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August 29, 2012

Savant's new reviews today are:

My Son John
Blu-ray

The most notorious of the Red-baiting anti-commie movies, this perversely sincere Leo McCarey show is hateful right down to the core. A Bible-thumping mother and know-nothing father react violently upon learning that their oldest and most successful son has somehow been transformed into one of "them". Robert Walker is the traitorous abomination so terrible that the FBI already has him under surveillance. This kinder and gentler FBI begs the son to see the light, voluntarily come in for coffee and name names. Helen Hayes, Dean Jagger and Van Heflin give excellent performances in this, one of the most twisted and ill-conceived American movies ever. In an excellent Blu-ray transfer from Olive Films.
8/28/12

Back from Eternity

If I were marooned in a rain forest with a few fellow plane survivors, I very much doubt that they'd include gorgeous Anita Ekberg, Phyllis Kirk and Adele Mara... but John Farrow's tough minded remake of Five Came Back features good acting and a no-nonsense attitude to survival. The jungle provides plenty of chewable scenery for Robert Ryan, Rod Steiger, Gene Barry, Fred Clark, Beulah Bondi and little Jon Provost. Just watch out for the headhunters and their silent blowguns. Prime RKO jungle thrills from The Warner Archive Collection.
8/28/12

and

High Time
Blu-ray

Crooner Bing Crosby bounces back in a hopelessly square family comedy about a middle-aged millionaire who decides to get a college degree and ends up showing all those undergraduate 'kids' how to really have fun. Direction by Blake Edwards and music by Henry Mancini back up a scrubbed studio-roster cast: Fabian, Tuesday Weld, Richard Beymer, Yvonne Craig. Don't miss the scene where Bing goes in drag as part of (sorry to disappoint) a wild-and-crazy fraternity stunt. In Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
8/28/12




Hello!

I'm recovering from the long REEL THING weekend and catching up on disc-watching in a big hurry. Some of the new titles I'm reviewing are familiar oldies so that usually makes them a lot easier to write up.

Warner Home Video wrote with an invite to an on-the-lot screening of the 3D Dial "M" for Murder in September. I saw it in 3D once before in 1979, projected Polaroid at the Tiffany Theater. It was amazing -- and with today's technology the 3D will most likely be even better.

Usually around this time of the year I take a look back over my reviews to see what I should be thinking about for my end of year lists. Thanks to the proliferation of Made-On-Demand labels and new boutique outfits releasing Savant-friendly older pictures, I already have more than twice the usual number of titles that really deserve to get major mentions. I haven't quite figured out the solution yet.

I have discovered that as much as I enjoyed keeping it up for seven years, maintaining the Savant Wish List was too much of a time drain. It was never as accurate as I wanted it to be but I liked doing it a lot. The time just isn't there. I know that it had a following, and once or twice I heard from disc producers at studios saying that they referred to it. That may have just been polite talk but it was welcome all the same. I haven't had to cut back radically on reviews, which isn't the important thing.

In the newest interesting disc announcements, we have Kino scheduling a fab new restoration of Fritz Lang's Die Niebelungen on Blu-ray for November 6. Criterion has a BD of Roman Polanski's superb Rosemary's Baby for October 30. Olive Films is packaging four of its Paramount thrillers in Blu-ray for November 13: Appointment with Danger, Rope of Sand, Union Station and Dark City. And Twilight Time is nothing if not eclectic, with Blu-rays of Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse (November 13) and the Ross Hunter musical remake of Lost Horizon for December 11.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson



August 24, 2012

Wrapping up the Savant report on this year's AMIA THE REEL THING symposium in Hollywood: The final technical presentation was given by Bev Pasterczyk of Eastman Kodak. Her brisk talk introduced three new color film products for archivists to use as low-contrast archiving masters, touting a 100-year projected stability when stored under archival conditions, etc. She finished with a demonstration - comparison between an image off an original negative and one reclaimed from archival stock -- they looked more or less identical.

