Blu-ray disc Consumer Guide: Incredibly late, clearing-the-decks July 2010 edition

Hey, kids! Remember when I put togeth­er that massive Blu-ray disc Consumer Guide back in June, when the world was young and full of hope and prom­ise? And it went over so well I thought, why, I ought to make this a reg­u­lar, or semi-regular, fea­ture for the pleas­ure and delect­a­tion of the Some Came Running read­er­ship? Yeah, those were the days. I had plans, big plans, for my second install­ment; among oth­er things, I was gonna make it at least in part a ref­er­en­dum on opera on Blu-ray, because I know that’s what the SCR audi­ence craves. No, okay, it was because I felt like it and thought it might be inter­est­ing, same reas­on as I do everything I do on this blog. So there I was, work­ing away on the thing…and then my plasma dis­play ceased to func­tion. And if you’re not aware of what happened then, well, as Bryan Ferry once sang, you can guess the rest.

My plasma has been restored to me recently—albeit so late and under such tor­tu­ous cir­cum­stances that I am now afflic­ted with a neur­os­is that makes me believe that the thing is going to (meta­phor­ic­ally) blow up again every time I turn on its power, or every time a cable chan­nel isn’t com­ing in cor­rectly, or…well, you get the idea—allowing me to take up where I left off, prob­lem being that the titles I have notes and half-written entries for are all, well, pretty sorely out of date. Not that I ever inten­ded this column to be dic­tated by the con­straints of get-there-first timeli­ness (and in fact its mod­el, music crit­ic Robert Christgau’s Consumer Guide was expli­citly not, par­tic­u­larly in its early days; it kept up with new releases, sure, but it could some­times take Bob sev­er­al months to weigh in on a par­tic­u­lar album) but still…

For all that, I did­n’t want to just throw away what work I’d done up to the point my set stopped work­ing; by the same token, there are a lot of new­er titles for me to look at/enjoy/assess. So. My idea was: for­get the opera side-tack, which was going to take a fair amount more as far as con­sid­er­a­tion and time were con­cerned. Leave stuff like Red Desert and Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, which have already been dis­cussed some­what in earli­er posts, be. And get out briefer-than-perhaps-normal-even-by-the-capsule-standards-of-this-format reviews of the rest. So as to clear the decks for what should be the next couple of what ought to be very prop­er Consumer Guides (if I can keep my damn dis­play work­ing). And show those pub­li­cists who have been so kind as to provide me with product that I haven’t been defraud­ing them (although n.b., hardly all of the stuff under con­sid­er­a­tion here was comped). And so, this. Not quite as pol­ished or expans­ive in the writ­ing as it might have been, but a neces­sary step in get­ting one foot in front of the oth­er and hope­fully some­thing of value to you. 

Absolute Power (Warner): I haven’t been able to see all of the Eastwood pic­tures that Warners has released on Blu-ray, in its recent big push to upgrade the Eastwood oeuvre to high-def. I have heard and read very mixed reports. Of course, many of us remem­ber the rather prob­lem­at­ic but hardly unwatch­able Dirty Harry of a while back. I could­n’t get my mitts on everything in the run of Warners’ Clint stuff, but I was par­tic­u­larly keen to get this, which I find one of the man’s juici­est thrillers on high-powered act­ing alone. The whole pack­age made me think that maybe sup­posedly “indif­fer­ent” look­ing films (and I don’t for the record, find Eastwood’s films to be indifferent-looking, but I think you get the idea) can bene­fit espe­cially from super-sensitive high-def mas­ter­ing, largely because arti­facts such as blocky blacks are more dis­tract­ing with­in a “plain” frame than they are in one that’s filled with stuff and move­ment, or one that does­n’t hold for par­tic­u­larly long. As it stands, the Blu-ray of this 1997 pic­ture looks very good, but not great; first 30 minutes of the pic­ture con­sti­tute some of Eastwood’s tersest, most effect­ive, Siegel-inflected sus­pense film­mak­ing. And they take place largely in the dark. And the blacks are blocky. —B

