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Equipment: Playstation 3, domestic discs, OPPO BDP 83, import discs, Panasonic Viera TC-P50S30 the display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV the amp.
Anatomy of a Murder (Criterion)
Even in the wrong—that’s right, wrong—Academy ratio framing of this 1959 film released on DVD by Sony many years back, this picture maintained a great deal of its fluid multi-leveled visual complexity. The correct 1.85 framing and the boosted detail here (some of which, admittedly, conks out briefly for a shot or two at a time—look for decreased forehead-wrinkle levels in a shot in the first Gazzara/Stewart confab about 19 minutes in, for instance) AMPLIFY that quality, which helps in turn to reveal why it is, in fact, one of the Great Films. The shot of Stewart’s character scoping out the awards and newspaper clippings on the wall of the Thunder Bay Inn here shows Preminger as a definite info-fiend precursor to David Fincher. Haven’t explored extras but don’t need to to award this a personal:— A+
Annie Hall (MGM)
1970s New York in color is practically its own genre. What’s cool about the imaginary genre are the connections within it; while the worlds of this film’s characters and those of Taxi Driver are in a sense universes apart, they’re not entirely unrelated of course and you can sense that without much effort. The grit of Gordon Willis’ cinematography here (and given director Woody Allen’s disinclination to work with movie-adequate light in many scenes, it can get gritty indeed) well complements Allen’s least romanticized vision of New York, New York, and this disc delivers that grit more than adequately. As it’s a release of a Woody Allen film the extras are a non-issue, but if the idea of a Blu-ray of this title means anything to you at all, you will not be disappointed with this, image-wise. —A
The Apartment (MGM)
The sub-theme of this particular installment of the guide could be “Preservation as opposed to Restoration.” This high-def upgrade of the less-than-entirely-insouciant (and all the better for that) 1960 Billy Wilder comedy is a pretty straight thing: a competent high-def rendering of a beautiful film made from obviously solid materials. As such, it’s not what you’d call “eye-popping.” At least not immediately. Refreshingly, though, it doesn’t appear to have been screwed with overmuch, with respect to still-somewhat dubious tools like DNR. So this represents an iteration of a conscientiously undertaken preservation of the film for your home viewing pleasure, which will be substantial indeed. That is, even though the image won’t make you say “Holy cats” immediately, you’ll have an almost unconscious appreciation of the quality of the image. Sonics hew to the enhanced-but-not-redefined ethos. Very nice. —A
The Ballad of Narayama (Eureka!/Masters of Cinema U.K. import, region B locked)
The Eureka!/MOC high-definitioning of the crazy world of Shohei Imamura (which is the crazy world of us all, in a sense) continues to yield staggeringly wonderful results. This 1983 film, treating a small mountain village culture, is in the sense of setting a kind of inverse of 1968’s Profound Desires of the Gods, which depicted the inhabitants of a small near-tropical island. Here we start out with a lot of snow and frozen breath, beautifully captured by cinematographer Masao Tochizawa, whose CV also boasts some nature docs but who, more importantly, also shot Profound Desires. The movie itself is top-tier Imamura anthro-surrealism and, and one enthusiast on the IMDB noted, “Teaches you how to love your parents and kids.” A twenty-minute video intro by Tony Rayns is excellent. —A+
Birth of a Nation (Kino Lorber)
The greatest problem film of our great nation’s history on Blu-ray at last. (And still, those “censored Looney Tunes” have yet to turn up from Warner Archive. ) Quite a package, too; a new high-def master of the 1915 feature on the Blu-ray, and two separate standard-def DVDs featuring the Shepard restoration of ’93, a doc, a bunch of Griffith shorts (and boy you gotta love Griffith’s SHORTS); anyway, a cinephile package of distinction. One aspect of film preservation/restoration that’s advanced almost hand in hand with the improvements in video technology relates to our expectations as to how GOOD films of almost one hundred years of age can look. Well do I remember showing William K. Everson the first laser disc of this film, and his intrigue, excitement, and slight skepticism. This version has a detail level that is pretty remarkable walking almost hand in hand with obvious artifacts of digital “improvement.” As early as five minutes in, a shot of a pillared doorway covered by a drape, right before Lillian Gish’s entrance; the patterning of the drape is extremely vivid, while the fur on the cat sitting on the stoop under the drape’s hem seems washed out. These little things represent the give-and-take that necessarily goes into every such process. In the aggregate, the choices made here, including the level of the tinting, FEELS correct. The ultimate effect is that of…well, that of watching a nearly one-hundred-year-old film. Only three years to go. —A+
Casino Royale (MGM)