The last presenter up was Tom Burton of Technicolor Creative Services. Last year he brought us a fascinating demo of the restoration process to recreate a fully-colored A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès; this trip was a chance to show off a full restoration of Universal's 1933 The Invisible Man, by James Whale. I'd heard quite a bit about the sorry state of this title, which has had all kinds of problems ever since I started seeing it as a small child -- problems way beyond the usual fuzzy picture and hissy sound. As the original negative is long, long gone and few film elements still exist, the prognosis wasn't good. Tom Burton has an entertainer's streak and entered the Linwood Dunn theater dressed as The Invisible Man, with his head wrapped up, a fedora tight around his ears and old-fashioned dark glasses. He then proceeded to explain (well, after removing his disguise) the backflips TCS performed to fix some of the film's worst problems. Universal has a fine grain with all kinds of digitally-repairable damage, but it also has serious issues all the way through, most notably scores of instances of missing frames, black dropouts anywhere from 1 to 8 frames in a row. A problem with splices on almost all the cuts caused frames just before and after cut points to be out of focus, as well. The only other useful film element was another copy in England, but it had its own kinds of damage, including bad deterioration stains in certain areas.

Technicolor ended up borrowing frames from the English copy to patch the missing bits in their American fine grain (not on film, just digitally). The separated films had shrunken differently over time. They had to be aligned and tweaked to fit, and then timed and processed to create a match. Because of the tools now available, these impossible problems just go away... the flaws that constantly popped up before, practically on every cut, disappear. One set of five missing frames happens in a wide scene of actor Henry Travers buyting a newspaper on the street, among a group of people. The Brit copy was stain-damaged through this entire section. But the camera is static in the affected patch, so TCS pieced together a full people-less background, and then cut and pasted just the human figures from the Brit copy. I imagine that making it all match and flow took some time, but that problem is now 'invisible' as well.

The screening that followed looked far, far better than any of us hoped The Invisible Man could ever look. It's true, cleaning up the picture, evening out the contrast and eliminating contrast flicker (probably the wrong term) goes about 90% of the way to making a 80 year-old show like this look brand new. I yanked out my older DVD of the title as soon as I got home to verify that the problem spots Tom Burton showed us were as advertised -- and yes, right in the middle of Jack Griffin examining the signpost to Ipping, there are frames missing. The sound restoration is almost as good -- now every dialogue line is clear, even with the British accents. And neither picture nor sound has the feel of being processed, optimized for home HD sets or sanitized of all surface noise -- the filmic dimensionality of people and objects is retained. I did see a few hints of the wires used to manipulate some objects... the wires hadn't been removed digitally (very good call) but they were all but invisible anyway. It's just a super, super restoration of a film we know and love: hey -- it's science fiction. Claude Rains is nothing short of fantastic, and it is rather magical seeing the young Gloria Stuart, sixty years before her victory-lap appearance in Cameron's Titanic.

Unlike previous years when the identity of the secret final evening movie leaked out early, this year Grover Crisp really kept the news a secret. Just before the screening Grover hinted that the film was Italian, released by Columbia and the recipient of a best Foreign Film Oscar in 1972; that it starred an actor from the first two Sergio Leone westerns. "Gian-Maria Volonté" was as far as I got in the guessing game. The 4K projector started up on the new restoration, revealing ... revealing ... Elio Petri's Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto, aka Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, also with Florinda Bolkan. We were immediately hit at full volume by a terrific Ennio Morricone music score, a theme I'd heard countless times but never before in its proper context. This is probably the most famous film of Elio Petri, the director of We Still Kill the Old Way and The Tenth Victim. It's also a terrific politically committed film about the relationship between the power of the law and fascism. A deranged police official commits an expedient murder for a crazy reason -- to prove that he's "too important to fail". Despite leaving plenty of clues that lead his own detectives right back to him, the killer confirms that the system is incapable of acting against him -- since all the insiders in power are corrupt in one way or another, none will allow a real investigation that might reflect back on the power structure. The film therefore proves that the grossly hypocritical "system" swings far to the right to protect its privileges, puts up with torture and practices repression ("It's a vaccination!") as a way of perpetuating its own illegitimate existence. Our killer hero has nothing to fear.

This year's The Reel Thing was the best so far even though I had to miss a couple of presentations on Friday. Having the status of an official guest, as opposed to riding in on someone's coattails, made me feel less self-conscious when pouring a cup of coffee from the guest table. Besides my 'restoration' friends Gary Teetzel and Wayne Schmidt, I got to talk with Wade Hannibal of Universal, who I once worked closely with at Cannon Films and MGM. Wade had plenty to say about the big restoration push for Uni's 100th anniversary and had some interesting opinions about 4K versus 2K projection. I also got to talk briefly with restorer Mike Hyatt and will hopefully connect with him later to learn what's what with his various projects. And I even got to talk again with a very big producer, now an AMIA member, that I cut some TV spots for twenty years before. He's as interested in film collecting as he ever was. I'll skip the name as I'm skittish about name-droppers. Is anonymous name-dropping just as big of a ego crime? Finally, I was very pleased to be introduced to producers-writers Nick Redman and Julie Kirgo of Twilight Time. They were both really gracious. I'm a big admirer of Ms. Kirgo's writing. She contributed entries to the old Film Noir Encyclopedia long before I was involved.

