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July 27, 2008
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are Project X / New Yorker High and Low Criterion and Fanny Image / Westchester Hello again ... while weathering the heat, Savant is receiving daily reports from Comicon in San Diego. A close associate tries to keep me current with all the latest news, a hopeless effort. His latest was about the remake of Day the Earth Stood Still, or as he puts it, Keanu Barada Nikto. Typical DVD release confusion -- I'm now told that the September 2 date for Fox's Boomerang! may only be for a Canadian release. Without hard info from the source, I feel like I'm spreading ripe misinformation around the barnyard. We should be having a Blu-ray review marathon around here soon -- besides a nifty disc of The Counterfeiters I've been sitting on for a week, I just received The Hunt for Red October, Top Gun and Dark City, all of which suggest good issues for discussion. What else? Got some negative responses (polite and im- ) for mildly dissing M*A*S*H in my review of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Must add that film to my list of topics about which people don't like to hear criticism ... Stanley Kramer, anything Disney ... The Turner Classic Movies cable channel has some attractive programming coming up for genre fans. Wednesday the 30th brings us 1932's The Old Dark House, while Thursday the 31st has a string of attractions: Atlantis, The Lost Condiment (George Pal's Peplum Sci Fi), The Gorgon (a preview of Hammer horror coming to DVD later this year) and The Killer Shrews (an impoverished but resourceful early exercise in monster siege terror). At least one real rarity is due in August, Carol Reed's seldom seen Outcast of the Islands. Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson
July 25, 2008
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are In the Year of the Pig, Millhouse: A White Comedy, Underground, Mr. Hoover and I Home Vision / Image Inglorious Bastards 3-Disk Explosive Edition Severin and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Blu-ray Warner Home Entertainment 
A couple of announcements today ... Correspondent Bill Shepard has inaugurated a site that interests Savant. It's called Film Blanc, The Cinema of Feel-Good Fantasies and it seems to be at least partially inspired by an old (1998!) Savant article on the subject of Films Blanc, that also autopsied the movie What Dreams May Come before Savant was regularly into DVD reviews. Shepard's pages break down Film Blanc (a style? a genre?) by decades. Individual entries include detailed synopses with a clever anti-spoiler gimmick -- the plot description only goes so far, and then the reader must voluntarily click to find out the twist ending. Shepard has Film Blanc well wired, and I'll be going back to see what added goodies accrue over time. Over at film.com I've attempted to describe my feelings about the nature of fight scenes and editing for screen action these days, in the context of describing some interesting movie combats old and new. The article is called Whatever Happened to Great Fight Scenes? I encourage interested readers to contribute suggestions of great cinematic fights in the comments function. Several have already been suggested from films I've never seen. Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson
July 21, 2008
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are Universal Natural Born Killers Blu-ray Warners and Fritz Lang's lost Metropolis Rediscovered Savant Article Some brief news from the Savant hotline ... well, medium-warm line: Critic Andy Powell tells us that Fox's long delayed (sort of) Boomerang! will be out September 2, along with two other new Fox Film Noir titles. For Joe Versus the Volcano fans: Reader "Anthony" has passed along this interesting Youtube link to a 1952 Goofy cartoon with some remarkable similarities ... Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson
July 18, 2008
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are 20th Anniversary High School Reunion Edition Anchor Bay and Before the Rain Criterion  For devotées of deep-dish horror fare, Savant has a new review up at film.com for Criterion's revelatory new disc of Carl Dreyer's Vampyr. I've already watched it three times, and it's still a mysterious work of art.
