Blu-ray Consumer Guide: April 2013

I was work­ing on a March Consumer Guide when I got called up
to do the De Niro book. I duly accep­ted and sub­merged in De Niro stud­ies, and left you all rel­at­ively blogless
for over a month. Well. Now I’m up for air…and feel­ing rather like Steve Brody at
the end of the Arthur-Davis-directed Looney Tune “Bowery Bugs,” when the lug is
all like “Everybody’s turn­ing in to rab­bits!” only in my case it’s
“Everybody’s turn­ing into De Niro!” 
So for a break, I thought, why not fin­ish what I star­ted, throw in a
couple of new­er titles, get a nice twenty-disc (no, wait, twenty-one!) Consumer Guide up? It’s fun! Because
I don’t WORK enough, you see.

Equipment:
Playstation 3 for domest­ic discs, OPPO BDP 83 for import discs, Panasonic Viera
TCP50S30 plasma dis­play, Pioneer Élite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver. 

Black Sunday (Arrow,
Region B U.K. import) 

I don’t wanna seem ungrate­ful for the decent Kino/Lorber
high-def edi­tion of this inef­fable Mario Bava work, but it’s plain that the
U.K. con­cern Arrow has a more per­son­al stake in the present­a­tion of this movie,
giv­en the extens­ive care dis­played in this present­a­tion. This three-disc
set—one Blu-ray disc, two standard-def discs with vari­ous extras AND Freda’s I
Vampiri, to which Bava contributed
considerably—is a pro­tean pack­age that, most not­ably, fea­tures a trans­fer of
the European release ver­sion that’ has more con­trast and detail than the
Kino/Lorber ver­sion, and thus brings it way closer to the Black
Sunday of one’s dreams/imaginings than was
the domest­ic issue, which to my eye suffered from too-low con­trast, among other
things, in the pri­or high-def incarn­a­tion, And we’ve still got the Tim Lucas
com­ment­ary and a huge num­ber of enjoyable/informative extras besides. If you’ve
got a multi-region play­er this is the no-contest way to go.— A+ 

Cabaret (Warner)

Pretty exquis­ite. The light­ing, dif­fuse or dir­ect, is
cap­tured with excel­lent grain and almost no noise. Immaculate flesh tones and
col­or all around. An exem­plary example, at time, of a kind of gauzy  but quasi-documentary style of ‘70s
cine­ma­to­graphy, with Geoffrey Unsworth adapt­ing with the times while also
refin­ing his ever-first-rate eye, with dir­ect­or Bob Fosse clearly get­ting the
most out of him with some unusu­al chal­lenges, as in the reverse zoom shot that
takes up much of the standout Liza num­ber “Maybe This Time.” Speaking of Liza,
The Huffington Post could prob­ably milk an entire stan­dalone side­boob gallery
of the Oscar win­ner from this motion pic­ture. Confession: I’m not sure whether
I’d ever seen it in it entirety pri­or to watch­ing this Blu-ray. It’s a
worth­while film, really!—A+

China Gate (Olive)

A long time hard-to-see Samuel Fuller fave, this 1954-set 1957 Prophetic Book On The Vietnam War, made under
the aegis of Daryl Zanuck and God bless him for it,  gets its anti-Commie hooks right into you with its voiceover
nar­ra­tion, and then in one fab­ulous crane shot reminds you that nobody shot
bombed-out ruins like Fuller. Black-and-white Cinemascope, and the excellence
of the trans­fer makes the fre­quently clumsy inter­pol­a­tions of stock footage
look clum­si­er still.  (Occasional
com­pos­ite shots also look pretty obvi­ous, and Fuller’s inab­il­ity to integrate
them into his usu­ally flu­id action style is, well, unfor­tu­nate albeit possibly
unavoid­able.) Although as the pic­ture goes on there are brief instances of
scratch­ing and such that crop up, it’s noth­ing you wouldn’t see at a rep
screening…and there’s not that much of it. By the time Fuller pays trib­ute to
his beloved “Big Red One” out­fit in the dia­logue, you should be thoroughly
engrossed in SamWorld.  For the
most part it’s an excel­lent present­a­tion. Good to see one of Nat “King” Cole’s
rel­at­ively scant efforts at dra­mat­ic film act­ing get such a release, too. —A