And that's that -- I'm really happy that so many readers have 'tuned in' to read these reports on the symposium presentations. My thanks to Grover Crisp of Sony and Dennis Doros of Milestone Films for their kind invitation to cover The Reel Thing. Back Tuesday with more reviews -- Glenn Erickson.

Saturday August 25, 2012 (6PM)

Finishing off Friday's THE REEL THING session, and most of the last day, Saturday:

Later Friday afternoon Paul Rutan, Jr. took the podium to talk about the restoration his company Triage performed on the 1968 animation classic Yellow Submarine, which I reviewed at DVD Savant a couple of months ago. The new disc of course looks terrific; Triage was able to work with the original negative, dropping a generation and gaining quite a bit of information over what was seen on screens in 1968. The scan was done at Triage's sister company Eque.

Also for Apple, Rutan's companies worked on a restoration of Magical Mystery Tour, which was shot on 16mm reversal film and has definite limits as to how good it can look. But we saw a sample and I was impressed. I found out privately that there is a very good chance that next year Apple will be releasing -- get this -- the long suppressed Beatles film Let it Be.

The Friday night announced screening was from Fox, a 'premiere' of a new restoration of Howard Hawks' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe. The colors popped, the already cartoonish visuals looked glossier and cleaner than ever. Fox appears to be going the Universal route with its color pictures, as the scrubbed image didn't have a strong film look. Technicolor wasn't exactly realistic in 1953 either. I don't know if the present new Blu-ray is made from this same restoration -- although that would seem logical, you never know.

Saturday began with a presentation by three archiving executives from Paramount. Last year they explained a feature retrieval database with which Paramount salesmen, execs, researchers and interested parties can access data on every movie they've transferred, and see a decent encoding of the picture as well. This year they went through their entire gameplan for archiving digitally-finished films. The workflow was complex and had taken into account some of the usual pitfalls of post-production plans. Their advice was not to trust digital intermediates submitted by production companies, which would have had a 'blame the outside company' bias were it not true that vendors never seem to submit correctly all they have contracted to submit. From vendor experience, I can assert that usually one doesn't find out how unreasonable the major company's demands are until after a deal has been set, and they send you the paperwork.

Next up was a really great presentation by Ellis Burman of Audio Mechanics, an investigation of a hairy technical problem so well explained that .... I understood it. It was 40 minutes about new techniques of Wow Removal for Motion Picture Soundtrack Preservation. Burman played some samples of wow and flutter, which sounds like someone interfering with a phonograph by slowing the turntable intermittently with their thumb. He went through four different methods of straightening out the audio. One uses the 'bias' track on a recording to 'straighten out the time clock' and eliminate the speed changes. On CinemaScope tracks, one can use the 12kHz signal track used to trigger surround tracks -- they also function like time clocks. And then Burman showed us software called Celemony and Cedar Audio, by which sections of wow and flutter can be corrected by matching waveforms. It was all fascinating: not something I personally could do, but fascinating.

Then came Davide Pozzi of the Italian company L'Immagine Ritrovata, to talk about the restoration of the enormous 1934 French version of Les Misérables directed by Raymond Bernard. Considered the best adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel, the film is in three parts and is almost 300 minutes long. It had been released in umpteen versions including a two-movie cutdown, so a big part of the restoration was mapping out the full continuity of all three parts, finding the best elements and reconstructing main titles for each part, none of which were retained on elements of good quality. Pozzi said that he had a staff of 48 restorers (!!) and that the whole job was done at a 4K resolution; this new restoration has two new scenes recovered, that haven't been included since it was new. He showed us a street riot and battle scene from the picture, and both Bernard's direction and the restoration were phenomenal. The restorers didn't touch the natural grain of shots, leaving the picture looking very 'analog natural'.

