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October 31, 2008
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are Blu-ray First Look The Entrance and The Passage Separate Region 2 PAL reviews by Lee Broughton DNC Entertainment Six in Paris New Yorker Strange Behavior Special Edition Synapse and Ten Years of Rialto Pictures Rialto / Criterion Besides wishing everyone a Happy Halloween, Savant has just a few notes to pass on today. The response to Stuart Galbraith IV's Bond Blu-ray Trouble? editorial has led to a number of revelations about the Blu-ray format. I'm feeling very subjectively biased on the subject; all I know is that if I'd shelled out big money for 007 movies only to find that they don't play and nobody cares, I wouldn't be happy. The reader correspondence at the end of Stuart's editorial gives a pretty good picture of the Blu-ray problems at present. Speaking of Blu-ray, Los Angeles residents really ought to drop into Santa Monica's Christopher Grimes Gallery for a few minutes to sample something really impressive. Artist Marco Brambilla has assembled a constantly-repeating 3-minute video show that's like nothing I've ever seen before. It's an endlessly recycling moving mural picturing humanity in its three states: The fires of Hell, the struggles on Earth and the visions of Heaven. Civilization is at the Christopher Grimes Gallery until November 22. It's located at 916 Colorado Avenue, Santa Monica; the phone is (310) 587 3373. The exhibit is open from 10am to 5:30pm Tuesday through Saturday.
It only takes a few minutes to see Marco Brambilla's New Video Work, and there's no waiting. I watched it cycle three or four times and still couldn't take in all the fantastic detail in the moving video mosaic of images. Civillization is represented on the web, but in a tiny form that doesn't begin to display its impact; you can see it at If you do look at the web representation, Imagine it 26 feet across, with each little facet a mini-movie of its own. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
October 27, 2008
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are Blu-ray Warner Home Entertainment From Russia With Love Blu-ray MGM / Fox Baraka Blu-ray MPI and Paranoid Park IFC/Weinstein/Genius 
Just announced, courtesy of THE DIGITAL BITS ... Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death / Stairway to Heaven will arrive on January 6, on a double bill with Powell's 1969 Helen Mirren & James Mason gem Age of Consent. Very much desired, very much anticipated! Well, the response to Stuart Galbraith IV's Bond Blu-ray Trouble? editorial is coming in; plenty of reader comments have been added to the article, if you want to check back. Some Bond Blu-ray owners have been notified (after inquiring independently) that a Sony firmware update is on the way. That may help Sony owners (if it works) but it doesn't change the problem. What other expensive consumer product is sent out knowing it will be defective, with the burden put on the consumer to make it work? It's like selling untested TV dinners, and then offering antidotes a few weeks later for people who unfortunately end up poisoned. Well, it's sort of like that ... can anyone offer a better metaphor? This Saturday night, November 1, the AFI Fest is showing Not Quite Hollywood, a feature documentary on "Ozploitation" -- the Australian genre cinema of the 70s and 80s (typical pic, above). It's by Mark Hartley and has rare clips from over 100 films that he graded direct to HD from the original negatives and then transferred back to 35mm. Here's a Variety Review and a link to the "R" rated trailer. I've heard good things about this and don't want to miss it ... just the trailer is outrageous. And finally, I have two more Film.com reviews for your perusal: the new Collector's Edition of Casino Royale, an 007 Comedy Spectacular. The second is an article about Lowry Digital, the company responsible for the excellent James Bond Blu-ray restorations, called To High-Def With Love: Restoring 007. -- Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
October 25, 2008
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are Blu-ray MGM Bond Blu-ray Trouble? A Guest Editorial by Stuart Galbraith IV Warner Bros. Pictures Gangsters Collection, Vol. 4 The Little Giant, Kid Galahad, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, Invisible Stripes, Larceny Inc., + Public Enemies,The Golden Age of the Gangster Film Warner Home Video and Le Doulos Criterion 
That Stuart Galbraith IV exclusive editorial above is DVD Savant's first squawk on various Blu-ray frustrations, mainly the ever-suspenseful uncertainty whether a new release will play in my particular Sony desktop player. The latest fracas is over the new James Bond releases, which apparently aren't playing properly all over, in machines old and new. As I state in my otherwise glowing Dr. No review, I cannot play any of the extras on all three 007 adventures I was given to review, and one of the discs won't even play the feature film. The Digital Bits advises getting the latest firmware update (which I have) and doesn't seem upset by the phenomenon. Stuart and I think it's more important than that and I'm happy to print his editorial. I've had brief problems with discs from other companies, but in both cases they treated the problem seriously and made sure things worked out properly. I hope this issue gets straightened out the same way. Good friend Stuart hasn't been seen on the DVD Savant site for several years. I was about to take credit for introducing him to DVDtalk when I realized that he's been reviewing films way before I started, since the early 1990s -- and in print, too. I'm hoping to receive lots of email responses on this issue to pass on to Stuart and to my DVDtalk reps ... good or bad. Have you bought a James Bond Blu-ray? Is it playing well? Are our complaints justified? 