Chronicle of a Summer
(Criterion) 

“We’re young and the sun shines;” thus one of the young
people inter­viewed at the begin­ning of this doc­u­ment­ary shrugs off a question
about hap­pi­ness. This 1961 col­lab­or­a­tion between Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin
brought the phrase “cinema ver­ité” to the fore­front of crit­ic­al consciousness.
As Richard Brody has poin­ted out, it’s a social sur­vey of Paris that becomes a
Holocaust doc­u­ment­ary in the middle—inadvertently pres­aging Georges Perec’s
great lit­er­ary works Things: A Story Of The Sixties and W, or the Memory of Childhood sim­ul­tan­eously. Not that this would, or should,
neces­sar­ily occur to you while watch­ing the film, which is all kinds of
excel­lent, not least for the fleet way it acknow­ledges its myri­ad of concerns—
the prob­lem of get­ting people to not “act” before the cam­era, for example—and
in so doing assembles some­thing as nar­rat­ively enga­ging as a more conventional
fic­tion. The stuff of which the actu­al film is made of is a tough but never
ugly black-and-white, and the trans­fer is a mar­vel of clar­ity. The extras
rep­res­ent an exem­plary jour­ney fur­ther into, and then past, the movie. Great
stuff. —A+

Deadly Blessing
(Shout! Factory)

Most of the time when know-somethingish would-be film
assessors say that some­thing looks “like a TV movie” they’re com­plain­ing about
a pic­ture that appears shot without some requis­ite flash. THIS 1981 movie, from
the cheesy title font and bey­ond, looks like a TV movie. And it looks like a TV
movie, not to beat a soon-to-be-dead horse, from pre­cisely that cheesy title
font…to the sepia-tinted stills from shots later in the movie images over
which the titles appear… to the actu­al title that reads (no
kidding)“introducing Lisa Hartman”…and bey­ond and bey­ond and bey­ond (hey, look,
music by James Horner!). (DP Robert C. Jessup did Dallas and a bunch of oth­er TV stuff). Then there’s the
night­time soap pro­duc­tion design. Let’s face it kids: for a film­maker such as
Wes Craven, these touches at this time rep­res­en­ted “pol­ish.”  But the dia­logue is, um, kicky
(“Incubus!” “Retard!” goes one exchange), Maren Jansen is cute, early Sharon
Stone is funny, Ernest Borgnine in his Mennonite cos­tume is always thrill­ing (he’s
not the hero­ic fig­ure here that he was in Violent Saturday) and the shocks in
this thrill­er are suf­fi­ciently divert­ing to make one finally not care that it’s
yet anoth­er religion-debunking hor­ror pic without the cour­age of its contingent
con­vic­tions.  (To my shame I hadn’t
seen Shivers/ It Came From Within
at the time I first saw this, so didn’t real­ize what a stone ripoff of
Cronenberg’s movie the snake-in-the-bathtub scene in this movie is.) Good
trans­fer of a so-so look­ing but not-without-genre-value pic­ture.  —B- 

Don Giovanni (Olive)

Joseph Losey’s vis­ion is still about neck in neck with
Bergman’s Magic Flute as far as
second-best-filmed-opera goes, their highly dif­fer­ent approaches
not­with­stand­ing. Bergman’s is a filmed sta­ging, while Losey brings his Don out
into the world, spe­cific­ally Venice and the Veneto region of Italy. It’s a
sen­su­al, erot­ic, vis­ion that turns mag­ni­fi­cently dire when the stone guest does
his busi­ness. Losey the sybar­ite and Losey the dis­penser of doom are both at
their inspired best here. Only occa­sion­ally do you get the sense of his feeling
con­strained by hav­ing to use the actu­al opera sing­ers in the roles of the
char­ac­ters (some­thing Syberberg did not feel com­pelled to do in his Parsifal, which is my oick for BESTEST filmed opera; Straub
and Huillet’s Moses und Aron gets close third place, if you’re interested). 
Olive’s present­a­tion is at a pleas­ing and cor­rect 1.66 ratio, and visual
high­lights abound: Very beau­ti­ful night scene in the open­ing, the shots of a
boat jour­ney through  reeds as Don
Octavio vows to avenge Donna Anna; Giovanni’s con­sid­er­a­tion of the nud­ity of a
bathing milk­maid; and so on. Super nifty. —A

