc to watch the Jim Lee special only to find it wasn't on there, and the special features actually included weren't worth the extra money at all!

the movie itself was a very bad adaptation of (The New 52) Justice League issues 1-6.
some elements of the dialog and story were changed for what seemed like an excuse just to be original, but over-all the story seemed very dumbed down for young kids but there were curse words thrown in so it's hard to tell what audience they were trying to aim toward?
had they not thrown in the swearing i'd say this movie was definitely geared toward young children, because some of the dialog in the film is beyond silly almost to the point of being laughable!
many of the voice performances are also very stale.

i've really enjoyed many of the DC animated movies so far, 'Crisis on 2 Earths' and 'Batman Under the Red Hood' have been among my favorites. Justice League War isn't a movie i will easily want to sit through again, it just wasn't very enjoyable.
3227754
I won't buy this until Warner Brothers adds the iTunes Digital Copy back.  Good movie, crappy Flixster App and limitations of Ultraviolet.  I can't stream it to my Apple TV, or easily sync it with my iPhone or iPad.  Pure crap.
3211579
DVD-R mfr. SYNERGY offers no commentary, deleted scenes, subtitles or other bonus features. Dubs are "best available source" and can vary from very good to only fair.

This 1936 adaptation of Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT has long been in the public domain. No tape or DVD of it to my knowledge has good picture or sound quality, a condition that compound's the film's several shortcomings. Continuity suffers greatly, as whole sections of the original play have been deleted (about a third in total). Individual speeches are truncated or simply missing. Miking and acoustics are poor.

Star Elisabeth Bergner dons male garb as Rosalind but wears full female makeup. Although the story's set in France, she delivers her lines with a distinct German accent. Mackenzie Ward's mugging as Touchstone (the fool) gets tedious. Laurence Olivier is unconvincing in a wrestling scene in his first of several screen versions of Elizabethan plays. He (and many critics) considered the picture a failure.

I've seen this one a handful of times and have never warmed to it. That doesn't mean I prefer director&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Kenneth-Branaugh-s-2006-version/dp/B000SM6FKE/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Kenneth Branaugh's 2006 version</a>&nbsp;which is set in 19th Century Japan. The definitive cinematic "As You Like It" has yet to be made.

Recommended only for Shakespeare completists.
4818204
Well this is just another attempt by Warner Bros to force folks into buying movies they don't want. I purchased this collection just for Holiday Affair as the original dvd is now outrageously priced. Warner owns all the old RKO and MGM libraries so I was stuck. I love Holiday Affair, a film that should be a Christmas classic but never will. It was the first film I ever saw that starred Ribert Mitchum and I spent the next year watching almost his entire filmography because of it. Disappointed there's no trailer, it seems to have gone missing. But the quality of the audio/video on this release is very good. My biggest complaint is that the other 3 films are not holiday fare, simply films that happen to have Christmas occur in the timeline of the plot. The worst offender is All Mine To Give, the saga of a Scottish family emigrating to the western United States and all the drama that ensues when you have a gaggle of kids. Depressing, drawn out, unremarkeable. It Happened on 5th Avenue sounds Christmas-y enough but is really about greed and the problems of post-war soldiers in a prosperous America. I really enjoy Don Defore as a character actor but had he not been in this film I doubt I could have lasted 10 minutes with it. I almost fell asleep during what is supposed to be a wacky comedy. Oh but it's not. Now, Blossoms in The Dust is quite a good film. Definitely underrated as I had never heard of it. However, when a film opens with patriotic music over the creadits it's not a Christmas film. Greer Garson gives a striking performance as a woman who devotes her entire life to orphans and adoption reform. A very touching ending as well. But again, how is this a Christmas flick or one that I would watch during the holidays??? Basically Warner Bros is trying to package films together so a fan of one is forced to buy the others. A great idea is for Warner Bros to create packages of films that are lesser known, underrated gems, and market them that way. Not under the guise of holiday viewing. Five stars all the way for Holiday Affair, Four stars for Blossoms in the Dust, and 1 star for the package Warner Bros is forcing us to buy.
2349949
DC's archive editions are usually good quality products. They're definitely overpriced for the 8 issues you usually get in each, but the colors are good and vibrant. In this new DC Comics Classic Library series, things are completely different.

"Kryptonite Nevermore" was a multi-part adventure in Superman's comic book where Kryptonite gets changed to normal iron through a freak accident. Now Superman apparently has no weaknesses (other than magic), and this leads to a few good adventures before a new Superman steps into the picture to cause problems for the old one.

The covers are done by Neal Adams, which makes them beautiful pieces of art, but the colors of this edition are horrible! They are washed out and aren't even up to par with the original Silver Age comics they are based on. While doing that in a paperback reprint might be excusable, charging a premium "Archive Edition" price for this hardcover reprint while giving us sub-par quality isn't.

