Blu-ray Consumer Guide: August 2011

Damn, got it in just under the wire. Man, I don’t know how Christgau did it, month after month, for so many years. Fewer titles this month and prob­ably few­er next month, if I’m gonna keep this up month to month. We’ll see. In any event, enjoy. Equipment: Playstation 3 con­sole and Oppo BDP 83 were the play­ers, Panasonic Viera TC-P50S30 the dis­play, Pioneer Élite VSX-817 AV the amp.

L’Age d’Or/Un Chien Andalou (BFI U.K. import, Region B locked)

It’s kind of odd that these two still-galvanic clas­sics of sur­real­ism in cinema are now by and large, as far as I can tell, per­ceived as objects for study rather than, you know, “real” movies; for me they’re still aes­thet­ic touch­stones and Age in par­tic­u­lar a great hoot. So of course I was look­ing for­ward to this pack­age with GREAT anti­cip­a­tion and I was not dis­ap­poin­ted. Age looks largely great, although its res­tor­a­tion does show off its rough edges; start­ling and innov­at­ive as it is, it’s not the most con­sist­ently tech­nic­ally pro­fi­cient film in spots (it’s worth remem­ber­ing that it is, in a sense, almost an under­ground film). On the oth­er hand, some cru­cial sequences (the ball scene) authentically/convincingly repro­duce stu­dio arti­fice and work, pastiche-wise, pre­cisely as must have been inten­ded. Cinema doesn’t get more essen­tial than this, and I’ve nev­er seen bet­ter present­a­tions of either film. —A+

 Animal House (Universal)

A dif­fer­ent kind of essen­tial cinema, to be sure, but in a cer­tain sense not that dif­fer­ent. Among oth­er things, this is a genu­inely impol­ite and impol­it­ic movie; its rather authentic-seeming mean-spiritedness (only slightly ameli­or­ated by the cutesy “where-they-are-now” coda—which in itself isn’t all that cutesy in the lar­ger scheme of such things) puts the sen­ti­ment­al­ity of most con­tem­por­ary “edgy” com­ed­ies in what they call bold relief. Never the most visu­ally beau­ti­ful of motion pic­ture exper­i­ence, it looks just fine here, although on cer­tain of the pic­ture set­tings of my new plasma dis­play, the flesh tones look a little flushed. Hard to say if this is a func­tion of the trans­fer or actu­ally has to do with the cinematography/film stock but I’d actu­ally guess the lat­ter. This doesn’t look like it’s been screwed-around with digit­ally all that much. Nifty. —A

Battle Beyond The Stars (Shout Factory)

This ren­der­ing of Roger Corman’s biggest-budgeted pro­duc­tion is both hand­some and dinky! The cheap enter­tain­ment value extends to the cheesy effects and the 1980 hair­cuts and so much more. Even if you’re not a stu­dent of Corman prac­tices, the sol­id, Seven-Samurai-derived story and snappy dir­ec­tion make this good pop­corny fare, and the mater­i­als are clean and very nicely digit­ized. The set and light­ing design presents an object les­son in how blue and green gels make everything look cool­er and more “futur­ist­ic,” and these refrac­ted hues come across with no video noise or noth­ing. The Shout! Factory Blus of the “Roger Corman Presents” series are, admit­tedly, a bit on the pricey side, but with respect to qual­ity they do deliv­er. You’re gonna see more and more of this as Blu-ray grows even more long-tail in its mar­ket appeal, alas. —A

Beauty and the Beast (Criterion)

