Year:  1970
Genre:  Blu-Ray, Romance, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Ali McGraw, Ryan O’Neal, Ray Milland, John Marley
Notable bit part:  Tommy Lee Jones
Director:  Arthur Hiller
Run time:  99 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Movies don’t get more chick flicky than Love Story.  Ali McGraw, Ryan O’Neal, two kids in love and defying the odds in this crazy world.  Parents that just don’t understand, the failed attempts to start a family, the sudden diagnosis of a horrible disease, and the bizarre decision to keep that diagnosis from the person it affects most.  And of course, it’s all about “love means never having to say you’re sorry” and the huge tear-jerker ending.

     Now, that being said, here’s the thing about Love Story.  It’s good.  Like, actually, geninuely GOOD.  Love Story is what chick flicks should be – it’s entertaining enough and the characters are likeable and genuine enough that I can stomach the maudlin boo-hoo business that closes out the film.  I actually LIKE Love Story.  It’s deservedly a classic, although sadly a classic that spawned a whole lot of inferior and putrid movies from the same template…Sandra Bullock, Hugh Grant and Katherine Heigl, I’m looking at your careers…

     Now Love Story is on Blu-Ray for the first time, February 7^th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  It’s a good transfer, and the movie holds up well without feeling dated.  I would, however, just throw in a word of caution here. This is NOT a good way to suck up to your wife or girlfriend on Valentine’s Day. Not only can YOUR love never measure up to this one in any way, but you will also spend most of the rest of the evening wiping away tears and not getting laid.  Just sayin’.

     One more thing.  There is a small chance that you, too, will cry while watching Love Story.  If this happens, there is a good chance that your wife will notice, and an even better chance that she will bring it up at dinner parties for years to come.  So, watch this.  Cause it’s good.  But maybe do it alone, to preserve whatever masculinity you might have!

Years:  1970, 1971
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Mike Connors, Gail Fisher, Joseph Campanella, Ward Wood, Robert Reed
Creator:  Lalo Schifrin
Run time:  21 hours 18 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
DVD extras:  Not much of anything
Related reviews:  Mannix Season Two, Mannix Season One, Mannix Season Three

     It might just be my copy of Mannix Season Four.  (Out January 4th from Paramount Home Entertainment.)  But the cover says “Mannix the Fourth Season”, and the spine says “Mannix the Third Season”.  Just letting you know now, so when you go searching for it in the stores, it may be a little bit tougher if you go by the spines.  And also a complaint on my behalf, because it’s really screwing up my DVD library, where I rely heavily on spines!

     Anyway.  Mannix is the same old guy in season four.  His old army buddies are all crazy, and they keep showing up trying to kill him.  Sometimes with karate.  Mannix is very good at karate.  Apparently not so good at staying friends with his old army buddies.  Maybe he was a real jerk during the war.  He was of course a war hero, as well as a college football star and an amazing karate expert and many other cool things.  Including a really smart guy. 

     You know, though, for a really smart guy he sure gets knocked out a lot.  Not that smart guys can always avoid getting knocked unconscious when they fight with all these bad dudes.  It’s bound to happen.  But the fact that Mannix was able to maintain all of his faculties, and remain a really smart guy through all those head traumas is remarkable.  I read somewhere on the internet that throughout the course of the show, Mike Connors (or rather his character Mannix), was knocked out fifty-five times.  And no trace of post-concussion syndrome, no blank spots in the memory, no problem!  He wouldn’t be allowed to start a football game as a kicker with all those concussions, but he is allowed to continue being a private investigator.  Thank goodness.  I like this show.

Year:  1970
Genre:  Western
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Lee Marvin, Jack Palance, Jim Davis, Jeanne Moreau, Mitchell Ryan, Bo Hopkins, Richard Farnsworth
Director:  William A. Fraker
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     As Homer Simpson once said, Lee Marvin is always drunk and violent.  That’s true, and I would point to Lee Marvin as an actor who almost never existed on screen outside his comfort zone.  Which is, as Homer so sharply pointed out, a violent drunk.  Monte Walsh is a pleasant surprise in Marvin’s career, in a sense the exception that proves the rule. 