Caddyshack (Warner): I do have quite a bit of affec­tion, and not even of a ves­ti­gi­al kind, for this “slobs versus snobs” com­edy, which throws in some not un-pertinent class ana­lys­is with its not-always-entirely-dumb humor. The Blu-ray looks nice, not eye-poppingly extraordin­ary, and is sharp enough that for some reas­on cer­tain of its insert shots—for instance, Dangerfield’s “pay up” bit near the very end are more obvi­ous than they were in the the­at­ric­al pro­jec­tion. Nifty extras, includ­ing a previously-seen-on-cable making-of doc that I think may be longer than the fea­ture itself. —B+

City of the Living Dead (Blue Underground): I don’t know what’s got­ten into me. It’s been years since I talked myself into believ­ing that I’ve “grown out” of this kind of mater­i­al, par­tic­u­larly this kind of mater­i­al done as argu­ably ineptly and inar­gu­ably crassly as dir­ect­or Lucio Fulci does it, and still, I con­sumed this like a bowl of M&Ms. Blue Underground, you’re like a drug…The pic­ture is rather vari­able, some­times razor-sharp, oth­er times grainy, per­haps reflect­ing the dust-bowl phe­nom plaguing the film’s set­ting of Dunwich (along with those liv­ing dead and all), ar ar ar. But that’s a reflec­tion of the mater­i­als, which really have been superbly mastered. A superb present­a­tion over­all, good for what ails you on those occa­sions when you, too, might need some Fulci. The guy had some­thing, that’s for sure. The gore effects—and in case you don’t recall, this is the notori­ous 1980 film in which one of the char­ac­ters vomits up the entirety of her intern­al organs, intest­in­al tracts and all—can still eli­cit “ughs” and “yeeechs!” 30 years later. —A

Close-Up (Criterion): My notes on the Blu-ray of this clas­sic 1990 Kiarostami:  “Raw, beau­ti­ful, old. The autumn leaves of Tehran/The back­grounds are some­how fascinating/Good, con­ver­sa­tion­al com­ment­ary…” Of course this pic­ture can­not be termed “old,” but its Academy aspect ratio and the qual­it­ies of the film stock give it the feel of some­thing not just from anpoth­er coun­try but anoth­er era. It’s yet one more example of Criterion’s exem­plary policy of mak­ing a high-def video ren­der­ing of cinema look like film. If you get that, you’re going to love this. And for oth­er reas­ons as well.—A+

Darkman (Universal): Very strong ren­der­ing of Sam Raimi’s idio­syn­crat­ic 1990 super­hero not-quite clas­sic. One of those films about which some might say it looks  “bet­ter than it has any right to.” And to heck with that; it looks pretty amaz­ing, and is a real pleas­ure. —A

Everlasting Moments (Criterion): I was hop­ing that the release of this might func­tion as some­thing of a con­scious­ness raiser with respect to dir­ect­or Jan Troell, who is at the very least one of the greatest cine­mat­ic crafts­men still work­ing today. And…not so much. For now, let me just unre­servedly recom­mend this, an immacu­late ren­der­ing of an immacu­late film, an account of an early 20^th-century artist by acci­dent, as it were, as sens­it­ive a feat of lens­ing and con­struc­tion as you’re likely to see any­where. —A

Flash Gordon (Universal): Very gar­ish, but why com­plain, giv­en the con­tent and con­text of this 1980 Dino De Laurentis-produced mega-cheese fest, whose self-consciousness per­tain­ing to its own chees­iness is still kind of hard to read. Hard to say how this Blu-ray looks in com­par­is­on to how it “should” look in a theat­er, but here the very vivid col­ors and near-3D qual­it­ies not only don’t reek of overt digit­al manip­u­la­tions, they feel entirely appro­pri­ate. Good sur­round audio on that goofy Queen score, too. I also have to admit I enjoyed the decadent-European-aliens debauch­ing boring-wholesome-Americans sub­text, such as it it, this time around, too. Fun, for what it’s worth.—A

