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Features: DVD
LA BAMBA: The life of rock & roll legend Richie Valens bursts across the screen in this celebrated, music-filled movie with star-making performances by Lou Diamond Phillips as Richie and Esai Morales as his half-brother, Bob. LA BAMBA depicts the 17-year-old Mexican-American's rocket rise to fame, from field laborer to rock star with a string of hit singles and a date with destiny. Fueled by Valens' hit songs performed by the Grammy -winning Los Lobos as well as classic '50s tunes, LA BAMBA recreates the thrilling early days of rock and pays homage to the enduring legacy of a remarkable talent whose music crossed all borders. BUDDY HOLLY STORY: Gary Busey gives an electrifying, Oscar nominated performance (Best Actor-1978) as Buddy Holly, the musical genius from Lubbock, Texas, who changed the tune of rock n' roll history. With a groundbreaking combination of country music and rhythm & blues, Buddy Holly and the Crickets (Don Stroud, Charles Martin Smith) catapulted to national stardom in just three short years with such hits as "That'll Be the Day," "It's So Easy," and "Peggy Sue." By the age of 22, Holly had it all: chart-topping singles, a beautiful wife, and international acclaim until tragedy ended a brilliant career but not his music. In an Academy Award - winning score adaptation, Busey sings Holly's greatest hits in this dynamic tribute to one of the most influential rock n' rollers of all time and the legacy he left behind.System Requirements:Running Time: 108 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE
"[La Bamba] Two Thumbs Up." Siskel & Ebert
Editor's Note
LA BAMBA: Rock 'n Roll biopic on the life of Ritchie Valens, a young Mexican/American whose talents as a rock and roll singer catapulted him from the obscurity of a farm laborer obsessed with music to stardom at the age of seventeen with a string of pop hits still popular today. Starring Lou Diamond Phillips as Ritchie and an excellent Esai Morales as his brother Bob, with whom he had a loving but tempestuous relationship.THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY: A powerful biography of '50s Texas rockabilly phenomenon Buddy Holly who took his band the Crickets to the top of the charts before a tragic airplane accident ended his life. Portrays Holly as regular, hardworking type who struggles with peers and the music industry before he makes it big with the huge hit "That'll Be The Day." Also details the final events leading up to the plane crash, en route to Minnesota in a snow storm on February 3, 1959, which also claimed the lives of Richie Valens and the Big Bopper.
| Features | [both] Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo | | [Holly] Bonus Trailer | | [Holly] Director Steve Rash And Gary Busey Audio Commentary | | [Holly] Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | [Holly] Talent And Filmographies | | [La Bamba] "La Bamba" Music Video (Los Lobos) | | [La Bamba] "Lonely Teardrops" Music Video (Howard Huntsberry) | | [La Bamba] "Remembering Richie" Featurette | | [La Bamba] Bios And Filmographies | | [La Bamba] Director, Producer And Cast Audio Commentary | | [La Bamba] Subtitles: English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Thai | | [La Bamba] Taylor Hackford And Daniel Valdez Audio Commentary | | [La Bamba] Theatrical Trailer |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Sony Pictures |
| Release Date: 9/13/2005 |
| Original Release Date: 1978 | | Catalog ID: 11590 | | UPC: 00043396115903 | | Number of Discs: 2 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Widescreen 1.85:1 |
| Cast & Crew
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| | Professional Reviews | Washington Post 8 of 10
La Bamba is a puzzle -- a real mixed bag. Some of it, like the braying, cock-and-bull performance by Esai Morales, is just plain awful. But other bits, like the performances by Rosana De Soto and, as Ritchie's agent, Joe Pantoliano, are unexpectedly vibrant. The Valens music, too, performed in the film by the Los Angeles Mex-rock band Los Lobos, is a kick. Lead singer David Hidalgo, who performs the Valens vocals, actually has a more working-class quality to his voice than Valens' sweet tenor had. It feels as if he's lived a story similar to the one the movie tells -- it sounds rooted in that life -- and that may have something to do with why his versions of the songs, some of which are improvements on the originals, work so well in the film. The tale has the classic lines of a rock 'n' roll rise to glory, and you may feel you've seen some of the early sequences -- the tryouts, divey clubs and scrub bands -- in dozens of other movies. And you probably have. The movie plays like a greatest hits of movie bio cliche's. But Valdez presents it all unapologetically, with brio, and the mood of the film is so vibrant and the energy so uninhibited that you're carried over the familiarity of the terrain. The outlines of the film are the same as those of '30s and '40s movies in which talented young kids from the Lower East Side (or wherever) rise to the top, but Valdez seems to have some primal, native resonance in his story; he's seen something immutable, classical and true in it. And darned if he doesn't believe in it so deeply that he almost convinces you it's true, too. - Hal Hinson
Chicago Sun Times 8 of 10
[La Bamba] This is a good small movie, sweet and sentimental, about a kid who never really got a chance to show his stuff. The best things in it are the most unexpected things: the portraits of everyday life, of a loving mother, of a brother who loves and resents him, of a kid growing up and tasting fame and leaving everyone standing around at his funeral shocked that his life ended just as it seemed to be beginning. - Roger Ebert
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