It was yet another very busy week over at Paramount Home Entertainment … let’s get right to it.
Last week there were two new Blu-ray editions added to the “Paramount Presents” promotion catalog — Nashville and A Place in the Sun, both streeting on Aug. 10. Paramount wasted no time in naming yet another “Paramount Presents” Blu-ray selection this week and this time — heading home on Aug. 31 — it will be the late writer/director Alan Parker’s 1976 film release of Bugsy Malone.
This new 4K film restoration marks the Blu-ray debut of Parker’s first theatrical film, a daring bit of showmanship featuring an all-kid cast in a “gangster musical.” WOW.
For some, that might be a career killer, but for Alan Parker it was cinematic magic, especially when you consider that the only known “star” that he had was Jodie Foster (who had just finished Taxi Driver and would later be nominated for her performance) … Parker would later earn Best Director Oscar-nominations for both Mississippi Burning and Midnight Express.
The titled character, Bugsy, is played by Scott Baio in his film debut (he would re-team with Jodie Foster four years later in director Adrian Lyne’s Foxes).
Parker, it is rumored, interviewed close to 10,000 children to fill out his cast (which eventually numbered on the order of 200 kids) and while the interview process was going on, a complete 1929-era set was built at the Pinewood Studios and costume designers, led by Monica Howe (her first film), set about to make hundreds of kid-size dresses and suits from the period.
The legendary recording artist Paul Williams would receive his third of six Oscar nominations for his music in Bugsy Malone (his Oscar-win would come the same year for the Original Song, “Evergreen,” in A Star is Born).
Bonus goodies include two newly-minted featurettes — “Give a Little Love: Paul Williams on Bugsy Malone” and “Filmmaker Focus: Executive producer David Puttnam on Bugsy Malone.”
Things that go bump in the night will be front and center on Aug. 10 when “The Midnight Society” reconvenes on Aug. 10 in Nickelodeon’s six-part mini-series, Are You Afraid of the Dark?: Curse of the Shadows.
Here we have six hour-long spooky tales as new members of “The Midnight Society” gather to tell the story of the Shadowman, who becomes all too real and it becomes a race against time to stop him before he consumes all!!
Also heading to DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment on Aug. 10 is director Renny Harlin’s The Misfits, starring Pierce Brosnan as Richard Pace, a master thief who escapes from prison only to get caught in an elaborate caper involving millions of dollars in gold bars … gold bars that are being used by their current owner to finance terrorist schemes!!
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