Savant's new reviews today are
Mourning Becomes Electra Image
The Matchmaker Paramount and
A New Kind of Love Paramount
A lot happening this week once again. I reported here last November that I was able to see a screening of an extended version of Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee, but at that time it was requested that I not mention that Columbia was considering re-scoring the film, something that I'm not sure has ever been done. The screening convinced me that the movie would be greatly improved just by removing all the music - I think it's the main reason that Dundee doesn't play well - but it was just an idea at the time. Now The Film Score Monthly has broken the news on the web, and I'm wondering exactly what's going on. I'll try to find out if the rescoring is going to happen, as the prospect of seeing the film revived in a watchable form is very attractive.
I've just finished reading The DVD Revolution: Movies, Culture, and Technology by Aaron Barlow. It's the first book I've read about the impact of DVD and I was very impressed; it would make an excellent textbook. It covers the history of previous non-theatrical delivery systems for movie entertainment, including 9.5 mm and Castle films before going into the DVD revolution and discussing extras, special editions and ways that the format is and isn't exploiting its possibilities. Having been with the DVD phenomenon since before the beginning, I wasn't prepared to see it discussed in these terms, and the author's ideas are very interesting.
Savant's friend Bruce Holecheck already writes for Nathaniel Thompson's Mondo Digital, a more horror-fantastic oriented website than DVD Savant, but he's just started a weekly column over at DVD Drive-In called Cinemuck. It's the kind of column I'll read to keep up with cult movies, some of which I don't necessarily want to see - for instance, I have a screener of a new release The Killer Must Kill Again that I am going to check out, because the director and cast interest me. But Bruce's descriptions of the ick factor in notorious titles like Entrails of a Virgin let me read about what I'm missing.
I can also report that I just saw a screener of Ray Harryhausen: The Early Years and will be reviewing it soon. Sparkhill's collection of the master animator's early work includes a lot of input from Harryhausen in person.
That's the news for now .... Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at January 16, 2005 07:55 PM