Divided in two parts before and after lunch was a remarkable illustrated lecture by Jonathan Erland, an effects man who has worked on projects as varied as the 1964 World's Fair animatronics, Star Wars special effects and special processes for the digital age. Erland's subject, Gigantic Ideas: The Age of Enlightenment and Pre-Cinema drew parallels and made connections between science and the arts to show the underpinnings of motion pictures. Like a fantastic puzzle, the connection-web made here linked various groups of gentleman scientists in the 1700s and 1800s (including Benjamin Franklin) and showed that some of them created all kinds of inventions across various disciplines -- like the full, prophetic description of the future of computers written by "Ada", the relative of Lord Byron. Erland spelled out the contributions of at least a dozen men that all have a claim to 'parts' of the invention of the motion picture camera, all except Thomas Edison, who commercialized his Kinetoscope but typically took credit for many things he either bought or appropriated from others. One of the movie pioneers and his son may have been murdered under suspicious circumstances. Erland went further, showing the development of film, some color processes and plenty of special effects developments. (A sub-title for the presentation is "Better Films Through Trickery and Deceit.) The most amazing thing he showed us is a 1916 boy's invention activity book that very precisely describes the workings of a slit-scan camera, as used in 2001 fifty years later! The ending chapters of the lecture went into more familiar EFX techniques like motion control, but Mr. Erland ended on a note of true wisdom. In short, he said that the adoption of standards that came with the talkies, for frame rate and other filmic variables, put a crimp on the creativity of filmmakers to use all the tools that had been open to silent film directors. Today they're getting ready to release The Hobbit with its high frame rate and 3D, that has as its aim the creation of a visual dimension almost as real as reality. Erland stressed that the whole idea of film art is not to be real but to manipulate the variables of film to create different styles, different levels of artificiality. He hopes that technical advances won't kill off the creativity in film production.

Later in the day I'll be back with a description of the final REEL THING presentations, including a report on the 'premiere' of the restored 4K The Invisible Man and the 'secret' special screening, which turned out to be a rare surprise. Thanks -- ! Glenn Erickson

Friday August 24, 2012

The first official day of the AMIA THE REEL THING symposium began with Sony's Grover Crisp showing a restored trailer for Lawrence of Arabia, touting the new restoration coming out on BD later this year. It looked extremely impressive on the Pickford Center's wide screen.

That was followed by David Pierce of The Media History Digital Library, who put an interesting topic before the restoration crowd: Multiple Editions of American Silent Features. It became quite a discussion, for real. The issue at stake was the assumption that multiple cameras cranking on silent film sets were there to record multiple negatives for use in various regions or overseas. But Pierce said that in the films he had examined, the foreign versions didn't have slightly different angles of the action, but completely different takes. His initial assertion was that the cameras weren't for duplicate negatives. It sounds to me as if there were no rules about this. We've all seen comparisons of Charlie Chaplin films where the alternate version does indeed look like the same action, from a slightly different angle. But versions can be different for who knows how many reasons. They said that but The Iron Horse American version had material (a horse stunt) not found in a European version. Leonard Maltin took a microphone during the Q&A session and countered the no-dupes argument with the question, "Do you think Buster Keaton let them drop the house on him more than once, if more than one camera was available?" It was pointed out in another still that one of the cameras being used in one shoot had a longer lens, so wouldn't yield a similarly-framed image as the one next to it.

Up next was a technical presentation about archiving media (Digital Content) given by Mark Fleischauer of Hewlett-Packard, which involved new generations of LTO tape drives with greater storage and better access, etc. It was very involved but made a convincing argument that the nightmare of digital backup and archiving may have an eventual solution (total format compatibility). The only feedback saw AMIA members asking why the drives were called "green" when Fleischauer said that the right thing to do was dispose of them after four uses -- the green aspect was that data tapes, unlike disc drives, just sit on a shelf. They don't use power resources during storage.

Then came Lee Klein of the Criterion Collection, who had a lot to say about Criterion's new restoration of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate. It's the full long original director's cut with color and sound supervised by Cimino. Even Cimino couldn't account for the fact that the only film elements for the long version had been color-timed very brown and red (previous MGM revival prints were overseen by cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond) so wanted to go back to his idea of what the color should be. The problem is that accessing the original negative wasn't an option. In the panic after the disastrous premiere UA had ordered Cimino to drastically cut the movie: the original negative had been conformed to that shorter cut. After checking out some useless 70mm prints, Kline had the entire nearly four-hour movie reconstituted in 2K from color separations -- 23 reels of film, times three -- and timed with Cimino's input. We were shown samples of the old and new color and they're like night and day. Heaven's Gate will once again look like a 'Big Sky' western.

