Notes from an abandoned Blu-ray disc Consumer Guide

So. To return to my prob­lems: how fuck­ing busy I am? Pretty fuck­ing busy. This morn­ing I was think­ing, “I’ve gotta do more with the blog, maybe I should go back to my last batch of notes for a Blu-ray disc Consumer Guide, see if I can spruce ’em up a little, run with that, and then really buckle down and put togeth­er a FRESH guide.” So I got home and looked at my last batch of notes and dis­covered that A) they really were very sketchy notes, and while I under­stood exactly what was required to make them into actu­al “entries,” I abso­lutely did not have the time to expand/refine/distill them into such and B) the discs in ques­tion are pretty, well, out of date. 

And, BUT. This is, after all, a blog, not a pro­fes­sion­al endeavor, which means I can do pretty much whatever the hell I want, and as I’m kind of neur­ot­ic (not crip­plingly, but kind of) about start­ing up one par­tic­u­lar task without hav­ing com­pleted a related pri­or par­tic­u­lar task, I thought, maybe I’ll just put up the notes, sketchy as they are, because they might amuse some read­ers who are inter­ested in my “pro­cess” such as it is. So that’s what I’m gonna do. These are the notes, exactly as I left them, only with a little format­ting and the names of the discs’ labels added. An fur­ther explan­at­ory note is at bottom. 

Fall Blu-ray CG Notes 

Alien BOX (Fox): Alien, really fabulous…

Space is boring/2001

Good work with the nuances of light­ing, blue and purple flash­lights and emer­gency lights… 

Aliens/Excellent too

Antichrist (Criterion) More impres­sion­ist­ic, less “sharp” than I remem­ber it. A very burn­ished look that’s kind of video look­ing any way.  B-

Beauty and the Beast (Disney): Not as rev­el­at­ory as, say, Sleeping Beauty, but damn fine look­ing in any case.

Black Orpheus (Criterion):Once the sine qua non of col­or! Looks lovely! Not gar­ish! Very strong. The settings..mountains, beauty, etc. A

Chloe (Sony):Man, Julianne Moore has a lot of freckles. And you can count them. B

Cronos: Very clean and detailed. Beautiful.

Date Night (Sony):Looks good, fakey sets/Kind of painful/dopey

A Fistful of Dollars (Italian) (Ripley’s Home Video) Superb! A+

Grindhouse (Vivendi):Great look­ing scratches! “If he’s so in love with me, why did he fuck Darryl Hannah’s stand-in?”

Humanoids From The Deep (Shout! Factory): Looks EXACTLY like it did at the Plaza! Better, even!  Awesome Alien ripoff end­ing! A-

Inception (Warner): A

Night of the Hunter (Criterion): Really beau­ti­ful, every shot counts and is gorgeous/Cortez’s slow­ness cost him Chinatown!

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (Kino Lorber): A fuck­ing gem! Just beau­ti­ful, not overdone.Great pro­duc­tion design.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (Universal):Nifty

Seven Samurai (Criterion): Nifty

Sex and Lucia (Palm) Looks like…it was shot on video! Yes! It was! Looks good, but still…looks like it was shot…on video!

The Sound of Music (Fox): Beautiful! Lovely throughout!

Videodrome (Criterion)

Vigilante (Blue Underground):Icky!

“I’ve nev­er been through any­thing like this before, so you’ll just have to tell me what to do.”

Make stuff up in terms of procedure.

Looks nifty though.

“At this point in Joe’s life, he began to…put it this way…drink too much”

Notes on Notes: Yes, I know I used the term “sine qua non” incor­rectly. Sorry about that. “The Plaza” was the actu­al grind­house theat­er where I first saw Humanoids From The Deep. It was the first and only time I brought my then-girlfriend to the ven­ue. A curse-filled knife-fight broke out a few rows in front of us, and was inter­rup­ted when one of the par­ti­cipants paused and looked at my then-girlfriend and said, “ ‘Scuse the lan­guage, miss.” I am not mak­ing this up. Overall this was a pretty good-looking batch of discs, the not­able excep­tion being the too-boosted Date Night, which had oth­er prob­lems as well. Blu-ray mavens ought to be well-pleased with the remainder. Absolute musts, as in no-“taste”-exceptions-allowed, are the Italian Fistful, Night of the Hunter, Seven Samurai, and Videodrome, for which my notes are admit­tedly VERY sketchy. Musts in the “if you like the genre” cat­egory are the Alien box, Beauty/Beast, Cronos, Grindhouse, Humanoids, Inception, Pandora, Scott Pilgrim, Sex, Sound, Vigilante. The rest is elective. 

There. Now I can maybe put togeth­er a “prop­er” Guide before June. Lemme pull out that Criterion Blow Out...