Blu-ray Consumer Guide: November 2012

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is kind of the benefit of being handed a long stretch of time during which one is more or less obliged not to leave the house. Of course if I had lost power this would be an entirely different blog post and don't think I'm not appreciative of how fortunate my household was/is in this respect. 

Having contrived to get back "on the ball" with this project, I made a set of rules, one of which I ended up not following. That would be to only review twenty titles per installment. As you see, there are 26 here; another benefit of a sort of enforced down time. I also embraced a certain kind of randomness, not really applying a set criteria to what was going in the pile. Once the pile was determined, I stuck with it, save for one omission, which was Dial M For Murder, which, unlike Prometheus, I thought needed to be looked at on a 3D system, which my home setup is not at the moment. The six I ended up adding to the pile could have been things I just incidentally wound up watching (Moonrise Kingdom) or something for which a verdict was so manifestly obvious that it suggested itself almost as soon as the disc started playing (the Fleischer Supermans).

I also endeavored to be more careful. I am mortified to admit that I really fucked the monkey with my capsule on The Color Of Money last installment. I might have been over-tired when first watching it, or just believing something about it that I wanted to believe, but after reading Robert Harris' evisceration of it and giving it another look...well, I'm not as down on it as Harris but I don't disagree with him either (if that makes any sense); it's a shoddy disc and I was crazy to initially grade it as high as I did. I'll try not to let it happen again. I believe the below assessments are a lot more accurate across the board. I imagine you'll let me know!

Equipment: Playstation 3 for domestic discs, OPPO BDP 83 for import discs, Panasonic Viera TCP50S30 plasma display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/reciever.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Universal)

Why is the animated opening (reputedly the work of Walter Lantz) windowboxed? That little quirk is my only complaint about this rendering of a divisive comedy classic, cited by many genre fans as the point where Universal just stopped taking horror movies seriously. Lon Chaney Jr. apparently hated it. Which makes the tension between his Larry Talbot and Bud and Lou that much more convincing. Anyway, the picture here is attractive, clean, shows good grain, and only occasional hints of noise (around the circles formed by some klieg lights on plain walls, for instance). Greg Mank’s commentary is very good, scholarly, informative, delivered in a style that’s neither too stiff nor sloppily casual. As a late boomer of Italian-American heritage who grew up in Jersey I am of course practically genetically determined to be an Abbott and Costello fan, so take that caveat for what you will.  —A

 Altered States (Warner)

I sometimes have entertained a theory that this is Ken Russell’s best film, which theory might have been influenced by the fact that I first saw it during its theatrical run in 1980 on what they used to call a “hot date” which the movie actually enhanced, which was rare in those days so…I dunno what to tell you. It still holds up pretty damn well today and I think there’s pretty much no movie that can’t benefit from the presence of Bob Balaban and Charles Haid playing against each other. And Blair Brown, o dios mio. William Hurt was quite a babe himself. As for the Blu-ray, it looks good for the most part but skin tones can be a little flush and over-bright in “realist” scenes. There’s a little video noise here and there, some unwanted shimmer in “dust to dust” hallucinations sequence but for the most part this is very nice indeed and the weird stuff really pops.  —B+

 The Aristocats (Disney)

The last animation feature the old man signed off on (although he died well before it was completed, four years before its 1970 release in fact), and yeah, it’s a 101 Dalmations retread minus the scary edge and who cares. The animation style, which some latter-day critics, I see, have criticized for its ostensible crudity, is quite interesting, with its “sketchy” pen-and-ink delineations creating movement in the human characters’ hair and faces, or the kittens’ fur. The backgrounds are uniformly gorgeous in design, color, and drawing style. In the 1.66 aspect ratio that the studio largely favored, I am told (see also Mary Poppins). Pretty much a perfect high-def rendering; while the remastered 5.1 surround soundtrack is fine it would have been nice to have the original audio here too. A sweet short starring Pinocchio’s Figaro, in which the kitten gets a bath from Minnie Mouse, is also included in full HD and there are some engaging other extras. —A

 The Big Heat (Twilight Time)