On a less disturbing note, I just received a fancy Christmas box from Warner Home Video, containing a Blu-ray Ultimate Collector's Edition of A Christmas Story complete with a tub of cookie dough and a cookie-cutter shaped like the lady's-leg lamp from the movie! It even came wrapped in red and green tissue paper! The consumer packages apparently don't have the dough, but the DVD Ultimate set comes in a metal cookie box with more cookie cutters, a custom apron and a book of recipes. The Blu-ray box has a string of lady's-leg Christmas lights! This may be perverse, but the welcome cookie dough freebie reminds me of a publicity gag that backfired for Used Cars way back in 1980. To promote his film, Bob Gale sent reviewers a 'special gift' to reviewers, news editors, etc. ... a cardboard box that turned out to contain a real, greasy auto part from a broken car! Apparently several critics weren't amused by the joke on swag gifts, when the grimy parts slipped out of their hands into their laps! And finally, you want sinister? Take a look at this: Pentagon Wants Packs Of Robots To Detect "Non-cooperative Humans". Don't forget to play the embedded YouTube video. These things are scary. Someday they'll just put a Social Security number into a squad of these, and send them looking for us. When your number is chosen by mistake, your next of kin can ask for the return of your body. It's GORT on four legs, I tell you! Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
October 20, 2008
Savant's new reviews today are The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome, Comanche Station Sony Aki Kaurismaki's Proletariat Trilogy Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, The Match Factory Girl Eclipse Series 12 and Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag Blu-ray Image / Boeing 
Hello! Nine reviews today. Get 'em while the opinions are still soggy, with that obnoxious aftertaste you enjoy so much! Here's whazzup, courtesy of good friends like Stuart Galbraith IV and John McElwee: The Classic Science Fiction Channel Feature Films, a web stop for fuzzy Public Domain features, is suddenly brimming with reasonable, often good copies of movies that definitely don't seem to be in the Public Domain -- like, titles associated with big studios. Some of them appear to be properly licensed through Hulu, but I've been watching some other fairly rare shows that I'm pretty sure are under copyright, like Invasion of the Saucermen in excellent quality. Take a look for yourselves. They also have the fairly rare The Lost Missile in pretty good quality, which may indeed be out of copyright by now. I see pictures from Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros., Turner and MGM/Orion. It's not the best way to watch everything, but certainly good enough for The Day the Sky Exploded. News flash! Director William Friedkin strikes back against political intimidation, McCarthy- style, It's all real, and available to be read at This Link. A final item of interest -- over at Greenbriar Picture Shows, host John McElwee takes us on a great Halloween ride through the lastest Hammer releases, with some very interesting ad images, especially for The Stranglers of Bombay. I particular like John's domestic attitude about his movie pursuits: "She says I ignore household matters but am vitally interested in what Boris Karloff might have said on some street corner back in August 1933, to which I reply, Well, what did he say?" My kind of guy. -- thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
October 17, 2008
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are Criterion Ray Harryhausen Gift Set It Came from Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, 20 Million Miles to Earth, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad Blu-ray Sony The Unforeseen New Yorker / Cinema Guild and Legend Horror and Sci-Fi Features The Devil Bat, Phantom from Space, Bride of the Monster, Creature from the Haunted Sea, The Phantom Planet, The Last Man on Earth Legend 
