Shame about the Oscar lark.
920241
This could of been a really good steelbook but they had to go and cover the cover in oscar stuff and make the bottom very busy.  This is unusual for steelbooks and therefore the item does not really appear exactly like it is on this page.  If I could of rated it 3 and 3/4 I would of but I couldn't. Therefore be warned.
4683122
The Cazalet film version (i.e., this Masterpiece edition) does nothing positive for reputations. The whole feeling in it is one of false acting (overdone, contrived, poorly directed, not well-managed), inept script (expected lines - in the sense one watches and hears some dialogue and is able to predict exactly what the next-spoken cliche will be), and hot-potato-in-mouth accents (false parody - these are NOT how well-educated middle-class [and upper-middle-class] English speak normally - nor is it how they spoke in the late 1930s to early 1940s). My group watched the first three episodes but collectively decided to not continue with the 4th and 5th. In fact, by the middle of episode 2, our private theater became almost rowdy with groans and semi-catcalls as the Cazalet characters woodenly worked through the pathetic script; by the end of episode 3 we had had enough and sent the DVDs back to the shelves. We have seen other British presentations of similar period and have respected, enjoyed, and been educated by them (examples are Downton Abbey, Love in a Cold Climate, and so on, all of which so favorably impressed us, and were so well done, that we decided to purchase them for our permanent collection). But this Cazalet series is junk, bruises reputations all round, and astonishes us ... What were its producer/s, directorate, screenwriter/s and cast thinking?
2076291
The performance is great vocally. But I cannot stand its boring and ugly scenography. This is a downer. It's a great opera and could be wonderfully staged.
3891805
In my quest to read all the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels, I was subjected to this, Rabbit at Rest. An amalgam of retiree life in Florida, sports, heart ailments and surgery, cars, and drugs. The characters are despicable and Rabbit is a misogynistic ass whose wife is little better. How or why this won any award is beyond comprehension.
2521813
I agree with the above review by Mr. Santos but not for the same reasons or, at least, the same order of reasons. The fact that the TV director (here is where Brian Large makes all the difference) chose to focus on Placido Domingo more than it should be recommended is bad. But in time we get accustomed and even forget that Placido is there. What we cannot forget and never will, even after months after having seen this recording, are the tremendously ugly, horrific and tasteless costumes and scenery.

The concept behind this staging was that if a butterfly is an insect and the heroine is called Butterfly, then she should be dressed as such an insect, antennae and all. And all the other characters, why not, should be insects as well.  That is why Suzuki appears like what seems be a giant moth, Sharpless like a huge kind of beetle, the chorus that enter with Butterfly look like a caterpillar, Goro like a disgusting cockroach from the filthiest gutter, the son Dolore like a ten year old fat and slow lady bug, Yamadori, what can that be? a silkworm? and Kate, what is that? Is she a giant ant or a disproportioned wasp? I don't know, everything is so incompetently designed that it is diffidult to make the correct guesses.

Now, someone could be asking, and what about Pinkerton? Well, aye there's the rub, for he does not have antennae so he is not an insect. Could he be a rat? He is dressed in a black uniform as someone out from Marlon Brando's gang in the film "The Wild One", only he forgot to bring the motorcycle. He has very black sideburns, a goatee to go with it and he wears a thin ponytail. What can he be? Here I give up.

Oh, I forgot to tell that during the "humming chorus" there appears someone dressed like a black spider and after some slow and demented steps of ballet throws its net over Suzuki and Dolore, not to eat them but to protect them. Then the spider goes away and when the sailors begin to sing she returns and picks

its net back.

The sets, or better yet the one piece of set, resembles a part of the desert where Manon Lescaut dies in Puccini's opera. Meaning what? With what purpose?

Well, and what about the singing and playing? The singing is good but it gets hampered by the dreadful outfits, with Daniela Dessi having to fight with collars, veils and tails. Fabio Armiliato and Juan Pons, both also excellent singers, deserved a better fate than this. They should have refused to appear so ridiculously dressed.

Placido Domingo is there allright but I think he is feeling a little bit ashamed at having to be a part of such a terrible disaster.

