The Miracle of the Little Prince (2018)
Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: The Anne Bancroft Collection, Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Melody Ivins, The Miracle of the Little Prince and Melody Makers: The Bible of Rock ’n’ Roll.
“The Anne Bancroft Collection” (Shout! Factory)
Anne Bancroft played the disaffected housewife who seduced Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967). That milestone movie is included among the eight Blu-rays in “The Anne Bancroft Collection,” and it’s not the only attraction. The set skips the bad flicks that caused her to renounce Hollywood for Broadway in the ’50s and hits all career highlights.
The collection begins with her cinematic debut, a substantial role with Richard Widmark and Marilyn Monroe in the psycho-thriller Don’t Bother to Knock (1952). Bancroft wrote and directed the prickly comedy Fatso (1980), a rare achievement at the time for women and an unusual subject (obesity) for Hollywood. In To Be or Not to Be (1983), she works with husband Mel Brooks on a worthy remake of the Ernst Lubitsch classic. Co-starring with Anthony Hopkins, Bancroft plays a woman besotted with books for their tactility as well as their words in 84 Charing Cross Road (1987).
Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins (Magnolia Home Entertainment)
After moving back to Texas, Molly Ivins constructed a good ol’ gal persona as a straight-shooting political commentator with a knack for nailing fools. As Janice Engel’s documentary shows, Ivins had no lack of fools to hammer. With a skin as tough as an armadillo, she was often the lone liberal voice in a loud red state. Death threats arrived. Ivins was especially courageous in challenging the Iraq invasion when most of the media fell silent.
The Miracle of the Little Prince (Film Movement)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) wrote only a few books, but one, The Little Prince (1943), became an enduring classic of children’s literature. In her documentary, director Marjoleine Boonstra takes note of how widely The Little Prince has been translated and focuses on a surprising point: Through their popularity, some of those translations have helped keep alive indigenous languages threatened by the hegemony of Chinese, Arabic and Spanish in places like Tibet, Morocco and El Salvador.
Melody Makers: The Bible of Rock ’n’ Roll (Cleopatra Entertainment)
Britain’s weekly Melody Maker was at the heart of rock’s most creative epoch. The paper shaped the careers of many British bands and was shaped in turn by the music it covered. The documentary, an entertaining trip in time when rock stars burned bright, includes interviews with staff recalling their access to the back stages, tour planes and homes of the stars. Melody Maker squandered its legacy in the ’90s by embracing bad pop music.