Wow. Very nice. Twilight Time’s high-def stuff is never not good, but this rendering of Fritz Lang’s sizzling 1952 angry-cop-out-for-vengeance thriller is gorgeous. A supple and sharp black-and-white image that really highlights the near-expressionist-with-a-lower-case-“e” lighting: see the way Lucy Chapman’s face stays a quarter-to-half darkened in close-up, in the bar scene where Glenn Ford’s character grills the actress, who’s playing a B-girl who counted on a now-dead cop as her ticket out of B-girldom. This keeps up throughout, clean as a whistle and deep and dark and pretty much flawless. Isolated score soundtrack is the only on-disc extra, and it’s a nice touch.—A

Female Vampire (Kino/Lorber)

Watching this Blu-ray suggested to me yet another way of looking at prolific no-budget director Jess Franco, not as a genre director or a half-assed pornographer but rather as an underground filmmaker. That is to say, this bare-bones "narrative," which is largely composed of lengthy meditative shots (punctuated with zooms, of course) of his walking wet dream of a leading lady/wife Lina Romay feels, supernatural trappings aside, almost diaristic. Yes, in a Jonas Mekas Walden kind of way. The quality of the Blu-ray image is superb throughout as the movie itself changes in image quality all the time, depending on the materials at hand and the method of shooting, and in this particular too the diaristic aspect is emphasized. It’s like a series of obsessive observations of Romay strung together with this supernatural narrative template applied to it, the elements of exploitation moving its action close to hardcore without ever getting there. (There is a version of the film featuring hardcore footage, and the producers at Redemption apparently wanted to include that version in this package, but if they did they’d have had to kiss Amazon and big-box stores goodbye, so no, and goddamnit I hate this fascist country.) Good grain, constant background contrast flicker, skin tones all over the fucking place; in other words, a very accurate transfer! I dug/dig it. You might not. —A

Letter From An Unknown Woman (Olive)

It’s one of Max Ophuls’ best U.S.-produced films, so it’s a no-brainer, but this is no Criterion treatment. Then again, it’s not bad. It appears to be mastered from same source as Second Sight U.K. DVD from several years ago. Which looked decent, not great. This has the same scratch marks in scenes so that’s why I’m thinking the source material’s identical. That being the case, the high-def upgrade IS noticeable. Detail is boosted, the picture is a tad brighter, but not overly so; the clarity is welcome. The audio track is improved, too; at a “normal” volume level (for instance, the -14dB reading on my amp) the Second Sight soundtrack seemed overmodulated; here it comes out nice and clear. —B

Mad Monster Party (Lionsgate)

You know there’s a problem with a Blu-ray when the menu image is far more vibrant than the screen image of the work itself. This version of the charming puppet-animation monster-movie sendup, a charming picture to watch in a certain mood, nostalgic or not, looks terrible, and that’s a real shame; it would have been kickier to see it looking more like Nightmare Before Christmas, a movie it most likely at least partially inspired. Utter crap, and a real shame. On the other hand, the experience of watching it on a crappy color TV in the ‘60s is reproduced PERFECTLY. —D

Mean Streets (Warner)

One of the many things that make Martin Scorsese such a distinctive filmmaker is a visual style that often splits the difference between realism and a fever-dream impressionism/expressivity. That’s certainly present here, as in the “Rubber Biscuit” drunk scene, from which Spike Lee and Ernest Dickerson extrapolated their dolly-walk shot. But given the movie’s limited budget, the amount of artifice required to make some rundown pockets of L.A. stand in for New York’s East Village/Little Italy, and maybe the fact that the directive to make this breakthrough feature was handed to Scorsese by John Cassavetes, you have a movie that lands firmly, more often than not, on a square most would label docudrama realism. Which is also to say that the movie’s frequently raw-looking. Some shots aren’t precisely focused, some of the handheld work isn’t as assured as it might have been, and so on. This Blu-ray, which also keeps an excellent Scorsese commentary from the last standard-def edition, gets the movie’s rawness but also its frequent beautiful moments of mook lyricism visualized. A keeper. —A

Moonrise Kingdom (Universal)

When a studio gets a great movie right for the high-def edition (and this ought not be all that difficult in the Realm Of The Digital Intermediate, although bitter experience has taught us that nothing is a sure thing [what, for instance, can explain The Assassination of Jesse James… Blu-ray?]) there’s really not much you can say besides “Bravo!” My own third time around for this wonderful picture, and what I noticed here was the preponderance of yellow bathing certain shots in the movie’s front end, before the storm. Looked great. Certain of the pictorial detail and light did bring home its origins on Super 16 film more than the theatrical projections I saw. As befits studio issued product rather than more conscientiously curated editions ala Criterion, the extras here are mostly of the EPK variety, but as it’s a Wes Anderson movie, they’re more-creative-than-average-EPK grade. No matter. —A

