"Road to Avonlea is solid, engrossing family fare with classy acting, splendid photography and a fine period look." - VARIETY
This 4-Disc DVD Boxset is the complete first season of "Road to Avonlea" / "Avonlea" (as shown on the Disney channel). "Road to Avonlea" is a sparkling one-hour episodic series that follows the adventures of Sarah Stanley (Sarah Polley), who is forced to live with her deceased mother's relatives in the charming town of Avonlea, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Sarah's story is intertwined with many unforgettable L. M. Montgomery characters - from the cast of the original "Anne of Green Gables" mini-series. Sara's antics and misadventures lead her through tales of romance and fancy; tragedy and comedy.
Disc 1 Ep. 1 - The Journey Begins Behind the Scenes Featurette Screen Tests Footage
Disc 2 Ep. 2 - How the Story Girl Earns Her Name Ep. 3 - The Quarantine Ep. 4 - Secrets and True Love Ep. 5 - Old Lady Lloyd
Disc 3 Ep. 6 - Proof of the Pudding Ep. 7 - Aunt Abigail's Beau Ep. 8 - Malcolm and the Baby Ep. 9 - Conversions
Disc 4 Ep. 10 - Felicity's Challenge Ep. 11 - The Blue Chest of Arabella King Ep. 12 - The Witch of Avonlea Ep. 13 - Nothing Endures but Change
Special Features include: - Behind-the-scenes featurette - Screen Tests footage - Languages: English, French
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Road to Avonlea Season 1 is a movie that everyone can enjoy together.This is something not usually seen in movies of this type, so it makes it an unusual, yet pleasant experience.The movie is absolutely stunning and Ashley Muscroft deliver some award winning performances in this movie. I also think Graham McPherson was great!
Full Comments on Gary Cooper MGM Movie Legends Collection
Gary Cooper MGM Movie Legends Collection is a movie that everyone can enjoy together.This is something not usually seen in movies of this type, so it makes it an unusual, yet pleasant experience.The movie is absolutely stunning and Ronald Colman deliver some award winning performances in this movie. I also think Vilma Bnky was great!
It actually underscores the power and distinctiveness of Gary Cooper's movie stardom that this isn't so much a true collection as gleanings from the odds-and-ends table. That's not a knock; three of the four films are solid entertainments and would be well worth recommending on their own. But the only thing unifying them is the beauty and enigma Cooper brought to them, and the professionalism with which he addressed these wide-ranging assignments.
Three of them date from the '20s and '30s and were produced by Samuel Goldwyn. The 1926 silent The Winning of Barbara Worth gave Western stunt man and bit player Cooper his first featured role (by accident--the actor originally cast didn't report for work!). A cowboy whose visionary surveyor father aims to "redeem the desert and make it one fine garden," Cooper's character is the third corner of a romantic triangle, ordained by the Hollywood caste system to lose lifelong sweetheart Vilma Banky to engineer Ronald Colman. Colman has lots more screen time than Cooper and bears the moral-ethical brunt of the eco-conscious drama; he's also surprisingly persuasive wearing a sweat-stained Stetson and trading gunshots with the bad guys (if this were a sound film, Colman could never have gotten away with it). But the camera and the audience are locked onto Cooper whenever he's on screen. In longshot or vulnerable closeup, he's already one of the gods of the cinema. As for the movie, the quality of the print is excellent, its clarity intensified by bronze, yellow, and moonlit-blue tinting that often seems on the verge of resolving into full color. Director Henry King shows a good eye for action and bold vistas, and a visual adventurousness mostly absent from his later work.
Next up chronologically is The Cowboy and the Lady (1938), and the best thing about this misbegotten movie is Garson Kanin's description, in one of his Hollywood memoirs, of how Leo McCarey sold the idea for it to Sam Goldwyn. McCarey was, of course, a comedic master (recently Oscared for directing The Awful Truth), and his exuberant pitch convinced Goldwyn and his staffers that audiences would "piss" themselves laughing at this romantic comedy about a daughter of privilege (Merle Oberon) who falls for a rodeo rider (Cooper) and learns homespun values. Goldwyn paid McCarey off, assigned some writers to the script, then realized there was no real story--"no there there," as Gertrude Stein might have put it. The resultant unfunny and unromantic endeavor oozes bad faith from every pore, with neck-snapping life changes foisted on the hapless Cooper and Oberon from reel to reel, and excruciating scenes (jitterbugging in a drawing room, playing house back on Cooper's ranch) that strain charmlessly for McCarey's patented brand of fey. H.C. Potter directed, understandably without conviction.
We and Cooper are back on track with The Real Glory (1939). The reliable Henry Hathaway helmed this second cousin to his and Cooper's The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, with Cooper as an Army doctor assigned to the Philippine Constabulary on Mindanao in 1906. The movie was well-received when it came out; encountered in the shadow of the Iraq War, its tale of U.S. occupiers trying to help the local populace "stand up" against a fanatical and murderous insurgency takes on new fascination. There are some amazing passages--two horrendous murders by bolo knife--and the final battle sequence puts the CGI-riddled action films of the present day to shame. But the most impressive element is Cooper, and we can't improve on the verdict of that astute film critic Graham Greene: "Mr. Cooper ... has never acted better.... Watch him inoculate [Andrea King] against cholera--the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think any more."
For the final film in the set we jump into the '50s--the century's and Cooper's. Vera Cruz (1954) casts him as a former Confederate officer who's ridden into Emperor Maximilian's Mexico, hoping to make a fortune in the new civil war south of the border so that he can rebuild his own devastated homeland. Costar Burt Lancaster (whose company Hecht-Lancaster was producing) plays another mercenary, a real sociopath, and it's fascinating to watch these two stellar icons of very different Hollywood eras make common cause--Lancaster at the height of his grinning-predator mode, Cooper an aging knight whose aim is still true. Director Robert Aldrich keeps finding dynamic uses for the SuperScope format and flavorfully fills it with sublime uglies like Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, Charles Horvath, Jack Lambert, and Charles Buchinsky-about-to-become-Bronson. Pieces of this movie found their way into the dreams of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone. --Richard T. Jameson
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