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Documentary DVDs

The General (The Ultimate 2-Disc Edition) (1926)

Sales Rank:3529
List Price: $29.95
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

Format:

Color
DVD-Video
NTSC
Silent

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Buster Keaton
Marion Mack

Buster Keaton's career reached its creative apex with this rousing comic adventure. Not merely one of the finest silent films, this remains one of the great film comedies of all time. The Great Stone Face stars as Southern railroad engineer Johnny Gray, a man with only two loves: the sweet Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack) and his trustworthy engine, the eponymous General. When Fort Sumner is fired upon he's one of the first to enlist, but when the war office rejects him (he's too valuable as a trained engineer) his sweetie rejects him as a coward. Johnny has the opportunity to prove his bravery when Yankee spies steal his engine and inadvertently kidnap Annabelle, and Johnny pursues with all the resources at his disposal: handcar, bicycle, and finally railroad engine. Keaton's love/hate relationship with technology and machinery shines as he becomes one with his beloved locomotive and wrestles with a finicky cannon that threatens to blow his engine off the tracks; with tremendous dexterity, he nails the humor with inimitably deadpan takes. Spunky Marion Mack makes a perfect partner for Keaton, not merely a foil but a gifted comedienne in her own right. Other Keaton films contain more laughs and inspired comic stunts, but none combines romance, adventure, and comedy into a solid story as seamlessly as this silent masterpiece. --Sean Axmaker

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Operation Valkyrie: The Stauffenberg Plot to Kill Hitler

Sales Rank:1695
List Price: $19.98
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

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The Definitive Story Based on Eyewitness Accounts
Produced in Collaboration with the German Resistance Organization Forschungsgemeinschaft 20. Juli 1944

July, 1944. As WWII raged on, a group of conspirators, led by Claus von Stauffenberg, plotted to assassinate Hitler and end his reign of terror. Using rare color footage, painstakingly recreated dramatizations, detailed CG reconstructions and exclusive interviews with leading historians, this thrilling documentary presents the definitive record of what happened before, during and after these pivotal events.

INCLUDES 2 HOURS OF BONUS FEATURES:
-The Eva Braun Films: Newly Re-Mastered Home Movies shot by Hitler's Mistress
-An Exclusive Visit to the Stauffenberg Estate
-Killing Hitler: Other Assassination Attempts on the Fuhrer presented by author Roger Moorhouse
-A Visit to the German Resistance Memorial Center in Berlin
-Footage from the Volksgericht Trials
-Interview with Philipp Baron von Boeselager, the last surviving member of the Stauffenberg Conspiracy

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Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers & Tides

Sales Rank:2827
List Price: $26.95
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

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Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers and Tides is a truly beautiful, Scottish-German 2001 documentary about artist Goldsworthy, a Scotsman whose medium is nature itself and whose preferred studio is the outdoors, particularly where water forever flows, rises, and/or retreats. The soft-spoken, secluded Goldsworthy is seen hard at work making ephemeral sculptures out of bits of ice in the trees, or building tall, mysterious cones from loose rock, which stand like spiritual sentinels in forests and on shorelines, overgrown by plants or swallowed daily by high tides. Filmmaker-cinematographer Thomas Reidelsheimer goes to great and sometimes inexplicable lengths to make visual corollaries to Goldsworthy's ideas about underappreciated relationships between light, color, movement, balance, and fluidity of form in the real world, making Rivers and Tides a lively and always surprising cinematic gallery. Some of Goldsworthy's most miraculous natural installations--stone walls that snake through hundreds of feet of forest and stream, for instance--show up in the last half-hour. --Tom Keogh

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The Privileged Planet

Sales Rank:1682
List Price: $19.95
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

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Closed-captioned
Color
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Today, most scientists and philosophers claim that Earth is an ordinary speck of dust adrift, without purpose or significance, in a vast cosmic sea. This idea (popularized by the late astronomer, Carl Sagan) is an outgrowth of the naturalistic philosophy that has dominated science for the past 150 years. Yet, remarkable evidence--unveiled by contemporary astronomy and physics-may now tell a very different story. Building upon the overwhelming success of Unlocking the Mystery of Life (widely acclaimed as the most effective refutation of Darwinian theory, ever produced), Illustra Media presents The Privileged Planet. This hour-long documentary explores the scientific evidence for intelligent design and purpose in the universe. In the process, Earth is revealed as far more than the product of time, chance, and random natural processes. We now know that a rare and finely tuned array of factors makes Earth suitable for complex life. We depend on our planet's oxygen-rich atmosphere, its large moon, its planetary neighbors, and its precise location within the solar system and Milky Way galaxy. But the story does not end here. For, the same factors that make a planet like Earth hospitable to life also provide the best conditions for scientific discovery. Is this correlation merely a coincidence? Or does it point to a deeper truth about the purpose of the cosmos and the reality of a transcendent designer? The answer could dramatically affect 21st century science. Through stunning computer animation, interviews with leading scientists, and spectacular images of Earth and the cosmos, The Privileged Planet explores a startling connection between our capacity to survive and our ability to observe and understand the universe. A connection that points directly to the work of a creative mind and plan. This extraordinary documentary will be a focal point in the escalating debate between evolution and design.

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Mythbusters: Collection 2 (3pc)

Sales Rank:7170
List Price: $29.99
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

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Ever wonder if human teeth could stop a speeding bullet? You're about to find out! Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage are back to test a host of the most insane and dangerous myths ever dreamed of. No theory is safe from the scrutiny of the MythBusters, who take on the Hindenburg disaster, Tesla's Earthquake Machine, the Mentos mint-Diet Coke Internet myth and much, much more! From the wacky (can a hurricane blow the feathers off a chicken?) to the death-defying, Hyneman and Savage go where no reasonable people have gone before in separating the reality from the ridiculous!

EPISODES: Helium Football: Field test helium-filled footballs to find out if they stay aloft higher and longer than regulation air-filled balls. Then face a firing line to discover the bullet-halting capability of human teeth.

Bullets Fired Up: See if celebratory bullets shot into the air can kill when they return to Earth, and find out whether low-grade vodka can be transformed into a top-shelf spirit with an ordinary household water filter.

Killer Whirlpool: Literature is filled with nautical tales of ships being sucked to deathly ocean depths by killer whirlpools, but could such a thing really happen? Then discover whether snowplows can blow a car off the road or if that?s just a snow job.

Crimes and Myth-demeanors 2: Test the most high-tech home alarm systems on the market, including stripping down to birthday suits, getting sprayed with dry-ice and donning a Big Bird-like yellow rug to evade burglary detection.

Deadly Straw: Test burning barnyard myths like whether a hurricane can blow the feathers of a chicken.

Earthquake Machine: Take on Nikolai Tesla, one of the greatest scientists and inventor of all time. Unbelievably coming up with a working prototype of Tesla's Earthquake Machine, the pair put a California bridge to the test.

Diet Coke and Mentos: Inspired by an Internet myth, the MythBusters pair various sodas and candies together until they create the most explosive cocktail possible. Then: Can putting a postage stamp on a helicopter's rotor blades send it into a tailspin?

Anti-Gravity Device: Celebrate the magic of the holiday season by loading strings of hot lights on a Christmas tree to see how long it takes for the tree to burst into flames.

Firearms Folklore: Test the likelihood that a criminal's bullet could hit and then jam the chamber of a policeman's revolver and whether a sniper could kill another by shooting straight down the enemy gun scope.

Holiday Special: Yodel to an avalanche in this special episode, then exhaustively test for the best Christmas tree-water cocktail to keep the needles from falling off.

Pirate Special: Test period swords, cannons, guns and the laundry-cleaning capabilities of grog.

Hindenburg Mystery: It's generally accepted that the hydrogen keeping the Hindenburg afloat sparked the infamous inferno, but could other chemical reactions actually have caused the blaze?

Underwater Car: The team willingly recreates many people's worst nightmare: being trapped in a car submerged in water after a crash.

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Do You Believe in Miracles? The Story of the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team

Sales Rank:6137
List Price: $14.98
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

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Closed-captioned
Color
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Director(s):

Actor(s):

Craig R. Whitney
Walter Mondale
John Powers
Jack O'Callahan
John Harrington

You don't need to know anything about hockey to be moved by this hourlong documentary about one of the greatest upsets in sports history: the United States' defeat of the vaunted Russian Olympic hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. The film recounts the David vs. Goliath matchup between the Americans (essentially a group of college kids molded into a team by coach Herb Brooks, also the U.S. hockey coach in the 2002 Olympic games) and the Russians, professionals who had won four straight Olympic golds. The story is retold in interviews with the people who lived it, including Brooks and several of the American players, sportscaster Al Michaels (who uttered the title line as the game ended), and key Russian players. Do You Believe in Miracles? is a solid blend of sports and history that focuses on the human element in one of the great underdog victories of all time. --Marshall Fine

