Last Stage

Six characters, contemporary archetypes of urban solitude, meet in an old apartment located in the city centre of Barcelona. An elderly married couple, her brother and three tenants: a blonde woman who gives French classes, a young security guard, an ex-football player and a young, pregnant South American girl. The old man, who was formerly a doorman at the opera and who likes to dress up in women's clothes, gets them all together and asks them to leave as he is going to die and wants to be alone for the last stage of his life. In this flat, incest, homosexuality and adultery are intertwined in the life of these characters whilst we simultaneously witness the passing of time in this Mediterranean city.

Mima was a pop idol, worshipped by the masses until fashion dictated otherwise. In order to salvage her career, she is advised to drop music and pursue acting. A soap opera role is offered but Mima's character is less clean cut than desired. Regardless, she agrees and events take a turn for the worse. She begins to feel reality slip, that her life is not her own. She discovers (imagines) her identical twin, a mirror image that hasn't given up singing. Internet sites appear describing every intimate detail of her life and a figure stalks her from the shadows….

Peter Bogdanovich's debut feature is a thinly disguised account of ex-marine Charles Whitman, who, after murdering his mother and his wife, armed himself with a number of rifles and handguns and on a sunny 1966 Texas morning, began a shooting spree that killed 14 people and wounded 32 people. Bogdanovich's version tells two stories concurrently, about an aging horror-film star who feels that his type of movie monster has become passé, and the other about a father-hating gun freak who goes on a rampage to get even with his dad by shooting at people from the top of a water tower and then from behind a drive-in movie screen.

Peter Bogdanovich's debut feature is a thinly disguised account of ex-marine Charles Whitman, who, after murdering his mother and his wife, armed himself with a number of rifles and handguns and on a sunny 1966 Texas morning, began a shooting spree that killed 14 people and wounded 32 people. Bogdanovich's version tells two stories concurrently, about an aging horror-film star who feels that his type of movie monster has become passé, and the other about a father-hating gun freak who goes on a rampage to get even with his dad by shooting at people from the top of a water tower and then from behind a drive-in movie screen.

Frankie sets off on a stand-up tour of Scotland. On four trips to four gigs, he meets a heady mix of people and places, filtering his nation's past and present through his unique mind.

Disc contains such masterpieces: Herakles (1962), The Unprecedented Defense of the Fortress of Deutschkreuz (1966), Last Words (1967), Die Fliegenden Arzte von Ostafrika (1969), Massnahmen gegen Fanatiker (1969), Fata Morgana (1970).

After fifteen films that received mostly local acclaim, the 1955 comedy Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende) at last ushered in an international audience for Ingmar Bergman. In turn-of-the-century Sweden, four men and four women attempt to navigate the laws of attraction. During a weekend in the country, the women collude to force the men’s hands in matters of the heart, exposing their pretensions and insecurities along the way. Chock-full of flirtatious propositions and sharp witticisms delivered by such Swedish screen legends as Gunnar Björnstrand and Harriet Andersson, Smiles of a Summer Night is one of cinema’s great erotic comedies.
This Blu-ray debut includes an introduction by Bergman.

The Magic School Bus is a series of children's books about science. They feature the antics of Ms. Frizzle, an elementary school teacher, and her class of eight children (in the original books, the class population was at a larger and more standard amount), who board a magical school bus which takes them on field trips into the solar system, under the Bed, into the American Flag, or to other such impossible locations. The books are written in the first person from the point of view of an unnamed student in "the Friz's" class. The class pet, Liz, an anthropomorphic lizard, accompanied the class on their field trips.
Since the Magic School Bus books present scientific facts in the form of stories in which fantastic things happen (for example, a bus turns into a spaceship, or children shrink to the size of blood cells), each book has a page at the end detailing in a humorous manner which parts of the book represented scientific fact and which were fanciful storytelling. In the books' television adaptation, this was replaced by the Producer Says segment at the end of each episode, in which the producer of the show (voiced by Malcolm-Jamal Warner of The Cosby Show fame) receives phone calls from kids complaining about how some things that happened on the show couldn't happen in real life. This allows the show to explain the specific facts in question and why they had to be disregarded to a degree because of the need for dramatic license.

The assistant stage manager of a small-time theatrical company (Polly Browne) is forced to understudy for the leading lady (Rita) at a matinée performance at which an illustrious Hollywood director (Cecil B. DeThrill) is in the audience scouting for actors to be in his latest "all-talking, all-dancing, all-singing" extravaganza. Polly also happens to fall in love with the leading man (Tony) and imagines several fabulous fantasy sequences in which the director is free to exercise his capacity for over-the-top visuals in this charming 1920's era flick.

Based on a book of short fiction called Tevye and his Daughters by Russian writer Solomon Rabinowitch (aka Sholom Aleichem), Fiddler on the Roof tells the story a typical Jewish family living the simple life at the turn of the century. Tevye (Topol) and his wife Golde (Norma Crane) struggle to match their three eldest daughters with suitable husbands from their little Russian village of Anatevka. Yente (Molly Picon), the town's unofficial matchmaker, has word that the local wealthy butcher Lazar Wolf (Paul Mann) has "cast his eye" on Tevye's eldest daughter Tzeitel (Rosalind Harris). She, however, has already nailed the young tailor Motel (Leonard Frey in an Oscar-nominated role) as her husband-to-be. With ever less desirable suitors baying for the hands of his remaining nubile daughters, poor Tevye attempts to hold on to tradition while addressing his children's blind passions. This juggling act, symbolized by a fiddler sawing out a tune perched precariously on a rooftop, has Tevye turning to God for guidance and some kind of uneasy reconciliation.