     Now, I’m not going to pretend that Monte Walsh, just now being released on DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment, is a TOTAL departure for Lee Marvin.  After all, he’s still playing a violent drunk who likes his whiskey and his fistfights.  But he gets a chance to flex his acting muscles a little more than usual, in a movie that is both poignant and poetic.  Marvin and his best pal Chet (Jack Palance in a role that’s a departure for him as well, in that he isn’t a villain) go looking for work.

     Monte and Chet must compete with dozens of other cowboys for seasonal work, work which is getting more and more scarce as the west moves on from the old ways.  As the work force gets cut again and again, cowboys are forced to turn to other ways of earning an income.  While Monte manages to hang on to one of the few remaining cowboy jobs, Chet starts working in a hardware store and gets married, leaving Monte behind.  Other cowboys, like Shorty (a terrific Mitch Ryan), turn to crime and bank robbery.

     The slow, elegaic pace of Monte Walsh works well, as the old west moves on and becomes something else.  Monte tries to create a life for himself the way Chet did, but his old flame Martine (Jeanne Moreau) has tuberculosis and isn’t long for the world.  When his old friend Shorty comes back through town and wreaks sad, devastating havoc, Lee Marvin gets drunk and violent once more, saddling up for a final showdown that ends both this movie, and, in a way, the old west itself.

“Mannix…is back in action”

Years:  1969, 1970
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Mike Connors, Gail Fisher, Joseph Campanella, Ward Wood, Robert Reed
Creator:  Lalo Schifrin
Run time:  21 hours 18 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
DVD extras:  Not much of anything
Related reviews:  Mannix Season Two, Mannix Season One

     I like Mike Connors.  I like him as Mannix.  And I like the show.  But it’s still just a private investigator show.  It may have been interesting in the 60s.  In fact, I imagine that it was pretty gritty and advanced for television in 1969.  But so many shows have come since then, and so many private investigators have plied their trade on the small screen, that Mannix just lumps in with all of them.  He’s jsut another private eye, like Cannon and Jake Styles and Mom P.I.  Mannix, Season Three comes to DVD October 27th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

     Thankfully, Mannix is no longer with that ridiculous, massive Private Investigator Firm he was with in the first season.  And he has a good supporting cast, especially Gail Fisher as his receptionist.  In Season Three, he has yet another different car (the car appears to be a pretty big deal, season to season).  This time it’s a Dodge Dart GTS 340 convertible.  For me, that makes little difference in the show.  A car’s a car, as far as I’m concerned.  But I think a lot of people would probably care, so I’m mentioning it anyway. 

     The best thing I can say about Mannix Season Three, other than that it’s a pretty good private eye show, is that the DVDs are not split up into those obnoxious “Volume One” and “Volume Two” editions of each season that are coming out so much lately with other shows.  That means that for Mannix fans, all they have to do is purchase one season at a time.  You know, if you wanted to buy it.  And you might, if you’re a car person or just generally a fan of private investigator television.  I guess I am – I’m still watching Mannix.

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“20 minutes of that sure doesn’t help a headache.”
“I can dig it.”

     Clarence Williams III sure knows how to deliver the line “I can dig it”.  He says it like most people use the word “like”, or “umm.”  It’s like his verbal crutch, and when he has nothing else to say, he “can dig it”.  Which leads to the use of the phrase in many moments that don’t make a lot of sense.  “I think I might have eaten some bad fish.”  “I can dig it.”  “My goiter is acting up.”  “I can dig it.”  “I’m thinking of switching toothpastes.”  “I can dig it.”  I don’t think this is entirely Williams’ fault.  In fact, it probably isn’t his fault at all.  I assume this is the fault of the writers of The Mod Squad, who really wanted to get as much cool-guy 60s lingo into the dialogue of the show, but only knew three cool-guy phrases and varations thereof.  Can you dig it?