 Easter Parade
(Warner)

Another glor­i­ous Technicolor tri­umph for Warner Home Video.
At first you might feel that’s the best thing to be said about it, because in
its first sixth or so it seems like a heck­uva treacly pic­ture.  Once its Pygmalion-out-of-spite back­stage music­al storyline starts it
picks up and turns into a pretty good one (back­stage music­al that is) at that.
I haven’t too much overt exper­i­ence with so-called “lossless” audio soundtracks
but I paid spe­cial atten­tion to this one and the mono is indeed glor­i­ous, clean
and bright. Astaire and Garland’s combo magic is potent throughout,
par­tic­u­larly on  “A Couple of  Swells” of course. And Astaire’s slo-mo
sim­u­la­tion on “Steppin’ Out” is even more of a “how did he do that” thing than
his ceil­ing dan­cing in Royal Wedding.
All this IS bet­ter seen in its prop­er con­text (which includes some odd casual
racism in the por­tray­al of a schem­ing maid) than on a YouTube video or even That’s
Entertainment, and the clips in Entertainment
haven’t been remastered like this one,
which I can­not emphas­ize enough is lovely. —A

Experiment in Terror
(Twilight Time)

Super-incredible widescreen black-and-white image quality
attached to an excel­lent thrill­er that makes you sad Blake Edwards didn’t do
more of them. Man, was that guy one hell of a dir­ect­or. The con­trol he has over
this mater­i­al is mag­ni­fi­cent, and he imbues every scene with sharp observation,
vivid char­ac­ters, engaged intel­li­gence. Lee Remick is superb in her
under­state­ment and Glenn Ford exactly right. And again, this trans­fer: not a
smidgen of noise, and the 
mater­i­als seem com­pletely pristine 
Can’t fig­ure why the soundtrack is in full sur­round; I don’t know much
about Columbia Pictures’ sound pro­cesses in the early ‘60s (this is a ’62
film), wheth­er the stu­dio was exper­i­ment­ing with multi-channel sound as Fox
did, so I can’t fig­ure out what’s the deal. But the sur­round soundtrack isn’t
bad at all, doesn’t feel tacked on, not does it have irritatingly/obviously
sim­u­lated effects. Highly recom­men­ded. —A

Gypsy (Warner
Archive)

My first time out with a Warner Archive Blu-ray and I am
pos­it­ively impressed. It’s very solid. 
Not that this well-liked music­al is a feast of var­ied col­or or any such
item. Man, between this and Quo Vadis
you’d think dir­ect­or Mervyn LeRoy had a fet­ish for lav­ender or some­thing. He
doesn’t seem ter­ribly inspired here, so the res­ult­ing movie comes off more or
less like a filmed play. But. Good songs, com­mit­ted per­form­ances all around,
and Natalie Wood is SO cute. “How is it a less-than-deluxe disc in the
bare-bones Warner Archive mode?” you ask. Well, there is no “scene selections”
option on the main menu, so you just have to go through chapters manu­ally. No
extras either. Still, for twenty bucks it’s a sol­id value if you’re
suf­fi­ciently inves­ted in the movie. I’ll get to Hudsucker Proxy next go-round. —B+

Hannah and Her Sisters
(MGM)

