Cornbread, Earl & Me/cooley High

Two movies that stood out from the blaxploitation cycle of the 1970s -- Cornbread, Earl and Me, a bittersweet tale of life and death in the ghettos of Chicago, and Cooley High, a nostalgic comedy-drama which follows four friends attending high school in the early 1960s -- come together on this "Soul Cinema" DVD set from MGM. Cornbread, Earl and Me has been given a widescreen transfer to disc, letterboxed at 1.85:1 on conventional televisions and enhanced for anamorphic play on 16:9 monitors, while Cooley High is presented in a pan-and-scan version in the full-screen 1:33:1 ratio. Both features have been transferred from good quality source materials, with a realistic color balance and an image that's sharp without sacrificing the original look of the films. Cornbread, Earl and Me is in English, with optional subtitles in French and Spanish, while Cooley High is in English, with an alternate dubbed track in French as well as optional subtitles in English and French. The audio for both films has been mastered in Dolby Digital Stereo retaining the original monophonic sound mixes, and the quality is good for the period, with the soundtrack of Motown oldies on Cooley High sounding just as bold as they deserve. No bonus materials are included beyond the original trailers for each feature. Essentially these are the DVD editions of Cornbread, Earl and Me and Cooley High that were released in 2001 and now put into a new package, but fans who missed them the first time can now pick them up at a two-for-one price and the quality is good enough to satisfy most fans.