Here Come The Brides: Season Two

Gang way all, Here Come the Brides!
It's so wonderful to hear this show is finally coming out in DVD. No one will be disappointed. HCTB was one of the best and brightest on television. It was around when TV was true entertainment. Now if only they would release The rest of The Big Valley I would be one happy TV viewer. Bravo to the powers that be for the decision to release this wonderful show! My pre-order is in!

Finally:Season 2 of Here Come The Brides
It has been a very long wait but it is finally here. The release of Season 2 of Here Come The Brides! They don't make shows like this anymore. It should have gone on for more than 2 seasons. The cast was great, the stories were very entertaining. I cannot wait to sit watch and Jason, Joshua, Jeremy, Lottie, Clancy, Aron, Candy, and Biddie all over again.....

ABOUT TIME!
This was an awesome show, that was over way before it's time! We have been waiting a long time for this to come out!

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Top Gear: Complete Season 17 [Blu-ray]

This show keeps getting better and better!
You've gotta love the British humor. Anyone who can appreciate cars in the slightest can enjoy this show, in my opinion. I love how Hammond starts out the series with a "BANG", pun intended!

Good for fans
This is a compilation of a recent season of Top Gear. It contains some content that is edited out of BBC America or YouTube broadcasts.

TopNotch
What more can we say to these chaps, they are true to their audience and are bloody fantastic hosts'. There is no other motoring show like UK/TopGear. The choice of cars and other type of vehicles they review have always been top-notch, the machines always take center stage.

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Aida

He and Berti bear the new Aida standard.
Having viewed and re-viewed this DVD, I have come to conclusion that in terms of current Verdian singers, there is simply too few that could out-sing Marco Berti or Hui He, respectively the Radames and Aida in this performance.
In the opening Celeste Aida, Berti pours forth in a timbre with just the right amount of squillo and lyricism that one seldom hears these days (for the past decade). Here and there, very sparingly, one tight high note creeps in, but only fleetingly and undamagingly. Here is a true Verdian tenor, who luckily, has his voice 'saved' until his 50th year (he's born in 1962 January) for the real big roles and who has not 'squandered' his vocal goods in the earlier years. He is now truly ripe for the Verdian roles like Radames in 'Aida', Gustavo in 'Un Ballo', Mantua in 'Rigoletto', Ernani, Steffilio, if not Alfredo in 'La Traviata' or Manrico in 'Il Trovatore'. One certainly hope that Berti can be more dramatically alert in his acting, but with a good...

Four star (+) for a sterling cast with a shimmering Hui He as Aida.
This DVD of Aida is probably one of the most even in terms of singing that one could find on the market, spanning from the days of the great Luciano Pavarotti, given that even Pav in his time did NOT have as good an Aida as one could probably find here in Hui He.
In the major supporting role, Amneris is sung by veteran mezzo-soprano Luciana D'Intino, who reprises this role since the late 1980's with Cheryl Studer as Aida.
While Hui He may not be most verbally incisive Aida, her performance here sets her way above many other lyrical spinto sopranos who have undertaken this role: Maria Chiara, Cheryl Studer, Violetta Urmana, and more lately Sondra Radvanovsky, though not yet recorded.
Hui He's impassioned performance of this role is fully enhanced by her shimmering lirico spinto voice, which is fully lyrical without the slightest edginess that marrs other spinto sopranos like Urmana and Radvanovsky. Yet her timbre is at the same full-bodied and rich throughout all...

Beautiful!
This is done so beautifully! Beautiful voices, wonderful acting, especially by the female lead. I have watched this over and over - and cry every time! So beautiful.

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Enemies of the People (2 Disc Special Edition)

A brilliant piece
This is a brilliant, thoughtful study of a massively terrible event which is overwhelming in its scope. Even now, the young people in Cambodia are forgetting about this time-partially because evidently some of the perpetrators are still in power. It is never solved, truly-the whys of this tragedy.
The narrator takes us though a journey with gentleness, graciousness-remarkable in the face of what he personally experienced. Highly recommend this dvd...just watch it.

