Holiday Shopping Night at the Movies Blu Xmas: Best BD reissues of 2018, pt. 2
By Dennis Hartley
‘Tis the season, so I thought I’d toss out gift ideas, with more of my picks for the best Blu-ray reissues of 2018. Most titles are released concurrent with an SD edition, so if you don’t have a Blu-ray player, don’t despair. Any reviews based on Region “B” editions (which require a multi-region Blu-ray player) are noted as such; the good news is that multi-region players are now more affordable! So here you go, in alphabetical order…
Dietrich and von Sternberg in Hollywood (Criterion Collection; box set) – I picked up this box set with trepidation. Previously, I’d only seen two collaborations between director Josef von Sternberg and leading lady Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel and Shanghai Express). While I found both quite watchable, they struck me as creaky and melodramatic; it seemed “enough” at the time to get the gist of their creative partnership.
After watching all six films in this Criterion set (and being older and wiser this time around), I “get it” now. Viewing them as a unique film cycle reveals that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; this is Dietrich and Sternberg’s idiosyncratic cinematic universe; a romantic, glamorous, adventurous, exotic world-and you’re just soaking in it. Once you have given yourself over to Dietrich’s mesmerizing allure… plots don’t matter.
The films in the set were all made for Paramount in the early to mid-1930s. Included are: the romantic drama Morocco (1930), spy thriller Dishonored (1931), adventure-romance Shanghai Express (1932), romantic drama Blonde Venus (1932), costume drama The Scarlet Empress (1934), and the comedy-drama-romance The Devil is a Woman (1935).
The films have all been restored and boast new scans (some 2K, others 4K), rendering them as clean and sparkly as they can possibly be for 80+ year-old prints. This visual clarity accentuates Sternberg’s flair for composition and filmic language. Extras include documentaries, video essays, archival interviews, and an 80-page book. Buffs will love it.
Escape From New York (Studio Canal; Region “B”) – John Carpenter directed this 1981 action-thriller set in the dystopian near-future of 1997 (ah, those were the days). N.Y.C. has been converted into a penal colony. Air Force One has been downed by terrorists, but not before the POTUS (Donald Pleasence) bails in his escape pod, which lands in Manhattan, where he is kidnapped by “inmates”. The police commissioner (ever squinty-eyed Lee van Cleef) enlists the help of Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a fellow war vet who is now one of America’s most notorious criminals.
Imaginative, darkly funny and entertaining, despite an obviously limited budget. Carpenter and co-writer Nick Castle even slip in a little subtext of Nixonian paranoia. Also with Ernest Borgnine, Adrienne Barbeau, Isaac Hayes (the Duke of N.Y.!), and Harry Dean Stanton (stealing all his scenes as “Brain”). Carpenter also composed the memorable theme song.
Boy, is this new sharp 4K scan ever a wondrous gift to fans of the film! This is probably the 3rd (or 4th?) dip I’ve made over the years; all previous DVD and Blu-ray editions have suffered from transfers so dark and murky that I’ve spent every screening squinting like Lee Van Cleef as I attempt to make out details. Granted, it’s nearly all night shots for the exteriors, but I have never seen the film looking so…film-like (outside a theater). Cinematographer Dean Cundey approved the restoration and color grading, and it shows.
Studio Canal’s new edition features 3 audio commentaries to choose from, and several featurettes and interviews with cast members. I haven’t been able to track down any information on a domestic (Region “A”) Blu-ray release; but given the popularity of the film I’m sure one is in the pipeline (this review is based on the Region “B” version only).
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (BBC; Original 1981 UK TV series) – I’m not sure if it’s possible to “wear out” a DVD, but I’ve probably come closest to doing so with my copy of the original BBC-TV version of Douglas Adams’ sci-fi comedy cult classic.
In a nutshell, the Earth is obliterated to make way for a hyperspace bypass by a Vogon construction fleet (as the result of bureaucratic oversight the requisite public notice was posted in a basement-on a different planet). One member of humanity survives-Arthur Dent, a neurotic Englishman who “hitches” a ride on a Vogon vessel just before the Earth-shattering “ka-boom”, thanks to his friend Ford Prefect, whom Arthur never suspected was an alien doing field research for the eponymous “guide”. Zany interstellar misadventures ensue, with a quest to find the answer to life, the Universe, and everything.
While the 2005 theatrical remake was a hoot, it lacked the endearing cheesiness of the 1981 series. As it was originally shot on video and 16mm, the very idea of a “restored” Blu-ray edition is a bit silly, really…but it actually is an upgrade, particularly in audio quality (it’s mostly about the wonderfully cheeky dialog anyway). And with 5½ hours of extras, Adams geeks will be in 7th heaven (or at least somewhere near Alpha Centauri!).