My Son John (Olive)

Leo McCarey’s notorious 1952 anti-Communist family drama is one odd duck of a film, a series of fraught, sincere dialogue scenes in which the increasingly effete, snotty and condescending John of the title, the incredible Robert Walker, patronizes his All-American neurotic parents (Helen Hayes and Dean Jagger) and is subjected to ever more bizarre dressings-down from them. A film maudit in several crucial respects, not least of them being that Walker died during the shooting, and McCarey was obliged to reconstruct his climax. He built it largely around footage from Strangers on A Train that Alfred Hitchcock was kind enough to lend him. Hence, we have shots of Walker in a phone booth talking with no sound, and the carousel death scene from Strangers optically printed in to a car-seat after a fatal crash…oh, it’s just a mess that you’ve got to see to believe. And now you can finally see it—this has been one hell of an elusive picture over the years. This is a solid unremarkable transfer but a really essential title. Also, Frank McHugh is in it. “Maybe…we’ll have a lasting peace some time soon.”—A

The Naked Gun (Paramount)

From the commentary: “O.J. Simpson was in this?” “He was.” “Where is he now, is he still acting?” The opening scene of this very hilarious 1988 picture, in which heroically inept Frank Drebbin mucks up a meeting of America’s enemies, now indicates what was probably director David Zucker’s then-inchoate conservatism, which led him to his disastrous An American Carol. Such details aside this remains a largely timeless hoot. Although at the beginning one is inclined to find the image HIGHLY underwhelming. Soon enough certain things start registering high-def-like; the detail on Leslie Nielsen’s white hair is pretty sharp, if you’re into that, so one gets the impression this is not merely an exercise in prettying up an outdated master. It is not a movie that gets a really significant upgrade in pleasure via high-def, but if you’re fond of the movie and have the equipment, this is a sensible option, particularly if you can score it cheap, and you can. —B

The Navigator (Kino/Lorber)

After a disappointing (e.g., interlaced) 2011 Our Hospitality, the Kino/Lorber series of Buster Keaton releases picked up quite nicely but quick, and this title is a further reflection of the stuff getting back on the beam. This 1924 title, which strands rich Buster on a big boat with a girl who’s kind of not that into him, is an inventive physical comedy that gets odder as it goes along, climaxing with an innovative sword (fish) fight. The image looks pretty damn nice.  The intertitles are speckly, but the varied tints look good (I particularly enjoyed the isolated yellow flag on a quarantine ship). Recommended.—A 

The Penalty (Kino/Lorber)

As boring fucking black-and-white silent movies go this is pretty weird. (And not entirely black-and-white, either.) A study in star power and performance masochism, in which Lon Chaney dons a painful-to-wear (apparently) harness to portray a legless gangster whose life of crime has been leading up to the opportunity to get revenge on the doc who mistakenly cut him off at the knees as a child. Good sharp image quality from a George Eastman House restoration; the occasional tinting doesn’t seem over done. Aside from Chaney’s performance, I particularly enjoyed “Lichtenstein, of the Federal Secret Service,” and the movie’s double-whammy ending. —B

Private Hell 36 (Olive)

Relatively early Don Siegel. This 1954 picture is his eighth directorial feature and finds him pretty firmly on the noir/crime drama ground that he’d been spending much time on. Co-written by costar Ida Lupino (the picture was an independent produced by a company founded by Lupino’s then-husband Collier Young, who worked with her on the script), it’s mostly a hardboiled character study in which going-to-pieces cop Steve Cochran tries to enlist his more straight-arrow partner Howard Duff into a keep-some-stolen-money scam. The Dragnet-evoking opening narration is kind of a key to the final plot twist, which isn’t bad. The 1.77 presentation from Olive isn’t bad: there’s a fly in the locker room where Duff and Cochran have a little chat, and it’s very visibly buzzing around. There’s lots of visible grain that seems to poise on the precipice of becoming noise but never quite getting there. Fans of Ms. Lupino’s idiosyncratic vocal stylings in 1948’s Road House will be happy to learn that she sings again here.—B+ 

Prometheus (Fox)