Online forums sometimes provide a venue for uninformed hotheads, but they also score the occasional scoop: over at the Classic Horror Film Board, frequent poster and informed author Tom Weaver has leaked the following Warner double bills as Best Buy exclusives, out just ten days from now on July 29:
Allied Artists' trippy World Without End with the Cinemascope rarity Satellite in the Sky,
July 14, 2008
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are Blu-ray Warner DVD and Stop-Loss Paramount Hello --- I'm hoping things will lighten up this week, work-wise; I'm trying to conquer a stack of reviews that threaten to get out of control. Criterion has several exciting titles coming up (Vampyr, Trafic, High and Low and I still need to cover worthy releases already in hand: Man of a Thousand Faces, Heathers, Patriotism, Emile de Antonio - Radical Saint, The Ballad of Narayama, The Future of Emily and Perils of the New Land. New Blu-rays are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Natural Born Killers. Am also about a week behind in updating the Savant Wish List ... and hope to remedy that by the weekend. Hope somebody out there is enjoying a vacation! Glenn Erickson
July 11, 2008
Savant's new reviews today are First Run Films Picnic at Hanging Rock Region 2 PAL review by Lee Broughton Second Sight and The Busy Body Legend 
Hello again. A busy week! Coming on October 7 from Universal is Touch of Evil, which should be in Blu-ray but is too appealing to ignore. Besides the 1998 Walter Murch 'reinvention' of Orson Welles' film, the set will contain the original release version plus the slightly longer (and preferred) "preview version" that helps the middle section of the film make sense. All versions will be in their proper 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Online bulletin boards have been lighting up with misinformed flamers ranting that the film is supposed to be 1:33 Academy. This is not true. Universal is also releasing special editions of some of its top Alfred Hitchcock titles on October 7, which do not appeal to this reviewer, regardless of the new extras offered. If Universal wants me to buy Vertigo or Rear Window again, they'll have to be on Blu-ray. Speaking of Rear Window the site called If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats has been continuing its run of full-length Hitchcock-Truffaut recordings, the ones used to write Truffaut's famous interview book. The latest installment discusses the fascinating Rear Window. Skip down the page to July '07, or cruise down slowly while pondering Tom Sutpen's eclectic visual offerings. 
I've heard about it and wondered if it were true ... and it is! Chuck Shillingford sends me this link to the one and only, original Blobfest at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, which creeps, and leaps, and slides, and glides through this very weekend. Are you fan of author John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Brit Sci-Fi? Bill Warren sent me this great link to a YouTube encoding of an entire BBC show on John Wyndham, The Invisible Man of Science Fiction. I watched the whole thing in one run-through; it's very well produced. A note on the August 3 Cinematheque screening mentioned in the July 8 column: Chris D. has corrected me with the information that Mothra will be screened in a new print of the original Japanese version with English subtitles. Tohoscope on the Egyptian's giant screen makes this the optimum way to see Honda and Tsuburaya's most magical monster romp. Thanks to Dean Blake, Allan Peach & Gary Teetzel for additional info tips ... Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
July 07, 2008
Savant's new reviews today are Warner DVD and Firestorm: The Allied Bombing of Nazi Germany First Run Features 
Greetings! The buzz on the rediscovery of an uncut Premiere Version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis continues to grow on the web. I've added my observations on the excitement with a new article at film.com . It's probably too early to get reliable information, but more than one reasonable source reports that Kino will be delaying their Blu-ray of Metropolis to incorporate the extra 25-30 minutes from the newly-found long version. Savant needs to plug fellow DVD Talk reviewer and good pal Stuart Galbraith IV today -- he got the screener for the new Carmen Miranda Collection instead of me, and did a great job with it -- I really enjoyed the read and recommend Stuart to Savant readers. The collection contains a reportedly completely restored The Gang's All Here, which makes it a must-get. Correspondent Jaci Spuhler checks in with an interesting link for Stanley Kubrick fans. The UK Archives Hub has organized an online resource to Stanley Kubrick holdings at the University of the Arts in London. I was most amused by the photo shown of Stanley and Arthur C. Clarke, mainly because I haven't seen many (if any) snapshots that show the director actually smiling! And, for Angelenos and those who can get here, the Cinematheque at the Egyptian will be having an all-Toho Giant Monster night on Sunday, August 3. Besides showing 35mm 'Scope prints of War of the Gargantuas (dubbed) and Mothra (original length, Japanese subtitled in English), the evening will premiere a new docu about Kaiju Eiga, Bringing Godzilla Down to Size. It's narrated by Alex Cox and Savant correspondent Steve Ryfle had a big hand in its production. Classic Media will be releasing a DVD boxed set of War of the Gargantuas, Rodan, and Bringing Godzilla Down to Size on September 9. And, finally, for you more literary fantasy fans, Editors Elizabeth McCarthy and Bernice M. Murphy have guided me to the new issue of their online The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies. I'm always pleased by their well researched articles. With more time for review writing, Savant should be back to normal speed by the next posting date. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
