sjj's - Rented List

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Brutalized by poverty, gentle blacksmith Marcus (Preston Foster) turns to the arena in Pompeii and becomes a gladiator. The more men he kills, the more bitter and cynical he becomes. After his gladiatorial career ends he takes up slaving, and fighting as a mercenary in the far off land of Judea.

It is in Judea that he is fated to meet a great man - a man later crucified by his friend Pontius Pilate (Basil Rathbone) on a lonely hill outside Jerusalem. Before his life is through, Marcus will see his adored son (John Wood) turn to the forbidden teachings of that man, realise the true horror and cruelty of the Roman arena - and witness the terrible destruction of the city of Pompeii as Vesuvius erupts in its full, unrestrained fury...

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In 1975, in an America defined by both the self-mythologizing pomp of the upcoming bicentennial and ongoing socio-political turmoil, Bob Dylan and a band of troubadours - including luminaries such as Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, and Joni Mitchell - embarked on a now-legendary tour known as the

'Rolling Thunder Revue', a freewheeling variety show that was part travelling counterculture carnival, part spiritual pilgrimage. Director Martin Scorsese blends behind-the-scenes archival footage, interviews, and narrative mischief, with a magician's sleight of hand, into a zeitgeist-defining cultural record that is as much a concert "documentary" as it is a slippery, chimerical investigation into memory, time, truth, and illusion. At the center of it all is the magnetic Dylan, a sphinxlike philosopher-poet singing, with electrifying conviction, to the soul of an anxious nation.

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Triple bill of American classics.

It Happened in Hollywood (1937)
While hospitalized young Billy (Bill Burrud) meets his silent movie idol Tim Bart (Richard Dix) but then the talkies came, destroying Bart's career. Now Bart must convince his young friend he is still a star.

Adventure in Sahara (1938)
Agadez is a lonely French outpost baking under the desert sun and commanded by the cruel and oppressive Captain Savatt (C. Henry Gordon). To it comes, at his own request, Legionnaire Jim Wilson (Paul Kelly) soon followed by his fiancée, Carla Preston (Lorna Gray), who has been tracing him from post to post. Legionnaires seize the fort and turn Savitt loose in the Arab-haunted desert with only a fraction of the water and food needed to get back to civilization. But Savitt gets through and returns to the fort at the head of an avenging troop of men. But Arabs surround Savitt and his men, and the mutineers, knowing that to leave the fort and aid them means their own death...
Power of the Press (1943)
During WWII, the publisher of the isolationist New York Gazette is murdered just as he was about to change the paper's policy and support the US war effort. His friend, a small town patriotic editor, is brought in to find the culprits.

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The Secret Garden, tells the story of Mary Lennox, a 10 year old girl sent to live with her uncle Archibald Craven, under the watchful eye of Mrs Medlock with only the household maid, Martha for company.

The film is set in 1940's England at Misselthwaite Manor, a remote country estate deep in the Yorkshire moors. Mary begins to uncover many family secrets, particularly after chancing upon her cousin Colin (Edan Hayhurst), who has been shut away unwell in a wing of the house. Whist exploring the grounds of the Misselthwaite Manor, Mary discovers a wondrous garden and meets a local boy Dickon (Amir Wilson), who helps her fix stray dog Hector's injured leg using the garden's restorative powers. The three children adventure deep into the mysteries of the garden a magical place that will change their lives forever.

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Though his people, the Israelites, are enslaved by the Philistines, Samson (Victor Mature), strongest man of the tribe of Dan, falls in love with the Philistine Semadar (Angela Lansbury), whom he wins by virtue of a contest of strength.

But Semadar betrays him, and Samson engages in a fight with her real love, Ahtur (Henry Wilcoxon), and his soldiers. Semadar is killed, and her sister Delilah (Hedy Lamarr), who had loved Samson in silence, now vows vengeance against him. She plans to seduce Samson into revealing the secret of his strength and then to betray him to the Philistine leader, the Saran (George Sanders).

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Bitter hatred divides two brothers. Prince Einar (Kirk Douglas) is the son and heir of a savage Viking chieftain. Prince Eric (Tony Curtis) is his unknowing half-brother, the bastard offspring of Einar's father and an English queen.

When the Vikings kidnap a princess (Janet Leigh), her beauty inflames the desires of both men, forcing a bloody duel that decides their fate...and the future of the English throne.

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Rome burns. Nero (Peter Ustinov) fiddles. Christianity rises.

Featuring 110 speaking parts, 30,000 participants and a filmed-on-location panoply of marching legions, magisterial pageantry and massive spectacle that includes the martyrdom of Christians thrown to the lions before cheering Coliseum throngs. Robert Taylor plays the Legion commander whose love for a Christian slave girll crosses the divide between Empire and a sect with a higher loyalty. Presiding over all is Nero. He is Caesar, madman, murderer - an imperial ruler of the spectacular, and spectacularly doomed, glory that was Rome.

When Prince John (Claude Rains) and the Norman Lords begin oppressing the Saxon masses in King Richard's absence, a Saxon lord fights back as the outlaw leader of a rebel guerrilla army.

Drawn from the same events that later inspired 'Gladiator', the film charts the power-hungry greed and father-son betrayal that led to Rome's collapse at the bloody hands of the Barbarians.

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"Echo in the Canyon" celebrates the explosion of popular music that came out of LA's Laurel Canyon in the mid-60's as folk went electric and The Byrds, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield and The Mamas and the Papas gave birth to the California Sound.

Featuring Jakob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Beck and Norah Jones, the film explores the beginnings of the Laurel Canyon music scene. Dylan uncovers never-before-heard personal details behind the bands and their songs and how that music continues to inspire today.

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Wealthy Rollo Treadway (Buster Keaton) suddenly decides to propose to his neighbour across the street, Betsy O'Brien (Kathryn McGuire), and sends his servant to book passage for a honeymoon sea cruise to Honolulu.

When Betsy rejects his sudden offer however, he decides to go on the trip anyway, boarding without delay that night. Because the pier number is partially covered, he ends up on the wrong ship, the Navigator, which Betsy's rich father has just sold to a small country at war.

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As the Napoleonic War rages, the Scots Highlanders are forced off their ancestral lands by unscrupulous landlords and driven almost into the ocean. Trapped on the bleak and barren North-East coast of Scotland, they have to pursue the one thing of value to be found there...the rich shoals of herring.

Setting out on merciless seas in tiny boats, they risk their lives daily to give their families hope...When young Catrine (Helen Shingler) loses her husband to a navy press gang while he pursues the herring, she sets out to make a fresh start for herself. But Roddie (Clifford Evans), the new man in her life, is the skipper of a herring boat and she must learn to live with the fear of losing him too. As her son Finn grows to manhood, she recognises that the sea is in his very blood. Catrine will try anything to prevent Finn from taking to the ocean, but there seems no alternative - and she may one day lose both the man she loves and her own son to the treacherous ocean swell... A two-year labour of love by writer and director Clarence Elder and star and associate director Clifford Evans, The Silver Darlings is a sincere and stirring tribute to the men who forged the Scottish fishing industry with raw courage, determination and vision. With its stunning use of natural Highland locations, it also offers a visual celebration of the Scottish coastline that has seldom been equalled.

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After years spent reading books of chivalry, a middle aged Spanish gentleman (Nikolai Cherkassov) is convinced that he is the real-life knight-errant, Don Quixote de la Mancha.

To this end, he commissions his battered horse Rocinante to be his steed and appoints fellow Manchegan Sancho Panza (Yuri Tolubeyev) to be his reluctant squire. Both Knigh and Squire find themselves living anachronisms in 16th Century Spain, subject to constant humiliation and frequent defeat; safeguarded only by Sancho's good humour and Quixote's mad zeal. Don Quixote, made in 1957, is the first version of the novel in colour and CinemaScope, shot on location in the Crimean region. In adapting Cervantes, Grigori Kozintsev anticipates the style of his renowned Shakespeare adaptations (Hamlet, King Lear); crafting a film of comparable visual richness and poetic wit. The legendary Nikolai Cherkassov (Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible) adds a third to his roster of iconic screen roles with his stirring performance as the 'Knight of the Rueful Face.'

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Buster Keaton is at the peak of his slapstick powers in 'The Cameraman' - the first film that the silent-screen legend made after signing with MGM, and his last great masterpiece.

The final work over which he maintained creative control, this clever farce is the culmination of an extraordinary, decade-long run that produced some of the most innovative and enduring comedies of all time. Keaton plays a hapless newsreel cameraman desperate to impress both his new employer and his winsome office crush as he zigzags up and down Manhattan hustling for a scoop. Along the way, he goes for a swim (and winds up soaked), mimes every position of a baseball game in an empty Yankee Stadium, and teams up with a memorable monkey sidekick (the famous Josephine). The marvelously inventive film-within-a-film setup allows Keaton's imagination to run wild, yielding both sly insights into the travails of moviemaking and an emotional payoff of disarming poignancy.

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Feature draws upon the narration of the surviving shipmate of a terrible tragedy to tell the classic tale of Captain Ahab's (Gregory Peck) obsessive hunt for the great white whale that has dictated his destiny ever since leaving him a peg-legged cripple.

In a perilous journey that will take Ahab and his crew to the ends of the earth, no sacrifice is too great in Ahab's thirst for bloody revenge.