The Great Debaters

• Denzel Washington directs and stars in this uplifting drama based on a true story about a small East Texas all-black college in 1935 that rises to the top of the nation's debate teams in a duel against Harvard. A poet and debating coach at Wiley College, Professor Melvin Tolson (Washington) sees debating as "a blood sport" and recruits the meanest and brightest, including troubled Henr

As the debate over America's public schools rages on, the one thing everyone agrees on is the need for great teachers. Yet while research has shown that teachers are the most important in-school factor in a child's success, America's educators are so underpaid that almost two-thirds must work a second job in order to make a living. Chronicling the stories of four teachers in different areas of the country, American Teacher reveals the frustrating realities of today's teachers, the difficulty of attracting tal! ented new educators, and why so many of our best teachers leave the profession altogether. Can we re-value teaching and turn it into a prestigious, financially attractive and desirable profession? With almost half of American teachers leaving the field in the next ten years, now is the time to find out.From the Academy Award-winning Director of An Inconvenient Truth comes the groundbreaking feature film that provides an engaging and inspiring look at public education in the United States. Waiting For “Superman” has helped launch a movement to achieve a real and lasting change through the compelling stories of five unforgettable students such as Emily, a Silicon Valley eighth-grader who is afraid of being labeled as unfit for college and Francisco, a Bronx first-grader whose mom will do anything to give him a shot at a better life. Waiting For “Superman” will leave a lasting and powerful impression that you will want to share with your frie! nds and family.Love, American Style was an hour-long televisio! n anthol ogy which originally aired between September 1969 and January 1974. For the 1971 and 1972 seasons it was a part of an ABC Friday prime-time lineup that also included Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222, and The Odd Couple. Each week, the show featured different stories of romance, usually with a comedic spin. All episodes were unrelated, featuring different characters, stories and locations. The show often featured the same actors playing different characters in many episodes. In addition a large and ornate brass bed was a recurring prop in many episodes. Charles Fox's delicate yet hip music score, featuring flutes, harp, and flugelhorn set to a contemporary pop beat, provided the "love" ambiance which tied the stories together as a multifaceted romantic comedy each week.Frustrated newlyweds and bickering marrieds, lecherous executives and bodacious secretaries, uptight squares and free-spirited hippies, suspicious wives and nervous husbands, inexperienced teens and ! swinging seniors. They’re all part and parcel of Love, American Style, the era-defining anthology series that offered a comedic look at the so-called "new morality." Rebounding after studio-imposed DVD-interruptus, this three-disc set contains the 12 episodes that complete Season One. Each contains two or three playlets. Unlike The Love Boat, all are played for laughs: A honeymooning groom accidentally locks himself in an antique store’s chastity belt; A bachelor pretends to have a wife and children to seduce a coworker who only dates married men; A harried man discovers his favorite restaurant has gone topless just as his wife surprises him for lunch. One intriguing story is "Love and the High School Flop-Out," whose story about an awkward teen who has the house to himself while his parents are out of town anticipates Risky Business, complete with friends who suggest he rent out the house for an "orgy." Love plays it completely straig! ht. In one story, a newlywed complains her husband seems to be! losing interest in her, prompting her mother to inquire if he is "strange." In another, an interior decorator in love with a mobster’s daughter is dismissed by him as a "petunia" until he dispatches the thug’s henchmen ("The fact that I have taste and a certain flair for color and design doesn’t make me any less of a man," he argues). And in another, two bickering male business partners visit a marriage counselor to sort out their troubles. Of course, what really makes this show such a star-spangled affair is each episode’s roster of character actors, TV Land cult faves, and future stars. Burt Reynolds already has his smirk going as a soldier whose wife has written a scandalous bestseller in "Love and the Banned Book." An 18-year-old Kurt Russell portrays a high school student poised to lose his virginity in "Love and the First-Nighters." Love American Style is hip enough to reference Alice B. Toklas, Bonnie & Clyde, Rosemary’s Baby and Federico Felli! ni, but its chauvinistic attitudes now make the once-naughty show seem almost endearingly quaint. Still, to watch "Love and the Nervous Executive," which pairs prissy Paul Lynde with va-voom "Mighty Carson Arts Players" bombshell Carol Wayne, or "Love and the Big Night" with Tony Randall and Julie "Catwoman" Newmar, is to fall in Love all over again. --Donald LiebensonLove, American Style was an hour-long television anthology which originally aired between September 1969 and January 1974. For the 1971 and 1972 seasons it was a part of an ABC Friday prime-time lineup that also included Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222, and The Odd Couple. Each week, the show featured different stories of romance, usually with a comedic spin. All episodes were unrelated, featuring different characters, stories and locations. The show often featured the same actors playing different characters in many episodes. In addition a large and ornate brass bed was a recurring p! rop in many episodes. Charles Fox's delicate yet hip music sco! re, feat uring flutes, harp, and flugelhorn set to a contemporary pop beat, provided the "love" ambiance which tied the stories together as a multifaceted romantic comedy each week. No "I Love the '70s" party will be complete without this blast from the groovy past, when women were "chicks," beaded door curtains were cool, and Carl Betz got top billing over Harrison Ford. Love American Style was an anthology series of comedic playlets about modern love, some sweet (two shy ventriloquists let their dummies do the talking in "Love and the Dummies"), some silly (a greeting-card writer's romance is threatened by his penchant for practical jokes in "Love and the Joker"), and some mildly risqué (In "Love and a Couple of Couples," a man regards his ex-wife's posterior as she asks of their former marital bed, "Is it still firm?"). A more apt title for this series could be, "Comedy, Neil Simon-style." One of the more interesting segments is "Love and the Good Deal," co-written by Garr! y Marshall, and which plays like a deleted act from Barefoot in the Park in which newlyweds Paul and Corie look for a new bed for their cramped apartment.

