“Green Acres: The Complete Series”
If it hasn’t already been done, someone should write a book on the odd lot of ’60s television shows that caricatured a rural America invisible to most Americans. “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Petticoat Junction,” “Hee-Haw” and “Green Acres” depicted a comical Ruritania where technology and fashion halted during the Hoover administration. The modern world might as well have been another planet.
“Green Acres” (1965-1971) is out in its entirety, all 170 episodes spread across 24 DVDs. Its peculiar plot involved a pompous nitwit New York lawyer (Eddie Albert) who drags his sexy cosmopolitan wife (Eva Gabor) to Hooterville, where he purchases a rundown property and lives his dream of becoming a yeoman farmer. He’s delusional, oblivious to the manure he’s stepped into. The locals, parents and grandparents of the Hillbilly Elegy crowd, are loafers and dumbbells when they aren’t crooks, squeezing every dime out of the gullible city slicker-cum-gentleman farmer.
Rolling Stones: From the Vault: Sticky Fingers Live at the Fonda Theatre 2015
An entire classic album, performed live in its entirety, has become almost requisite for veteran bands regrouped and on tour. In 2015 The Rolling Stones took their turn; this DVD/CD set catches them in concert, warming up with “Start Me Up” and a few other tunes before proceeding through one of their great albums, Sticky Fingers. The motors of the Stones’ well-oiled engine were firing on all cylinders for “Brown Sugar,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” et al.
Glory
Tsanko, a simple speech-impaired man who loves animals, trudges to his railroad job one morning and finds millions in bank notes strewn across the tracks. When he turns the money over to the police, he’s branded as a hero. And then everything goes wrong in this droll Bulgarian comedy-drama as Tsanko is yanked into the clutches of urban professionals. The underlying humor speaks to lack of communication and social dishonesty in a tale worthy of Dostoyevsky.
