Salvaged: August (or so) 2018 Blu-ray Consumer Guide

So at the end of every year I rearrange my computer desktop. Folders for freelance work, SCR work, and more go on to an external hard drive and are replaced on the desktop with folders for the current year. And one thing that had been on the desktop, outside of any folder, more than half a year was a document titled "AUGUST 2018 BLU RAY CONSUMER GUIDE." This is how it always works when I actually manage to finish a Blu-Ray Consumer Guide. Last one was in May, and I did it for the tenth anniversary of the blog, mainly because it represented the only type of writing that I couldn't find anyone to pay me for. (Not the ONLY kind, but you get my meaning.) Having pushed myself to get it done I thought, well that wasn't so bad, and immediately set about doing another, and of course I got too busy and never got it done. But I had still watched all the discs (in a period that extended well past August, mind you) and made notes, and there they sat, on my desktop. So I thought, January being a fairly fallow work time, maybe I can draft them up into something, so I did, although in many cases I am just presenting the notes themselves, as a glimpse into certain habits of mind that some of you might find amusing. The sole ringer here is the review for The Comfort of Strangers, a disc I only watched last week. 

Equipment: Playstation 3, OPPO Sony KD50X690E display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.

Au Hasard Balthazar (Criterion)

Notes: “Bresson deliberately refuses to chase beauty in his compositions but beauty finds its way into them anyway. The shot of PK [Pierre Klosowski, venerable author and brother of Balthus—ed.] getting a little water for the donkey. The blackness of the bottom of the well. The blackness of the container of water.” — A+

 Avanti! (Koch Lorber)

Back when it came out in 1972 it was in some quarters dismissed as old Billy Wilder trying to do one of his acid romances new-style, with cussing and nudity and all. Now, the movie is itself old. The pacing of it really stands out: It’s Billy Wilder’s Slow Cinema. There are unexpected moments of lyricism here, also sourer-than-usual bits of misogyny and projected transphobia with the mustachioed-maid joke. An anomaly and a curio. — A-

The Changeling (Severin)

Looks good and is a fabulous film, a well-paced and consistently scarifying haunted house mystery with a restrained and convincing George C. Scott lead performance. Lots of then late-model Fords getting involved in all manner of mishaps, quite a time warp to my suburban teens.  —A

Combat Shock (Severin)

One Viet vet’s worst day ever on Staten Island; a very working class New Yawk take on Eraserhead. Things I learned from the commentary: Director Buddy Giovinazzo studied with  seminal minimalist musician and multi-media pioneer Phill Niblock, who wrote him a “legit filmmaker” note. Inspirational commentary soundbite: “Eddie had a gall bladder operation” meaning cast member and future cult figure Eddie Pepitone. —A

 The Comfort of Strangers (BFI Region B import)

I’ve long thought this Schrader’s most accomplished directorial effort (although there are quite a few gaps in my viewing of his films) and with the exception of the anachronistic and trendy camera-click-sound-effect freeze frames in some early scenes, this holds up spectacularly and is naggingly creepy in the best way. The image quality is particularly good in a nuanced way; the gorgeous detail doesn’t pop but instead insinuates. Among the extras is a typically spectacular Schrader commentary. Topics include degrees of queer in Rupert Everett’s performance and the way he instructed Schrader to rein him in; uses of screen nudity back then (1990) versus today, and working with screenwriter Harold Pinter. One admirable thing about Schrader’s practice is that he has a confidence that doesn’t register as entirely egotistical, and when he talks about Pinter he’s very matter of fact, never fanboying it in. One of the niftiest features of the film is that its theme of the proximity of danger leading to hotter sex, while a valid one, is usually depicted in cinema in  the most dumb and ham-handed way, and this picture provides an excellent exception to that. There are two other audio tracks of Schrader here that I haven’t gotten to but the primary commentary is aces. While he’s not an overtly sentimental man, the way he almost always refers to Natasha Richardson as “Tasha” tips me off that he misses her…as do all film lovers, really.  —A+

Curse of the Cat People (Scream Factory)

The 2016 release of Cat People on Criterion made me hope that the entire Lewton run of RKO pictures would be on the label. Apparently that’s not to be. But Shout!/Scream Factory  are not trifling here. “Beauty” is the only note I had on this, so clearly I didn’t get to any of the extras. But I’d still call this essential. —A

Designing Woman (Warner Archive)

John Alton shooting in color Cinemascope is as much a recommendation for this Blu-ray as one would need I suppose. And this is a lovely disc; the materials from which it was transferred look to have been pretty pristine, as there’s not a lot of wobble or color degeneration in dissolves.  The movie, according to my notes, is “weird as fuck.” Probably more for its perspective on gender relations than its Husbands and Wives-prophesying device of framing it as a quasi-documentary retrospective on a romantic quandary. Bacall and Peck struck me as a very mismatched couple. But what a supporting cast: Mickey Shaughnessy, Chuck Connors, Ed Platt, Alvy Moore. And that climactic brawl. All that notwithstanding, I think (and it's possible I've made this observation before in the context of a different picture) this is the sort of output that compelled François Truffaut to call Vincente Minnelli “un esclave.”—A-

