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Amazon.com essential video Saturday Night Fever is one of those movies that comes along and seems to change the cultural temperature in a flash. After the movie's release in 1977, disco ruled the dance floors, and a blow-dried member of a TV-sitcom ensemble became the hottest star in the U.S. For all that, the story is conventional: a 19-year-old Italian American from Brooklyn, Tony Manero (John Travolta), works in a humble paint store and lives with his family. After dark, he becomes the polyester-clad stallion of the local nightclub; Tony's brother, a priest, observes that when Tony hits the dance floor, the crowd parts like the Red Sea before Moses. Director John Badham captures the electric connection between music and dance, and also the desperation that lies beneath Tony's ambitions to break out of his limited world. The soundtrack, which spawned a massively successful album, is dominated by the disco classics of the Bee Gees, including "Staying Alive" (Travolta's theme during the strutting opening) and "Night Fever." The Oscar®-nominated Travolta, plucked from the cast of Welcome Back, Kotter, for his first starring role, is incandescent and unbelievably confident, and his dancing is terrific. Oh, and the white suit rules. --Robert Horton On the DVD As copious as the special features accompanying this new edition of Saturday Night Fever might be--and there's well over an hour's worth of material, not including director John Badham's full-length commentary track for the film itself--watching them is slightly discomfiting. The lack of any sort of participation by John Travolta is a bit like having an elephant in the room (an invisible elephant, at that): everyone knows it's there, but no one dares mention it. Instead, we get a lot of people--Badham, cast, crew, producer Robert Stigwood, folks from the Brooklyn 'hood where the movie was filmed, and so on--talking about the star, along with a few clips of Travolta in action. We also get a 50-minute featurette about Saturday Night Fever's overall impact (all agree it was significant), its music (Barry and Robin Gibb are among those discussing the remarkable success of the soundtrack album, still one of the biggest sellers in music business history), its fashions (one word: yikes!), and the '70s disco scene; there's even an instructor on hand to lead us through some of the key dance moves (now you, too, can make like Travolta to the strains of "More than a Woman"). All in all, not bad… except for that pesky pachyderm. --Sam Graham Product Description From John Travolta’s electrifying Oscar®-nominated* performance to the Bee Gees’ top 10 soundtrack to the unforgettable dancing, Saturday Night Feveris a movie sensation that captured the world’s attention like never before. Now catch the fever all over again with this 30th Anniversary Special Collector’s Edition that goes behind-the-scenes with special features on the history, culture and fashion of disco, the smash-hit soundtrack, an exclusive look at Hollywood legend John Travolta, and so much more. Now more than ever before, Saturday Night Fever is the one film that’ll make you feel like dancing. DVD (Sep 18, 2007):http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SQFC0Y/?tag=imwan-20Blu-ray (May 05, 2009):http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001S86J30/?tag=imwan-20
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