The 6-track sound master was located, but one of the tracks had some distortion so it had to be worked over very carefully. No separate stems existed to do a swap or replace a track -- dialogue isn't just in the center speaker but spread across all of the front speakers. They attacked the track with new software instead. Kline said that Michael Cimino admitted that he had done wrong by judging the audio in the big state-of-the-art mixing room at MGM, where you can hear everything. He should have listened to some mix-downs and optical tracks in ordinary theaters. This is why it is impossible to make out important dialogue in noisy street and action scenes. Actor Richard Masur speaks with a thick accent, which doesn't help either.

What else? Cimino wanted the intermission taken out so that was done ... in a movie that long it's a nice idea to have an official kidney break. And I always thought that the intermission break for Heaven's Gate packed a (needed) dramatic impact, too. The Heaven's Gate BD is due out on November 20.

More on the rest of the day's events a little later. We're still wondering what the surprise Saturday night closing movie is going to be. .... Glenn Erickson.

August 23, 2012

The first night of the AMIA THE REEL THING began with a reception in the foyer of the Pickford Center on Vine Street. I pretended to be receptive waiting in a side room, away from the deafening noise. Although many archivists and restoration specialists come in from out of town, just as many are of the endangered Hollywood species PWJ (Professionals With Jobs). Here's where they get together to swap stories and show that they're still workin'. I enjoyed looking at a display of late 1940s TVs set up in the foyer with a group of what may have been retired AMIA members -- I remember television sets like these that looked like old-fashioned radio cabinets with screens two or three inches wide. These were all running, too, but were sadly not receiving any 1949 broadcasts, just new cable TV dreck.

Usually THE REEL THING begins with a screening of a new restoration but we were instead treated to a two-hour presentation by Bruce Goldstein, the programmer for The Film Forum in New York. The subject was The Nicholas Brothers, the dancing and singing entertainers best known for their lightning-fast, incredibly complicated tap routines and near-gymnastic dance moves that feature impossible-looking running splits, often performed at the end of painful-looking leaps. Mr. Goldstein had given this presentation two years ago at TCMfest. Besides a wealth of rare performance clips the show included quite a few amusing home movies. As Harold liked to film their marquees, we get a fairly incredible cavalcade of 1930's and '40's big-city neon displays. Harold and Fayard Nicholas are seen performing with Dorothy Dandridge (to whom Harold was married at one time), Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, etc., very often topping the bill. We also see an outtake from Down Argentine Way in which the Brothers' act is interrupted by a cutaway to Betty Grable; they complained and restored their performance without a break. We were also shown how the Brothers' movie scenes were designed so that black performers didn't share the screen with white performers; Gene Kelly broke that rule in The Pirate by dancing with Harold and Fayard. The brothers had to go to a welcoming Europe in the 1950s -- their act was as good as ever but bookings were hard to get in the states, where opportunities for black acts became scarce.

Harold passed away in 2000 and Fayard in 2006. Attending the show was a large contingent of Nicholas family relatives and descendants, all pleased with the reception of 'grandpa's' legacy. Bruce Goldstein gave them a warm introduction. What a great way to celebrate some terrific performers.

More tomorrow on the second day of The Reel Thing. I won't be able to attend everything but will solicit some reports, with a little help from my friends. Cheers, Glenn Erickson



August 21, 2012

Savant's new reviews today are:

Twins of Evil
Blu-ray

Synapse delivers a dazzlingly beautiful presentation of Hammer Films' third 'sexy vampire' epic based on the Carmilla story. Peter Cushing is the murderous puritan burning sinful women; the Playboy centerfold Collinson twins are a pair of curious virgins that attract the interest of the local Satanist, Count Karnstein -- just recently promoted to the status of full vampire. Glossy, glamorous exploitation thrills in the late-period Hammer mold, in an eye-popping transfer. In Blu-ray from Synapse.
8/21/12

Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 4

The fourth Warners collection of Pre-Code delights stars William Powell, Kay Francis, David Manners, Joan Blondell and Loretta Young, in stories that promise plenty of infidelity, lax morals, compromising situations, risqué dialogue and social criticism. The four hot titles are Jewel Robbery, Lawyer Man, Man Wanted and They Call It Sin. From The Warner Archive Collection.
8/21/12

and

Fidel!