A little dis­ap­point­ing, image-wise. The flushed skin tones
that abound on this Blu-ray are not in keep­ing with the burn­ished warmth I
asso­ci­ate with cine­ma­to­graph­er Carlo Di Palma. This sug­gests a mater­i­als issue,
and also a trans­fer issue. It’s hardly a dis­aster, just not as good as prior
Woody Allen Blu-rays. Given how beloved this movie is among his fans I’d
expec­ted some­thing more spe­cial. Then again, the movie didn’t hold up as well
as I remembered either—some of the interi­or mono­logues are super awk­ward, and the
scene, say, in which Michael Caine inter­rog­ates Barbara Hershey about AA
meet­ings sug­gests Allen’s occa­sions of cul­tur­al out-of-it-ness are not an
entirely recent mani­fest­a­tion. On the oth­er hand, in who else’s movies will you
come upon Lewis Black, Julia Louis Dreyfus, J.T. Walsh and  John Turturro not just in the same
scene but the same shot? (Also, I noticed this time around that Joanna Gleason
is in it.) — B

In Like Flint
(Twilight Time)

Did you know this was the last Cinemascope pic­ture? Me
neither. Fox went widescreen dif­fer­ently after this. Anyway, this looks great.
Weird movie though.  Gordon
Douglas, who HAD had some exper­i­ence with com­edy (“From the dir­ect­or of The
Great Gildersleeve!”), dir­ects the
1967  007 pas­tiche as if it’s not a
spoof. And he’s still abler than Daniel Mann, who made Our Man Flint the year before. James Coburn is droll, Lee J. Cobb
is flustered, the plot is sex­ist, Yvonne Craig is ador­able, it moves fast and
the sets and cine­ma­to­graphy are good eye candy. I can’t tell you why every time
someone lights a cigar­ette in this movie, the matches look like road flares.
Funniest line: “The John C. Calhoun High School in Roanoke Virginia.” You know
you want it.  —B

King of the Pecos
(Olive) 

Olive seems to be put­ting out early John Wayne republic
Westerns by the truck­load lately. These morsels tend to be fast-paced,
no-nonsense affairs not entirely lack­ing in pro­duc­tion, or at least scenic,
value. Cinematic his­tor­ic­al appeal aside, they really do the trick when a film
lov­er of a cer­tain age wants a brisk enter­tain­ment. I picked one at ran­dom to
look at for Consumer Guide pur­poses, ‘cause I liked the title, and am pleased
to report that Pecos has a really
pleas­ing look to it, yield­ing a black-and-white pic­ture of excel­lent contrast
and detail. Much of this action of this tale is set in shad­owed geological
nooks and cran­nies, with shrub as pictori­al gar­nish, and all these are rendered
well. The mater­i­als them­selves seem in excel­lent shape. Very pleas­ing. This was
the sixth, by my count, of the approx­im­ately three hun­dred (OK, not that many)
Republic Westerns Wayne shot before the Stagecoach break­through, and if you
watch a couple you’ll be able to under­stand their appeal. I am particularly
par­tial to the “no Indians, no Cavalry, just evil cattle rust­lers and the lone
men who mobil­ize the com­munity against them” storylines, and I rate this
slightly high­er than its imme­di­ate pre­de­cessor, The Lawless Nineties, the nov­elty pres­ence of a coher­ent and relatively
dig­ni­fied George “Gabby” Hayes in that one not­with­stand­ing. Good stuff. —B

Laura (Fox) 

Goddamn this looks good.  Everyone should get this. The enhanced detail of
high-definition provides the depth that the mov­ing cam­era wants to con­vey, so
the visu­al relief in every cine­mat­ic sen­tence is com­pletely real­ized. Fabulous
blacks. I don’t think I need to sell you on the movie itself. At least I hope
not. —A+

 Naked Lunch (Criterion) 

I remem­ber not being crazy about the look of this,
the­at­ric­ally, back in the early ‘90s. Too bright, mak­ing the undulating
Mugwumps look rub­bery in an uncon­vin­cing non-meta fash­ion, and so on. The
Criterion standard-def had a burn­ished qual­ity that ameli­or­ated this issue to a
sub­stan­tial extent…and the Blu-ray con­tin­ues this improv­ing trend commendably.
The con­flu­ence of Burroughs and Cronenberg res­ul­ted in one of the clammiest
(and most hor­rific­ally funny) of Cronenberg pic­tures. And the Mugwumps for some
reas­on look bet­ter. —A+

Nicholas and Alexandra
(Twilight Time)