Greenberg (Universal): This 2010 Noah Baumbach char­ac­ter dis­sec­tion is the sort of thing that some benighted souls look at and say “Why does this war­rant a Blu-ray?” Well…because. Just on account of it’s low-budget does­n’t mean it’s not meant to be seen. And Harris Savides’ lens­ing IS by…Harris Savides. As it is, this film takes the ’70s-ish lens­ing of Payne’s Sideways a sunshine-is-boring step fur­ther; there are lots of rev­el­at­ory per­spect­ives on the dust motes float­ing around a kit­chen by the much-used door just off a pool deck, for instance. The disc is very accur­ate in nail­ing the film’s visu­al depic­tion of dingy, Southern California anomie. So that’s why it war­rants a Blu-ray. What I wanna know is why Resnais’ great Wild Grass does­n’t have a Blu-ray, but if I bring that up here, I’ll be bitch­ing to the wrong com­pany, so there’s that… —A

Happy Together (Kino Lorber): Ravishing, as have been all of the Kino Lorber Wong Kar Wai Blu-rays. Wait, there’s only one oth­er so far, Fallen Angels. That’s great too. Essential. —A

Home (Kino Lorber): Another entry in the “Kino Lorber is doing some­thing right” trend. A gor­geous ren­der­ing of a very inter­est­ing French film, a deadpan-surreal and genu­inely gal­van­iz­ing account of what hap­pens when the high­way that’s sup­posed to have been oper­at­ive right next to your quaint quiet home finally opens for real. Absolutely worth a look.—B+

Hot Tub Time Machine (Sony): The most sali­ent tech­nic­al fea­ture of this disc is that it’s really loud. The second most sali­ent is that its pic­ture detail makes its cheap-ass pro­duc­tion val­ues look even cheap­er. Watching it in tan­dem with Caddyshack, I determ­ined that squir­rel jokes are not as funny as gopher jokes. Sample dia­logue from the film: Character played by  Craig Robinson: “I can­’t believe we’re all here.”  Character played by John Cusack: “I can­’t believe we all made it.” Sample dia­logue from My Lovely Wife, on hear­ing this while get­ting ready for work: “I can­’t believe this is a script some­body actu­ally wrote.” —C

Jason and the Argonauts (Sony): This is not a film that needs to be over­sold to its tar­get audi­ence, so let me just report that to my eyes the high-def ren­der­ing is superb, sens­it­ive. The thing I feared most from this: that the detail does­n’t exag­ger­ate the nature of the rear-projection effects, does not hap­pen. Which isn’t to say that they don’t look like what they are; they do. As they did in theat­ers, which is not enough to “take you out” of the thrills of a giv­en sequence. Great stuff, and very good extras. —A+

Kelly’s Heroes/Where Eagles Dare (Warner): A good strong vin­tage look, one would say. Not what you’d call pristine or rev­el­at­ory, more like what you’d see at a drive-in where all the equip­ment was up to snuff and the pro­jec­tion­ist knew what he was doing. Which is, really entirely appro­pri­ate for this pair of, shall we say second-tier ’60s/’70s Clint Eastwood star­rers, both dir­ec­ted, as it hap­pens, by Brian G. Hutton. And that’s not to say that cer­tain details don’t pop: Check out the blue in Carrol O’Connor’s eyes in Heroes! Gorgeous!  Look how solidly the high-def format holds the identic­al Gothic red type faces used in the open­ing cred­its of both films! In terms of con­tent, Dare is prob­ably best appre­ci­ated while half-asleep, and it should amuse some to note that Don Rickles’ pres­ence in Heroes has dated far less than Donald Sutherland’s has. Just goes to show, I guess…  —B

