Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are
Once again we have only two entries that represent multiple reviews, in this case six, or actually eight titles reviewed. Savant has a lot of reviews on his plate but will continue to give each its due.
It's been reported that a Warner Robert Mitchum collection is on its way late in January, with Angel Face (Preminger), Home from the Hill (Minnelli), Macao (Von Sternberg, sort of), The Sundowners (Zinnemann), The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (Kennedy) and a Savant favorite, The Yakuza (Pollack). It's probably too much to ask, but The Yakuza supposedly was ten minutes longer in its first run; it would be great to see what was taken out.
Saw THE DEPARTED a couple of nights ago, and although it might not be top-notch Scorsese, it's a riveting cops and robbers story with wall-to-wall violence and swearing that make one appreciate one's own dull life. All the actors are terrific and the complicated plot is just accessible enough to follow ... knowledge of the intricacies of cell phones is a must. A little slick and perhaps not a classic, but it's the best movie I've seen so far this year and one of the two or three that actually engaged my full attention.
Reader Galen Young has drawn my attention to an encoding error in the new Criterion Jigoku disc. On his missing scene web page, Young points out that although the entire movie is encoded on the disc, a flaw causes the playback to skip the first 2 minutes and 8 seconds of one of the chapters, resulting in a jump cut. Reader Jeff Krispow reports that the problem occurs exactly at point of the disc's layer change at 65:45 (the beginning of Chapter 16). Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at October 13, 2006 10:43 AM