Saul Landau's portrait of Fidel Castro and conditions in Cuba circa 1968 gets a restored release, with a better encoding and color. Fidel speaks his mind on all subjects; director Landau digs a bit deeper to show Cuba still suffering from shortages, an underdeveloped countryside and a political situation that forms long lines for exit visas. With a filmmaker commentary and another short film made a few years later. From Cinema Libre Studio.
8/21/12





Hello!

Gary Teetzel just told me that TCM and Universal will be releasing a double bill of (the last two?) Billy Wilder-directed home video holdouts Five Graves to Cairo and A Foreign Affair on October 15. That's good news -- they're both great pictures.

Besides that, things are calm at Savant central. The Warner Archives' Crime Does Not Pay Collection is even more fun than I expected. I've already watched at least 16 installments. After that will come Twilight Time's High Time, Olive's Child's Play & A New Leaf and Kino's terrific restoration of the French silent serial Les Vampires, the one with the slinky bandit heroine in the body stocking ... circa 1915. Already in the can and coming are Olive's My Son John and Captain Carey, U.S.A..

I Hope the downslope of summer '12 is a pleasant one -- I'll be back sooner than usual with my first report on the AMIA The Reel Thing symposium ...

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson



August 18, 2012

Savant's new reviews today are:

Lonesome
Blu-ray

Criterion introduces us to yet another great filmmaker in need of wider appreciation, artist-anthropologist Paul Fejos. This 1928 gem uses impressive techniques -- optical printing for complex montages, fascinating color mattes, expressionist fast cutting -- to fashion a feather-light but deeply emotional story of two New Yorkers meeting at a holiday outing at Coney Island. Half poetic imagery and half documentary realism, it's an amazing redisovery that's been very popular at film festivals. The new restoration is accompanied by an encoding of another Fejos picture, the stunning 1927 Universal melodrama The Last Performance with Conrad Veidt and Mary Philbin. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
8/18/12

The Cross of Lorraine

MGM and director Tay Garnett beat the drum for the patriotism of France, with a story of French POWs suffering under the Nazis. The politically-tailored script sees lawyer Jean-Pierre Aumont, taxi driver Gene Kelly, priest Sir Cedric Hardwicke, sneaky rat Hume Cronyn and others rebounding from concentration camp conditions, to lead a revolt against the occupation. With Wallace Ford and a terrific performance by Peter Lorre as (what else) a hiss-able German. Key Hollywood morale/propaganda filmmaking, from The Warner Archive Collection.
8/18/12

and

The Incredible Mr. Limpet
Blu-ray

A Savant childhood favorite (a perk of the house) returns in a terrific HD presentation. Don Knotts plays a different character than his usual apoplectic ditz, gaining our sympathy in a story that generates some weird scenes to go with its Technicolored live action/cartoon fun. Henry Limpet seems happy to be transformed into a fish, but his strange fate is like something out of Science Fiction. With some amusing extras featuring the much-missed Mr. Knotts. In Blu-ray from Warner Home Video.
8/18/12




Hello!

Well, I think I'm still registered for AMIA's The Reel Thing next week. Although home responsibilities won't let me attend all of the programs, I'll be able to get details from associates/friends attending (you know, real restoration experts that know what they're talking about). What with Criterion announcing a restored Blu-ray of Heaven's Gate, I'll be interested in seeing the show 'n' tell presentation about the work done on that film. Heaven's Gate is one of those movies that I often get an itch to see ... and then it bogs down to a crawl. Never seen it on a big screen, though, so I'm hoping that it turns out to be the secret last-night screening item.

Friendly pub contact Shade Rupe has forwarded me a BD of Synapse's Twins of Evil, so it's next on my list. The absolutely stunning transfer is a big plus. Also on deck are a trio of big review items from the Warner Archive Collection -- two sets of Pre-code Forbidden Hollywood movies, and a fat release of MGM Crime Does Not Pay short subjects.

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson



August 14, 2012

Savant's new reviews today are:

The Hunger Games
Blu-ray

Last Winter's sleeper hit looks even better in HD. Jennifer Lawrence is the disadvantaged girl chosen to participate in a ritualized death sport organized by the ruling powers to keep the rabble in line. Great storytelling by director Gary Ross results in an exciting movie that doesn't depend on graphic violence for its thrills. This one captured the imagination of a huge audience. In Blu-ray, with a digital copy, from Lionsgate.
8/14/12

and

Bye Bye Birdie
Blu-ray

A pile of changes to the Broadway musical push Dick Van Dyke and Janet Leigh to one side and encourage Ann-Margret to steal the show -- and become a symbol of the new sexually liberated woman of the 1960s. Great music, frenetic dancing and funny turns from Paul Lynde and Maureen Stapleton. Looks and sounds terrific in Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
8/14/12




Hello!