Really quite a fant­ast­ic look­ing movie. (Freddie Young
lensed, and should have been awar­ded the Nobel.) The snows and the forests and
the archi­tec­ture; each shot more beau­ti­ful than the last.  Shame about the movie itself though. My
friend Robert A. Harris, who’s sim­il­arly crazy about the disc, rates it higher
as a movie than I do; and yes, it is an exem­plary Sam Spiegel superproduction
in every respect that makes for an amaz­ing cine­mat­ic exper­i­ence on a particular
level. But the story is a huge bum­mer to the extent that it’s almost impossible
to dram­at­ize in a com­pel­ling way, or at least impossible from this particular
epic angle. And the never-not-heavy-handed Franklin Schaffner is hard-pressed
to bring to life mater­i­al that David Lean him­self would have had hassles with.
(Many insens­it­ive souls con­sider Dr. Zhivago a slog; I ima­gine com­pared to this Zhivago looks like, well, Lawrence of Arabia.) Anyway, oth­er visu­al high­lights include rooms
illu­min­ated by red candle­light, a protest in the snow, and Brian Cox as
Trotsky. Demo disc mater­i­al, and actu­ally not a bad movie if you’re in the mood
for gar­gan­tu­an, slow, and old-school pic­tur­esque.—A 

The Opening of Misty Beethoven (Distribpix/Video X Pix) 

A sen­ti­ment­al favorite…for reas­ons mostly revealed in my
yet-to-be-published mem­oir My Life In Pornography, so I don’t want to give too much away. It’s no secret that my “Erotic
Connoisseur” char­ac­ter in The Girlfriend Experience quotes a bit of dialogue
from this in a cru­cial “pan” for the film’s cent­ral fig­ure. The 1975
picture—another Pygmalion
vari­ation, this one fea­tur­ing a Higgins who wants to mold a per­fect sex
worker—is an import­ant “porno chic” land­mark, dir­ec­ted by Radley Metzger under
the nom du porn Henry Paris. Featuring, among oth­er things, the first screen
appear­ance (non-sex, we are com­pelled to reas­sure) of future Darren Aronofsky
reg­u­lar Mark Margolis. Metzger was/is, for lack of a bet­ter term, a “real”
nar­rat­ive film­maker, which means he’s often more con­cerned with choreographed
gags and char­ac­ter momentum than the actu­al lub­ri­cious con­tent, which makes
this a not uncom­pel­ling study in how nar­rat­ive porn often ends up as neither
fish nor flesh nor good red her­ring, the excep­tion­al attract­ive­ness of lead
act­ress Constance Money not­with­stand­ing. This super-special Blu-ray edition
boasts a 2K trans­fer from the ori­gin­al neg­at­ive and this
mostly-shot-in-Super-16-by‑a –guy-who-knew-what-he-was-doing film looks pretty
damn great, right in step with the likes of more ostens­ibly respect­able Metzger
fare such as The Lickerish Quartet.
Winner of the first AVN Award, I read. As much care has been applied to the
disc itself, the man­u­fac­tur­ers only prin­ted the liner notes book in
standard-def pack­aging size, which makes for awk­ward fil­ing. But the essays
with­in are rev­el­at­ory, the oth­er extras (includ­ing an audio com­ment­ary from
Metzger) are invalu­able for the adult schol­ar.—A

Richard III
(Criterion)

I do not joke when I say this would make a spectacular
double fea­ture with the 1959 Disney Sleeping Beauty, which, unlike this, is an anim­ated film. Olivier’s
VistaVision-shot 1955 ver­it­able orgy of col­or and design and lighting
sim­u­lat­ing rococo post-medieval times is just as dazzlingly regal a
con­triv­ance, and this Blu-ray of it is remark­able, every frame like a
par­tic­u­larly unnerv­ing stained-glass win­dow. Its kal­eido­scop­ic appeal is nicely
aug­men­ted by the, you know, good act­ing by Olivier, Claire Bloom, and the usual
gang of expert British Shakespearean Actors, and of course the story and the
words and stuff. Two hours and forty minutes and some­times I wish it twice that
length. Super-exciting and essen­tial. —A+

Ruthless (Olive)