I don't intend to watch it again and would only wish that Guillermo Mariotto (costumes) and Arnaldo Pomodoro (set) should give my money back
3456125
All the rave reviews, one even called this hodgepodge "The British Gone with the Wind". If this is so then the Shondells are the American Beetles. I probably made the mistake of watching the Poldark disaster after "The Dutchess of Duke Street" and "Upstairs Downstaires", two truely great productions. Poldark is not well written nor is it well constructed. Consiquently, the acting suffers. I must be the only one who is turned off, I'm certainly not getting in line for Series II.
Denis Wright (I have no catchy reviewer name)
1076055
Arnold Bennett was in a restaurant in Paris one day and a haggard old woman, apparently a maniac, got into a tussle with a beautiful young waitress.  Bennett had an epiphany and realized that the old woman too must have once been young and pretty and full of life.  He decided there and then to write a novel that would chart the arc of such a woman's life.  The result is this naturalist classic, by one of the last truly 19th Century writers.  But it begs the question: is an author a humanist or a condescending phallus when it comes as a revelation to him that old unattractive women may have lead full and interesting lives?
In the event, Bennett wrote a book about two sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, daughters of a shopkeeper in the Five Towns where he set all of his novels.  Sophia, who leads the more exciting life, runs off to Paris with a louse of a husband, but Constance, modeled on the old woman, stays in Bursley and marries the assistant in the shop.  Late in life, the two women are reunited, dying within a brief time of one another.  The version of the book that I read has an Introduction by JB Priestley, wherein he says:
  If we think first of the two sisters as young girls, then this tale is grim, a tragedy; but if we think  first (as Bennett did) of the apparently dull old women and then realise that they marched through  this epic, then the tale is a romance.
Now, I'm not the most sensitive flower in the garden, but I just find that totally offensive.  It seems to me that it is a fair representation of the attitude of the intelligentsia throughout history:  pity the poor hoi polloi, what dull lives they must lead.  But it defies logic to assume that the great mass of mankind leads lives of desparation and disappointment.  It would seem that the contrary is probably true; most folks probably lead perfectly satisfactory lives, even if they are just working 9 to 5 and then going bowling or watching wrestling and NASCAR on TV.  We may not all pursue the same highbrow interests as the authors and artists of the world, but there's no reason to assume that we're any less happy with our lives.  And even the fat old chick pumping coins into a video poker machine may be as happy as a pig in slop.
I had honestly never even heard of Bennett until there was a piece on him in the New York Times Book Review a couple of years ago.  I've since made an effort to read his stuff and I find much to like in his work.  But the attitude that gave birth to this book infects his narrative voice and I found it pretty annoying.
GRADE: C
3863009
I couldn't actually finish the movie, it was so embarrassingly bad. I'm all for wholesome uplifting entertainment, but this is just amateur hour in a very boring town. It must just be family members of cast voting this thing up.
595
American Heritage magazine called it one of the most overrated Westerns of all time and I couldn't agree more.  When I read a plot summary of this movie, I could not wait to get it home and watch.  I could not believe how  disappointed I was.  The plot had so many details and layers that could  have been explored, but no.  It fails on almost every level.  The only  saving grace is that Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly look good in it. Also, I  appreciated the unself conscious approach to references to an interracial  romance that ended before the beginning of the movie, something quite  remarkable for a movie from the early fifties.  Everything else is just off  the mark.  I still can't believe that Tiomkin's song became so popular.  There are so many holes in this most boring of scripts.  What really  shocked me was the subpar cinematography and production values, especially  for a film that they obviously had spent a lot of money on.  The story  takes the course of a single day, but there were so many continuity  problems in terms of lighting(i.e. 5pm looked like noon and noon looked  like dusk).  Grace Kelly spends the entire film wandering around and  pouting.  Cooper and Lloyd Bridges were absolutely disappointing.  I gave  it two stars only because it was a very influential film and became its own  archetypes for many films to come.  This movie represents all the ills that  come from a film industry that was oppressed by production codes and  McCarthyism.  Don't waste your time.  Go with an Eastwood, Ford, or a Leone  picture.
2645431
As an Indian I was appaled by the movie . It is quiet unrealistic and the
story shows a India which does not really exist .