One of the reas­ons Criterion are the good guys of home video is their habit of updat­ing already-released edi­tions of their lib­rary when bet­ter materials/transfers arise. This Blu-ray rep­res­ents the company’s third ver­sion of Cocteau’s ever-amazing 1946 pic­ture, as exem­plary and trans­port­ive and haunt­ing a filmed fairy tale as ever was, and it is entirely remark­able and beau­ti­ful. It is, for all intents and pur­poses, merely a high-def upgrade of the second edi­tion that was released in stand­ard def in 2003, but the boost in detail is notice­able, and regard­less of what you think of the Phillip Glass opera offered as an altern­ate soundtrack (it was writ­ten to sync up to the film, and FYI, I quite enjoy it), the 5.1 sur­round on that puppy is just exquis­ite. Overall, beau­ti­ful, a really won­der­ful way to exper­i­ence a pic­ture that just nev­er gets old. —A+

The Blues Brothers (Universal)

Animal House did so well that Universal appears to have giv­en dir­ect­or John Landis the key to the stu­dio, or at least its gar­age, to con­coct this
low mod­ern­ist ode slap­stick car chases and clas­sic R&B.  Again, the genu­ine rude­ness of much of the com­edy is kind of bra­cing. As for the Blu-ray qual­ity, it’s sol­id. As with Animal House, we have some notice­ably flush flesh tones, in this case it seems a com­bin­a­tion of the cine­ma­to­graphy, dis­play set­tings, and some­what more notice­able digit­al manip­u­la­tion than on the Animal House DVD. Like fried ice cream, digit­al manip­u­la­tion is a real­ity, and it’s not going away, so we might as well meet it on its own terms. I didn’t find it all that notice­able or egre­gious in terms of “view­ing exper­i­ence” here, so if you’re a fan of the film this is a buy-with-relative-confidence call. —A

Boudu Saved From Drowning (Park Circus U.K. import, Region B locked)

Renoir in high-def is a poten­tial home-vid trend I can totally get behind. This ver­sion of his 1932 cel­eb­ra­tion of being a filthy slob (okay, not really…okay, kind of…) is com­pel­ling evid­ence in sup­port of such a thing.  Pictures such as this and 1935’s Toni are why some will insist that Renoir was the fath­er of what many call neo-realism, as well as everything else good in cinema. Anticipating both Rossellini and Godard (and many oth­ers, but bear with me here; these are cap­sule reviews), he took the cam­era out of the stu­dio and into the streets, the bet­ter to cap­ture “real” life and its attend­ant beha­vi­ors (not just human beha­vi­ors, either; the way Renoir holds a shot of Boudu’s dog at the water in the Bois is, as you’ll see, an emblem of his geni­us.) The views of Paris don’t just have a doc­u­ment­ary vivid­ness here; they’re simply gor­geous. In fact the out­door sequences are sharp­er than the sound­stage bound ones in many cases; you get a little more diffusion/softness in the interi­or scenes, par­tic­u­larly in the medi­um close-ups. In any event, while skimpy on the extras (that is, there’s a trail­er), this is as a whole a really spe­cial disc. —A

Buster Keaton: The Short Films Collection (Kino Lorber)

Nifty. This presents 19 solo shorts by il migli­or fabro, not just a per­former of geni­us but as great and cru­cial a dir­ect­or as Griffith or Eisenstein or Feiullade or Godard. In what I believe to be a first, four of them, all per­son­al favor­ites (includ­ing “The High Sign”) are included in both untampered-with (rel­at­ively) and digit­ally enhanced ver­sions, which lat­ter have noise reduc­tion tech address­ing all man­ner of scratches and oth­er kinds of dam­age. Very con­sid­er­ate, I think, and hon­estly the digit­al cleanup on the enhanced ver­sions makes for a clean­er view­ing without ruin­ing the look of the silent-era mater­i­al. As for the rest…well, these are Keaton shorts. Even without the gen­er­ous and pleas­ur­able sup­ple­ments, there’d be no excuse not to own ‘em. —A+

 Conan the Barbarian/Conan The Destroyer (Universal)