Ingmar Bergman's Cinema(Criterion Collection; box set) – One of my favorite exchanges from Barry Levinson’s infinitely quotable 1981 film Diner occurs between two friends sitting in a theater watching the Ingmar Bergman classic The Seventh Seal:
Edward 'Eddie' Simmons: Who's that?
William 'Billy' Howard: That's ‘Death’ walking on the beach.
Edward 'Eddie' Simmons: I've been to Atlantic City a hundred times. I never saw Death walking on the beach.
Speaking for myself, I saw Death walking on the beach just the other day, in a restored 4K print. It’s one of the 39 films included in Criterion’s exhaustive, bicep-building box set. I have previously seen approximately half of the films in this collection; several I have never even heard of (18 of these titles have never before been released by Criterion).
My plan of attack is to watch the films in chronological order of original release dates. OK, full disclosure: I watched the first two (neither of which I had previously seen, from the late 1940s) but then cheated by skipping ahead to The Seventh Seal (couldn’t wait to see the restored version). So…36 to go (is mid-winter a bad time of year to plow through a boxful of Bergman films? Discuss). From what I’ve seen so far, the prints are gorgeous.
Extras. Where to start? There are 5 hours of interviews with Bergman and some key collaborators. There are 2 rare documentary shorts by the director, extensive programs about Bergman’s work, “making of” featurettes, video essays by critics and film scholars, a 248-page hardbound book…everything short of a collectable Death action figure. Discs are mounted in numbered slots on cardboard flip-through “pages” (kind of like an oversized coin collection) and curated as a “film festival”. Of course, you can watch them in any order that you wish (especially at this price). A treasure trove for art house fans!
King of Hearts (Cohen Film Collection/Sony) – The utter madness of war has rarely been conveyed in such a succinct (or oddly endearing) manner as in Philippe de Broca’s absurdist adult fable. Alan Bates stars as a WW1 Scottish army private sent ahead of his advancing company to a rural French village, where he is to locate and disarm a bomb that has been set by retreating Germans. His mission is interrupted when he is suddenly set upon by a coterie of loopy and highly theatrical residents who (literally) sweep him off his feet and jovially inform him he is now their “king”. These happy-go-lucky folks are, in fact, inmates of the local asylum, who have occupied the town since the residents fled. The battle-weary private decides to humor them, in the meantime brainstorming how he can coax them out of harm’s way before the war inevitably intrudes once again.
It’s wonderful to have a newly-restored 4K scan of this cult favorite, which has been previously difficult to track down on home video. Extras include a feature-length commentary track by film critic Wade Major, a new conversation with the film’s leading lady Genevieve Bujold, and a new conversation with cinematographer Pierre Lhomme.
Little Murders (Indicator; Region “B”) – This dark, dark comedy from 1971 is one of my all-time favorite films. It was directed by Alan Arkin and adapted by Jules Feiffer from his own self-described “post-assassination play” (referring to the then-relatively recent murders of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy). That said, it is not wholly political; but it is sociopolitical (I see it as the pre-cursor to Paddy Chayefsky’s Network).
Elliot Gould is at the peak of his Elliot Gould-ness as a nihilistic (and seemingly brain-dead) free-lance photographer who is essentially browbeaten into a love affair with an effervescent sunny side-up young woman (Marcia Rodd) who is bound and determined to snap him out of his torpor. The story follows the travails of this oil and water couple as they slog through a dystopic New York City chock full o’ nuts, urban blight, indifference and random shocking acts of senseless violence (you know…New York City in the 70s).
There are so many memorable vignettes, and nearly every cast member gets a Howard Beale-worthy monologue on how fucked-up American society is (and remember…this was 1971). Disturbingly, it remains relevant as ever. But it is very funny. No, seriously. The cast includes Vincent Gardenia, Elizabeth Wilson, Doris Roberts, Lou Jacobi (who has the best monolog) and Donald Sutherland. Arkin is a riot as a homicide investigator.
Indicator’s limited-edition Blu-ray features a gorgeous high-definition remaster (please note that it is a Region ‘B’ locked disc that requires a multi-region player). A plethora of extras includes a 2004 audio commentary with Gould and Feiffer, an alternate commentary track from 2018 by film journalist Samm Deighan, new and archival featurettes, interviews, and critical re-appraisals, a 40-page booklet of essays, and more.
The Magnificent Ambersons(Criterion Collection) – It’s sad that the late great Orson Welles has (unfairly) become the perennial poster boy for “squandered talent” in the film industry. Granted, he was a rapscallion who loved to push people’s buttons; unfortunately, some of those “people” were powerful producers and studio heads who didn’t get the joke back in those days when “maverick” and “genius” were dirty words in Hollywood. But he was a maverick, and he was a genius…he just wanted to make the movies he wanted to make, precisely the way he wanted to make them. But alas, the “boy genius” became enslaved by his own legend soon after making Citizen Kane at age 25.
