Savant's new reviews today are

Hello from Southern California, where the glow on the horizon is not the setting sun. Savant is reasonably remote from from the big fires but close enough to see the traffic snarls they are causing ... our terrific fire crews out here are saving many a home while the rest of us have only smoky air and falling ash to ponder ....

This is a working week and the energy isn't there to drum up the usual web tidbits ... although I'd like to thank everyone for the correspondence about Zulu Dawn. It's a favorite film and although the disc is pretty disappointing, I recommend it for a rental. I'm also getting plenty of mail about the new Major Dundee DVD; hope people are enjoying that one (as opposed to organizing anti-Savant hit squads...). Have a nice weekend! -- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

A worthwhile note from reader Mark Cheney: "Finally, I'm going to stick my neck out and mention something that may have already been pointed out to you. When I first started reading your reviews I wasn't terribly familiar with specific aspect ratios, and for a while I went nuts trying to understand the way you represent them. I understand that a ratio with a 1 representing the height is commonly written with the :1 dropped, but when you drop the :1 from, for instance, 1.33:1, you change the decimal to a colon, which makes it look as though you mean 1 to 33 instead of 1 point 33 to 1. Of all the ARs I've seen in your reviews, only 16:9 is written correctly. I really dislike seeming to nit-pick, but this confused the hell out of me for a while."

Here's how I answered, for better or for worse: "Mea culpa. I drop the extra 'to one' in the 1.33 to 1 just as shorthand. I'm an editor and we just say 'one three three' or 'academy' or 'scope' or 'two to one.' I've been dealing with those concepts since about 1974, way before anybody but drunk projectionists and crazy editors worried about such things. So that's habit. Also, projection prints are commonly marked as I write them, not as they technically should be. So I'm guilty for perpetuating confusion."

Come to think of it, I also often say 'anamorphic 16:9' when 16:9-enhanced DVDs aren't really anamorphic (as in a Bausch & Lomb Lens), just squeezed. This also creates confusion when flat-widescreen movies are 16:9 enhanced ... they were never anamorphic, even in the camera. So build Savant's gallows extra high.

I've been updating some reviews with good correspondence, questions and corrections .... should any of the following interest you... The Elephant Man, We're No Angels, A World Apart. Thanks, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Savant's disappointed this week by the fact that one of his favorite films, Zulu Dawn has come out in a pretty shabby DVD presentation. DVD executives everywhere should take a look at this excellent film and see what can be done about getting those rights somewhere that can give the film the decent treatment it deserves.

Interesting release news to report. Universal is putting out letterboxed discs of its two King Kong themed movies, 1962's King Kong vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes from 1967. I remember taking my little brother to the second one ... he liked it. Unfortunately we've been spoiled by Media Blasters' Toho series, as these will be strictly American versions.

On a western theme, Paramount is bringing out a pile more Batjac movies, the ones partially produced by John Wayne in the 1950s. Two titles grab Savant's attention immediately. Track of Cat is a bizarre artsy William Wellman movie with Robert Mitchum, filmed in color but designed to look like B&W. Seven Men from Now is the first of the Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott minimalist westerns, with an excellent villain - a young Lee Marvin.

Finally, Savant's expecting the super-deluxe Universal Alfred Hitchcock collection, in which all of the films are supposed to be remastered and properly formatted - Vertigo is said to have an extra monaural track! I'll get to reviewing them as soon as they come in!

Thanks for switching over to the Savant Email address (it's above in the title bar) - that's gone very smoothly. Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Savant's favorite movie Major Dundee is supposed to come out today, so those who have read the multiple reviews and related essays on it here can finally see the full film for themselves with both the original audio track with the Daniele Amfiitheatrof score and the 2005 remix with the Christopher Caliendo score. Then you can decide whether it's the mangled masterpiece Savant claims it is, or write off Savant forever as the biggest Damn fool in Northern Mexico! (that's Dundee-challenged humor).

The three Savant links are here:

The last link is Savant's 1998 essay on Dundee's place among Vera Cruz, The Magnificent Seven, The Professionals and The Wild Bunch in the Western subgenre about gunslinging gringos who travel South of the border to intervene in foreign wars.

On another subject entirely: The intriguing real-life face transplant story takes another step: On last year's review of Eyes Without a Face, Savant discussed the amazing fact that today's surgeons were on the brink of making "Dr. Faustus' Horror Chamber" a reality that might benefit people with extreme facial wounds. My son David forwarded me this link about the start of real clinical trials. If all goes well yesterday's cynical horror may become a new hope for the cruelly disfigured. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Some readers might want to take another look at the Savant review of House on Haunted Hill -- it's been revised with emails from a helpful pair of readers who remember the details of William Castle's EMERGO gimmick.