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Steep

Sales Rank:2464
List Price: $19.94
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)

Format:

AC-3
Closed-captioned
Color
Dolby
DVD-Video
Subtitled
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Ingrid Backstrom
Anselme Baud
Bill Briggs
Doug Coombs
Chris Davenport

Thrilling and spectacular, Steep is a mesmerizing documentary in the Warren Miller mold about extreme skiing, but with more emphasis on the drive and psychology of the adrenaline-hooked athletes involved. A number of skiers are captured in archival and original footage braving the odds against surviving runs down astonishingly steep, dangerous slopes. Among the subjects is Bill Briggs, who climbed in 1971 to the top of Grand Teton in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and skied down, an unprecedented effort echoed by Europeans who later did the same thing down the French Alps in Chamonix. Doug Coombs, who twice won the World Extreme Skiing Championship, is also profiled and speaks honestly about the possibility of dying for the sake of living life to the fullest as a thrillseeker. Written and directed by Mark Obenhaus, a producer for several of the late Peter Jennings’ television news specials, Steep is visually gorgeous, and literally breathtaking whenever a skier is seen barely outracing an avalanche nipping at his heels. Steep attempts, somewhat, to get inside the heads of the pros who do this sort of thing, but it is hard for many of the subjects to articulate what they feel. It’s best just to be knocked out by their deeds and let the fantastic visuals in Steep speak for themselves. --Tom Keogh

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Shark Week: 20th Anniversary Collection

Sales Rank:7401
List Price: $29.99
Lowest New Price: $11.00
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

Format:

Box set
Color
DVD-Video
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Frank Mundus
Corey Sosner
Erich Ritter
J.V. Martin

Lurking silently beneath the ocean's placid surface is one of nature's most terrifying creatures, a powerful predator who can rip its prey apart in a matter of seconds! Now experience actual shark attacks and rescues captured on film. Learn why these attacks are increasing at an alarming rate and see the awe-inspiring lengths sharks will go to when they're after prey. Swim with this misunderstood marvel in the world's most beautiful places, and discover the shark's secrets as we peer into its home in the sea's dark depths. Go shark hunting with the man whose legendary adventures may have inspired the infamous character Quint from Jaws, the movie that has scared millions out of the ocean. Explore the science, myths and mystery of this fearsome predator in 14 favorite Discovery Channel programs from Shark Week--the series that has been exciting and intriguing fans for 20 years! 4-DVD Set includes the following episodes: "Shark Attack Rescuers," "Shark Attack Survivors," Anatomy of a Shark Bite," "Prehistoric Sharks," "Future Shark," "Bull Shark: The World's Deadliest Shark," "Jaws of the Pacific," "Sharks in a Desert Sea," "Air Jaws: Sharks of South Africa," "Air Jaws II: Even Higher," "American Shark," "Shark Rebellion," "Shark Hunter: Chasing the Great White," and "Shark Bite! Surviving Great Whites."

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The Endless Summer

Sales Rank:2636
List Price: $14.99
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

Format:

Color
DVD-Video
Full Screen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Robert August
Lord 'Tally Ho' Blears
Terence Bullen
Michael Hynson
Wayne Miyata

The definitive surf movie, this 1966 documentary by Bruce Brown is beautifully shot and thrilling to see in its portrait of youthful freedom on the world's shores. Brown followed two surfers around the globe in their quest for the perfect wave, finding it eventually on a remote beach far from home. The narration by "Big Kahuna Brown" cuts through the reverence a bit, being cheeky in tone. --Tom Keogh

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The Dark Ages (The History Channel )

Sales Rank:3432
List Price: $24.95
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

Format:

Black & White
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NTSC

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Actor(s):

At its height in the second century A.D., the Roman Empire was the beacon of learning, trade, power and prosperity in the western world. But the once-powerful Rome--rotten to the core by the fifth century--lay open to barbarian warriors who came in wave after wave of invasion, slaughtering, stealing, and ultimately, settling. As chaos replaced culture, Europe was beset by famine, plague, persecutions, and a state of war that was so persistent it was only rarely interrupted by peace. THE DARK AGES profiles those who battled to shape the future, from the warlords whose armies threatened to case the demise of European society, like Alaric, Charles the Hammer, and Clovis; to the men and women who valiantly tended the flames of justice, knowledge, and innovation including Charlemagne, St. Benedict, Empress Theodora, and other brave souls who fought for peace and enlightenment. It was in the shadows of this turbulent millennium that the seeds of modern civilization were sown.

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