Early on in the first Conan title, I got a little wor­ried at the stark con­trast of rear pro­jec­tion and fore­groun­ded char­ac­ters in a scene; “Yeesh,” thought I, “is this gonna be a botch in the tra­di­tion of Uni’s ungodly Out of Africa?” But no—that’s kinda how it looked in the movie, I sur­mised, because the rest of John Milius’s Robert E. Howard/Marvel Comics adaptation—which looks as stately-paced by com­par­is­on to today’s “com­ic book” pic­tures as a, um, Tarkovsky film—has a lot of what they call “good grain” and doesn’t come off as hav­ing been digit­ally cleaned up to death. As a film it turns out on revis­it­ing to be pretty damn sat­is­fy­ing in its ana­chron­ist­ic way, although the ques­tion “Why is that snake wear­ing a hat,” asked by my wife as she passed by the set at a cru­cial point in the film, remains troub­ling. Primo cheese for sure, and the sub­sequent Destroyer is cheesier still, its ini­tial effect of Valeria in flames a rather charm­ing rel­ic of the uncon­vin­cing appeal of the now more or less optic­al effect. In some respects Destroyer is even more visu­ally “impress­ive” than Barbarian but for sure it’s also an even goofi­er movie. Both of these will more than sat­is­fy any high-def Vintage Arnold jones you’ve been nurs­ing. —A

Cul de Sac (Criterion)

 “A film to reflect our taste at the time,” dir­ect­or Roman Polanski says (in an inter­view included as a sup­ple­ment here) of his 1966 fol­lowup to the stag­ger­ing Repulsion. It’s a suf­fi­ciently unyield­ing enter­prise that some might argue that the verb in that sen­tence ought to be changed to “indulge” for accuracy’s sake. In many respects this decept­ively aus­tere exer­cise in cine­mat­ic acro­bat­ics is a tough Beckettian sit, but in the right cranky mood it’s a ton­ic, and this is an abso­lutely gor­geous rendi­tion, the oft sickly gray scale of Gilbert Taylor’s cine­ma­to­graphy get­ting a genu­inely stag­ger­ing present­a­tion. Extras are sparse but well put-together and well presen­ted. A must for Polanski junkies—I’m one—and a cal­cu­lated gamble for every­one else. Even so, I give it an…—A+

 Deep End (BFI U.K. import, Region B locked)

Long-buried films such as Jerzy Skolimowski’s 1967 1970 British pro­duc­tion acquire such an under­ground repu­ta­tion dur­ing the peri­od when they’re incred­ibly dif­fi­cult to see that they more often than not dis­ap­point when they’re finally made access­ible. This, I am delighted to report, is not even close to the case here. Deep End still packs a wal­lop; assuredly creepy and funny from the very begin­ning, with Diana Dors’ cra-zay-zy pae­an to foot­baller Georgie Best likely to be the con­vin­cer for you if you’re not imme­di­ately sucked in. London doesn’t “swing” in this movie; it roils with sexu­al ten­sion and dribbles and jerks with sexu­al repres­sion and aggres­sion. One senses that it had a pro­nounced influ­ence on Taxi Driver, and a less pro­nounced but very real influ­ence on Rushmore. And it looks incred­ible, which is anoth­er thing about such long-buried pic­tures; it’s also kind of amaz­ing when they turn up look­ing so great. Great extras, too.— A+

 The Egyptian (Twilight Time)

