Another great historical performance from the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in London that's been captured on tape, this 1968 production of Tchaikovsky's perennial holiday classic The Nutcracker stars two of the premier dancers of their (or any) time: ballerina Merle Park and the redoubtable Rudolf Nureyev. Both are seen in their considerable prime. Nureyev's choreography and production are also tastefully done, with the opening March of the Toy Soldiers and the climactic Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies particularly beautifully handled. Conductor Charles Taylor leads the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in a merry and vigorous reading of Tchaikovsky's wonderfully appealing score. As always with such legendary stagings taped for posterity, the video and audio quality aren't perfect, but they are more than adequate enough to appreciate and be endlessly entertained by Nureyev's, Park's, and Tchaikovsky's balletic mastery. -Kevin Filipski.

Treasures of the British Crown, hosted by Sir Huw Wheldon and filmed in 1981, offers an insider's view into the magnificent residences and lives of the British monarchy. Contributions from the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Prince Charles personalize this 100-minute video, which explores the exquisite possessions, the affections, the artistic pursuits, and the talents of royals since King George IV. Starting at the famous Buckingham Palace, we hear the Queen Mother's memories of wartime bombing and learn that Queen Victoria's coronation at 18 and residency at Buckingham represented her release from her mother's possessive clutches (Victoria had to sleep in her mother's room every night until she became queen). Other highlights include a dapper Prince Charles (pre-Diana) speaking admiringly of his great-grandmother and the journals she kept as a widow at Balmoral, the grand retreat-estate she and her beloved husband, Prince Albert of Germany, built on the Scottish Isle of Wight. Devastated by her husband's premature death at 42, for several years the Queen avoided London and became hopelessly dependent on her servant John Brown (Judi Dench and Billy Connolly immortalized this friendship in 1997's Mrs. Brown). We also get a presentation on the favorite carriages of George IV from the duke, a lesson on the gems mounted in the imperial state crown from Queen Elizabeth II, and a tour of the royal yacht. All in all, this is an intriguing and even romantic history lesson on the British monarchy and their glorious riches. -Rebecca Wright Treasures of the British Crown is an inspiring journey through the largest and most spectacular private art collection in the world. Her Majesty the Queen describes the Imperial State Crown, the Duke of Edinburgh discusses the collection of carriages, and the Queen Mother describes her wartime experiences at Buckingham Palace. [+]

Writer-director Alan Parker's feature debut Bugsy Malone is a pastiche of American movies, a musical gangster comedy set in 1929, featuring prohibition, showgirls, and gang warfare, with references to everything from Some Like It Hot to The Godfather. Uniquely, though, all the parts are played by children, including an excellent if underused Jodie Foster as platinum-blonde singer Tallulah, Scott Baio in the title role and a nine-year-old Dexter Fletcher wielding a baseball bat. Cream-firing "spluge guns" sidestep any real violence and the movie climaxes cheerfully with the biggest custard pie fight this side of Casino Royale (1967). Unfortunately for a musical, Paul Williams's score-part honky-tonk jazz homage, part 1970s Elton John-style pop-lets the side down with a lack of memorable tunes. Nevertheless, Parker's direction is spot on and the look of the film is superb, a fantasy movie-movie existing in the same parallel reality as The Cotton Club and Chicago. A rare British love letter to classic American cinema, Bugsy Malone remains a true original; in Parker's words "the work of a madman" and one of the strangest yet most stylish children's films ever made. -Gary S. Dalkin.

With his aptly titled Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard embraced the widescreen splendor of Hollywood while thumbing his nose at Hollywood itself. A rebel with a cause, Godard pursues an iconoclast's agenda, using the Franscope format (expertly controlled by cinematographer Raoul Coutard) to undermine the grandeur of widescreen melodramas. The story ostensibly concerns an innovative production of Homer's Odyssey and the struggle of a respected screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) to please a pugnacious producer (Jack Palance), a veteran director (Fritz Lang, essentially playing himself), and a petulant wife (Brigitte Bardot) who's grown tired of their turbulent relationship. It's all pretense, however, for Godard's mischievous (and yes, contemptuous) deconstruction of commercial Hollywood filmmaking, potently infused with film-buff in-jokes, astute observations about love, stardom, and artistry, and enough glossy style to suggest that Godard had mastered the craft he so willfully rejects. Contempt is one of his most accessibly fascinating films. -Jeff Shannon.

