Savant's new reviews today are
It's a pleasant Sunday in a California week that has seen record heat, fog, and some snappy cold evenings. Not a heck of a lot to report, except that I received some mail objecting to my positive review of the image quality of The Ten Commandments. I guess I need to stress that DVD Savant hasn't the resources or time to analyze every transfer from a scientific POV, and I've never been interested in reviewing the specs, as do Hi Fi magazines when they judge the quality of a recording by looking at oscilloscopes. The Commandments looked fine to me, and I revised the review only when some reliable helpers gave me a comparison with the older Paramount disc release. The special edition extras weren't at the Kevin Brownlow level of quality, but I doubt that many viewers will be dissatisfied with the transfer or the extras, even Charlton Heston's awful, lame joke.
I flipped when I saw Image Entertainment's May schedule - They're bringing out Riccardo Freda's The Ghost on a double bill with The Dead Eyes of London. It turns out the disc is really from Retromedia, and might be an abject dog. But even that label has occasional reasonable presentations, so here's hoping. Otherwise, Image also has what will hopefully be a good disc of Frank Sinatra's Suddenly!, where he plays a gangland assassin waiting for a Presidential whistle stop at a rural railroad station.
Here's a question maybe somebody better read about Ol' Blue Eyes can answer: Sinatra reportedly withdrew The Manchurian Candidate from distribution because of its similarity to the JFK assassination. That's also been the reason given for an absence of Suddenly on television in the middle 60s (which I haven't confirmed). Why then, did Sinatra star several years later in a third movie about an assassin with a high-powered rifle, 1967's The Naked Runner? Is the JFK withdrawal story just a myth to cover up the fact that The Manchurian Candidate wasn't a box office hit? Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at March 14, 2004 11:03 AM