Love American Style debuted in 1969, a year in which the networks started to reach out to "modern people living in a modern world" with shows such as Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, The Mod Squad, and The Music Scene (which anticipated Saturday Night Live with its mix of satirical sketches and contemporary music). Love American Style was hip enough to feature a story called "Love and the Pill" and to refer to Philip Roth's novel Goodbye, Columbus. But traditional values invariably triumphed. In "Pill," a young man tells his girlfriend's overwrought parents that they have abstained from you-know. "That's the way we happen to feel about it," he reassures them. But what we truly love about American Style are the casts. You'd have to sail The Love Boat or vis! it Fantasy Island to find such a stellar gathering of H! ollywood greats, comic legends, TV Land faves, future stars, and unsung character actors with the indelible and unforgettable faces. To name a few: Bill Bixby, Sid Caesar, Hans "Uncle Tonoose" Conreid, Broderick Crawford, Dwayne "Dobie Gillis" Hickman, David Ketchum (Agent 13 on Get Smart), Shari Lewis, Regis Philbin, Connie Stevens, Larry Storch, Paul "Tigger" Winchell, Joe Flynn and Carl Ballentine from McHale's Navy, and Mr. Ford, who shows up as Roger, the boyfriend, in "Love and the Former Marriage." Stuart Margolin (The Rockford Files) is the most recognizable face of the show's stock company who appear in Laugh-In-style blackouts that link the stories. These are hit and miss, but some are blink-twice bizarre, as the one in which a black man reassures his reluctant fiancée, "Okay, we'll raise the kids Jewish." So cue the Cowsills ("Love American Style/Truer than the red, white and blue….") and ignite the fireworks. It's dated, yes, but Love will never go out of style. --Donald LiebensonThis new DVD to accompany the best-selling sign language book, Learning American Sign Language, brings the art and learning of sign language to life.Lessons from Jesus, the American Sign Language edition, 6 discs.Inspired by a true story, 'The Great Debaters' chronicles the journey of Professor Melvin Tolson (Denzel Washington), a debate team coach who shapes a group of underdog students from a small African American college into a historically elite debate team. Directed by Denzel Washington. Co-Produced by Oprah Winfrey.

Read more »