The sad news about director Robert Wise's passing made me remember the two times I bumped into him. One was as a fan at the 1975 Filmex Science Fiction marathon, then held at the Century City Plitt theaters. He came to speak at a screening of The Day the Earth Stood Still. I asked him if it was true that Century City was built on the old 20th Fox backlot, and he said yes, most of it. The grassy area where the saucer landed was supposed to be on the mall in Washington DC, but they set it up only a short distance from where we were standing, getting ready to watch the movie.

The second time was four years later and I had my back to Wise most of the time. It was on Star Trek - The Motion Picture, where I'd landed several weeks of editorial work during a deadline crunch. Wise had come to Douglas Trumbull's special effects facility to see what was going on, and hung out in the editorial shack while waiting for me to splice together the day's first dailies for a group screening. These 70mm dailies invariably came late and I rushed to assemble them so that the 14 cameramen working on triple-time pay could get on with their day's work. Making things worse was the fact that on many dark shots of swirling smoke or starfields, finding the frame line was next to impossible, especially with one's supervisor asking three times a minute if it was ready yet.

In that instance, Wise was more like an army general than a director. All the effects men stayed clear of him and it was easily understood that conversation was out of the question. By that point live action filming had been over for the better part of a year. Since he'd probably been dispatched to see for himself why things were going so slowly, nobody was making jokes.

That contrasted with the friendly fellow my producers interviewed for two separate documentaries on West Side Story. I never came to those tapings but one could tell from the last one in 2001 that the fine director was winding down.

I have always hoped that someday Wise would clean out his garage and say, "Well, whaddaya know, there's that original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons I snuck out of RKO in 1942."

--- An email update: Savant's email is changing to [email protected] -- please change your address books! Thanks, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Not a great deal to report today. I took a spin past the Amoeba Sunset Blvd. store and saw that the Hammer Series Boxed Set happened to be sold out, as was the Astaire Rogers Boxed Set. I asked a person at the counter, who said that their batch of both titles hadn't experienced any return problems.

Gary Teetzel has pointed me to the news that Media Blasters' Tokyo Shock series has listed the Toho super-sub saga Atragon with a December 13 release date. This is good news, for Atragon was controlled by American -International for the longest time but never came out on home video (or at least it got by me) from either Orion or MGM. If its rights have reverted back to Tokyo, perhaps other Toho productions massacred in their American releases (Savant's mainly thinking of the superior Astral Collision movie Gorath) will eventually be forthcoming. Atragon is a silly but intriguing adventure that pits the treacherous undersea Mu empire against a fantastic triphibian warship commanded by a Japanese Naval Officer who never surrendered in 1945. Savant can't wait to get his keyboard into that one. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson.

Savant's new reviews today are

So this finishes the two big Universal horror sets from last week. There are reportedly some bad lots of discs out there. The most prevalent complaint is that THE RAVEN snags on the Lugosi set, and CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF and or PARANOIAC clogs up on the Hammer set. Hm, I feel like Wavy Gravy stepping up to the mike to warn people off the brown acid that's circulating through the crowd. The only defense against this is to buy the discs through reasonable sellers who will help you find a good one when it doesn't play ... maybe even retail, if you think web sellers are too slow.

Coming up, The Innocents and a colorized House on Haunted Hill. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson.

Savant's new reviews today are

A lot of reviews this weekend, along with the extra fun of digging through some Hammer pictures I haven't seen in years - and one good one that almost nobody has seen, Night Creatures. Savant's also received the Universal Bela Lugosi Collection and should have it up on the weekend. It was one or the other - they both arrived last Saturday.

Savant wrote the Canadian DVD company called Project X to find out when Punishment Park will officially be released in the United States. Project X's slate of releases is impressive enough to reprint "Oliver's" entire letter of response:

"Hi, Glenn, thanks for your interest. I've finally got a sales service deal in place for the States: with New Yorker. So I'll be putting together the releases in consultation with New Yorker and Morningstar, who'll be handling the distribution in the States and Canada respectively.

Mixed in with those are The Girls (Mai Zetterling, 1968) and Hunger (Henning Carlsen, 1966). Most of these are at various stages of preparation. Best wishes, Oliver"

A tangential but pleasing thought to the horrors of the Bayou State: Great news item today. The Louisiana zoo can account for all of its animals except one large alligator. I'd like to see a Gorgo -like docu about a twenty-foot happy gator ambling his way to freedom through a destroyed city, and never looking back! Quote: And she turns back - turns with her young - leaving the prostrate city, and leaving man to ponder the proud boast that he alone is Lord of all creation."

Friend Avie Hearn suggests that the gator that got away is heading to Southern California, for a romantic reunion with the sexy Latin caiman that nobody seems to able to catch. --- Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

It's a hell of a week out there ... Savant worked his frustration and anger out by writing, then discarding, a lengthy rant about the four DAYS it took for an adequate response to the hurricane disaster to really begin. This site is supposed to review DVDs, and my personal concerns come through strongly enough already. One question - isn't there a big zoo in New Orleans? If so, what became of the animals?

Exceptionally good discs this week, when one's blood pressure goes down. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson