"Since our last report many things have changed; indeed it would be foolish to assume that is could be otherwise."—Throbbing Gristle, sleeve notes, D.O.A. The Third And Final Report Of Throbbing Gristle, 1978.
Oy.
When last we spoke, things were getting on track for this to be a monthly feature again, but then, you know, actual paying work, and my domestic player broke and all that. And then I started getting queries about am I doing a Holiday Gift Guide, which made me think, "Well, there's a hook," as if I needed a hook when the whole point was to get this back to being a monthly thing, and then...
And in the meantime as I'm getting new equipment and prevaricating the discs are piling up, bless them. And really, as you'll see, they've been of really high quality, which is always nice. So here's 34, reviewed and rated, and I've still got a pile to go, and I hope to get that done before the actual holiday itself, but I make no promises. Enjoy.
Equipment: Playstation 3 (broken noisy fat model replaced by quieter skinny model) and OPPO BDP 83 the players, Panasonic Viera TC-P50S30 the display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV the amp.
3 Women (Criterion)
A pretty straightforward upgrade from the standard-def edition same extras) with a BIG uptick in image quality; Chuck Rosher’s cinematography here reaches the apogee of “impressionism” that most cinephiles with a minor in the ‘70s tend to associate with Vilmos Zsigmond; look at those aquas in the pool mural, etc. In its odd way this is one of Altman’s most perfectly realized films, that is, whatever it is, it’s exactly what he wanted to put across. My Lovely Wife: “It’s a very interesting film and I’m glad I watched it. I never want to have anything to do with it again.”— A+
The 10th Victim (Blue Underground)
Elio Petri’s futuristic quasi-Marxist satire is no Death Lays An Egg, but it’s sharper and brighter and funnier than, say, The Running Man. 
You’ve heard of this, it’s the one where Ursula Andress wears a bra that shoots bullets, got pop-art sets, all that. It’s actually a good deal more substantive than its rep indicates, but the real news here is the transfer: So gorgeous, smooth, yet filmlike, And it’s a 1965 picture. Which somehow, to my mind, once again evokes the question of what the fuck is the deal with the Argento Blu-rays. One salient feature of the picture quality here is that there’s zero speckling in the whites, and there are a LOT of whites. — A
Le Beau Serge (Criterion)
Chabrol nuts (I’m one) are suitably gratified that Criterion is putting out this and Les Cousins (see below), the prolific, perverse maestro’s two opening features, a criss-crossing duo, thematically. 
This 1958 debut, in which frail city mouse Jean-Claude Brialy goes back to the provinces and reenters the life of his childhood buddy of the title, a dissolute and surly Gerard Blain, is deceptively simple and plain and very beautiful. The Blu-ray image is impeccable; the winter-gray sky of the French village is so crisp it’s chilling. Very consistent throughout. The commentary by Guy Austin is informative albeit rather formal. —A+
Ben-Hur (Warner)
I understand the party line on big-studio sword and sandal and Jesus epics is that they stink because they’re all lifeless and such, and that the ones directed by one-time studio greats such as William Wyler stink even more because…well, I’m just not getting into all that again. As for me, I think my prior-stated sentiments of affection for the likes of Quo Vadis and even The Robe testify that I have a thing for this sort of stuff. And I do. 
And as Johnny LaRue would say, it’s not a gay thing, and even if it was, what business would it be of yours? I dunno, something about all that production value and the attendant/inadvertent cinematic inertia that result s in making sure it all gets on screen create in an atmosphere that I find perversely engaging. Also, I like Charlton Heston and I don’t care who knows it. This grand anniversary edition of the remake of the General Lew Wallace vision is a spectacular Blu-ray realization, for better and/or worse (check out the “swarthy” makeup on that Arab dude who yells “Roman pig” [no, he really does!] during the chariot race). Hence, that aforementioned atmosphere, perfectly transposed to home viewing. Hooray!— A+
Blue Velvet (MGM/UA)
It looks great, but given how many times I’ve seen this well-projected in a theater, I can’t say it’s revelatory. The big news here is the sole extra of note, almost an hour of deleted scenes, some of them so fully realized (scored and everything) that they must have come out fairly late in the post process. Good, weird, Lynchian stuff it is, too, and demonstrative in hindsight of what a resourceful recycler Lynch is: you see a lot of things that would go, in some form, into Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, those “Rabbit” sequences of his online videos and INLAND EMPIRE, and more. The odd thing, or really not so odd, is that you never get the impression that having these scenes in the film proper would have substantively improved it. (Admittedly the whole jettisoned subplot involving Jeffrey’s college girlfriend Louise IS pretty hilarious.) Great to see it though. — A+
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Paramount)
I’ve seen scads of prints of this, 
16 mostly I suspect, and I’ve never seen it look down-and-out awful, but the brightness and detail of this rendering really is eye-popping and delivers a really great viewing experience. God DAMN Mickey Rooney is grating though. —A+
Cape Fear (Universal)
Shot by Freddie Francis, production-designed by Henry Bumstead, directed by Martin Scorsese in an attempt of sorts at making a mainstream work (if not product), this comes across well on Blu-ray; the most salient feature for me is seeing Scorsese doing some of his signature camera moves and shock cuts with such slick surface material. 
This is maybe my least favorite Scorsese film; there’s something tense and unpleasant about it that has little to do with the tension and unpleasantness of the actual subject matter. Try as he might, Scorsese can’t quite key into the film’s “ordinary” characters, so he throws all manner of effects into his mix (image going to negative, etc), while simultaneously allowing DeNiro to turn his Max Cady into Freddie Krueger. By the end the whole thing seems like an exercise in masochism for pretty much everybody involved. There’s still striking stuff here, and the meagerly-appointed disc sports a first-rate image.—B+
Carlos (Criterion)
Vicissitudes of contemporary filmmaking: While director Olivier Assayas and cinematographers Yorick La Saux and Denis Lenoir shot this in 35, the U.S. theatrical run of this picture (a television mini-series originally), such as it was, never saw a 35 projection, and don’t quote me on this, but I don’t think there were a whole lot of 35 prints struck for the European market either. So the visual quality of your experience of this film (which, as you may have noticed, is one I’m pretty crazy about) is entirely reliant on the quality of its digitization, as it were. And the quality here is, as you might expect, first rate, as are the extras. It’s a common argument these days that the quality line between cinema and television is disappearing because Breaking Bad. There are corresponding (or is it concomitant? Or neither?) views that movies where there aren’t a lot of shots at Dutch angles aren’t “cinematic” because Some Dude™ doesn’t think The Descendants is all that. Sigh. I look at stuff such as Carlos, and at stuff like Fassbinder’s World on Wire (made for German television in the early ‘70s for heaven’s sake, and coming soon from Criterion) and think, well, hell; cinema is where you can find it. And Breaking Bad ain’t cinema. But that’s an argument for another time. This rules. —A+
Citizen Kane (Warner)
This amazing rendition is not just the result of lessons learned about too much DNR application and such. Word on the street is that a new element was found, and given something along the lines of the Zhivago treatment. (See here.) The result is the most compulsively watchable version of the film imaginable, or close, I guess it depends on the limits of one’s imagination. What’s as impressive as what you see I what you don’t see—Welles’ old-age makeup for Kane doesn’t “pop” as makeup the way it did in the prior standard-def edition. One potential pitfall of the genius here is that you’re apt to start telling your spouse or roommate that you’re going to send him or her to Sing Sing, do you hear me, Sing Sing. —A+
The Collector (MGM)
Here’s a Wyler pic I’d be hard-pressed to accept any arguments against, although it is true that they don’t make ‘em like this anymore on any number of levels, so unusual is the balance between old school and new that it poises on (the year was 1965, and it was only Wyler’s second film after Ben-Hur). No way in hell they’d get away with the ending today, that’s for sure. This is a very handsome disc, solid…good hair detail on Samantha Eggar and better freckles! The film, or its making, is also the source for the cover of the Smiths’ 1984 single “What Difference Does It Make,” so, you know…—A
Les Cousins (Criterion)
Haven’t seen this puppy, Chabrol’s second feature, in maybe 40 years (I remember watching it as a kid on “Cinema 13,” my local PBS station’s invaluable film series) but it must’ve made a huge impression on me, as I remember the final shots almost exactly. Weird. Here the country-mouse/city mouse scenario is reversed, although Brialy and Blain play roles that both correspond to AND invert their roles in Chabrol’s first. It’s great, it looks great, get it. The commentary here is licensed from the Australian issue of the film on the Madman label, and features Down Under quasi-tyro Adrian Martin, who really does sound almost exactly like whoever used to do the voiceover for the American Foster’s beer ads. At one point Martin translates the French title of Chabrol’s debut feature thusly: “The Good Serge, The Good Lookin’ Serge, something like that.” Very funny. —A+
Despair (Olive)
Very solid, not a jawdropper, just consistently very good overall quality, no print damage, none of the soundtrack issues that have cropped up on prior Olive issues. I’m working on a longer piece about this interesting confluence of Fassbinder, Nabokov, Stoppard, Bogarde,Ferreol, et. al., so I won’t say much else here except that if you think you liked this movie back in the day, it’s worth another look; it seems even more interesting eccentrically multi-layered than it did back in the late ‘70s. —A
Dumbo (Disney)
I’ve been waiting on this for Blu-ray for a long time and now I’ve got nothing to say about it. Just beautiful, everything I’d wanted it to be. I really wish the studio would reconsider Song of the South, not to mention putting some odder stuff—Three Caballeros, etc.—on to Blu-ray. And also uncensoring all the tobacco-based humor in the material. You can’t have everything. You SHOULD, however, have this. —A+
Fanny and Alexander (Criterion)
Whaddya know, another piece of cinema made for European TV. On the off chance that you know a lot of Bergman skeptics, I’d say this is the work of his that you’ll want to throw in their faces. It’s quintessentially Ingmar but by the same token so much more, well, well-rounded than the more severe (and to some, strained) Scenes From A Marriage. It’s also a film in which every frame seems more beautiful than the last, particularly in this thoroughly astonishing Blu-ray transfer. —A+
The Four Feathers (Criterion)
As adventure yarns go, this is hardly as rip-roaring as, say, Gunga Din; it’s a little more staid, a little heavier, which is one reason its rep is on the more subdued side. Still, it’s got its crackling bits, and the Blu-ray rendering is just beautiful. As opposed to Gone With The Wind, released the same year (1939), this is a study in the delicacy of Technicolor. Look at the blue of C. Aubrey Smith’s eyes. (There’s a sentence you’ve never read before, I bet.) Check out the wine glass, the pineapple in the early dinner scene. Whoa. —A
Go West/Battling Butler (Kino) 
Two very clean renderings of a couple of minor Buster Keaton classics, each one a great deal of fun. Like everything with Keaton attached to it, essential. —A
The Guns of Navarone (Sony)
Apparently restoring this was a real bear of a task, as materials were all over the place and originals of everything were, well, pretty much nonexistent. The resultant Blu-ray is of interestingly variant quality. Skin tones are kind of all over the place relative to day/night scenes, and that goes whether shot with rear-projection or on location or not. The storm at sea scene right after they kill all those poor Germans is a particular study in the malleability in appearance between effects shots and real-life stuntwork stuff. It’s all kind of fascinating, technically, if you look at it with an eye to that sort of thing. If you don’t, it’s still very satisfying in that old movie-movie fashion (the 5.1 surround soundtrack is mixed so as to sound appropriate to a 1961 film, if you follow me).—A
Identification of a Woman (Criterion)
The first shot-on-film feature Antonioni made in his native Italy in nearly two decades, 1982’s Identification is a bit of a puzzle film that, rather puzzlingly in and of itself, relates most directly to…well, Il Grido, if it had been made about an intellectual film director rather than a workingman. Visually, it’s got some striking stuff (not least of which is female co-lead Daniela Silverios), but, my friend John Powers’ booklet essay’s claims notwithstanding, it doesn’t hit, for me at least, the same highs as The Passenger, or Red Desert. Still. Seminal cinema in the highest home video format, it’s kinda like putting two and two together. —A
Island of Lost Souls (Criterion)
Awesome! The film itself is discussed by myself in some detail here. The Blu-ray presentation is quite impressive especially considering the picture is almost 80 years old. Where it really comes to life are in the darker scenes, those on the titular island, which itself seems plunged into what you’d call a Stygian absence of light. The varieties of shade and detail are fabulous. —A+
Jackie Brown (Miramax/Lionsgate)
A few months ago the missus expressed a desire to look at this, and I said, “Let’s wait for the Blu-ray.” A good idea, that. Very smooth, solid, punchy high-def presentation. And a terrific film, not just a high point for Tarantino but, along with Yates’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a kind of object lesson in how to transpose a first-rate genre novel to the screen. I could quibble about how not all of the extras are in 1080p, but what’s the point, beyond a docked notch? The play’s the thing, and this photoplay is quite the thing. Check it out. —A
Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy (Universal)
“I hate computers,” remember that thing that Sam Neill says at the beginning of the first picture? 
Ha ha ha ha. Man, I’d forgotten how studio-generic a lot of the first one looked; Dean Cundey’s a solid pro, for sure, but man, this is workmanlike at the level of solid pro. And the opening: too much music, telegraphed thrills. For a groundbreaking picture, this is one of Spielberg’s weakest. The second one’s tighter and tauter and with less child-in-peril boredom, and a more distinctive look (thank you Mr. Kaminski) the third kicks out the jams with no waiting, paying homage to the B movies it was essentially inspired by, and which I myself still prefer. Not a bad looking (or sounding) set of Blu-rays though. — A-
Kuroneko (Criterion)
Certain critics/Asian cinema mavens aren’t all that crazy about this movie, and I can understand why; its stolid camera stylings aren’t exactly what you’d call cinematically distinctive. Still. It’s got spooky female corpses, black cats, evocative forest sets, and really fabulous atmospheric lighting for black-and-white, which this Blu-ray disc absolutely nails. Another study in atmosphere, then. —A
Meek’s Cutoff (Oscilloscope)
Here’s the extent to which high-def television technology is trumping projection: I saw this for the first time in a Manhattan screening room and I actually found myself doing mental compensation for the image quality. That is, I just KNEW that what I was seeing was probably not as striking as what was supposed to be on screen. 
This wasn’t the first time I’d had this experience, and I actually know of at least one filmmaker who’s pulled a film from that room because they weren’t screening a particular picture at the correct resolution. In any event, the Blu-ray of this striking some-call-it-a-minimalist-Western makes the version I saw in that screening room look dingy and dishwaterish. This was one of the films cited by that Dan Kois character in his deplorable “cultural vegetables” piece; well, the brightness and the color values shown here make it a veritable VEGETABLE SALAD, there I did it please kill me now. But seriously, if you missed this in theaters and you’ve got the equipment, go this way as soon as possible. —A+
Meet Me In St. Louis (Warner)
A version of the immortal classic that we have always wanted. Very “filmlike,” down to the occasional feeling of softness; that is, not in terms of muddied or not-sharp detail, but rather the way a film feels when you’ve got that consciousness of light being thrown on the screen from some distance. Spectacular. —A+
Mutiny on the Bounty (Warner)
I’ve read some carping on this, that it ain’t 8K brilliant, or something. I was pretty sold on the version that was on the HD disc of the Milestone/Brando version way back in, when, 2007? So this, finally, would seem to be that version on a Blu-ray, and I’m still pretty sold on it. Vivid, colorful, never visually dull. The film itself a bit of another matter. Still, if you’re a fan of it, or of excellence in high-def generally, this is absolutely solid and worthwhile. —A
Mysterious Island (Twilight Time)
Ooh. A Cy Endfield picture! With Ray Harryhausen special effects! A sequel, of sorts, to 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, with Herbert Lom very apposite as Nemo. Boy, Gary Merrill looks TERRIBLE! In any event, once again the mavens at Twilight Time come through with a very entertaining package at a mildly unpopular price, presenting a studio semi-classic that the originating studio MIGHT get around to issuing on Blu-ray some time after the end of the world. The presentation itself is solid, with lots of what they call “good grain” and the standard deviation when the stop-motion effects are optically printed on the live-action stuff. A first-rate presentation of an underrated picture. Love it. —A+
The Phantom Carriage (Criterion)
Super fucking awesome, a high-def version of what I believe was the transfer that was on foreign region disc, which I raved about back in 2008. Original intertitles on this baby. Amazing detail through all the tints, no “digital” feel. It’s got that electronic KTL score and everything. Get this baby, confuse your friends; they’ll think they’re watching Murnau. And then, after discussing this confusion, you can all sit around and think about what other amazing stuff in cinema history has been lost, or languishes in canonical obscurity. Depressing. —A+
The Rules of the Game (Criterion)
A further upgrade of this staple of cinephilia, a picture which, I’ve been insisting since I was given a published platform on which to insist (around 1987, I think), is entirely accessible and pleasurable and watchable for anyone with eyes and a brain, cinephilic or not. While the disc is not the barn-burner that the Kane Blu-ray is, it’s damn fine. —A+
The Strange Case of Angelica (Cinema Guild)
This graceful and odd fantasy from 100-plus-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliviera is remarkable in both its vivaciousness and mournfulness, which is why it’s so, you know, odd. 