I remember one stoned collegiate cinema discussion many many years ago in which a nitpicky friend complained about a continuity error involving a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t axe at the climax of The Wizard of Oz, and another friend deadpanning to the complainer, “So is that where the movie loses credibility for you?” Which is pretty much all I have to say about any and all of the whinges that the, um, enthusiast variant of what Alfred Hitchcock calls” the plausibles” have about this movie. (Being that the enthusiast demo is not easily squelched, I can practically hear all the “Oh, come on, what about X?”s indignantly rising in response to this dismissal.) If the fact that I respond very positively to this movie strictly on the level of visual spectacle makes me a bad…person, I can live with that. Because it is a really amazing visual spectacle pretty much from stem to stern, and this Blu-ray get it. Pin prick sharp, astounding color, the various imaging effects (the pinboard-animation-like dreams, the alien race’s “security camera” massacre replay footage) reproduced gorgeously…you can’t ask for better. A lot of the action in this takes place in dark murky environments and I can’t find an instance of crushed blacks or any such thing. I don’t have full-time access to a 3D high def display but the 2D Blu-ray is pretty much perfect to my eye and so I kind of wish I DID have a permanent 3D rig.—A+

Pursued (Olive)

In 1943, writing of the film The Hard Way, James Agee observed “James Wong Howe’s first few minutes with the camera, in a Pennsylvania mill town, all but floored me with gratitude. He goes on the list with Hitchcock as on of the few men of whom it can be hoped that, given the chance (and in Hitchcock’s case travel, and still sharper advice from natives), they may yet take advantage of the $5,000 ceiling on sets to use this country as it ought to be used in films, and as it has scarcely been touched.” We trust that Agee enjoyed Howe’s work for this 1947 Raoul Walsh western, in which he sometimes used infrared black-and-white film stock to shoot New Mexico terrain, with strikingly beautiful results. Said results come across well in the Olive Blu-ray (which retains the Martin Scorsese intro that was on it back when various Republic pictures were issued on VHS back in the day). See particularly a funeral scene relatively late into the picture. The noted Walsh expert Dave Kehr finds this an uncharacteristic picture for the director, a little logy and humorless and lacking the typical Walsh rollicking-ness, but it’s hardly bad. And in some senses it’s pretty much classic. Robert Mitchum’s the male lead, that helps. Anyway, the solid picture quality keeps up throughout, with patches of the not-that-good only showing near the end, as in a slightly washed-out wedding scene and some video noise on a horse. But overall a very pleasant surprise.— A-

Rogopag (Eureka!/Masters Of Cinema Region B U.K. import)

Just as I am besotted with the multi-country European co-production (twas French money that landed Anna Karina and Macha Meril in Fassbinder’s Chinese Roulette) so too am I highly diverted by the Euro-anthology film, of which this 1963 picture, scintillatingly subtitled Let’s Wash Our Brains, is a primo example. Its main title is short for Rossellini Godard Pasolini Gregoretti. The RR segment is a typical expect-the-unexpected offering from the restless genius, in this case more restless than genuinely inspired, but pleasingly astringent. The main function of Godard’s segment is to demonstrate the spectacular versatility he possessed even relatively early in his career; and the Gregoretti bit is better-than-average Italian/Marxist social satire. The jewel of the bunch is Pasolini’s “La ricotta,” starring Orson Welles (who bemoaned the fact that Pasolini didn’t let him dub his own part, and it’s worth bemoaning; how I’d love to hear the maestro’s orotund Italian) and sending up both moviemaking and religiosity with more insouciance than Pasolini generally liked to conjure up. The image quality is excellent: Godard’s segment is the most purposefully gray black-and-white thing he ever put on film, and the color segments in “La ricotta” really pop. —A+ 

Rosemary’s Baby (Criterion)

Yowsa. Spectacular theatrical-run grade picture quality. And still a real master class in suspense/horror moviemaking. Subtler than Repulsion, less perverse than Cul de Sac, almost as funny as Dance of the Vampires. And not as dated as you might think. Rosemary’s snobbishness about Minnie and her vulgar pal played by Patsy Kelly still carries a frisson for a New Yorker of today, to the extent you almost feel slightly gratified on behalf of the more lumpen characters for managing to knock up Little Miss Priss via Satan. Or not. Anyway, essential genius cinema and the making-of doc attached is mighty fine too despite it opening with Robert Evans repeating his goddamn “There are three sides to every story” bromide in the beginning. (Mia Farrow’s exasperation with Frank Sinatra is still [understandably] mildly present, and kind of funny.) More added value is presented by way of a doc about composer/musician Krystof Komeda, who tragically died not too long after completing the score for this movie.  —A+