The Leopard (Criterion) Gorgeous; indi­vidu­al details in the early battle scene, and the intro­duc­tion of Claudia Cardinale’s char­ac­ter, and so on, just pop like mad. The inclu­sion of an English-language ver­sion with Burt Lancaster’s own voice is very wel­come, and the one we WWOR-raised tri-state area cinephiles remem­ber; Peter Cowie’s com­ment­ary is as epic as the film itself. Just mag­ni­fi­cent.  —A+

The Living Dead of Manchester Morgue (Blue Underground): This first-rate 1974 zom­bie cult item is, among oth­er things, a remark­ably well-photographed film (one of the last things shot by Francisco Sempere), and this is an excel­lent trans­fer. As was the cus­tom of its time, the male lead is a great beardy-longhair obnox­ious jerk (played to per­fec­tion by Ray Lovelock), which brings up the ques­tion as to wheth­er the cov­er shot con­sti­tutes a spoil­er. No mat­ter, really. Another score for Blue Underground, whose cata­log is grow­ing as essen­tial, in its way, as Criterion’s (yeah, I know DVD Beaver’s already said the same thing, or some­thing, but I’m just con­cur­ring). —A

Mystery Train (Criterion) Just beau­ti­ful, great extras, and kind of rev­el­at­ory; some have dis­missed this as minor, frivol­ous Jarmusch, but look­ing at it again I see a great, mel­an­choly hangout movie that’s all the more poignant for its touches of whimsy. The dir­ect­or does an audio-only fan-submitted-query Q&A instead of a com­ment­ary, and it’s enter­tain­ing, although I was per­son­ally frus­trated by the fact that it nev­er addresses the whole Stephen Jones thing. That’s the guy who plays the ghost of Elvis, in case you’re ask­ing. And the guy who gave Paula Jones his last name, in case you’re ask­ing why I’m ask­ing. Anyway… —A+

Showgirls (MGM):A missed oppor­tun­ity: now that some people are begin­ning to actu­ally take this film ser­i­ously (as I’m sure many of you already know, Jacques Rivette has always been a fan), MGM had a chance to issue an anniversary edi­tion full of you-thought-this-movie-was-camp-crap-but-you-were-wrong extras. Demonstrating the lack of vis­ion that has no doubt con­trib­uted to its busi­ness woes, it instead fes­toons this Blu-ray with the usu­al it’s-so-bad-it’s-good sup­ple­ments, or some­thing. The big news is the transfer/mastering; again, as with Flash Gordon, it’s on the gar­ish side, and again, this seems entirely appro­pri­ate to the film’s milieu and, you know, mise-en-scene. But as just how you’re sup­posed to take it ser­i­ously, this pack­age will leave you high and dry.

 —B+

A Star Is Born (Warner): Good lord. I’ll admit it: this film com­pletely wrecks me every time, and I hate it for it. That said, my word, this is a won­der­ful, won­der­ful present­a­tion of it.  For all its widescreen/color pro­duc­tion value, it hits hard­est in its intim­ate scenes, which feel just…that. Intimate, that is. Shows you Cukor’s real value as a dir­ect­or. You need this. But handle with care, lest someone come home and find you in a fetal pos­i­tion on the couch, blub­ber­ing at the finale. A+

Steamboat Bill Jr. (Kino Lorber): This is just beau­ti­ful. The film itself, the res­tor­a­tion, the high-def mas­ter­ing.  “No jury would con­vict you…”; who else came up with that stuff? No one, that’s who. Another lib­rary essen­tial. —A+

The White Ribbon (Sony): I run hot and cold on Haneke,but I have to admit, this black-and-white semi-epic allegory got me good, at least up until its damn punch­line. And even then, its par­tic­u­lars were such that it got me good any­way, in spite of the damn punch­line. In any event, this high-def present­a­tion of it is damn near per­fect. Only the recent Criterion edi­tion of Bergman’s The Magician (dis­cussed a bit here) beats it as an impress-your-friends B&W Blu-ray. —A