This is one of two recent Blu-rays from the adventurous firm The Cinema Guild, and I’m very positively impressed: the main feature looks great, beautiful pastel colors highlighted, overall a lovely impressionistic palette presents itself. No video noise, either. The special features, including a 1931 silent short from the director, are also uniformly excellent. Highly highly recommended. —A+
Strike! (Kino Lorber)
Eisenstein’s 1925 celebration of doing revolutionary stuff is a genuinely odd piece of cinema particularly in those juxtapositions that don’t quite constitute montage…you know what I mean, the animal identities of the provocateurs and all that. Also fascinating to look at are all the planes created in the shooting of the factory settings. Despite the, um, materialism of the subject matter, the vulgar vitality of its visual treatment yields to a kind of delirium; one can find a distinct influence from this film in Dreyer’s Vampyr, and that’s no accident on several levels. The Kino Lorber Blu is from a recent restoration and whole thing is so lovely it seems slightly churlish to complain about lack of original Russian intertitles. But still, woulda been nice. —A
Touch of Evil (Eureka/Masters of Cinema, U.K. import, region B locked)
Talk about OPTIONS. 
Orson Welles’ 1958 beyond-noir masterwork was, like much of his other work, subjected to studio tampering, leaving its release version, um, compromised. A subsequent 1998 “reconstruction” from Welles’ notes yielded great satisfaction but of course also some controversy. And then there’s the bedeviling aspect ratio debate: is the film Academy ratio or 1.85, and just because Russell Metty made it 1.85 for Douglas Sirk doesn’t mean…and so on. So, in the spirit that animated Criterion’s wonderful omnibus edition of Welles’ Mr. Arkadin/Confidential Report, the MoC mavens give us FIVE versions of the film: the theatrical and reconstructed versions in your choice of 1.37 and 1.85 ratios, the “preview” version in 1.85. Four different audio commentaries are doles out over four versions. Transfer quality is superb throughout. Magnificent, a strong, credible candidate for Blu-ray of the year. —A+
Winnie the Pooh (Disney)
One of the too-unsung films of 2011, a really outstanding expansion/appreciation of the design and animation styles of the Disney Pooh adaptations of the ‘60s. The Blu-ray is about as beautiful and crisp as the film itself, which is to say, very.—A+
Zombie (Blue Underground)
Quite a few of the Blue Underground Blu-rays have revealed values that we might not have appreciated on the first go-round of the films thus treated. 
For instance, the fabulous cinematography of The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue, yclept Let Sleeping Corpses Lie. Or the fact that New York Ripper, while pernicious exploitative garbage, had at one point been, and was now once more, pernicious exploitative garbage in focus! Etc. Alas, this long-awaited high-def digitalization of Lucio Fulci’s walking-dead, erm, classic, offers nothing like that in terms of revelation. Don’t get me wrong, it looks good, it mostly looks REALLY good, and Lord knows its set pieces—underwater zombie attacks topless girl, but is in turn attacked by a shark, who he then BITES! Jagged oversize splinter pierces unpleasant woman’s eyeball! Zombies walk across the Brooklyn Bridge!—still pack a punch. But it remains Zombie on Blu-ray, nothing more, nothing less. Worth noting is the pretty amusing 5.1 sound mix, the pans and reverbs of which are something like the aural equivalent of Italian horror cinema’s overuse of the zoom lens. As with that visual tic, it’s something you eventually get to like. —A-
Recent Comments