In the end it was just slum porn . Long shots of pimping the third world poverty and filth made for the
westen masses , who seemed to have lapped it up with 8 oscars et al.
2483115
This a cheaply conceived and cheaply made radio that has been 'tricked-out' to look like a top-level professional multi-band radio.  I have tried to like it but cannot.  First, its sound on any band is far inferior -- especially on AM/MW -- to either my old and beaten-up pocket Sony, my i-Home alarm/radio AND, in particular, is VASTLY inferior to the Grundig Satellit 2100 that I bought in 1974.  I can barely understand any of the 'talk' radio announcers on the Satellit 750 and manipulating the poor bass and treble controls brings little change.  The rotating AM antenna makes no difference to reception whatsoever, even though I live only 25 miles from New York City.  How I wish I could return it -- please Amazon!!
 I have had problems with other Eton products -- notably a rechargeable pocket version -- one of which would not recharge, and now the degraded plastic cover of the replacement radio has become uncomfortably 'tacky' to the touch.  My advice: do not buy Eton products.  I have bought my last.
15737
Admittedly, the movie is pretty to look at.  The music is OK, even though it frequently becomes faux Lloyd Webber, and he is faux enough all by himself.  What I find objectionable is the theme:  constantly the movie hammers in a theme of "believe" as a good thing, when what the world needs now is more people who question.  Mere "belief" leads to suicide bombers and airplane hijackers and is responsible for most of what is wrong in our world today.  Toward the end of the film the conductor says "What's important is to decide to get on the train, no matter where it's going."  A pernicious doctrine if I ever heard one!
574403
The most depressing show I've ever viewed. Yes, the drama is compelling but void of any redeeming value. According to Allen Ball the writer (also the writer of American Beauty) everything is carnal and driven by narcissistic appetite. Watching is completly voyeuristic on my part. I'm trying to learn something about this point of view. Why did American Beauty win the hearts and minds at the Academy? I hated American Beauty. Both American Beauty and this program are cruel to it's audience. I understand validating the ugly but I don't get building a career on the myopic. Story is way more important than one's ability to crush. I think it's just bad story.
3643899
not Miss Havisham, not Pip's rejection by Estella--what is truely heartbreaking is how this great novel (my favorite Dicken's opus) was  brutalized by Sarah Phelps. I was anxious to see this version because of the choice of Gillian Anderson to play a relatively young Miss Havisham.  Every other version of Great Expectations had portrayed her as being much too old. I thought that I was in for a faithful retelling of this wonderful story.  But honestly, the disappointment was so great that I could not sit through the first episode.  (a similar experience happened with Masterpiece Mystery's retelling of Agatha Christie's "Pale Horse," which was so badly hacked up by BBC writers that I actually e-mailed them to complain.  Their reply was that this is how their writers hone and perfect their craft!)  But my chief complaint is that when great works are bastardized in this fashion, people who watch, without being familiar with the work, may get the wrong idea about the author. Nobody benefits from this, except perhaps the screenwriter on payday.  Ms. Phelps should be severely chastized for turning Great Expectations into pig swill.  We should make her read the novel again and rewrite her sceenplay 500 times.
2617819
This film was a complete let down. Overrated, depressing and mediocre, makes one really wonder how it ever could won an Academy Award. It seems nowadays that making films about the Jewish suffering in Word War II is a guarantee for winning the best prizes of cinematography regardless of the quality of acting or directing. Albeit, we are fed up and we simply can't digest more of the same. Ida's aunt, a brave but self-destructing judge in communist Poland played by Agata Kulezsa, is the only bright spot in this film with her fine acting.
2395707
If this movie was a Saturday afternoon matinee, I could excuse it and turn off the TV.  However, for this movie to pose as Grand Art is ridiculous.  How can this be nominated for an Oscar "Best Picture"?  I'm an avid Sci-Fi fan, enjoyed the original Mad Max, and am open to almost anything.  I love a thrilling action ride as much as anybody.  I also truly appreciate the genius that can go into evoking a well-crafted, believable, other-worldly atmosphere on film.  I'm not repulsed by graphic violence when it is part of the montage.  However, in this film NO time is invested in meaningful character development;  there is NO viable history laid out or mythology;  NO romance;  NO believable morality;  NO attempt to move toward HOPE (though that is presented as a theme at the end) ;  NO nobility (in spite of Valhalla being mentioned repeatedly); and NO heroes we can truly love.  What a dreadful waste of time and money.  I admit that technically the filming, sound, and editing were amazing;  but as for the "make-up"  -  I have a lot of personal experience; and could do better myself.  Where is my Oscar??
4678216
Take one ageing soprano with a wobble, a tenorino without the vocal heft or distinction to do justice to the Verdian line, a light, pleasant bass without the vocal gravitas to challenge proper exponents of the role of Fiesco like Ghiaurov and Christoff, a thunderously dull comprimario baritone as Paolo, a distinguished baritone whose increasing reliance upon forcing has resulted in his now having a hoarse, coarse, woolly tone and finally add one rushed conductor with an under-powered orchestra. Then do as some previous reviewers in their fandom blindness do, and ignore the discography to call this "the BEST Boccangera of them all." Give me strength.

Hvorostovsky is here sadly unrecognisable as the elegant singer who has delighted us since his winning Cardiff Singer of the World over twenty-five years ago and I am very sorry to say so, as I have long been a big fan. He has gone down the same route as another great and now sadly vocally compromised baritone, Simon Keenlyside, in over-singing and sacrificing beauty of tone to sheer noise. His intake of breath is now painfully and audibly laboured, he virtually shouts his way through some passages and often simply does not sound like the singer we know. The rest of the cast is equally mediocre. I understand why people want to hear the singing as better than it is but to elevate this is to sacrifice all common sense and objectivity.

If you want to hear this marvellous opera done justice, return to Cappuccilli in Abbado's or Gavazzeni's classic studio versions, or Gobbi in the studio Santini or the live Gavazzeni, or the old Cetra Molinari-Pradelli with Silveri or even the antiquated, historical recording with the dream team of Tibbett, Rethberg, Martinelli, Warren and Pinza - but please don't perpetuate the nonsense that this latest recording is in some way pre-eminent. Far from it; it's simply poor.