I'm trying to keep up with the work and am again on schedule, if a little light in the quantity of reviews.

Correspondent Marshall Crawford forwards us to a familiar mega-big site that has reproduced a photo of me without permission, credit or a link, just an I.D.. It's on a page called Cool News. They did get one thing right -- I'm definitely 'fiddling' with the miniature in the photo. I don't know if Greg Jein, who singlehandedly created these 6' x 6' landscape masterpieces, would be amused by the inference that it's my work.

Dick Dinman has more interesting radio shows up, including a two parter (part one; part two) on Singin' In the Rain. The one that grabbed my interest is George Feltenstein and Dick Dinman salute Gary Cooper's The Hanging Tree. The show includes a full explanation of the obstacles to the restoration and home video release of this great western, a major Savant favorite. Check out all of Dick Dinman's DVD Classics Corner radio shows at the WMPG Archive.

Finally, Savant correspondent Bill Migicovsky forwards this brief Salon article by Mitzi Trumbo, offering a reality check for a bit of blacklist history: Trumbo Family: Kirk Douglas Overstates Blacklist Role. Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson



August 12, 2012

Savant's new reviews today are:

The Fairy
Blu-ray

A special delight! This cute, fresh French comedy reminds us a bit of Jacques Tati, Buster Keaton and Cirque du Soleil, yet is a special item all its own. Dominique Abel is the lonely night man at a hotel who finds himself 'charmed' by a homeless fairy, Fiona Gordon. The fun and romance that follows is certainly silly, but never predictable. In Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.
8/11/12

and

Rio Grande
Blu-ray

John Ford's third cavalry western teams John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara for the first time, but abandons the director's earlier critical stance to regress to the old format of noble troopers versus devilish Indians. Claude Jarman, Jr, Ben Johnson & Harry Carey Jr. and a serious dose of The Sons of the Pioneers. Looks great in Blu-ray from Olive Films.
8/11/12






Hello!

The post is short and late this week because I was ... was ... none of your business. I do have a couple of fun links.

Busy Savant contributor Gary Teetzel forwards Thomas Waldek's cute re-cut remix called James Bond on the Beach. It works pretty well, if not as perfectly as this older Bond vs. Ghidrah mash-up.

And for readers of German, correspondent Andreas Kortmann sends me this reportage of the passing of Kurt Maetzig, the East German writer-director who made the wonderful, unique (and thoroughly propagandized) The Silent Star (First Spaceship on Venus). Maetzig was 101 years old.

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson



August 06, 2012

Savant's new reviews today are:

The Saphead
Blu-ray

Buster Keaton's First full-length feature appearance is as a star-for-hire in a funny stage play adaptation that helped him establish his feature persona. A bumbling heir is everybody's fool until he inadvertently foils a crooked relative's scheme and saves the day. A silent comedy presented in two different versions, with different camera takes. Plus a Keaton audio recording and some good extras comparing film versions. In Blu-ray from Kino Classics.
8/07/12

Full Metal Jacket
25th Anniversary Edition
Blu-ray

Stanley Kubrick's assessment of Vietnam and military training comes through loud and clear in a harrowing, funny, well-observed drama about boot camp, followed by the Tet Offensive "in country". Kubrick may have his best cast since Dr. Strangelove: Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, Adam Baldwin and R. Lee Ermey as the drill sergeant from hell. A two-disc 25th Anniversary Edition, with new extras, in Blu-ray from Warner Home Video.
8/07/12

and

Suez

A fancy Fox prestige picture starring Tyrone Power as the mid-19th century Frenchman that promoted and pushed the construction of the Suez Canal. Loretta Young is the woman who rejects him to become an Empress and the wonderful (and very daring, Production Code-wise) Annabella is the sergeant's daughter who remains devoted. With an enormous cast of character actors and enlivened by some large scale action scenes, particularly one of a lethal sandstorm that rips through the construction camp. A new MOD disc from Fox Cinema Archives.
8/07/12




Hello!

Another quick column day ... with just enough time to get this out the door!