In the excit­ing tra­di­tion of MICHAEL CURTIZ IN WIDESCREEN, only it’s not that excit­ing a tra­di­tion, because poor Mr. C. didn’t quite fig­ure how to adapt his ever-engaging baroque visu­al styles to Cinemascope dimen­sions. Dave Kehr detailed the ways in which the format kind of hogtied Curtiz in his typ­ic­ally per­cept­ive and acute review of this pricey disc. And as much as his points are well-taken, I still find this to be a fas­cin­at­ing film visu­ally, par­tic­u­larly in the way Curtiz falls back on DeMillean tableaux of Eisensteinean human trip­tychs when he’s stuck for a com­pos­i­tion. And every now and again, par­tic­u­larly when there’s a reflect­ive sur­face to be seen, a hint of the old-style Curtiz magic makes itself known. As for the disc itself, it’s the first Blu-ray ven­ture for Twilight Time, a slightly Olive-esque con­cern mak­ing disc space for titles that Fox can’t be bothered to put out itself. Apparently the stu­dio itself was respons­ible for the high-def mas­ter of this, and com­mis­sioned the excel­lent com­ment­ary from James Ursini and Alain Silver. In any event the pic­ture is beau­ti­ful but also kinda soft in parts, hard to tell if it’s the trans­fer or hav­ing to do with early Cinemascope and lens issues. One senses the trans­fer could have been a bit bet­ter, but this is NOT a fake high-def rendi­tion. The col­ors are VERY strong through­out, and they’re like half the movie. I’m look­ing for­ward to revis­it­ing this pecu­li­ar melo­drama as the weath­er gets cool­er; it’s that kind of movie com­fort food. —A

High and Low (Criterion)

Kurosawa in widescreen black and white (and, in this case, a couple of plumes of pink smoke) is always a kick in the head. This high-def upgrade of a Criterion clas­sic looks real nice and crisp, dis­plays good grain. This epic crime drama star­ring Toshiro Mifune as a bull­headed shoe man­u­fac­turer deal­ing with a kid­nap­ping under­scored for me, on this rewatch­ing, that very often Kurosawa’s sig­nal strength as a film­maker is his LACK of sub­tlety (as in the on-the-nose bit early on where Mifune’s char­ac­ter instructs a couple of kids on how to prop­erly play cow­boy) com­bined with an innate secur­ity in just how far he can push the emo­tion or sen­ti­ment or even sen­ti­ment­al­ity (although this is abso­lutely one of his least sen­ti­ment­al pic­tures) of  giv­en scene. In this respect he’s very CLASSICAL Hollywood (Ford, McCarey, etc.). He’s also not afraid to be epic…although it’s worth not­ing that for all intents and pur­poses this film doesn’t leave its first set for nearly an hour; any­way, who else then or now had the stones to do that? A very, very rich pic­ture, in an exem­plary edi­tion. — A+

The Killing (Criterion)

Interesting how young Kubrick the pre­co­cious mas­ter tech­ni­cian embraced in 1956 the notions that were soon to be adop­ted by the some­what more emo­tion­al nou­velle vague a few years down the road, par­tic­u­larly with respect to real­ism in loc­a­tion shoot­ing and stuff. Not quite a noir, not quite a pro­ced­ur­al, this mag­ni­fi­cently intric­ate and brisk heist pic­ture exhib­its mord­ant dar­ing in some of its themes—a first-time view­er was kind of blown away by the blatancy of Jay C. Flippen’s man-love for Sterling Hayden—and is also a great source of Lucien Ballard black-and-white shoot­ing, which this disc gets like nobody’s busi­ness. Incredible. And incred­ible extras. The French tele­vi­sion inter­view with Hayden is par­tic­u­larly incred­ible. And oh so sad. —A+

 Leon Morin, Priest (Criterion)