     Season Two, Volume Two of The Mod Squad comes out May 26th on DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment, and it (as one would expect) picks up right where Season Two Volume One left off.  It’s annoying to split up these series into volumes, instead of releasing the entire season all at once, but with The Mod Squad it isn’t so bad.  It’s not like there’s some big season-long plot that has to be followed, and each episode stands alone.  This volume starts off with an episode about a guy saving Pete Cochran from a mugging and then mysteriously disappearing.  The scrumptious Peggy Lipton doesn’t show up until the second episode, when she gets mistaken for a rich guy’s daughter and is kidnapped.  The Mod Squad remained a pretty good show through 1969 and 1970.  I can dig it.

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      Thankfully, on Paramount Home Entertainment’s Forever Funny TV Set, there is no Walker Texas Ranger to ruin the mood.  Instead, this is just a solid collection of the premiere episodes or pilots of some of the most classic comedies ever to grace the television sets of North America.  I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Brady Bunch, The Odd Couple, Frasier, Cheers, and Taxi are all represented here.  Now, Paramount also distributes The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Happy Days and several other classic comedies which might have made a little more sense than Frasier, in terms of old-school classics, but I love Frasier.  So I won’t complain.  Much.  Here are the premieres, in chronological order:

     I Love Lucy (1951): 

     “Happy Anniversary, Ethel.”

     The very first episode of I Love Lucy sees Fred and Ethel fighting over what to do on their anniversary.  Fred (and of course Ricky) wants to go to the fights, while Ethel (and of course Lucy) wants to go to a nightclub.  Soon, the old cranky couple have decided to go sepearately, and Lucy stirs the pot by trying to find dates for her and Ethel.  Of course, this makes Ricky and Fred decide to find dates for themselves, which end up being Lucy and Ethel in disguise and…well, you can guess the rest, I’m sure.  We all know I Love Lucy, we all know it’s hilarious, and one of the best comedies ever.

     The Honeymooners (1955): 

     “You wanna go to the moon?  You wanna go to the moon?”

     Although Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) is constantly threatening his wife Alice with phyiscal violence, he has, to my knowledge, never actually struck her.  At least, not on screen.  But The Honeymooners must at least present Ralph as a potential domestic abuser and a ticking time bomb of rage.  As he and Ed Norton (Art Carney) split the cost of a TV set, and then fight over what programs to watch, I got the sense that Gleason was, at any moment, capable of snapping and commiting a brutal murder.  And I found that hilarious.

     The Brady Bunch (1969): 

     “Dad’s gonna take the girls’ side on everything from now on.”

     I wasn’t aware that when The Brady Bunch began, Marsha wasn’t yet old enough to be smoking hot.  But she was still a little girl in 1969, when the show began with a wedding.  The man, you see, has a bunch of boys.  The boys have a dog.  The woman, obviously, has a bunch of girls.  And the girls have a cat.  Because men like boys and women like girls and boys like dogs and girls like cats.  And they are all going to live together after this big ol’ wedding, and hilarity will ensue!  In the meantime, the little kids say all kinds of cute and smarmy things, paving the way for the 80s and the Olsen twins saying “dude” on Full House.  Thanks a lot, Brady Bunch.

     The Odd Couple (1970): 

     “They think I’m a hypochondriac?  That makes me sick.”

     The people who made the Odd Couple TV show must believe that everyone tuning in already knows the whole concept, either from the movie or the Neil Simon stage play.  And they’re probably right.  I think we all know the idea.  Felix is neat and anal.  Oscar is slovenly and rough.  And they have troubles…the premiere episode of this classic comedy introduces the weekly poker game, the Pigeon sisters who live upstairs, and the angrily tolerant dynamic between Jack Klugman and Tony Randall.