Note this week's cover of The New Yorker, which ribs the mood on Wall Street with an 83 year-old image of Lon Chaney as The Phantom of the Opera, descending the staircase in his Halloween duds as Edgar Allan Poe's Red Death! And the bloody action in the foreground links directly to Roger Corman's 1964 version of Poe's story. Hey, this arcane genre stuff isn't as arcane as I thought it was. The upcoming horror film Plague Town will be showing on Friday October 24th as part of the Hollywood Film Festival at the Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood. It's a good opportunity to see David Gregory's squirm-inducing shocker on a big screen! Remote reviews department: Over at Film.com, Savant takes a look at the new Poltergeist Blu-ray. My new review here for Legend's Horror and Sci-Fi Features includes a footnote from Bob Furmanek, the provider of the source elements for their excellent copy of the Bela Lugosi thriller The Devil Bat.
Dean Blake has informed Savant about more upcoming special editions / remasterings of existing DVDs, that should have been done for Blu-ray as well: Gypsy, Splendor in the Grass, Breakfast at Tiffany's. At least we know that Gigi and An American in Paris are planned for BD very early next year ... and Quo Vadis?, due out November 11 on DVD, will return as a Blu-ray offering next Easter. The Robert Taylor epic reportedly been photochemically remastered from its original Technicolor elements. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
October 13, 2008
Savant's new reviews today are Blu-ray Warners Casino Blu-ray Universal Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Blu-ray LucasFilm / Paramount and Risky Business Blu-ray Warners 
Well, here's a first ... all four reviews today are Blu-ray discs. I was a guest at a friend's house last week who had a very impressive -- and gigantic -- monitor, and he demo'ed some great-looking discs. He also showed me a sampling of the HD-DVD Casablanca, as a preview of what to expect when the title hits Blu-ray next month. It looked really, really good, and makes me hope that the format is here to stay. Everybody not obsessed by the economy is into the horror theme this month. All the DTV providers are hawking their wares and the few studio releases like The Picture of Dorian Gray and Sony's Icons of Horror: Hammer are getting lots of attention. And the Harryhausen fans have yet to surface after last week's premiere of the four-disc Harryhausen Blu-ray set. Frankly, I'm jazzed by the excellent French crime movies from Criterion, Le doulos and Le deuxième souffle, and am beginning to check out the latest Eclipse releases. Some of you may not have heard that Variety has reported that Ridley Scott is going forward with a Sci-Fi project he's wanted to do for years, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. According to the article, the "book revolves around a soldier who battles an enemy in deep space for only a few months, only to return home to a planet he doesn't recognize some 20 years later." Scott apparently has a couple other projects lined up to proceed first. --- Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
October 11, 2008
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are War of the Gargantuas + Bringing Godzilla Down to Size Classic Media John Carpenter's The Thing Blu-ray Universal Home Entertainment Beetlejuice Blu-ray Warner Home Video and My Brother is an Only Child ThinkFilm / Image It's a busy week at Savant, with one ear cocked toward the nose-diving NYSE. I've been trading graveyard humor with friends about not being able to retire. Since the only people able to afford anything more than potatos will be living in machine-gun guarded communities sealed off from the rest of us unwashed heathen, I'll have to cater my DVD reviews to the tastes of the very rich. They, of course, will renege on paying unenforceable contracts. When I complain I'll either be deported to the Mojave Desert (there to search for Mad Max) or taken to Debtor's Prison in Texas, where I can work clearing drainage ditches on the Bush ranch. We have to think positively about things like this! Instead of crawling into survivalist mode (jeez, why didn't I install that gun turret on the house last year?) I'm reviewing wonderful movies. If Rome starts burning around me I'll stop, but only when they