July 03, 2008
Savant's new reviews today are Legend and Sophia Loren Four Film Collection Attila, Carosello Napoletano, Madame Sans-Gêne, I Girasole Lionsgate 
Greetings! Big news in the world of Science Fiction today, as reported to me by corps of interested readers, correspondents and friends-- Aitam Bar-Sagi, Gary Teetzel, Darren Gross, David Zeil, Robert Gutowski, Guido Bibra, Mark Forer, Scott Henderson, Lee Broughton, Marshall Crawford, Sergio Mims and John Mastrocco. An almost intact 16mm dupe negative for the full-length original Metropolis has been found in Buenos Aires by Paula Félix -Didier. The Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung company is figuring out what to do with it ... stills online look pretty bad as it's a not very good dupe in heavily -- heavily scratched condition. Aitam Bar-Sagi forwarded this letter from Martin Koerber, which is the clearest explanation of the discovery I've read so far. "Dear all, I was just about to put this link into a message, when Tom beat me to it. Paula Felix-Didiér of the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires indeed came to Berlin last week to show us what she found, and it is the real thing, no hoax this time. The material is terribly banged up, being a 16 mm dupe negative made from a no longer extant nitrate print, which was duplicated some decades ago after many years of heavy use. Nevertheless one can now see the director's cut of Metropolis, 80 years after we all believed the original version was destroyed. Contrary to our thinking, obviously at least one print of the original cut made it into distribution, albeit in Argentina. Only one of the missing scenes (the monk in the cathedral) remains missing, because it happened to be at a reel end that got badly torn. The rest is there. The images you will find at the links Tom gave will show you some scenes, and also expose the amount of damage. They look indeed a little worse than the real thing, as they are frame grabs from a DVD transfer of the dupe. About 10 pages of information and frame enlargements from many more missing sequences are in the printed edition of DIE ZEIT, which is coming out today. I guess you can find this at the news stands in most countries in Europe, don't know about the international edition overseas. Flip through it before you buy it, the articles about Metropolis are in the somewhat glossy "Zeit Magazin Leben" which comes with the paper. It will surely become a collector's item. Kudos to Paula Felix-Didiér and her initiative to unearth the material and share the information. A lot of thinking is now necessary to find ways to incorporate this material into the existing restoration, released on DVD by Transit Film and Kino International, among others. It has titles and black leader where the missing parts once were so in principle one could just insert whatever is new at those inserts. The good news is that Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung intends to do just that once access to the material has been granted. The critical edition of Metropolis on DVD, which Enno Patalas derived from the 2001 restoration in order to create a "full" version of Metropolis has even more information about the missing scenes, and has the option to fill the missing scenes with not only black leader, but information from the script and other sources. When ran in synch with the material found in Buenos Aires, it is amazing to see how everything falls into place now. The critical edition can be found here.
Martin Koerber That's it for now --- Happy 4th of July, as we proud Americans watch our fireworks displays -- which are mostly manufactured in Communist China! -- Glenn Erickson
July 01, 2008
Greetings! A little late-ish but still under the wire. Savant's new reviews today are Criterion and Classe Tous Risques (At Any Risk) Criterion Well, I wanted to get Phase IV up tonight but I had to work late and the clock's running out, along with my energy level. It's a promise for Saturday. More interesting news. Sony is launching its own DVD line of 'hip and cool' library titles called, for some undisclosed reason, "Martini Movies". Not all of them sound exactly hip, but the list definitely whets the appetite. The Anderson Tapes, The Garment Jungle, The New Centurions and Nickelodeon are planned for September 23, while this list of "future titles" was offered: Affair in Trinidad, The Comic / Enter Laughing, Five, Getting Straight, Gumshoe, The Heat's On, Husbands, I Never Sang for My Father, Nightwing, Our Man in Havana, Vibes. A good list by any measure. DVD Beaver is reporting on a new region-free import Blu-ray of Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger's Black Narcissus. The frame grabs comparisons are eye-opening; you can see them here. I guess I'm going to be in trouble again. I've been receiving irate emails (well, 2 1/2 emails) berating me for praising the look of Patton on Blu-ray. Now that I've written a review (it's up at film.com as of tonight) saying that the new Blu-ray of Dirty Harry is wildly processed away from the drab prints I remember from 1971, the same web pundits are now praising it as a beautiful, authentic transfer! My review/article does agree with the basic web feeling that older titles on Blu-ray are being over-enhanced, to make the format look good. Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson
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