I wrote of the film in 2007: “Melville’s shooting-on-the-fly meth­ods, use of actu­al loc­a­tions, and invent­ive but hardly stately visu­al style all influ­enced the Nouvelle Vague, and the Nouvelle Vague influ­enced him in turn, as 1962’s Occupation-set Leon Morin, Pretre, shows. The free­dom Godard and Truffaut and oth­ers insisted on seems to have emboldened Melville a bit in that here there’s more of the liberty-taking he showed young­er film­makers. A scene of young chil­dren pre­par­ing for mass is done in a series of quick dis­solves. The use of once-seemingly out­moded visu­al devices that were joy­ously revived by the New Wavers is more pro­nounced, e.g. the optic­al wipe; some scenes last mere seconds; and so on. That said, this is one of Melville’s quietest and most dialogue-heavy films, con­sist­ing largely of con­ver­sa­tions between the title priest and a young athe­ist wid­ow (Emmanuelle Riva, of Hiroshima mon Amour) about the nature of God and faith. Leon Morin is not the kind of Father today’s Vatican would approve, what with his talk of “a lar­ger Church” than the Catholic one. Melville’s cast­ing of Jean-Paul Belmondo in the title role was a piece of coun­ter­in­tu­it­ive geni­us; hav­ing estab­lished him­self as a supremely iron­ic­al per­former in Godard’s A Bout de Soufflé, here he is asked to por­tray a par­agon of sin­cer­ity. Belmondo’s seem­ingly innate ami­ab­il­ity enables him to do so without com­ing off in the slight­est bit pom­pous. It’s a remark­able per­form­ance.” If that sells you on the film—and I hope it does, because as “unchar­ac­ter­ist­ic” a Melville work as it could seem to some on the sur­face, it’s entirely key to the rest of his work—then this is the edi­tion to see it in. —A+

Life During Wartime (Criterion)

Yikes! Full digit­al from cam­era to inter­me­di­ary to film­ing out back to disc (com­pressed of course), so whatcha want? It is a beau­ti­ful pic­ture that also gives you the sense of what we’re giv­ing up by going fully digital—the PHYSICAL qual­ity of it. It’s almost like there’s a lay­er MISSING. It isn’t so  much the lack of scratches, but the lack of the pos­sib­il­ity of scratches. It’s quite inter­est­ing and a little dis­quiet­ing. As for the con­tent, I liked, and dealt with it here. —A

Monamour (Cult Epics)

More soft­core filth from the fine folks at Cult Epics. Ah, Tinto Brass; in man­ners “erot­ic,” he’s the hon­est man’s Michael Bay. I like the way he dol­lies in—no cheap zooms for him!—far fur­ther than to merely the crack of his lead actress’s butt. Tasteful. Hard to believe this was made in 2006, it plays EXACTLY like Paprika or whatever the hell the last Brass movie I looked at plays like…was it Cheeky!? WAS there even a Brass movie called Paprika?… Then again, what do I know, a lot of the Brass fans in the IMDB com­ments feel this is just a retread, and the new­bies weren’t’ impressed either, to wit: “There was no erot­ic, no thrill­er and no plot at all, just a poor act­ress com­mit­ted to an old mans [sic] chau­vin­ist­ic fantas­ies.” . “It is anoth­er movie full of Brass obses­sions like hungry volup­tu­ous women, impa­tient to be sod­om­ized, to be unfaith­ful, to go with every­one but not their hus­bands.” Boy you say that like there’s some­thing wrong with it. In oth­er news, pros­thet­ic pen­ises look more pros­thet­ic in high def. And said lead act­ress, one Anna Jimskaia, IS pretty easy on the eyes. And the image qual­ity is reas­on­ably snazzy. But people who tol­er­ate your Radley Metzger advocacy won’t look so kindly on this item, I guar­an­tee you. —B

The Music Room (Criterion)

I’ll admit it—I’m so far behind on my Satyajit Ray know­ledge that for me to beat my chest about how his work is crim­in­ally under­rep­res­en­ted on DVD would be almost disin­genu­ous. Suffice it to say that I’m very happy this ver­sion of his 1958 film exists. It’s a won­der­ful pic­ture. Materials were clearly in rough shape (check out the scratches in the open­ing sequence) Sometimes the rough­ness is such that this almost registers as a doc­u­ment of the film rather than the film itself (c.f. L’Age d’Or). But there’s incred­ible detail in the trans­fer, and as the dam­age sub­sides, the cine­mat­ic storytelling takes over. Speaking of Buñuel, the light­ing often resembles that of some of Buñuel’s Mexican films. Ray’s shoot­ing style here is very straight­for­ward but not lack­ing in verve. An object les­son in both uni­ver­sal­ity and cul­tur­al spe­cificity, with extens­ive and illu­min­at­ing extras. Can I say with con­fid­ence that it’s an excel­lent and enga­ging entry point into Ray’s world? I think so. —A+