A weird Edgar G. Ulmer. Unlike most of his pic­tures, it
looks like he had some money to use here, and Ruthless is very elegantly
craf­ted. He doesn’t seem quite as fully engaged with the mater­i­al as with, say,
Detour, largely maybe because the mater­i­al is so…one wants to say “schiz­oid,”
but the less offens­ive and prob­ably more accur­ate word is “tent­at­ive.” Is this
about Louis Hayward’s obses­sion with his one-time best friend, is it a portrait
of a mor­ally warped Man of Power in the tra­di­tion of The Power And The Glory
and/or (not so much, really ) Citizen
Kane? There’s also the mat­ter of its
struc­tur­al bifurc­a­tion and…well, that the pic­ture holds togeth­er as well as it
does CAN be cred­ited to Ulmer, and to a remark­able per­form­ance by Sydney
Greenstreet, whose per­form­ance has dis­tinct echoes of Emil Jannings in The
Last Laugh, the Murnau film Ulmer was a not
insub­stan­tial com­pon­ent of. Greenstreet look­ing in the mir­ror and walk­ing out
of the bed­room after a dressing-down from Lucille Bremer is an indelibly
pathet­ic image, and a pri­or look at him pulling her head up by her hair is
Ulmer at his most mord­antly per­verse. And the disc itself is quite handsome,
even though the movie does wind up being more a super-wonky busi­ness thriller
than a noir. Inspirational dia­logue: Greenstreet: “$300,000 is a lot of money
to some people.” Zachary Scott: “Not to me. My nuis­ance value is worth more
than that!”—A

Skyfall (Sony) 

Storied cine­ma­to­graph­er Roger Deakins’ inaug­ur­al for­ay into
digit­al lens­ing gets its high-def home video mani­fest­a­tion, and, relatively
pre­dict­ably enough (although you nev­er really know), there’s no news here. It
looks great. You can kind of tell how much he amused him­self with the new
tech­no­logy in the Shanghai scenes, ever push­ing the over­lay­ing of the neons and
reflect­ive sur­faces and so on. Everything holds, steady as a rock. Also, in the
sub­sequent casino scene, the dark­ness from which out of nowhere a komodo dragon
rushes: very impress­ive. I like the movie, too, but the look of this disc is
the real treat. —A 

Westworld (Warner)

Another movie about the near future that didn’t predict
widescreen TV! J’accuse! This was Michael Crichton’s first theatrical
dir­ect­ori­al effort, and MAN, did he learn a lot between this and The Great
Train Robbery.  This legendary test of Asimov’s Law of robot­ics, with it
hil­ari­ous cast­ing of Yul Brynner as his Magnificent Seven char­ac­ter as an android, is not a very smooth
cine­mat­ic ride but it’s got its moments. Whoa, were these chroma key effects
REALLY state of the 1973 art? Who can say. Well, I guess I could if I did more
research, But, you know.  Richard
Benjamin as the schlemiel char­ac­ter and James Brolin as, well, the James Brolin
char­ac­ter (and here you’ll see the extent to which Josh is really a chip off
the old block) are fun, as are the pix­il­ated (actu­ally part of the visual
scheme this time) POV shots from the robots eyes. A good look­ing disc. I did
not notice what the DVD Beaver review cited as hori­zont­al stretch­ing, I admit.
It retails cheap, though, so I doubt stal­wart fans will be dis­ap­poin­ted.—B-

Wild Geese (Severin)

There’s a remark­able high-def improve­ment here over the fre­quently pix­il­ated (no, really)  standard-def ver­sion (you can com­pare them yourselves as this is a dual-format pack­age). The alcohol-flushed faces of Richards Burton and Harris are rud­di­er still in the Blu-ray ver­sion. Which nat­ur­ally ups the watch­ab­il­ity quo­tient of the public-schoolboy-tooled ante­cedent of The A Team, whoo-hoo, which was not much to look at to begin with, but…Heck, it is a cine­mat­ic curio of note, I would argue. If pressed, I would insist it earns the respect one con­fers to ami­able tripe pro­duced by the once-great. Ish.  —B-