Buying This Historic Documentary Encourages Reconciliation
Leaders around the world still are sorting out the aftermath of the vast crimes against humanity that swept through Cambodia in the 1970s. As recently as spring 2012, U.S. and Cambodian officials made front-page news by trying to reconcile the theft of a priceless Cambodian statue that apparently was stolen in the mid-1970s and wound up in a Sotheby's auction.

Even more important than sorting out reparations from cultural crimes in that era, the first of the Khmer Rouge war criminals was not convicted until 2010 and human-rights investigations continue in Cambodia to this day. Many investigators and journalists--like those you will meet in the historic video record in `Enemies of the People'--are still working to pierce the veil of secrecy about what happened during the bloody reign of Khmer Rouge terror. In that era, countless Cambodians who are alive today were brutally tortured--and 2 million Cambodians were murdered. (Some estimates place the death toll lower or...

One of the most important documentaries ever produced
The Khmer Rouge's reign in Cambodia, has a notorious notch in history's timeline. But, unlike, say Nazi Germany, it is not as studied; the psychology of how neighbor turns against neighbor. This outrageous few years is not the stuff of museums and American history classes. Many do not even know what happened. Those who do still ask why.

Approximately one quarter of the population lost their lives; one quarter - that is not a misprint. Men, women and children. The Khmer Rouge regime murdered over a neighboring country's political movements, (Vietnam), and the paranoia that grew within two of Cambodia's leaders that "infiltrators" would take down their new communist regime.

After executing any high-level officials the two felt may be party resisters they took aim at farmers and workers. Villagers considered traitors (without trial or proof) were put to death.

Thet Sambath, who lost his father, mother and brother to the Khmer Rouge has become a...

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Die Entfuehrung Aus Dem Serail [Blu-ray]

Extraordinary version of an underrated Mozart opera
There's an in-built difficulty in Mozart's earliest 'mature' comic opera that every modern opera stage director must consider a challenge - the long passages of unaccompanied spoken dialogue and recitative that are scattered throughout. Yes, the actual drama of Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail is a bit silly too and the libretto isn't the most sophisticated, but even if you manage to make the plot work dramatically (having good singers can help gloss over the inconsistencies which is certainly the case here), you're still left with those lulls between Mozart's beautiful musical passages that can potentially kill the opera dead in its tracks. This production by Christof Loy at the Liceu in Barcelona, aided and abetted by an outstanding cast and an exhilarating performance of the score from the Liceu orchestra under Ivor Bolton, crucially takes account of those weaknesses, and if the result is still not entirely convincing, it's nonetheless still one of the best versions of this...

An outstanding version of Mozart's early 'singspiel' - a distinctly different art-form from his later operas
Mozart wrote this work at the age of 25 having just left the service of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg and at the start of his freelance career as a musician. The work's commission was to be for the Emperor's own National Singspiel company as opposed to a commission for an opera, an important distinction as this turns the work into more of a play with singing than an opera (essentially a sung play).

This performance of Mozart's Singspiel, most importantly therefore, includes the whole of the dialogue. It is only by doing this of course that the work is able to make proper dramatic sense. Too often the dialogue is heavily cut. Consequently, in those cases, the whole concept of a Singspiel with its emphasis on the spoken word, as opposed to opera where the emphasis is on the sung word, is lost. No such errors are made here and this production generates great dramatic impact.

Of course, simply restoring the dialogue and failing to act it would also fail. In this...

Loy's second production of same opera on DVD with Damrau, who outdid herself!
There was a 2004 German production of this difficult to stage singspiel:
Konstanze - Diana Damrau
Blonde - Kerstin Avemo
Belmonte - Daniel Kirch
Pedrill - Peter Marsh
Osmin - Jaco Huijpen
Bassa Selim - Christoph Quest
With the exception of Damrau and Quest, the other protagonists are all new in this 2010 Liceu production. Belmonte was Christoph Strehl, and Blonde of Olga Pereyatko, Pedrillo of Norbet Ernst and with Franz Josef Selig as Osmin.
The character of Bassa Selim is a speaking role without singing, and Quest and Damrau acted with impeccable skill, while Damrau tackles the fiendishly demanding arias of konstanze at the same time.
The 2004 performance was on Youtube for some years already, and I first caught glimpse of Damrau's performance of the extended version 'Marten aller Arten' on Youtube and was totally bowed over by her superlative performance then. I got the DVD right away in order not to miss such 'great stuff'.
In...