Given the peculiar-to-say-the-least production history of the film, one might expect a Blu-ray of it to look a bit of a mess, and this IS mixed to be sure. But mostly on account of the optical and other effects used in the film itself, which, along with the fact that the weird thing had almost a half-dozen directors, prevents the Bond, spoof from achieving a really unified look, and that’s kind of half the fun. As a Blu-ray presentation this is really pretty damn good. I am particularly fond of how the much-bruited-by-audiophiles music soundtrack comes off on my system (NHT tower speakers for left and right channels BOI!!!). And there are some gorgeous visual bits BESIDES the top-drawer female cast, with the cartoon-Expressionist Mata-Bond-in-Berlin sequence taking the cake as it usually does. I do love this picture, so I’d be all over it even without the explanatory doc chronicling how this movie got so odd. —A
Colombiana (Sony)
Hey kids! If you play this Sony Blu-ray on a PlayStation 3 there’s some doohickey that makes that picture of Zoe Saldana praying with/to a gun into your Playstation wallpaper or screen saver or something. It’s kind of neat until you don’t want it or your wife’s thinking you’ve all of a sudden got this weird Zoe Saldana thing, and you don’t know how to get rid of it! Oh, and the disc of this quite enjoyably trashy Megaton concoction looks pretty fine too, and is of course damn loud. —A-
Fort Apache (Warner)
As one movie site proprietor has snarled on his own site, this is not one of Warner’s 8K frame by frame scanned repair jobs or any such thing; it’s a more standard issue high-def transfer of materials in good overall shape but showing a little damage here and there. That’s one reason you can get the thing for a little over twelve bucks on Amazon, and if you’re a fan of the film or of Ford in general you absolutely should, because the overall high quality of the image is maintained consistently throughout, yielding a very satisfying viewing experience of the movie itself. So there you have it. —A
The Helmstrom Chronicle (Olive)
One reason you gotta love the IDEA of Olive Films is that the outfit will put this kinda arcane pop culture artifact, a clever 1971 fake-doc in which the paranoid (or is he?) titular scientist uses a lot of awesome insect footage to propagate a theory that the creatures are not going to just outlive us but in fact maybe KILL US ALL or something. One reason you sometimes gotta love the idea of Olive more than the reality lies in the too-pink fleshtones of actor Lawrence Pressman as the titular scientist. And one reason you gotta hedge a bit on this issue is because you don’t remember if that was a problem with the film as screened back in the day, and also because the insect footage itself is pretty damn eye-popping. So you once again decide to accept and kind of cherish something like this mixed gift. —B+
Manhattan (MGM)
Is this Allen’s absolute masterpiece, or merely his most formally accomplished film? Good question, one this column was not really designed to address, but in any event this disc is the best way for home viewers to properly grapple with it. Allen went for a bit more quasi-Expressionist gloss with his follow up to this, Stardust Memories, but here he and Willis get an ideal-but-not-(overtly)-idealized widescreen black-and-white view of the title town. This is the best I’ve seen it look since theatrical and FAR better than any prior DVD. Highly recommended if you’ve got any affection for the thing at all. Another feast of supplement-withholding, of course. Can you imagine what will happen if Criterion ever wants to do an Allen film? —A
Man of the West (MGM, German import, region B locked)
The 1958 Anthony Mann picture a very distinctive look to it, particularly in the sere and treacherous final third. And at first I thought this German import Blu-ray wouldn’t live up to that look, because during the film’s opening credits the colors are pretty damn dull and washed-out. HOWEVER, after said credits things perk up QUITE a bit, and resolve into an extremely absorbing presentation. Always nice to get two Arthur O’Connell films in the column in the same month.—A
Nothing Sacred (Kino Lorber)
This is a high-def transfer of a preserved print from the George Eastman House. The Technicolor of this 1937 picture is all over the place and generally resolves in that kind of soft pink undertone that’s about the last thing I actually want in Technicolor. But for all that it’s still the best presentation of the film I’ve yet seen. I rather wonder if a full-bore restoration (assuming there are materials apt to be restored) would redefine this picture, which in its current form looks more like some sort of cinematic anomaly than a prestige production of its time. —B-
Notorious (MGM)
Solid, unspectacular, and essential. Of the three Hitchcocks coming out on Blu-ray from MGM, I suppose this is the one I WANTED to look the absolute best, and it’s not. (To find out which is, keep reading.) We recall that this is the film for which Hitchcock asked DP Ted Tetzlaff, as they were preparing a shot that was to cut from a transparency screen shot, “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to have a little light on the side, sweeping across the backs of their necks, to represent the motorcycle headlights that are shown on the transparency screen?” to which a perturbed Tetzlaff initially responded, “Getting a bit technical, aren’t you, Pop?” As usual Hitchcock the technician was pushing the studio apparatus as far as it would allow and the high-def transfer shows it, much as it does on the Criterion The Lady Vanishes. Hence, the somewhat silken feel that I associate with this movie is diffused ever-so-slightly. I understand this effect is mostly psychological. But it brings up a potentially new wrinkle in the transfer integrity issues that so bedevil this particular format. Still. A must. —A
