Greetings from Amazon.com!
You’ve previously signed up to be notified when “1776” (DVD) became available, and we’re happy to inform you that it is now available to pre-order!
Hu-frickin-zah! 1776 was a great stage show that may have been a great movie except for the cuts for time and (once it went to video) an abominable pan-n-scan print. It’s a retelling of the Continental Congress that drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence.
Dry stuff, you might say, and hardly something that would lend itself to a musical. But not only do the writers find some truly stirring romance (John and Abigail Adams, based on their historic love letters — not to mention the poignant, if ultimately doomed, romance between Jefferson and his wife), but there’s time for some mordant political comedy and some gut-wrenching debate over both independence and the question of slavery, which dispute nearly doomed the Congress and, in its resolution, paved the way for civil war a century later.
It’s got a great cast, centered on the acerbic William Daniels as the acerbic John Adams who, though “obnoxious and disliked,” is second to none in his passion to declare independence from the Crown.
I’ve loved this film since I first ran across it way too many years ago, and I am tickled pink that it’s coming to a decent DVD release. I am, I kid you not, as excited about this as I am about The Fellowship of the Ring DVD — and it’s coming out 2 July, just in time (natch) for Independence Day.
New York abstains…courteously.
I love this movie. Have to put it on my DVD want list.