Free Republic

With tomorrow being the inauguration of the disastrous 2nd Obama Administration(a/k/a the 3rd Jimmy Carter Administration that never was), what could be more appropriate for today's MFASA pick than a disaster film released the same year as the inauguration of the Carter presidency? A plague infected terrorist stows away on a passenger train which gets rerouted to a quarantine camp that will have to cross a rickety bridge with a good chance of not being able to sustain the train's weight. Come to think of it, the innocent train passengers probably have more reason to be optimistic about their fate...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QViEiDjd7Ew

Warner Bros. today will launch a service giving the public the opportunity to custom-order DVDs of films never before released via the medium. The move is seen as a response to dwindling DVD sales and also to customer demand for titles that while not totally obscure, didn't necessarily generate enough heat to merit a full-on DVD release. The Warner Archive Collection, available at WarnerArchive.com, includes films dating back to the silent age and for $19.95 per disc Warners will burn, package and ship for receipt within an estimated five days. Currently there are 150 titles available with for a total...

The suggestion that late American singer Frank Sinatra got a big movie role because the Mafia put a horse’’s head in a producer’’s bed has been negated by a new book. Tom Santopietro describes in the book Sinatra in Hollywood exactly how Sinatra got the role in From Here to Eternity. He writes that Sinatra got the role in the film because his wife Ava Gardner, who was a much bigger star, had so demanded. The writer even states that Godfather author Mario Puzo once said that “the horse’’s head was totally from my imagination,” reports the New York Daily...

In December, some big dates passed in relative obscurity. One was December 7th; the other was the 12th, Frank Sinatra’s (1915-1998) birthday, the only showbiz birthday I know by heart. I remembered the Chairman of the Board by ordering the VHS of an obscure movie he made in 1954, Suddenly. (But don’t you order it – the sound quality is horrible. Fortunately, the movie is often broadcast on TV.) Just two years before he made Suddenly, Frank Sinatra thought he was finished. His vocal cords hemorrhaged, and “The Voice” almost fell silent. Movie producers were no longer interested in making...