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Now restored to perfection, this genuine classic hasn’t been seen intact for way over sixty years. Michael Curtiz and Robert Rossen adapt Jack London’s suspenseful allegory in high style, with a superb quartet of actors doing some of their best work: Robinson, Garfield, Lupino and newcomer Alexander Knox.

The Sea Wolf

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1941 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 100 min. uncut! / Street Date October 10, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Alexander Knox, Ida Lupino, John Garfield, Gene Lockhart, Barry Fitzgerald. Stanley Ridges, David Bruce, Francis McDonald, Howard Da Silva, Frank Lackteen, Ralf Harolde

Cinematography: Sol Polito

Film Editor: George Amy

Art Direction: Anton Grot

Special Effects: Byron Haskin, Hans F. Koenekamp

Original Music: Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Written by Robert Rosson, from the novel by Jack London

Produced by Hal B. Wallis, Henry Blanke

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Chopping up films for television was once the...

The following text is an excerpt from an essay commissioned by the specialist publishing house Hatori Press (Japan) for a tribute to the great critic, scholar and teacher Shigehiko Hasumi on the occasion of his 80th birthday (29 April 2016). Other contributors to this book (slated to appear in both Japanese and English editions) include Pedro Costa, Chris Fujiwara and Richard I. Suchenski. Beyond Prof. Hasumi’s many achievements in criticism and education (he was President of the University of Tokyo between 1997 and 2001), his ‘method,’ his unique way of seeing and speaking about films, has served as an immense inspiration for a generation of directors in Japan including Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Shinji Aoyama. The online magazines Rouge (www.rouge.com.au) and Lola (www.lolajournal.com), co-edited by Martin, provide the best access to Hasumi’s work in English (see references in the notes below).Leos Carax and Shigehiko Hasumi. Photo by Michiko Yoshitake.

DVD Playhouse—September 2011

By Allen Gardner

In A Better World (Sony) Winner of last year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, this Danish export looks at two fractured families and the effect that the adult world dysfunction has on their two sons, who form an immediate and potentially deadly bond. Director Susanne Bier delivers another powerful work that maintains its drive during the films’ first 2/3, then falters somewhat during the last act. Still, well-worth seeing, and beautifully made. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; Commentary by Bier and editor Pernille Bech Christensen; Interview with Bier. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 5.1 surround.

X-men First Class (20th Century Fox) “Origins” film set in the early 1960s, traces the beginnings of Magento and Professor X (played ably here by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy), and how the once-close friends and colleagues became bitter enemies. First half is slam-bang entertainment at its stylish best,...

“The Near Future…As It Used To Be”

What if the world of today, the early 21st Century, looked the way our predecessors thought it would, back in 1949?

What if Mars were the world imagined by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein? And what if America’s most fun and famous couple flew to Mars in search of a missing brother and became embroiled in interplanetary intrigue, local wars, desert dangers and lost Martian civilizations?

This was the concept for The Lost Hieroglyph, the first of several “Brackett & Burroughs Adventures” set in an imaginary retro-future Solar System inspired by the great pulp science fiction stories and art of yore.

A lifetime’s affection for 20th-Century pop culture (of the sort now made huge by Comic-Con) eventually percolated into a sudden document in the late 1990’s. The concept lay dormant, with occasional proddings to see if it still breathed,...