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French Fields Complete Collection

Funny and delightful series, now available on Amazon.
We used to watch this series on PBS and were delighted when it came out on DVD. It is a well written and well acted series. The Brits seem to have a knack for being both funny and satirical. We have purchased the entire series, including Fresh Fields. Thanks for the laughs. It's nice to watch a comedy without bad language and inuendos.

Lucky people
What a wonderful situation to be in! The best of 2 worlds...city living and then the fabulous french countryside and oh, that lovely farmhouse.

Fresh Humor From a Not so Odd Couple. Convincing relationship.
Funny mid-life couple in love, not badgering each other. Their day, he an accountant, she (40) on the constant search of new creative outlets. Hester (Julia McKenzie-`Miss Marple' `Cranford') surviveS plots of activity & adventure. William (Anton Rodgers-`Lillie' `Affairs of the Heart') saves the day or plays along. Always a surprise laugh to end each episode. Sonja is a cameo, but son-in-law Peter (Philip Bird) returns as does daughter/wife Emma, but she is played by 2 different gals.
Very family oriented, with some fun play with words on risque topics, and a new French neighbor (Pamela Salem) a sexy gal who used ample episodes to slowly reveal. There's a maid (Valerie Lush) nobody understands--just shake your head, smile, like the cast and move on. Viewers of FRESH FIELDS quickly become enamored with the new cast and Hester's strawberry gray hair. "FRESH" London scenes convert to "FRENCH" vistas, quite appealing. I would recommend watching Sets one and two of "FRESH FIELDS"...

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Lulu - Alban Berg - Blu-ray

Perfect!!!
Lulu is a very complex work. This DVD makes justice to all of the complexness of the work: musical and dramatic. First of all: Christine Schäfer. Since Teresa Stratas she is the most impressive singer to play this difficult role. As she is a genuine coloratura , Schäfer can handle with all these crazy cadenzas with naturality. And her personification of Lulu is as ambigous as Wedekind( the play ' s writer) has though. But it isn' t only Schäfer that is fantastic in this DVD. Wolfgang Schöne is a convincent Schon and Jack the riper.Stephan Drakulich as The Painter and the Neger is very sexy and exciting . The old wagnerian bass-baritone Norman Bailey is a moving and repulsive Schigolch (and yet in a very good voice).Alwa, one of the most demanding tenor roles in all lyric repertoire, is very well sung by David Kuebler, and his naive looking is very moving during all the performance.Kathryn Harries as Geschwitz is fantastic too. Her final singing is a golden key for...

Hair Raising - a Perfect Performance
I cannot say enough good about Glyndebourne's 1996 production of Berg's

opera recently (and finally) released on video here in the States.

Initially I believed I'd be disappointed in this unit set. Wrong. A tall,

brick semi-circular wall of red brick with offset white bricks that extend

as necessary into beams, creating an angular stage wide staircase joining

otherwise impossible to use doorways, etc. A bare floor with 3 or 4

concentric circles revolves (sometimes in opposite directions) as necessary

denoting scene changes etc. At its direct center is a vast round hole.

This circular concept is fascinatingly explored bookending Lulu's going

full circle - beginning and ending in the gutter. Interesting too watching

her rise from this hole (a really great visual) in her first scene to

sinking permanently into it in the final. Once again the team of Graham...

A winner
Lulu is not an easy opera to get to know. It is written in a twelve tone style (serial) invented by Arnold Schoenberg. But Berg's serial music is easier to listen to than Schoenberg and many parts of Lulu are beautiful in their own way.
This DVD is a perfect way to get acquainted with the score. It is a perfect performance and Christine Schafer has both the vocal resources for this difficult part as well as the looks and acting ability for this femme fatale. The rest of the cast are fully up to her.
The production is pretty bare: a brick wall with a stairway up to two doors, a wooden floor and chairs. But don't let that steer you off. The important thing in Lulu is passion, and it is here in spades.

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