Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

darbski ***SPOILERS*** I've reviewed a bunch of these, and I see them on METV, usually just before I do. Nonetheless, i invested in the entire series from AMAZON, and I'm glad I did. There have been some very good opinions of this show published by IMDb, and I actually only found fault with one. Let's just take a brief look at this very fine program.It was a very long-running series for it's time, and even now. It had the same main characters (mostly) in the same roles, week after week. Three was a hiccup with William Talmann, and four weak episodes when Raymond was out sick. Also, those were the days when they actually expected The show members to put in a serious work schedule for a year; unlike today, where you're lucky to get a dozen episodes a year from them. The office setting did not change in all the time the series ran. This is ridiculous. I've given my opinion of the office decor, and the reason for that opinion in other reviews, so, I won't go into it here except to say it looks like it was borrowed from a department store window. Della should have been taking notes almost any time she and Perry were interviewing clients; I've covered this, too. This is a character driven drama wherein, the viewer is compelled to care about the main characters, and only SOMETIMES, the clients. There are exceptions: Almost always beautiful women. This point brings up another one. WHY were so many of these talented, beautiful actresses paired with goofy looking, older weirdos? My theory is simple. To give us older, goofy looking weirdos hope; fleeting, but so it is with hope.Next question is: WHY are so many of Perry's clients stupid? That's a good question, too. Probably to show off why emotion should never control our lives. Also, in a few cases, the clients ARE genuinely stupid. No doubt, some really are. Some make dumb mistakes, but are explainable for honorable, or misunderstood ends, but a few are truly idiotic. The main lesson? don't let emotion guide your life (good luck).The reason Perry wins. Besides the fact that he has a loyal, dependable, intelligent and skilled team, there remains the fact that he is a legal genius. If you watch these episodes, you'll see several times when Perry is dictating a legal brief, or business letter to a client concerning economic, or financial law. He is then, somehow, pulled away to defend someone in need. A favorite way, is Della getting him to rescue the damsel in distress. I love those stories. He mainly is a criminal defense attorney as a hobby. Just look at how many times his clients just can't pay him, or pay him a pittance of what they owe. My theory is that he is a high priced litigator (shark), who is very wealthy due to his unequaled legal expertise. He makes Burger crazy just for the fun of it.Next point would be the almost inevitable "Happy Ending". This is a very large worm in the nice, red apple. Frankly, back then, I guess we somehow needed the "all is well with the world" stopping point, but this is a flaw in my opinion, and if I see it coming, I'll usually turn off the show. There ARE some great ending lines, but some are disgusting drivel.I think Perry is so popular today (and according to IMDb, GAINING in fans) because so many of us are retired, and we want a good show to watch on T.V., rather than what seems to pass for entertainment today. This is a high quality drama that is one of the greats. A real treasure, that a lot of us had to miss to do homework, fight with our siblings, collect our paper routes, play with our friends. I'm sure it's all coming back to you now, isn't it?? This show is a consistent 10.

Mark Turner This review is for the recently released box set PERRY MASON: THE COMPLETE SERIES.I never watched the classic TV series PERRY MASON when it first aired. That's because I was born the same year that the series based on the books by Erle Stanley Gardner about a tireless lawyer in search of justice for his clients began. PERRY MASON went on to run for nine seasons, ending in 1966. Even then I wasn't watching it. No, I discovered PERRY MASON the same way most of us did, in reruns and syndication. I came on board late in the game and found the series to be one of the most entertaining I'd come across. And now it's all been collected in one great package.The series told the story of Mason (Raymond Burr), a lawyer who knew all the tricks of the trade. Each week Mason, aided by his secretary Della Street (Barbara Hale) and private detective Paul Drake (William Hopper) took on a new client and helped them from small crimes to murder. His main nemesis in the series was District Attorney Hamilton Burger (William Talman), a man he respected and was friends with outside of the court room.The best thing about the series was that each week a different story, a different defendant, made for compelling mysteries that had you guessing till the end. That was the fun of the series, trying to figure it out before the end of the show. Those endings have been satirized for years since with the famous court room admissions from the witness chair that Mason always seemed able to pull out of the most confident witness.Is there a favorite episode? I don't think you can lay claim to any one particular show. Not when you have 271 episodes to choose from. To be honest I've only begun to watch this collection. When you consider there are 72 discs involved to hold that many episodes the odds are it will take a while before finishing. But it won't take that long to enjoy the series for what it was, a groundbreaking series that held the attention of fans for years. It was so popular that a TV movie called PERRY MASON RETURNS brought the remaining cast members back together in 1985 and was so popular that it led to a series of made for TV movies that came out and continued through 1993! The series has been available for some time on DVD and broken down by year or split in two for each year. Selling for anywhere from $10-15 dollars per seasonal part that broke down to anywhere from $180-250 dollars for the whole series. Now you can buy the entire series in this single boxed set for $180 retail or $150 at amazon. The set is nicely put together in three cases that hold the discs well and keep everything together in much less space than the previous individual seasons held.For fans this is the perfect way to have the collection on hand. It will offer hours of entertainment and puzzle solving for the arm chair detective. It is family friendly rather than the current spate of law shows that seem intent on delving into the worst cases of sexual deviant or scenes of blood drenched corpses. Mind you I'm not slamming those shows but if you enjoy series like this and have kids the odds aren't great that you'll be able to watch these shows while the kids are awake. The same isn't true for this series which all ages can watch. The clothes might seem funny to the kids but the stories are still captivating.This is a set that the collector will want to have on hand. I got rid of my split seasons with this one here to add to my shelf. My guess is that Perry Mason fans will want to do the same. While the price may seem high it is actually quite a bargain. Even more so when you consider the entertainment value as well. This one is worth owning.

xsgame3115 I love, love, love Perry Mason. And out of all the great things about the show: the writing, the acting, the directing, the scripts... for me, the greatest thing about the show was watching the guilty party jump up out of their seat in the back of the courtroom and confess to the crime right before Perry Mason was about to point them out at the end of the show. LOL Perry Mason would start listing facts and occurrences and circumstances which led to only one possible person being the perpetrator, and his LASER-like insights and astute deductions would make that guilty party's resolve just crumble. ... As Perry Mason himself would tell anyone who doesn't think Perry Mason is one of the best dramas of all time: "Your opinion is irrelevant, incompetent, immaterial, and inadmissable in a court of law." And the judge would say, "Objection overruled."

bigdave5472 I was three years old when first episodes aired. I have been watching then in syndication most of my life. I try to watch an episode every morning on a local station, and watch additional episodes on tape and DVD most days. I enjoy seeing the various lifestyles depicted, from extreme wealthy to middle-class and bluecollar to down and out. The story lines are often very clever.In the way of criticism, I must admit that the quality went downhill as the series went on. Near the end, episodes were being recycled, and the re-telling was definitely not an improvement.In watching the episodes over and over as I do, I began to realize that the same actors were used in different roles, and it becomes a distraction.Also the writers were not often very creative in naming the characters. On occasion they did a great job like in naming the character Johnny Starr, but more often the same names are used over and over for similar but different characters. For example there are several teenage stepdaughters named Helen in episode after episode. The name Walsh is used over and again, as are other names.The producers sometimes took liberties with automobiles, and seem to think the viewers would not notice if an accident victim drove to the cliff in one car, and then went down the ravine in a different one.It was early television, starting in 1957, and these problems may be a little annoying but I am willing to overlook them and just enjoy the nostalgia.