On The Bowery (Milestone)
Lionel Rogosin’s 1957 doc/fiction hybrid, a searing portrait of non-lush life with the lushes of lower Manhattan, was a kind of tryout reel for the socially-conscious filmmaker’s even more galvanic Come Back, Africa. Terse but compassionate, thoroughly unsentimental, it teems with views and moments that make it like an unwritten Liebling piece or Luc Sante exploration set into motion. In utterly beautifully black and white and backed with a raft of fascinating extras including a mordantly ironic ‘60s antiwar film by Rogosin, it’s the kind of package that should be the reason every hardcore cinephile bought a Blu-ray player for in the first place. —A+
Rebecca (MGM)
THIS, as it happens, is the best looking of the three Hitchcock Blu-rays on MGM, and for the most part, it is REALLY fucking spectacular. Which some will find ironic, or at least something of an irritating coincidence, as they might consider this romance-with-thriller-elements completed under the very pressing aegis of David O. Selznick to be the least Hitchcockean of Hitchcock films. To which I say bosh, anyway. As much as I object, say, to yo-yos who insist that if only Terrence Malick had a strong producer who’d inhibit him from going all goofily New Age we could get another Badlands or Day Of Heaven, in retrospect it is quite interesting to see how an auteur such as Hitchcock occasionally asserted his prerogative from under the Selznick yoke. The “Hitchcock touch” applied to a job of work, as it were. It’s there from the very start, as in the dream tracking shot through the gates of Manderlay, through the caricature of the horrid “friend” (Florence Bates AS Edyth Van Hopper, apologies and thanks to jbryant) whose “paid companion” Fontaine’s character is, and so on. Kind of makes one want to look at Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And every sequin of Selznick’s opulent production value glitters here. Pretty awesome. —A+
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Fox)
The picture is beautiful and the sound is over-loud right off the bat. Story of your life when it comes to contemporary sci-fi blockbusters on Blu-ray, so what are you going to do? (And before you think go thinking “if it’s too loud you’re too old,” I’ll say that I still happily crank the likes of Back in Black and/or Raw Power at levels well above the -5 dB setting on my bigass amp whenever I get the opportunity, which admittedly isn’t too often. What the issue here is of proportionate volume. And it’s too loud. Which is easily fixed. And the picture does the CGI effects the service of not making them look more like CGI than they already do, which does not obtain, for whatever reason, on many other Blu-rays of this sort of fare. —A
Seven Chances (Kino Lorber)
In the continuing tale of the Kino Lorber Keaton Blu-rays, this one is excellent, super crisp, really beautiful, a good companion piece to the company’s superb Blu of The General. Although it is not, overall, as great a film as The General. In a way its not-being-as-great-a-filmness actually enhances one’s appreciation of Buster’s ability to enliven a film as a PERFORMER. This restoration also features an opening made in an early iteration of Technicolor that highlights the then-inchoate process as a kind of novelty. It’s all transferred at a very high level, no more of this “interlaced” B.S. like the Blu of Our Hospitality. Highly recommended. —A
Silent Running (Eureka!/Masters of Cinema U.K. import, region B locked)
I love some of the offbeat programming choices the Masters of Cinema folks make. I remember when this came out in 1972. Everyone thought a film directed by vaunted visual effects guy Douglas Trumbull was gonna be a mindblowing sci-fi spectacular, but this was more an earnest message-oriented chamber piece set in an environment dependent on visual effects rather than defined by them. Put another way, the effects here are about convincing rather than wowing, and the dominant tone is set early on when lead actor Bruce Dern is seen watering plants while wearing garb that puts one in mind of a Biblical prophet, like Noah. I myself was delighted to rediscover this eco-crusading cinema parable, and your mileage may vary; it helps to be big on Bruce Dern. But (to paraphrase Robert Christgau) if you’re not at least a LITTLE big on Bruce Dern, why are you reading this blog. Anyway, as most Masters of Cinema products do, this disc not only provides a gorgeous presentation for the film, but the whole package makes a strong case FOR the film. Highly recommended. —A+
Spellbound (MGM)
Some glass-half-empty types were grousing about this before it was even released, speculating that the transferers-that-be might flub the flash-of-red effect near the end, but the effect is there and the transfer is solid from stem to stern, that is, the scratches that the nympho patient leaves on the hand of Harry the attendant are quite vivid, the deglammed Ingrid Bergman drab in a very vivid way, and so on. It’s one of Hitchcock’s weakest pictures not so much because of the picture-book Freud of Ben Hecht’s patronizing script (although that doesn’t help) but because it’s so steadily humorless. Really, Hitchcock shoulda let Dali go hogwild on Bergman with the ants, that woulda been FUN. In any event, of the three Hitchcock/Selznick Blus under consideration here, you could call this the most skippable. Or buy it used. Or something. —B+