Female Trouble (Criterion)

Boy she’s really fixated on those cha-cha heels. This is one of those demonstrations that no amount of digital scrubbing can make a movie that purposely looks TERRIBLE look any less terrible, and that is how it should be. And yet by this point in his career (1974) John Waters (with Charles Ruggero) has sufficient editing chops to pull off the scene in which Divine plays two characters, one of whom rapes the other. And yes, the skid mark on the Fruit of the Loom is there in spectacular HD. My favorite bits in this are with Edith Massey telling her son to “go nelly” and describing the boredom and emptiness of the heterosexual lifestyle. The wide-ranging extras are entertaining, not least in that they feature both the refined debonair garrulous elder statesman Waters we know and love AND the  semi-surly, snotty, sunglassed, chainsmoking Waters on R. Couri Hay’s public access show from back in the day. —A

Frank and Eva (Cult Epics)

Hard to describe this 1973 Dutch counterculture relationship drama. Maybe to say it’s as if Crown International decided to do a homage to Bergman or something. A prodigiously drinking male constantly pranks his lovely female partner, including with fake suicide attempts, while relentlessly pursuing side interests including a pre-Emmanuelle Sylvia Kristal. Energetic if ultimately pointless, with lots of nudity on a not-at-all-bad-looking disc. —B-

Hilda Crane (Twilight Time)

Twilight Time’s devotion to Fox Cinemascope and films that fall outside the purview of conventional  auteur-driven cinephilia has been opening my eyes for years now. This 1956 Phillip Dunne melodrama (adapted from a Samson Raphaelson novel) can be commended as an exceptional anti-Sirk example of the genre in that there’s no subtext whatsoever. The only “there” in the movie is the “there” there. Jean Simmons plays the title role, a double divorcee crawling back from New York to small town Winona,  her British accent a victim of Midwestern small mindedness. Hilda’s mom Judith Evelyn disdains how New Yorkers laugh at the solid virtues. But this Harper Valley doesn’t quite teem with hypocrites, just old folks with ultra-hardened arteries who don’t want anyone to have a good time, exhibit A being  clinging mom Mrs. Burns, who doesn’t want Hilda anywhere near her good boy Guy Madison. “I live for nothin’ but that boy,” she proclaims in a REMARKABLE characterization from Evelyn Varden.

Jean Pierre Aumont phones in the great French lover bit, e.g., Hilda: “Get out and never come back.” Jacques: “Varay well. I wish you lots of unhappiness. But I’m sure you’ll get it anyway.”

From notes: “UNDER THE PORTRAIT OF MOTHER best shot in the movie.”— B+

Let’s Make Love (Twilight Time)

Notes: “ ‘A lively interest in balloons,’ are you fucking kidding me?

All the guitarists in the Elvis parody are out of tune.

Dennis Hopper was right. [When he said to Cukor “we’re gonna bury you man” at some dinner party recounted in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.-ed.]

The plot line is very pre-code.

JOE BESSER

Quine’s ‘among the beatniks’ or whoever they were treatment in Bell Book and Candle was better.

‘I’ve never been so humiliated in my life’  you said it.”  Not a bad-looking disc, though.—B

Lifeforce (Shout! Factory)

Generally I’m a little skeptical about re-remasterings, but this new version of the 1985 Tobe Hooper classic, the best Hammer movie Hammer never made while at the same time kind of wholly and irrefutably a Cannon film, is a worthwhile investment for the wise people who love it as I do. From notes: “ It DOES look a little better. There’s more definition on the FX Halley’s Comet looks better. Oh yeah it looks HELLA better.”— A+

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (ClassicFlix)

Notes: “Super nifty movie little movie, classical in direction and outlook. Claude Rains is fabulous, one of his greatest performances. Truculent and weaselly wimpy within a single breath. and it looks great. No extras.”  —A-

Midnight Cowboy (Criterion)

I’m only going to say this once about 1960s and 1970s and sometimes even 1980s films getting scanned/transferred/mastered for HD with what some would call a bias toward teal in the color correction: it’s always all about how the movies looks in motion. And in motion, this Blu-ray looks absolutely wonderful. The overall color values are superb—check out Joe Buck’s mom’s pink dress in the beauty salon flashback shot. Green  seems a dominant color in the film’s palette anyway. Also noteworthy, more and more each year, is the location shooting: look, it’s the last gasp of Hubert’s Museum. The 1991-recorded commentary from Schlesinger is  very good and made me miss Supreme Macaroni all over again. “Little too snazzily cut,” he says of one sequence, and yes, you could say that. Audio mix is fabulous.  From notes: “This is A LOT OF MOVIE MAKING (b&w, film within film, lighting, quick cutting)”—A+