On October 23 Kino Lorber will be releasing a Blu-ray and DVD of Stanley Kubrick's elusive and practically disowned first feature Fear and Desire. Pictured are Frank Silvera and Virginia Leith. Now I can finally retire my blotchy, dark pirated VHS tape from about 1995 ... and really see the movie. Here's my original 1999 Savant essay, where I act all privileged about seeing the film. Well, now it will be out there for everyone.. that's democracy for ya.

And Craig Reardon forwards a link to some YouTube clips from Orson Welles' original 1937 screen test. I swear, in the first shot Orson looks almost exactly like a young Stuart Galbraith IV!

Thanks for reading --- Glenn Erickson



August 04, 2012

Savant's new reviews today are:

The Hanging Tree

Gary Cooper is a gold camp sawbones with a suspect past and Maria Schell is the "lost lady" determined to unlock his secret in Delmer Daves' superior adult western tale. Great camerawork, music and performances make this one of the most satisfying westerns ever. With Karl Malden and George C. Scott. Finally released in widescreen from The Warner Archive Collection.
8/04/12


Private Hell 36
Blu-ray

Don Siegel collaborates with co-producer/actress Ida Lupino in a gritty bad cop drama that taps into the feel of '50s pulp crime fiction. Detectives Howard Duff and Steve Cochran recover a fortune in stolen loot -- but Cochran would rather run away with chanteuse Lupino than turn it in. Looks great (finally) matted in proper widescreen. A late-cycle daylight noir, in Blu-ray from Olive Films.
8/04/12


The Columbia Pictures
Pre-Code Collection

Columbia breaks out the seductive sin, illicit hanky-panky and cynical social comment in a quintet of Pre-Codes from 1931 and 1932, restored by Sony to tip-top condition: Ten Cents a Dance, Arizona, Three Wise Girls, Shopworn and Virtue. The saucy attractions include Barbara Stanwyck, Laura La Plante, Carole Lombard and Jean Harlow, with an impressive appearance by John Wayne. Top writers Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin wrote the snappy dialogue. From The TCM Vault Collection.
8/04/12

and

High Noon
Blu-ray

The classic Best Actor winning Gary Cooper western is back in all its glory. Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado and Lon Chaney Jr. all have different reasons not to back up Marshall Kane against the dreaded Killer Diller Miller; Dimitri Tiomkin's insistent music ticks off the seconds to the big showdown. Looks better than ever -- attractive, even -- in Blu-ray from Olive Films.
8/04/12




Hello!

This is supposed to be vacation time (hahahahaha) yet the workload has Savant busy up to his chinny chin chin -- every posting sees the arrival of more favorite titles.

What's up? A couple of things to share tonight. The AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) is having its THE REEL THING get-together again this year, a few blocks up Vine Street from Savant Central. For the previous two years I have been comp'ed by a friendly disc distributor and a restoration specialist-presenter. This makes me feel grateful but also a little uncomfortable. I was going to skip this year's confab when the AMIA Press Office (I didn't know they had one) extended me an even more official invite. So I'll be attending in earnest and converting DVD Savant to a screening blog for a few days.

The Reel Thing is like a film school lecture series, but with prime source presenters, special previews, samples of work, inside dope on restorations, and always a few seminars so technical that I must strain to even pretend to understand. In other words, restoration heaven. So far this year announced item that has drawn my attention is a lecture on a massive restoration of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate -- the true original long version that is some unbelievable length beyond anything I've seen. (To me that movie sometimes seems to play like a shapeless improvised roughcut begging to be knocked down to 120 minutes or so.) I'm eager to learn more, and to see what the picture looks like on a big screen.

Also scheduled is a special tribute to the Nicholas Brothers and screenings of brand new digital restorations of Fox's 1953 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Universal's 1933 The Invisible Man. "A little birdie" told me that the film elements for the James Whale picture are in such sad shape that extraordinary efforts were required to revive it; I'm really looking forward to the result. And I'll be reporting on the daily proceedings every evening from August 23 through 25.

If you should want to learn more about the AMIA, the home page of their website with links to The Reel Thing agenda, is Here. Check it out, you may just want to become a member.

And also, the intrepid (and closely related) David Erickson has sent me a rather cool animated graph page that displays the relative box office success of every film in the entire run of James Bond Movies. It can be viewed in terms of hard dollars or in dollars adjusted for inflation. Naturally, my all-time favorite On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the Bond that did the least business ... which bothers me not one bit!

Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson


Don't forget to write Savant at [email protected].

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