A Star is Born (Kino Lorber)
Another Selznick/Wellman Technicolor classic, a kind of What Price Hollywood retread that benefited from the personal experiences of all the behind the scenes players, and unspoiled on screens well before there was a Los Angeles branch of AA for poor Norman Maine to check out. I think. Another transfer from a George Eastman House print, and the color is in better shape than that on Nothing Sacred. Very watchable but still a little curio-esque, which is too bad. Essential cinema for sure though. —A
Stars and Stripes Forever (Fox)
Why is this 1952 screen biography of John Phillip Sousa on Blu-ray? Does it have a cult or something? If so, where IS that cult? Maybe watching the thing will help answer at least the first question. Well, the movie IS in Technicolor, and really pretty Technicolor, and it’s just gorgeously rendered here, almost (almost is an important word) as ravishing and clean as what you get on a Criterion Powell/Pressburger. It also, believe it or not, features Debra Paget in a white leotard doing a hoochie dance almost as inflammatory as the one she does in Lang’s Tiger of Eschnapur. And here, the detail of 1080p really DOES make a difference, if you know what I’m saying and I suspect you do. It’s also rather interesting to see Clifton Webb, in the role of Sousa, trying to butch up a bit. At times he looks like Red-period Robert Fripp, which is super weird. I really like this disc, but I have to admit it’s really only for Technicolor freaks, demo-disc seekers, Debra Paget droolers, and Sousa devotees. I may belong to three of those four categories. —A
Terrorizers (Sony, Taiwan import, region free)
You wanna know ANOTHER reason I hate that stupid Dan Kois “Cultural Vegetables” article? Yeah, I know, “No,” but I’m gonna tell you anyway. This sentence: “Yes, there are films, like the 2000 Taiwanese drama Yi Yi (A One and a Two) , that enrapture me with deliberate pacing, spare screenplays and static shooting styles. I’ve watched Yi Yi five times and never once dozed off over 15 cumulative hours of low-key Taiwanese domesticity.” Goddamn. With this string of banalities that don’t even mention director Edward Yang, Kois attempts a defanging of the great filmmaker. I imagine this attempted defanging is inadvertent because I infer that Yi Yi is the only Yang picture Kois has seen. But the coziness that Kois evokes in his description of Yi Yi is NOT EVEN skin-deep and Yang himself was of course a vital, radical, angry filmmaker, as one can glean from watching as few as ten minutes of his 1991 A Brighter Summer Day, for instance. Or this amazing 1986 picture, which I still have yet to fully or even partially process critically. But man, about the region-free high-def rendering here: Wowsers. BEAUTIFUL picture quality; just an excellent cleanup without over stressed DNR or such. You almost never see Asian films from the ‘80s looking this good; it’s part of a series of significant Taiwan features restored for Blu-ray that also include Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’Amour, which I hope to get to next time. A VERY encouraging development for Blu-ray here, for sure, albeit not a cheap one, particularly stateside. —A+
Two Lane Blacktop (Eureka!/Masters of CinemaU.K. import, region B locked)
There are some films that I’d happily run on a loop in whatever viewing environment available. This is one of them. It’s sufficiently perfect, in my mind, that I almost don’t even want to know anything about it outside of it. Which is not to say that the supplements the Masters crew have attached to this are unwelcome. But the thing for me is the film, a very apt upgrade from the Criterion standard def version of a few years back. An upgrade in which every dingy diner and gas station, every endless horizon, every too-sun-bright small town, looks ever that much more…perfect. American classic, Melville-worthy stuff, unimpeachable, all that. —A+
Witchfinder General (Odeon, U.K. import, region free)
Good God, how many video versions have their BEEN of this underground not-exactly-horror classic? All manner of various issues involving rights and materials appear to have been solved since back when poor Tim Lucas was bemoaning music cue replacements. I myself was not able to keep up and am still not sure of how up-to-date I am NOW, but I can report that in the recent Blu-ray version the film’s predominant texture resides in the realm of Wicker Man-redolent light diffusion. Which gives an impression of softness, as they say. The definition isn’t ABSENT, merely difficult to fully glean. Things perk up about 25 minutes in, with the ick-laden “you may come to my room tonight” scene. But honestly, the image quality, while never out and out bad, is rather variable, but it’s a feature of the film itself, not of the transfer, which is first-rate. A really notable film with a really top Vincent Price performance, but I’m thinking you know that, so buy with confidence, as they say. —A
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