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College (dvd):

Amazon.com video review: Ronald, the klutzy high-school brain played by Buster Keaton in College, is an inspired variation on the insulated millionaire playboys of earlier films. This bookish mama's boy who couldn't throw a fit, let alone a football, vows to become a college athlete to win the heart of the campus sweetheart. Of course in this path lies disaster, and his follies in track and field (the flyweight tries to throw the hammer and winds up flinging himself) only increase when he's made coxswain of the rowing team. Keaton's mix of energetic earnestness and flailing incompetence make his athletic tryout the film highlight, but in classic Keaton fashion Mr. Two Left Feet becomes the world's greatest athlete to save his sweetie from a bullying muscle-bound brute, mastering every event he so hilariously botched earlier in a decathlon dash to the rescue. This episodic comedy is more like his early shorts than his best features, lacking the narrative backbone that supports such masterpieces as The General and Steamboat Bill, Jr., but it's full of inspired physical comedy and Keaton's unique brand of gymnastic genius. Also featured are three short films: The Haunted House, with bank teller Buster matching wits against robbers in a gadget-filled hideout; the recently rediscovered Hard Luck, which recounts Buster's unsuccessful efforts to end it all (the missing conclusion is reconstructed from stills); and The Blacksmith, where Buster disastrously attempts to apply assembly line efficiency to a village smithy. --Sean Axmaker

The Art of Buster Keaton (The General / Sherlock, Jr. / Our Hospitality / The Navigator / Steamboat Bill Jr. / College / Three Ages / Battling Butler / Go West / The Saphead / Seven Chances / 21 Short Films) (dvd):

Amazon.com video review: Buster Keaton was arguably the cinema's first modernist, an old-fashioned romantic with a 20th-century mind behind a deadpan visage. His films brim with some of the most breathtaking stunts and ingenious gags ever put on film, all perfectly engineered to look effortless. And, as Kino's magnificent 11-disc box set The Art of Buster Keaton conclusively shows, they are among the funniest ever made. Keaton warped gags until they left the plane of reality in such shorts as The Playhouse (1921) and The Frozen North (1922), and takes a logic-defying leap into the very nature of cinema itself in his hilarious Sherlock Jr. (1924). He takes on the mechanical world with Rube Golberg ingenuity in The Navigator (1924) and perfects his match between man and massive machine in Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928), which features the funniest hurricane scene ever put to film, and The General (1927), one of the greatest comedies of all time.

In addition to the previously released 11 features and 19 shorts from the peak of Keaton's career, this set boasts the exclusive Keaton Plus, a collection of rarities and tributes. The greatest find is the long-lost ending to Hard Luck (1921), now restored to complete the film's final inspired gag. Other highlights include newly discovered scenes from Daydreams (1922) and The Love Nest (1923), entertaining excerpts from Keaton's 1951 TV show Life with Buster Keaton (he's still got it!), and his rare dramatic turn in the 1954 television play The Awakening. --Sean Axmaker