Garv’s Pick of the Week: The Abbott and Costello Show: Season 1 (ClassicFlix)
For the release week of December 14th:
Garv’s Pick of the Week: The Abbott and Costello Show: Season 1 [Blu-ray / ClassicFlix]: Heeeeey, Abbott! Season 1 of Abbott & Costello’s 1952 television series has been restored from original 35mm master elements by the 3-D Film Archive, in cooperation with the Library of Congress, so the 26 episodes will look and sound sharper and cleaner than ever before. The show itself is perhaps the strangest television series prior to Twin Peaks. Bud & Lou basically play less-successful versions of themselves, as unemployed actors living in a rooming house. They perform all of their famous cross-talk routines, while adopting a Chimpanzee as their son and fighting with Stinky, the mean little kid (played by a 45-year-old Joe Besser in a Little Lord Fauntleroy costume). If you love classic comedy or high weirdness, this series is pure bliss. The 3-disc Blu-ray set includes audio commentaries for 10 of the episodes. two of the episodes have alternative audio tracks (without the audience laugh track), and there is a behind-the-scenes featurette about the restoration process.
Additional Titles of Interest —
The Red Shoes [4K UHD / Criterion]: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 film is one of the most beautiful movies ever made. If any film deserves a 4K UHD upgrade, this one does. Even if you hate ballet (as I do), you owe it to yourself to watch this dazzling movie.
Cartoon Saloon’s Irish Folklore Trilogy [Blu-ray / Shout Factory]: The Secret of Kells (2009), Song of the Sea (2014), and Wolfwalkers (2020) are three of the best animated films of the 21st Century. If you don’t already own them, you can pick them up together in this Blu-ray box set.
Bedtime Story [Blu-ray / Kino Lorber]: I had a crush on Shirley Jones as a kid, so this movie was a childhood favorite. It was later remade as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, with Michael Caine and Steve Martin in the roles played here by David Niven and Marlon Brando.
The Four Seasons [Blu-ray / Kino Lorber]: During the decade of the 1980s, Alan Alda tried to re-brand himself as a writer/director in the Woody Allen mold. This was the first (and possibly best) of his productions.
Sylvia Kristel 1970s Collection [Blu-ray / Cult Epics]: I don’t think I’ve seen a Sylvia Kristel film that was actually good, but she was always better than the material she was given. I haven’t seen the four films included in this box set, so they might actually be good movies. One is even directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet. Included are Julia (1974), Playing with Fire (1975), Pastorale 1943 (1978), and Mysteries (1978).
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