Naked (Criterion)

These sub­titles are help­ful, aren’t they? Mike Leigh’s con­tro­ver­sial 1993 film is in English, British English yet, but so vari­ously clipped and slurred and elided and grogged that, yeah, the subs are nearly as essen­tial as they are on The Harder They Come. Also: It’s entirely appro­pri­ate that every per­son and every décor here looks like shit. The grey walls. The char­ac­ters’ flesh tones almost uni­formly alco­hol­ic­ally flush.  Even the chick­en chomped by Greg  Crutwell’s ulti­mate yup­pie scum Jeremy is incred­ibly nasty look­ing. Never before has such an unstit­nt­ing devo­tion to deliv­er­ing high-def ugli­ness been mani­fes­ted with such unfail­ing integ­rity. In all oth­er respects, e.g. sup­ple­ments, a repro of the stand­ard def edi­tion. So it gets an A rather than an A+ on account of being not quite such an event. —A

The Romantic Englishwoman (Kino Lorber)

A really scin­til­lat­ing Joseph Losey ‘70s pic­ture, a fol­lowup of sorts to the sub­lime The Go-Between but alto­geth­er more odd and idio­syn­crat­ic and not quite as per­fectly turned…and all the more intriguing for that. Another obscure item that kind of knocks you out of the box with its pic­ture qual­ity right off; Gerry Fisher, who also lensed Go-Between, shoots here, and his work with reflect­ive sur­faces at the very begin­ning test­i­fies to a near-casual mas­tery. The aspect ratio here is 1.66,not 1.85 as is claimed on the box. And as is spe­cified on the IMDB tech page. But I have to say it looks entirely fine and prop­er in 1.66, which as we know was maybe not an entirely uncom­mon ratio in Europe at the time and…aaaiieee. No, ser­i­ously, it looks fine and prop­er and is a Losey freak’s dream acquis­i­tion, or one of them.—A

The Sacrifice (Kino Lorber)

Beautiful…just the very first three shots, that is, the film’s first fif­teen minutes…it’s just won­der­ful the way the open­ing shot starts out so gray and over­cast and as man and boy walk home from the water’s edge the col­ors of even their cloth­ing bloom and blos­som.  I didn’t find the slight edge enhance­ment as dis­tract­ing as the review­er at DVD Beaver did, to be hon­est. The soundtrack is also aces,  I think,  very nuanced and tricky, telling so very much of this odd story in and of itself. What I DID notice very much this time around was the post-sync dia­logue„ par­tic­u­larly in the case of British act­ress Susan Fleetwood, who I can now see is say­ing her lines in English. As Tarkovsky in high-def goes, it’s the second such item, and in terms of qual­ity I’d say it’s a rel­at­ively close second to Criterion’s great Solaris. —A

Sands of the Kalihari (Olive)

Very nice, the best-looking Olive Blu-ray I’ve seen, I think, and com­pletely bereft of the soundtrack mod­u­la­tion issues that plagued the two Olive Blus I reviewed in July. Cy Endfield’s nasty and tense 1965 plane-crash-survival potboiler-with-brains is tense and terse and engross­ing enough to have earned its cult. ”A bru­tal cri­tique of American self-interest in a Third World con­text,” Jonathan Rosenbaum pos­its; also, I might add, the first and last time Stuart Whitman was asked to rep­res­ent American self-interest.  It nev­er looks any­thing less than sol­id, and the twi­light shots of wherever it is the charter plane that’s gonna crash is tak­ing off from are just gor­geous. The swarm of locusts looks laugh­ably phony, but the “actu­al” smash­ing locusts and their inner essences and guano are effect­ively gross. As are the prim­ates, both the talk­ing and screech­ing vari­et­ies.—A