This first half of the 1967 original, 26-episode British television series (which aired on PBS two years later and inspired the creation of Masterpiece Theatre) is both literary soap opera and sprawling, Dickensian tale of love, money, and destiny fatefully intertwined. Set in the late Victorian era, the early chapters of The Forsyte Saga (based on several works by John Galsworthy) merrily buzz with a large and hopelessly confusing roster of Forsyte kin, most creaking with age and cackling ridiculously over family gossip. As these elders pass on, a core cast including Eric Porter as Soames, an acquisitive "man of property," Nyree Dawn Porter as the ethereal Irene, and Kenneth More as Jolyon-the family's artistic black sheep-becomes our key players, wrestling with their definitions of "value" (i. e. , that which can be measured versus that which can't), procreating, and stumbling in the dark for happiness. -Tom Keogh The miniseries that started in all! In 1969, a internationally-acclaimed BBC show began airing on the fledgling public broadcasting network. The Forsyte Saga, in telling the remarkable story of a nouveau riche English family, introduced America to a new kind of TV. Millions of Americans devoted the next half-year of their lives to following the frank treatment of all sins, foibles and peccadillos of the Forsytes and their circle. The series was so popular that Masterpiece Theatre was created to meet the new demand for great literary adaptations. With a cast of 150, 2000 separate costumes and over 100 sets, this sprawling yet intimate saga continues to move, provoke and entrance viewers today. [+]

This 1985 film from Britain offers up the only possible reason the extraordinary British writer Dennis Potter could be involved with a project also featuring the talents of Jim Henson's Muppets. The subject is the awkward relationship between Charles Dodgson (Ian Holm), better known to the world as Lewis Carroll, and Alice Liddell (played by Coral Browne as an adult), as it was in the 19th century when Liddell inspired Carroll to create Alice In Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. The full account of that bond is finally told by Alice in 1932, as she arrives in New York City to participate in the 100th anniversary of Dodgson's birth. Flustered by press and public attention, Alice releases her repressed memories from that time, and Henson's factory does a wonderful job creating bold realizations of the author's characters and settings. Both dark and light, Dreamchild is a mesmerizing spectacle with inner portraits of two quite dissimilar but equally vulnerable people. Holm is excellent as the stammering, often ridiculed Dodgson. -Tom Keogh.

This 1982, 180-minute television remake of the original MGM feature, produced 30 years before, is the rare makeover of a classic that works quite well under its own steam. Anthony Andrews plays the disinherited knight who returns from the Third Crusades and is determined to raise the ransom to free a kidnapped King Richard (Julian Glover). With his bid rebuffed by his estranged father (Michael Hordern), and the affection of the latter's ward, Rowena (Lysette Anthony), compromised, Ivanhoe looks toward the generosity of the beautiful Rebecca (Olivia Hussey)-whose father (James Mason) he rescued from anti-Semitic Normans-for help. But a plot by faithless friends to discredit Ivanhoe, and his subsequent partnership with Robin Hood (David Robb) to save the day, keep this story from slowing down even for a minute. Originally a miniseries, this production has enough breadth to provide lots of breathing room for the script and cast to mine all the drama they can from Sir Walter Scott's novel. This is also a great-looking movie, with wall-to-wall pageantry, superb costumes-the works. -Tom Keogh.

Perhaps Jean Delannoy's (The Eternal Return) best-loved film, La Symphonie Pastorale remains one of France's greatest contributions to cinema. This sensitive adaptation of Andre Gide's introspective novel is precisely constructed, brilliant.

An ambitious experiment by the BBC that ultimately fails, Operavox attempts to condense six famous operas into animated half-hours. The limited time forces the filmmakers to present the stories in clunky English translations, while reducing the celebrated scores to musical mincemeat. The stop-motion animators come the closest to succeeding. Barry J. C. Purves captures the malevolent pleasures and crushing sorrows of the court of Mantua in his atmospheric rendition of Verdi's Rigoletto. Natalia Dabizha's softer, more traditional puppets give Rossini's The Barber of Seville the feeling of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, but she manages to preserve a suitably comic tone. Valeri Oganov treats Mozart's sublime Magic Flute as if it were an episode from Yellow Submarine, while Graham Ralph tries to turn Wagner's Das Rheingold into Heavy Metal, with Freya in a Frazetta-esque bikini. Mario Cavalli paints over live-action footage for his singularly ugly-and barely animated-version of Bizet's Carmen, while Gary Hurst's retelling of Puccini's Turandot boasts chinoiserie backgrounds that are more interesting than the animation in front of them. The performances by the Welsh National Opera under various conductors are adequate at best, with the singers painfully overtaxed in what should be the most beautiful moments. [+]