I had pre-ordered a couple of the upcoming Classic Library editions, but after seeing the quality of this one I'm canceling the order. Maybe this was just a freak accident for the first time out, but if DC doesn't improve the coloring process this will be a short-lived Library.
1274499
Why Hollywood studios want to mess with movies by changing the packaging is beyond me, what exactly was wrong with "Smokey & the Bandit I & Smokey & the Bandit II as single disc versions in individual packaging???, the first film is a classic, & the second is more character driven, a little crazy toward the end, but more to do with the character's personal flaws, the 3rd one is just unwatchable, I saw it when I was 13 more than 20 years ago, & found it to be awful, it is easy to see why Burt Reynolds& Sally Field were not in this one, why Jerry Reed & Jackie Gleason agreed to it is still a mystery, watching the 3rd one again recently, I still found it to be unwatchable & utterly ridiculous at best, it is pretty clear Universal Pictures had little faith in releasing this one by itself, which brings me to my review of the "Pursuit Pack" this has got to be one of the worst packagings ever, to start with, the first two films are on one side, the main menu allows access to either I or II, but once you access one film, you CANNOT access the other without ejecting the DVD, then reclosing it, talk about laziness on the part of Universal, secondly, the prodution notes on the single DVD versions of the first two films ARE GONE!!, I guess for the cheap price, Universal figured the consumer would overlook the technicality, not me, I would rather have the single versions, if I have to go to the trouble of opening & reclosing the player, if you like the 3rd one, & many I see here don't, then stick with the single disc versions if you can find them.
1267584
I sometimes think that NBC/Universal Home Video is the Anti-Warner Home Video. That is, they are a home video company that does a stellar job at giving its classic titles tragically shoddy treatment and ignoring their fans.

This is not as bad as their "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" release, which, in many cases, simply doesn't work. That's ignoring the fact that it is an edited version of the show taken from very bad prints.

Still, it is pretty darn awful. Universal has a wealth of special features for this show just sitting at their feet. There is a retrospective documentary made for TV about the show, there are a whole bunch of lectures by Serling given to Ithaca students about the show that could serve as audio commentary, and for pete's sake, would it be too much to put a gallery of the PAINTINGS on the DVD? Let alone show complete versions of the episodes...

But I digress. Universal is terrible, and I think most people who are avid TV on DVD followers know that by now from experience.

As to the series itself, suffice it to say that it is, for the most part, a delightfully spooky (and occasionally funny or even meaningful) follow-up to "The Twilight Zone" for Rod Serling. Although he did not have the creative control he had on "Twilight Zone" in "Night Gallery", his distinct dramatic spirit shines through in all of his scripts. His three scripts for the pilot movie add up to what is, in my opinion, quite possibly the best movie ever made specifically for Network TV.
3577425
If you have the VHS tape collection that was released in the 1990's, you may want to hold on to them.  This collection contains the same episodes, however, there are some segments that were trimmed.  For instance, within the actual video files themselves on the DVD are the opening title cards used on the VHS tapes, e.g. "KING OF LAUGHS!"  The control files on the DVD, though, start playing the video after that.  However, the major disappointment is in however actually authored these DVD's.

Sloppy and erroneous programming abounds on these discs.  For instance, if you use your remote to try to access the main menu directly, the 1 to 2 minute opening introduction plays.  You can Next skip past this BUT it loads the next video file in the stream, which on these discs can be any of the sub menus from the main menu.  You're forced to watch through it or fast forward just to get to the main menu again.  Disc 2 is entirely unforgivable because it's Scenes menu for The Best Of The 80's And 90's does not work at all on any player I tested, stand alone, computer, or otherwise!  Select your favorite scene, and, oh!  Nope!  It acts as a Start button instead, playing the VERY FIRST scene.  Regardless of the Scene you pick!

There are abundant video errors, too, converting the material.  Granted, some of the source video is not the best.  Many of the surviving Carson shows only exist on kinescope, basically using a film camera to record the broadcast off of a TV screen.  Still, most of the errors are in existing color material that has aired fine before on the VHS tapes and on TV.  For instance, one scene from Disc 1 clearly goes into off shades of solid green colors for a few frames.  Another develops wavy static momentarily.  Another has pixelated pink that shows up.

However, just in general, there's poor video conversion to begin with.  Even stuff from the 1980's and 90's on Disc 2 is blurry when things move.  Stuff appears to be slightly slow mo, too.  Like the old experience of video on a PC, frames are dropped, even though the DVD picture quality is higher.

While offering some new material, what you have to sacrifice in exchange is most likely not worth the price.
2078475
I've returned this item.  Very disappointed in Shout Factory's release of these videos.  Game of Death particularly.  The video quality of the Blu-ray is not very good.  The Fox Home Video DVD is better.  The biggest issue I had was the audio soundtrack.  The opening queue for the movie was cut and the soundtrack tempo has been sped up.  Granted this is not the best "Bruce Lee" movie, but what made it good ... for me anyway ... was the John Barry score.  With both the video and audio issues, I saw no reason to keep these versions of the films.  I'll stick to the DVD versions until someone does decent Blu-ray releases.
960430
I love batman, but this version of batman is by far the worst version ever created (including all the live action, animation, or comic book versions of batman).  I have no clue why they are wasting animation resourses on a crap cartoon like this, when they could be putting it toward quality cartoons like Justice League.  Warner Bros. needs to get a clue.  I might not be a kid anymore (I'm the ripe old age of 21), but if I ever have kids I can promise you they will not be allowed to watch this.  They will be watching all of the Batman the animated series dvds that I bought last month.  Please parents (and kids) go buy those dvds (or superman the animated series, or justice league, or batman beyond, or x-men, or even teen titans) instead of wasting your money on this crapola.