African American Cinema on VHS
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Shaft
List Price: $9.98 Now Only: $0.98 You Save: $ 9.00 (90%)
Category: VHS Movies
 Publisher: Warner Home Video Starring: Victor Arnold (II), Dominic Barto, Sherri Brewer, Drew Bundini Brown, Charles Cioffi Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) directed this 1971 detective story about John Shaft (Richard Roundtree), an African American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree's uncompromising performance, and the thrilling, Oscar-winning score by Isaac Hayes. Parks seems fond of certain detective genre clichés (e.g., the hero walking into his low-rent office and finding a hood waiting to talk with him), but he and Roundtree make those moments their own. Shaft had a couple of sequels and a follow-up television series, but none had the impact this movie did. --Tom Keogh. |
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Mo Money
Price: $9.95
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Sony Pictures Starring: Damon Wayans, Stacey Dash, Marlon Wayans, Joe Santos, John Diehl Directed By: Peter MacDonald Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Sort of comedy, sort of not, this film--cowritten, coproduced, and co-starring Damon Wayans--concerns a loser who takes an entry-level job at a credit company to impress a girl and soon gets caught up in fraud and blackmail. Marlon Wayans, Damon's brother, costars as a confederate in the chicanery. The film is meant to be both a jokefest and an edgy drama--the criminal activity is treated as a dark and serious matter--and the result is that Mo' Money succeeds on neither level. --Tom Keogh. |
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The American Experience - The Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory
Price: $34.95
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Pbs (Direct) Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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It was 1871, and the young singers - all but two of them former slaves - were performing before far-off audiences to save their struggling new school. The Jubilee Singers' first concert, in Oberlin, Ohio, raised hopes but little else. Still, they refused to quit, and as word of their talent spread along the route of the old Underground Railway, both crowds and collections grew. The youths from Nashville, Tennessee, made history by saving Fisk University, introducing the world to the power of spirituals, and challenging racial stereotypes. See - and hear - this profound and moving story of students who battled prejudice and oppression to sing their way into a nation's heart.. |
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Jackie Brown
List Price: $9.99 Now Only: $0.49 You Save: $ 9.50 (95%)
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Miramax Films Starring: Tangie Ambrose, Michael Bowen, Robert De Niro, Bridget Fonda, Robert Forster Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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The curiosity of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown is Robert Forster's worldly wise bail bondsman Max Cherry, the most alive character in this adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch. The Academy Awards saw it the same way, giving Forster the film's only nomination. The film is more "rum" than "punch" and will certainly disappoint those who are looking for Tarantino's trademark style. This movie is a slow, decaffeinated story of six characters glued to a half million dollars brought illegally into the country. |
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Small Steps Big Strides
Price: $28.15
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: 20th Century Fox Starring: Harry Belafonte, Donald Bogle, Diahann Carroll, Dorothy Dandridge, Ruby Dee Directed By: Velma Cato Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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The curiosity of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown is Robert Forster's worldly wise bail bondsman Max Cherry, the most alive character in this adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch. The Academy Awards saw it the same way, giving Forster the film's only nomination. The film is more "rum" than "punch" and will certainly disappoint those who are looking for Tarantino's trademark style. This movie is a slow, decaffeinated story of six characters glued to a half million dollars brought illegally into the country. |
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4 Little Girls
Price: $18.99
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Hbo Home Video Starring: Dianne Braddock, Carolyn Lee Brown, Gerald Colbert, Arthur Hanes Jr., Freeman Hrabowski III Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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There are many remarkable things about the documentary 4 Little Girls. Spike Lee's striking, beautifully realized film is a cinematic lesson of what kind of material is better suited to the documentary format. In his first documentary, Lee shares an attribute of Ken Burns: the major event in his documentary is not seen on camera. Except for four quick glimpses of black-and-white autopsy photos, the picture stays clear from the bombing. |
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Journey of the African-American Athlete
Price: Check for Updated Price
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Hbo Home Video Starring: Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe, Julius Erving, Althea Gibson, Samuel L. Jackson Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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This definitive history of the African-American athlete includes exciting footage of Boxing's Jack Johnson, Loe Louis and Muhammad Ali; Basketball's Dr. J. and Michael "Air" Jordan; Tennis stars Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe; Baseball's Negro Leagues, Jackie Robinson; and more.. |
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Set It Off
List Price: $6.98 Now Only: $1.73 You Save: $ 5.25 (75%)
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: New Line Home Video Starring: Van Baum, Vincent Baum, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Natalie Desselle, Dr. Dre Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Even when it misses a dramatic opportunity in favor of generic action, Set It Off benefits from a sharp understanding of its well-drawn central characters. They're a quartet of young African American women in Los Angeles (Jada Pinkett, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, Kimberly Elise), all struggling against a system that seems designed to prevent them from realizing their dreams. The movie establishes their plight with credible attention to emotional detail, making their decision to rob banks believable enough to give the ensuing plot its inevitably tragic momentum. |
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The Story of Jazz
List Price: $18.98 Now Only: $18.00 You Save: $ 0.98 (5%)
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Bmg Special Product Starring: Various Artists Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Produced as the title segment to a six-part series, this 90-minute documentary traces the evolution of jazz from its 19th-century origins in New Orleans's Congo Square, where slaves first introduced American listeners to the complex rhythms and earthy textures of African music. How that cultural diaspora combined with European and American folk, classical, and popular styles to become jazz, "America's classical music," is an oft-told tale, but it's handsomely served here by an intelligent script shaped by veteran jazz journalist Chris Albertson, and a well-chosen array of performances: Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Willie "the Lion" Smith, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Jimmie Lunceford, Charles Mingus, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sarah Vaughan, and Gil Evans all appear, representing as complete a pantheon of major innovators and influences as could be hoped for. Period footage, including both stills and rare film clips, and interviews with musicians and scholars round out a portrait equally appropriate for hard-core jazz fans and novice listeners looking for a point of entry. --Sam Sutherland. |
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Tiger Woods Son, Hero & Champion
Price: $1.40
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Twentieth Century-Fox Home Video Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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When golf phenom Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters with a tournament scoring record, he burst onto the national scene with what seemed like a storybook beginning to a great career. But what looked like an overnight success had actually begun years and years before, when as a toddler he was coached by his father. This video, appropriately subtitled Son, Hero, and Champion, prominently features Tiger's father, Earl Woods, a former Green Beret who essentially put his son through a psychological boot camp designed to make him a mentally tough player. One of the highpoints of this documentary is a detailed look at how Tiger Woods and his father developed strategies to win tournaments, focusing on a specific amateur championship where the Woods family brain trust had to quickly devise a way to come from behind to win the tournament in a playoff round. |
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