The Sterile Cuckoo (Olive)

“This is going to be poignant, isn’t it?” My Lovely Wife asked at this 1969 movie’s opening in which Liza Minnelli’s Pookie (rhymes with “kookie”) waylays inexperienced stiff Jerry (Wendell Burton). A little later, cringing a bit, she asked, “This is gonna land on the unbearably sad side of poignant, isn’t it?” I cannot tell a lie. Alan Pakula’s directorial debut, which might also have made an exemplary project for partner Robert Mulligan, whose stuff Pakula produced, hits that particular note with near-awe-inspiring acuity, even as the treacly wet-noodle strains of “Come Saturday Morning” are repeated often enough to drive you insane. Pakula’s camera is steady, assured, unobtrusive. (How the guy ended up making a mess on the level of The Pelican Brief remains beyond me.) And while I am not a proponent of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl theory of film characterization, Minnelli’s character and performance provide an excellent counter to that train of assessment.  Anyway…a fascinating picture that doesn’t get quite its due in the Olive Films Blu-ray. The picture’s real soft, to the point that sometimes I wondered if it was interlaced. The color looks okay mostly (about a half hour in, when the two principal characters visit the graveyard, you can see purple seeming into the earth tones), but there’s an overall overbrightness to the flesh tones. Detail is passable (see Burton’s tweed jacket in the early scenes). It’s a film that’s been hard to see for too long so it’s welcome. But don’t watch it in a vulnerable mood, for heaven’s sake. Those last two shots. Jesus. —B-

Strangers On A Train (Warner)

This much-awaited upgrade looks a little soft during opening credits, but picks up quite nicely. Check, for instance, the pinstripes on Bruno’s suit in the first dialogue scene, the way their alternating shades show The increase in detail is particularly awesome in the specialized optical work, for instance, the reflection of  Bruno strangling Miriam in Miriam’s eyeglass lens. The multifarious extras from the 2004 standard-def version are all here, although the “preview version” is only in standard def. Still, a must.—A+

Summer With Monika (Criterion)

Ingmar Bergman’s United States breakthrough, albeit not for the “right” reasons; one of this disc’s many superb extras details how this lyrical-but-daring 1953 film was recut and marketed by exploitation king Kroger Babb as Monika, Story Of A Bad Girl. In the early grindhouse circuit it proved quite popular among non-auteurists. And one understands why, given Harriett Andersson’s erotic ripeness, which combined with the knowingness and occasional petulance of the character must have provided ‘50s raincoat-wearers with some sweet hubba-hubba value. The thrifty brave clean and reverent Bergman cut of the film is a lyrical and lovely thing and almost kinda sorta an unabashed weepie. It’s a beautifully assured piece of filmmaking and the image quality is pretty much the same as that of the Criterion of Bergman’s Summer Interlude, reviewed in the last CG. That is, gorgeous throughout, every frame a gorgeous silvery image. Andersson is the subject of a lengthy new interview and her English is excellent and her recollections moving. —A+ 

Max Fleischer’s Superman Collectors’ Edition (Gaiam)

This should be something to get very excited about, and it is not, for one very simple reason. While these appear to be excellent-to-beautiful transfers of the Fleischer Superman cartoons (some of the materials have occasional blotchiness, but I didn’t see anything utterly ruinous) they are disfigured by the ever-present GAIAM logo, which is burned into the lower right corner of each Academy Ratio “frame.” What a fucking waste.—D- 

This Is Cinerama (Flicker Alley)

God bless Flicker Alley for everything it does, but in particular for putting out this piece of blockbuster esoterica. This 1952 picture is essentially the most elaborate demo reel ever concocted, a collection of far-flung vistas and experiences rendered in the super-wide-and-high format of three-projector Cinerama, which proved a hugely impractical way of making and seeing pictures. The Blu-ray is a wonky historical delight, presented with remarkable integrity and filled with extras that contextualize (and justify, in a sense) this bold/foolhardy venture. The SmileBox formatting for disc, simulating the 146˚ depth of the original presentation, works like a charm. Not for everyone…particularly not for people who prefer movies with characters and storylines and such, you know, those boring movies about people….but for those it’s for, a complete trip. —A+

Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines (Twilight Time)