My Sister Eileen (Twilight Time)

Notes: “Charming and bright. The dance between Fosse and what’s-his-nut is great. Sexism aside, the congenial sympathies of Quine and Edwards are practically palpable. Lovely transfer. It feels like a movie everyone had a good time on.”—A

Queen of Outer Space (Warner Archive)

Notes: “The most undemanding movie ever made, maybe. Fond and unexpectedly sweet commentary.”—A

The Revolt of Mamie Stover (Twilight Time)

This features Jane Russell as a barely-disguised prostitute thrown out of San Francisco for being a barely disguised prostitute and going to Hawaii and dying her hair red and becoming a barely disguised prostitute who get real estate investment tips from semi-Hemingwayesque author Richard Egan. It all goes pretty well until Pearl Harbor. Raoul Walsh directed. Agnes Morehead plays a barely disguised madam. CinemaScope, Deluxe Color, 1956.

Notes: “Vivid.” —A

Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (Warner Archive)

From notes:  “A triumph of MISE EN SCENE. Catchy tunes.  A lot to chew on for Jordan Peterson.”—A

Two Weeks in Another Town (Warner Archive)

Notes: “Timeless classic in a crisp transfer. These are mean mean people. ‘Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha’ ‘Toby Dammit’ “—A

Under Capricorn (Kino Lorber)

Kat Ellinger’s commentary is fact-filled and interesting, and her notes on Hitchcock’s treatment of class are engaging. But I gotta disagree with her when she says this relative obscurity from 1949 doesn’t LOOK like a Hitchcock film. This was Hitchcock’s second color film (the first was Rope) and his first period piece in some time (since Jamaica Inn ten years before), so maybe that’s where she’s coming from, but…the film language is very much Hitchcock’s. I also think she’s off base with her semi-constant disparagement of Hitchcock’s use of Bergman, that he “takes a great star and he kills her off” and then her note that Hitchcock’s insistence on long takes was “perhaps unnecessary.” Yeah, Hitch, why didn’t you try getting some COVERAGE, little indulgent there, ya think? But I’m not gonna kid myself. Ehringer is the future: with film critics a generation or two younger than myself, the thing with Hitchcock from now on is gonna be three parts slagging for every one part praise. And that’s if we are lucky. The disc looks GOOD, but given this is the only substantive collaboration between Hitchcock and Jack Cardiff it’s not quite what I had hoped for. —A-

Comments

[The Siren]

Ah, such a pleasure to have the Blu-Ray review back. You know how I feel about Under Capricorn, but my dislike is 90% about the script, 10% about the male cast; to me its beauty is undeniable. And the long takes work extremely well at some key points, notably Bergman's breakdown, which no less an authority than Dan Callahan regards as one of the greatest things she ever did. What does Ehringer mean by "kills her off"? I recall the letter Bergman includes in her autobiography, where she says Hitch was giving her trouble about something on UC but "I always get my way in the end," or words to that effect. Should be required reading for those wedded to the idea of Hitch as a merciless tyrant.

Hilda Crane I enjoyed a lot. Philip Dunne can't direct, he just points the camera. But I found the theme interesting; she spends the whole movie coming to terms with the fact that her mother doesn't love her. I was expecting her to chose the boring guy but in the end he was made more interesting than usual.

Do you know, I've never seen The Man Who Watched Trains Go By? Simenon adaptation, yes? And with Claude Rains, the apple of my side-eye. Must remedy that.

[Andrew Del Monte]

There's a shot in Under Capricorn where (and my memory's foggy) the camera follows Michael Wilding down a hallway toward a door, with no or little music, and with no seeming purpose other than for us to "be" moving through the physical space with Wilding for a moment. This shot to me always felt predictive of modern long take cinema, from Lubezki to Tarr... I'm surely projecting onto the film, but that's how it feels when I watch it. Just one among many examples of choices Hitchcock made that prefigured so much of modern cinema. Under Capricorn will always be in my list of top 10 Hitchcock films, for a lot of reasons. It's very powerful. When I saw it on 35mm with my girlfriend a few years ago, she leaped in her chair when the shrunken head was revealed.

[V. Morgen]

Kat Ellinger seems to have an audio commentary on every other video I've purchased this year. Maybe she's overextended herself...

[Simon Abrams]

I'm Simon Abrams, and I'm here to say, that I like reading Glenn on LIFEFORCE (also THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS, COMBAT SHOCK, QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE, THE CHANGELING, and FEMALE TROUBLE).

[Mr. K]

Glad to see someone else watched TWO WEEKS and thought of "Toby Dammit" (did Fellini see this?). The "Dracula Cha Cha Cha" song also makes me feel like this is a rough draft of a horror film in melodrama clothing.

[titch]

Great selection as always - a lot of As for B movies, which sets you apart from the pack. I didn't 'get' The Comfort Of Strangers - maybe I was just in the wrong mood. First Reformed has just plopped onto my table, so I'm considering giving Comfort a second chance.