     Taxi (1978): 

     “I’m playing the horse.”
     “Which end?”

Years:  1978
Genre:  TV series, comedy, sitcom
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Danny DeVito, Judd Hirsch, Tony Danza, Christopher Lloyd, Andy Kaufman, Jeff Conaway
Eye candy:  Marilu Henner
Creators:  James L. Brooks, Stan Daniels, Ed Weinberger, David Davis
Run time:  30 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The first episode of Taxi is a surprisingly sweet one, as Judd Hirsch runs off to attempt to re-connect with his daughter whom he hasn’t seen in fifteen years.  And of course, Tony Danza is a stupid guy and a terrible boxer, Danny DeVito is a tiny little loudmouth jerk, Andy Kaufman is just learning to speak English and acting creepy, Jeff Conway is an actor who gets no roles and isn’t very good, and Marilu Henner is the smoking hot woman who just started working as a taxi driver.  And they’re in New York.  And that’s the show.

     Cheers (1982):

     “A drunk?  A drunk?  Why, Sam was the greatest drunk there ever was!”

     The first episode of Cheers introduces Cliff and his stupid and questionable facts, Norm and his apathy toward his wife, Carla and her scathing wit, Sam and his womanizing, Coach and his idiocy, and Diane.  Mostly, the episode is all about Diane, who has come into the bar for the first time on her way to the airport with her soon-to be husband.  He is an intellectual, of course, and he will ditch her in the bar to go back to his ex-wife.  Of course.  So Diane sits there and annoys everyone in the bar for hours with her snobby holier-than-thou attitude, and eventually ends up with a job there.  And so began Cheers.

     Frasier (1993): 

     “My wife had left me, which was very painful.  Then she came back, which was excruciating.”

     The debut episode of Frasier opens with Frasier Crane on his radio program, explaining succinctly and in a neat little package why he left Boston and Cheers and moved back to Seattle for his own spinoff show.  Quickly, we meet neurotic Niles and space cadet Daphne and of course Frasier’s dad Martin, who moves in with his son in the first episode.  And the dog Eddie, who stares at Frasier.  And Martin’s chair, which drives Frasier nuts.  We don’t get to see Maris, but we know she’s a cold ice queen.  And Roz is sardonic and mean, but has a heart of gold.  Yep.

Years:  1970
Genre:  TV series, Spy, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Greg Morris, Peter Lupus, Bob Johnson, Peter Graves, Leonard Nimoy, Sam Elliott, Lesley Ann Warren
Guest stars:  Dana Elcar, Sal Mineo, Anthony Zerbe, George Sanders
Creator:  Bruce Geller
Run time: 20 hours plus
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
Related reviews:  TV sets: Action Packed, Mission: Impossible Season Six, Mission: Impossible Season Four

     I enjoyed Season Four of Mission: Impossible, certainly more than I did those three crappy Tom Cruise movies. Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Season Five on DVD Tuesday, October 7th, and it’s even better. The main reason it’s better is because they have added a hot chick. Now, normally that wouldn’t change the quality of a show, except to make it worse. The addition of a hot chick normally (these days anyway) means that the writers and producers feel the show has jumped the shark, but they can hang on for a few more years simply by providing their weirdo viewers with some eye candy.

     But when it came to Season Five of Mission: Impossible, this was actually a good move. The addition of Lesley Ann Warren as Dana Lambert was terrific. She provided the team with something it had been lacking – instead of simply using a bunch of gadgets to set up their targets, they began using actual people and deception a lot more. Dana was able to seduce the people who needed seducing, and get close to the men who were the targets of the team. In a bizarre way, this was actually more realistic spy stuff.

     Also great in Season Five is Sam Elliott, one of the great gravelly-voiced, made-for-westerns actors in the world. He comes and goes, and isn’t in every episode, but his role just adds a little more oomph to a series that already has plenty. The fourth season was good, the fifth is great.