I don’t often wish I had a bigger video display, but this makes me want one. Sure, this isn’t Lawrence of Arabia but rather a fun affectionate 1965 slapstick on the early days of manned flight. That just happens to have been lensed in 70mm by Christopher Challis (The Battle of the River Plate, hello?). Lord, what an absolutely beautiful Blu-ray image it presents. Just immaculate. If you watch this after another Blu-ray disc you might notice a slight blue cast to the overall picture but since so much of the action takes place in the sky anyway it’s not as if that isn’t understandable. The movie’s a great deal of fun, can’t emphasize that enough, and the commentary by its director Ken Annakin (from the 2004 standard def release; Annakin died in 2009) is pretty delightful. These Twilight Time releases do offer real high-def value. —A

 Les Visiteurs du Soir (Criterion)

The remastered Les Enfants du Paradis was the thing that was gonna get most people who are excited about this sort of thing excited, so I thought I’d check out the Criterion release of Carné/Prevert’s prior picture, a medieval maybe-allegory in which two representatives of Satan come to a castle dressed as minstrels; instead of wreaking the evil havoc they were contracted for, one of them falls in love with a mortal.  I anticipated a visually sumptuous experience, and I got one.  The materials of this 1942 picture look exquisite, and the transfer seems to reproduce every nuance of cinematographer Roger Hubert’s often gossamer-delicate lighting perfectly. There is not even a hint of video noise at any point. The sound is bell-clear mono.  At a certain point I turned off the subtitles, the better to enjoy the spectacular B&W image. The movie itself is excellent and interesting, both as a thing itself and as an example of French cinema during the German occupation of World War II. Not a “masterpiece,” precisely (at least by my lights), but better than solid, and a must for Carné fans.—A

World On Wire (Criterion)

This relatively early (1973) Fassbinder has been the stuff of legend among his stateside coterie that has found it (understandably) difficult to see. The very concept—a three-hour plus made-for-German-television movie adapted from an American sci-fi novel that would later serve as the basis for the less reputable Hollywood product The Thirteenth Floor—was pretty mindblowing in and of itself. The reality of it actually did not disappoint in the least: for this viewer, it exceeded very high expectations, as I discuss here. I feel like it’s both quintessential Fassbinder and excellent RWF for beginners. But I’m sometimes kind of not-right about that sort of thing. But give the theory a shot anyway, as this is an excellent rendering of a not-exactly-polished (but hardly crude-looking) movie. In a 50-minute documentary that’s one of the supplements, the great lensman Michael Ballhaus gives some insight into the shooting, which was done in 16mm, and still looks it—that saturated vibe with resolution that doesn’t have the particular resolution of 35 but conveys a rough integrity of its own. A truly beautiful image. A galvanic movie experience, absolutely essential. —A+

Comments

[Danny Bowes]

Not to beat a dead horse re: Prometheus--because boy are various horses in its retinue dead--but it HAS been weird how acutely that picture enraged nerds and how warmly it was received by non-nerds (yourself, Mr. Ebert). More on point, it sounds as though revisiting the Blu is a worthwhile way to bask in some visual spectacle.

[lipranzer]

I think of ALTERED STATES in the same way I think of FROM DUSK TILL DAWN - the first half, the director is relatively restrained, and then he went batshit crazy in the second half - although, in this case, I prefer the batshit crazy. I find the first half to be indigestible psychobabble, despite the actors who do their best to make it work. At least when it becomes a freak out, Russell knows how to make it creepy.

And I am still hoping Criterion releases LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMEN in my lifetime. Come on, guys! And while they're at it, THE RECKLESS MOMENT as well (wouldn't mind a Criterion transfer of CAUGHT either, but don't want to appear too greedy).

[lazarus]

I enjoyed Prometheus on a visual level for sure. It was often jaw-droppingly good. And I don't consider myself a stubborn nitpicker.

But dear lord, there's a difference between a few things you can shrug off, and a seemingly unending series of idiotic character motivations and inconsistencies.

You have to draw a line somewhere, no? When "smart" sci-fi becomes inexplicably dumb too many times?

[Petey]

"Rosemary’s snobbishness about Minnie and her vulgar pal played by Patsy Kelly still carries a frisson for a New Yorker of today, to the extent you almost feel slightly gratified on behalf of the more lumpen characters for managing to knock up Little Miss Priss via Satan."

Heh.

