Description
A look at President Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech with David Sanger, Simon Schama and Jon Meacham || Cate Blanchett and Liv Ullmann, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’

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Charlie Rose – President Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech / ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’

• celebrated artist balks at a commission to paint a picture of something beautiful, and instead chooses to portray the terrible societal collapse he sees all around him. Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, who appeared in Akira Kurosawa’s RAN, PORTRAIT OF HELL is a harrowing journey into the tortured mind of a very disturbed individual. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR Age:&nb

Description
Film legend Tatsuya Nakadai (Sword of Doom, Ran) stars as the troubled artist who is commissioned to paint a beautiful picture, but instead only paints the death and famine he sees in the world around him. Written by one of Japan’s best known writers, Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Rashomon), Portrait of Hell’s canvassed story-line is a journey of revenge, love and despair, which eventually leads to a horrific, fiery conclusion.Amazon.com
Part portrait of war-torn Feudal Japan and part ghost story, Portrait of Hell will satisfy Japanese film buffs who love epic battle scenes mixed with filmic interpretations of the spiritual drama that accompanies death. Toho Films director Shiro Toyoda, renowned for his literary adaptations of Medieval Japanese tales, turns author Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s (Rashomon) tragedy Jigokuhen into a potent Buddhist moral lesson about human suffering. Filmed in Tehnicolor, rural Japanese landscapes, royal court scenes, and the four seasons during which the film takes place make this movie visually beautiful as a way to infuse the deeply tragic plot with high romance. Set in 10th century Heian province (Kyoto), Yoshihide, Lord Horikawa’s court-appointed painter, vows to experience Hell before portraying it on canvas, as a way to communicate to his corrupt king the poverty and hardship he witnesses in the community. Yoshihide’s paintings of bloody corpse piles representing battle scenes that occur outside the castle cause demons to temporarily haunt Lord Horikawa, but the Lord is so impressed by Yoshihide’s talent that he challenges the painter to paint Hell after his obstinate refusal to paint Paradise. Not until Horikawa kidnaps and enlists Yoshihide’s only daughter, Yoshika, to become his concubine does the artist have fuel enough to unleash Hell upon the Lord. When Horikawa forces Yoshihide to witness his daughter burnt alive, the Lord realizes, with much fear, that the painter will succeed in creating his ultimate masterpiece, a Portrait of Hell in which both Yoshihide and Horikawa are eternally tortured by hubris and regret. More akin to Antigone in its spiritual darkness, Portrait of Hell actually contains little blood and gore, making it a good candidate for squeamish viewers. –Trinie Dalton

Portrait of Hell

Description
Get ready for big laughs with Abbott and Costello, undeniably the most popular comedy team of all time! Now, the classic films of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are available on DVD in this hilarious collection.

The wildly popular comic duo has entertained audiences since 1931, conquering vaudeville, radio and the silver screen in nearly 40 films. Enjoy these side-splitting hits like Buck Privates and Hold That Ghost in this collection of eight full-length features. The Best of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello: Volume 1 will have you laughing out loud again and again!

One Night in the Tropics (1940)
Bud and Lou get mixed up in a “Love Insurance” scheme.

Buck Privates (1941)
The duo accidentally enlists in the U.S. Army to avoid getting arrested!

In the Navy (1941)
Bud and Lou are sailors bound for duty on the high seas in this musical comedy.

Hold that Ghost (1941)
The boys inherit a haunted house formerly owned by a mobster.

Keep ‘Em Flying (1941)
Bud and Lou enlist in the Army Air Corps and get caught up in a love triangle.

Ride ‘Em Cowboy (1942)
The duo head to the Lazy S ranch to hide after Lou accidentally proposes to an Indian girl.

Pardon My Sarong (1942)
Bud and Lou travel to the South Seas where Lou is mistaken for a legendary god!

Who Done It? (1942)
The boys are suspected of murder while being targeted by the actual killer.

The Best of Abbott & Costello, Vol. 1

Amazon.com
It’s hardly shameful that The Three Godfathers ranks as the slightest John Ford Western in a five-year arc that includes My Darling Clementine, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Wagon Master, and Rio Grande. The source, a Peter B. Kyne story both hard-bitten and sentimental, had already been filmed at least five times–once by Ford himself as Marked Men (1919). The star of that silent version, Harry Carey, had recently died. This remake is dedicated to him (”Bright Star of the early western sky”) and proudly introduces his son, Harry Carey Jr. (who had already appeared in Howard Hawks’s Red River–as did his father–but we won’t quibble).

Just before Christmas, three workaday outlaws (John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz, Harry Carey Jr.) rob a bank in Welcome, Arizona, and flee into the desert. The canny town marshal (Ward Bond) moves swiftly to cut them off from the wells along their escape route, so they make for another, deep in the wasteland. There’s no water waiting for them, but there is a woman (Mildred Natwick) on the verge of death–and also of giving birth. The three badmen accept her dying commission as godfathers to the newborn. Motley variants of the Three Wise Men, they strike out for the town of New Jerusalem with her Bible as roadmap. It becomes increasingly apparent that saving the child’s life will cost them their own.

Ford’s is the softest retelling of the tale; in place of Kyne’s bitter/triumphant final twist, he adds a very broad comic postlude. Elsewhere, the nearly sacramental treatment of the mother’s death is followed by an extended gosh-almighty sequence of the banditos reading up on childcare. But it’s all played with great gusto and tenderness–especially by Wayne, who’s rarely been more appealing. Visually the film is one knockout shot after another. This was Ford’s first Western in Technicolor, as well as his first collaboration with cinematographer Winton Hoch. What they do with sand ripples and shadows and long plumes of train smoke is rapturously beautiful. It’s also often too arty by half, but who can blame them? –Richard T. Jameson

3 Godfathers

Description
Akira’s Hip Hop Shop is a romantic comedy about a Japanese guy (James Kyson Lee, “Heroes”) with a jones for rap music who falls in love with a Black girl (Emayatzy Corinealdi, “The Young & The Restless”) with a passion for culinary arts.

Can they overcome prejudice from family, friends and society to find true love?

An award-winning short film written and directed by Joe Doughrity (”Seven Days in Japan”).

This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com’s standard return policy will apply.

Akira’s Hip Hop Shop