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+
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.
Posted by: Danny Bowes | November 12, 2012 at 11:26 PM
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).
Posted by: lipranzer | November 13, 2012 at 12:23 AM
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?
Posted by: lazarus | November 13, 2012 at 02:10 AM
"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.
Posted by: Petey | November 13, 2012 at 07:06 AM
My son found MAD MONSTER PARTY on Netflix last week. It was pretty fascinating as a bizarro Rankin/Bass experience.
Posted by: Eric Lowe | November 13, 2012 at 08:51 AM
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.
Posted by: jbryant | November 13, 2012 at 12:29 PM
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...
Posted by: Gordon Cameron | November 13, 2012 at 01:02 PM
Helen Hayes is a nightmare in that fucking thing.
Posted by: Tom Block | November 13, 2012 at 01:06 PM
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)?
Posted by: James Keepnews | November 13, 2012 at 01:22 PM
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.
Posted by: Josh Z | November 13, 2012 at 02:30 PM
"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.
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | November 13, 2012 at 02:46 PM
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.
Posted by: jordan ash | November 13, 2012 at 03:16 PM
What a strange thing to say on a site populated by critics. Should one only elaborate on favorable opinions?
Posted by: Gordon Cameron | November 13, 2012 at 03:34 PM
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...
Posted by: James Keepnews | November 13, 2012 at 03:43 PM
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.
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | November 13, 2012 at 03:51 PM
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.
Posted by: Josh Z | November 13, 2012 at 04:45 PM
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.
Posted by: David Ehrenstein | November 13, 2012 at 04:47 PM
As for "Rosemary's Baby"
http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Cinema-Polanski-David-Ehrenstein/dp/2866429176
Posted by: David Ehrenstein | November 13, 2012 at 04:51 PM
That's very unfortunate about the Fleischers.
Posted by: Tom Russell | November 13, 2012 at 06:19 PM
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.
Posted by: Petey | November 14, 2012 at 08:55 AM
Uh-oh, Petey. You've just released the Kracken with that last post.
Posted by: NeilFC | November 14, 2012 at 10:30 AM
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.)
Posted by: Will Pfeifer | November 14, 2012 at 10:52 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb2zIR2rvRQ
Posted by: David Ehrenstein | November 14, 2012 at 03:26 PM
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.
Posted by: Scott Nye | November 14, 2012 at 05:59 PM
That should have read "I'll admit it's NOT exactly textual." Proofreading, I tell ya...
Posted by: Scott Nye | November 14, 2012 at 06:00 PM
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.
Posted by: Petey | November 14, 2012 at 06:09 PM
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.
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Posted by: Marilyn Donnellan | December 08, 2012 at 01:40 AM