[Eric Lowe]

My son found MAD MONSTER PARTY on Netflix last week. It was pretty fascinating as a bizarro Rankin/Bass experience.

[jbryant]

Man, you make me want almost all of these, when I'm in no position right now to have any of them. Thanks? :)

For those in my position, MY SON JOHN is on Netflix Instant, not in HD, but not bad.

[Gordon Cameron]

Whining about continuity errors in Wizard of Oz may be a bit much (though it just comes down to basic classical-Hollywood-style competence, on some level), and it's an amusing anecdote and all that. But I have never bought the argument that because something is fantasy, complaints about plausibility lose their validity. In fantasy and sci-fi, perhaps more than other genres, rules can very much matter. If Frodo sprouted wings and flew to Mordor halfway through 'The Lord of the Rings,' viewers or readers would understandably complain, because, fantasy or not, the turn of events would violate the rules of the world Tolkien had established. The text might still work on some meta level as satire, or in terms of dream-logic, but a little disgruntlement among those who had been drawn in by the depth and internal consistency of the fantasy world would hardly be surprising.

None of this is to be taken as a defense of the Prometheus nitpickers; just as a general rejection of the principle evoked by the WoZ anecdote. I know Hitchcock deplored the Plausibles, and I acknowledge there are all sorts of other levels on which a work of narrative can stand or fall. I moreover acknowledge that devotees of genre often focus myopically on internal consistency and logic to the exclusion of other virtues and faults. Still.

My own feeling about Prometheus is ambivalent. I admired its visual gorgeousness, Noomi Rapace's yeoman work in taking on Sigourney Weaver's mantle of embattled heroine, and its effective application of themes of biological and sexual terror. Fassbender, too, was pitch-perfect. I didn't much like what it did to the Alien universe, nor its shoehorning of Von Daniken-esque 'ancient astronauts' themes into a sci-fi world that had previously worked quite elegantly in terms of simple Darwinian brutality.

Besides a general dislike of Von Daniken, my feeling about Ancient Astronauts movies is that Kubrick utterly and for all time nailed the genre with 2001: A Space Odyssey and anyone else who feels inclined to try the same thing should probably just move on to something else.

There's also an innate problem with explaining who the Space Jockeys are, in terms of the 'Distant Mountains' concept (evoked by Terry Rossio by way of, who else?, Tolkien). Once you have shown us the Distant Mountains, you must then create more Distant Mountains beyond those, and so on ad infinitum. I liked the unanswered mystery of the Space Jockeys as seen in Alien; the question of who they were has titillated me since I was 12, and I preferred the titillation to Ridley Scott's belated answer.

Anyway. Hope I'm not hijacking another terrific Blu Ray Consumer Guide thread. My own Blu purchases are quite a ways behind the curve, but I just received The Rules of the Game and Rashomon via Amazon and am very much enjoying them. Ah, Marcel Dalio...

[Tom Block]

Helen Hayes is a nightmare in that fucking thing.

[James Keepnews]

You're a fine person, but PROMETHEUS is dopey as hell -- I could hash out those implausibles, but since you, um, "choose to believe" (choosing to believe sounds like a swell kettle of agency, until you consider what some of our fellow Americans are choosing to believe, absent facts (much less Scottish cave paintings), this month alone), I reckon we have epistemic closure on this front, so I'll simply beg to differ. I rather wish Sir Ridley had not chosen to believe allegoricizing what was genuinely provocative and horrifying (chilled with a frosty Nietzschean post-morality sangfroid, as articulated by Sir Ian's detached dome) in ALIEN with some vacuous Big Questions like "Where did I come from?", wedded to some undeniably well-lit tectonic CGI after Phillipe Druilliet. And speaking of HEAVY METAL, are people truly chomping at the bit for for PROM II -- DEN'S BIG PAYBACK, aka ONE HEAD IN A DUFFEL BAG (oops, spoiler alert)?

[Josh Z]

Hitchcock may have claimed not to care about "the plausibles," but I have trouble thinking of any film he made where all of the characters were raging morons from start to finish, as everyone in Prometheus is.

Hollywood churns out enough brainless visual spectacles every year. I expected more from this one. Frankly, I think we deserved more.

[Glenn Kenny]

"Choose to believe," heh. I'd say more like chose not to care. But that was/is my choice, and whether it stems from being bamboozled by visuals or just having my expectations for Ridley Scott movies lowered to dirt-eating levels year after year, I stand by my choice. That said, the objections voiced here, particularly by James and JZ...well, they're entitled to them, and they're probably not wrong. They're more convincing voiced as above than they were by the legions of know-somethingish would-be script doctors back when the film was first released. And I still say feh to them.