turn off the power and the zombies are at the door: "Erickson, come out!" Coming up I have a newly-received stack of Legend discs, a new selection of semi-public domain titles in both colorized and B&W versions. I'll be saying which ones are the best to get. The new Casino and Indiana Jones Blu-rays are also on the way, as well as The Unforeseen, an incredibly timely docu about the effects of Bush & Clinton banking deregulation on the American landscape -- encouraging destructive, unnecessary development for short term gain. And before I stop being political, there's Criterion's Missing, the Costa-Gavras movie about CIA complicity in kidnapping and murder in Chile in the 1970s. A great vote of thanks this week to DVDtalk for their hosting efforts and to the studios and independent publicists that keep DVD Savant going. And a special thanks to "save Savant from making a damn fool of himself" fact-checker and pal Gary Teetzel. Thanks for all the kind e-mails! -- Glenn Erickson
October 06, 2008
Savant's new reviews today are Warners Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray Warners Le deuxième souffle Criterion and The Wolves AnimEigo 
Hello once again. We're already seven days into October, and although Halloween-themed discs are running thin this year, we've been getting titles like The Thing, Poltergeist and Beetlejuice on Blu-ray. I should be breaking those open soon. My Ray Harryhausen box o' Blu-rays review is now up at Film.com. Dean Blake has informed me of some Warners titles coming on January 27. Goodbye Mr. Chips (1969), Far from the Madding Crowd (!!), The Yellow Rolls-Royce, Waterloo Bridge and Cannery Row will be single releases, while a set of containing Palm Springs Weekend, Parrish, Rome Adventure and Susan Slade will only be available in a boxed set. And a Warners insert in a new release reveals that The Wizard of Oz, Being There, King Kong ('33) and Gone With the Wind, among others, are catalog titles next in line for Blu-ray treatment. See you on Saturday! --- Glenn Erickson.
October 02, 2008
Savant's new reviews today are The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Godfather Part III, Blu-ray Paramount When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions Blu-ray Discovery Channel / Image and Saddle the Wind Warners  Hello again ... For those of you frustrated by Best Buy's exclusives, I picked up copies of The Shuttered Room / It! and Chamber of Horrors / Brides of Fu Manchu for a friend, as they've been set out on the sales shelves early. I got the last copy of one of the titles at my local store yesterday, a fact that may be frustrating to fans that show up on the official release date -- next Tuesday -- to find the racks bare. The remarkable Kevin Pyrtle, who last year gave us a chance to see Abel Gance's original 1931 French La fin du monde, has unearthed the incredibly incoherent American version from 1934, The End of the World. You can watch the whole thing online, here. They've even credited it to a fake director! Most of the American version appears to be made of scenes not in the French cut ... including a solid half-hour of chaotic eve-of-the-end-of-the-world montages, all done in Gance's unmistakable editing style. It even has a barrage of Armageddon- like meteors as the comet passes, not seen in the "long" French version. Kevin's own page (recommended) is at this link. My Touch of Evil review has been amended with an email from correspondent Nick Aretakis. It's self-explanatory -- and contains the text of a heretofore unpublished Orson Welles note to producer Albert Zugsmith! Lo-o-ongtime correspondent 'B' forwards this attractive new postage stamp art celebrating Bette Davis, with the suggestion that something is missing from the picture! 'B's suspicion is far too probable to be just a guess: Davis' fingers are obviously holding a cigarette. My sister suggested an alternate interpretation: Bette might be very religious and is simply blessing someone! I have an L.A. Confidential Blu-ray review up at Film.com, at this link. I can watch that show once a year and still enjoy every minute of it. Thanks -- Glenn Erickson
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