[jordan ash]

It would be enough for the Prometheus nit-pickers to simply say they didn't like it, but they have to tell us at length why they didn't like it.

[Gordon Cameron]

What a strange thing to say on a site populated by critics. Should one only elaborate on favorable opinions?

[James Keepnews]

Touché, GC! Reverse that construction and watch absurdum get reductio-ed ad:

"It would be enough for the Prometheus belief-choosers to simply say they liked it, but they have to tell us at length why they did like it."

Words, words! Why can't you all just read my dreams, like David the robot? Actually, on second thought...

[Glenn Kenny]

For the record, my own objections to the initial rush of "at length" why-they-did-not-like it writings was that so many of them were maybe 40 percent of what was actually objectionable in the movie, and 60 percent "Damon Lindelof is history's greatest monster" or some such. Such ascribing of ultimate responsibility, besides making clear precisely the nature of the axe you intend to grind, is also usually inaccurate.

[Josh Z]

I have yet to hear anyone explain at length why they DID like the movie. Even Glenn's review (and I'm talking about the original theatrical review for MSN) boils down to, "It sure is nice to look at," with a little praise singled out for the disgusting audacity of the med-pod sequence.

I have no axe to grind against Lindelof. I'm a fan of Lost, even the finale, but this script is indefensible.

[David Ehrenstein]

The fundamental problem with "Promtheus" was it's "been there done that." While the plot of the original "Ale" was a retread of "It-- The Teror From Beyond Space" the look and feel of the thing was entirely new. Now after so many sequels we know what to expect overall, and "Prometheus" has zero surprises or innovations.

[David Ehrenstein]

As for "Rosemary's Baby"

http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Cinema-Polanski-David-Ehrenstein/dp/2866429176

[Tom Russell]

That's very unfortunate about the Fleischers.

[Petey]

Did you write a book, David? If so, you ought to be less shy about promoting it in the comments here.

Be proud about said enterprise. Why not spam it here from time to time? I'm sure the comment readers here must be utterly unaware of said book.

[NeilFC]

Uh-oh, Petey. You've just released the Kracken with that last post.

[Will Pfeifer]

Not that it's worth buying the entire set for (though there's almost a staggering amount of content packed into the box), but the Warner Bros. Superman collection on Blu-ray contains all the Fleischer shorts. Can't vouch for their quality versus this set, but at least there's no logo burned in. (As a bonus, I'm a sucker for those vintage 1978 making-of TV specials that are included.)

[David Ehrenstein]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb2zIR2rvRQ

[Scott Nye]

I wrote at length about what I found to be quite remarkable in PROMETHEUS, though if you're inclined to focus on the screenplay, I'll admit it's exactly textual (and almost certainly unintentional or an afterthought, given how overt the screenplay is about its primary intentions):

http://www.railoftomorrow.com/2012/06/how-far-would-you-go-to-get-your.html

LES VISITEURS DU SOIR was one of the more pleasant discoveries of September, especially as a Carné fan (one whom, admittedly, doesn't see why LE JOUR SE LÈVE is held as one of his best). I almost felt spoiled, seeing him unleashed on a genre that would come so naturally to his romantic/poetic tendencies, and there's little question his more overt emotional displays seemed right at home. Added to his expression of the outright fantasy of the piece - the slowing down of time, in particular - and it was a hell of a mood to wallow in for a couple of hours. The transfer's great, too, and I was really surprised (and pleased) to find a half-hour supplement purely dedicated to the making of that film alone (usually these kinds of films get a general survey sort of featurette), in which it's revealed that Alain Resnais was one of the extras at the feast.

[Scott Nye]

That should have read "I'll admit it's NOT exactly textual." Proofreading, I tell ya...

[Petey]

If I can handle Sandy, I think I can handle one of those cute li'l Kraken.

BTW, they're wonderful fried with a spicy tomato dipping sauce.

[Peter Nellhaus]

OK. You might well have sold me on shelling out for the BD of "Those Magnificent Men . . . ", also for the Annakin commentary. If you haven't read it, I strongly recommend Annakin's autobiography, in part because he got into filmmaking in what seems like the most roundabout way possible.

[Marilyn Donnellan]

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