Welles’ disillusionment with the studio system began with the release of The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942, as what hit theaters was essentially a butchered version of how he had envisioned the film. Unfortunately, he had conceded final cut in a deal made with RKO (a decision he came to regret). Adding insult to the injury of the 50 excised minutes from Welles’ original rough cut, studio heads ordered that the negatives of that footage be destroyed as well. Regardless, the film is still heralded as one of Welles’ finest efforts.
Welles adapted the script from Booth Tarkington’s eponymous novel. It’s the story of a well-to-do family whose “magnificence” (as Welles’ stentorian voiceover narration informs us) “…began in 1873. Their splendor lasted throughout all the years that saw their midland town spread and darken into a city.” This sets the tone for what ensues, which is the rotting of that “splendor” from the inside out; not only the decline of a family dynasty, but of a mannered, measured way of life whose destruction was assured by the onslaught of the Second Industrial Revolution (the price of Progress can be steep).
Criterion’s new 4K restoration is a real showcase for Stanley Cortez’s striking chiaroscuro photography, and a testament to Welles’ mastery of visual storytelling. Extras include two commentary tracks by film scholars and critics, new video essays by film historians and scholars, an excerpt from the 1925 silent adaptation of The Magnificent Ambersons, written essays, and more. It’s another must-have for film buffs.
The Man Who Cheated Himself (Flicker Alley) – This marks the third collaboration between releasing studio Flicker Alley, the Film Noir Foundation, and UCLA Film and Television Archive in their mission to unearth and restore forgotten film noir gems from the classic noir cycle (it was preceded by Too Late for Tears and Woman on the Run).
The ever-gruff Lee J. Cobb stars as a bad, bad cop (a noir staple) who gets in the middle of a kerfuffle between his girlfriend (Jane Wyatt, cast against type as a femme fatale) and her estranged husband. The incident ends badly for hubby, and love-struck Cobb scrambles a cover-up. Adherent to the Rules of Noir, the more he tries to cover it, the deeper the hole gets. Having his straight-arrow rookie homicide detective brother (John Dall) by his side working so enthusiastically to solve the case does not quell his anxiety.
While I wouldn’t call this 1950 effort from prolific director Felix E. Feist (perhaps best-known for his noir cult pic The Devil Thumbs a Ride) a classic genre entry, it’s still quite involving, the performances are solid, and it’s always noble to rescue a forgotten noir. The real star is ever-cinematic San Francisco; some of its most iconic locations are used to great effect by DP Russell Harlan (especially the Golden Gate Bridge and Fort Point).
Extras include a mini-documentary about the original production, a “then and now” virtual tour around contemporary San Francisco scouting out original locations for the film, and a nifty souvenir booklet. The noir completest on your Xmas list will be pleased!
Shampoo (Criterion Collection) – Sex, politics, and the shallow SoCal lifestyle are mercilessly skewered in Hal Ashby’s classic 1975 satire. Warren Beatty (who co-scripted with Robert Towne) plays a restless, over-sexed hairdresser with commitment issues regarding the three major women in his life (excellent performances from Lee Grant, Goldie Hawn and Julie Christie). Beatty allegedly based his character on his close friend, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring (one of the victims of the infamous 1969 Tate-LaBianca slayings). The most memorable scene takes place at an election night event.
This was one of the first films to satirize the 1960s zeitgeist with some degree of historical detachment. The late great cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs infuses the L.A. backdrop with a gauziness that appropriately mirrors the protagonist’s fuzzy way of dealing with adult responsibilities.
Criterion’s Blu-ray features a 4K restoration (previous DVDs have been less than stellar in picture and sound quality). Extras include a conversation between critics Mark Harris and Frank Rich and a 1998 TV interview with Warren Beatty from The South Bank Show.
True Stories (Criterion Collection) – Musician/raconteur David Byrne enters the Lone Star state of mind with this subtly satirical Texas travelogue from 1986. It’s not easy to pigeonhole; part social satire, part long-form music video, part mockumentary. The episodic vignettes about the quirky but generally likable inhabitants of sleepy Virgil, Texas should hold your fascination once you buy into “tour-guide” Byrne’s bemused anthropological detachment.
Among the town’s residents: John Goodman, “Pops” Staples, Swoosie Kurtz and the late Spalding Gray. The outstanding cinematography is by Edward Lachman. Byrne’s fellow Heads have cameos performing “Wild Wild Life”. Not everyone’s cup of tea, perhaps- but for some reason, I have an emotional attachment to this film that I can’t even explain.
Finally… “someone” (in this case, Criterion) has done justice to Lachman’s lovely cinematography by giving this film a properly matted transfer (for years, the only version available on home video was a dismal “pan and scan” DVD). The newly restored 4K transfer was supervised by Byrne and Lachman, and it’s gorgeous. The 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio also lends a crucial upgrade to the soundtrack quality (all those great Talking Heads songs really pop now!). Extras include a CD of the complete music soundtrack, deleted scenes, written essays, and documentary shorts (new and archival).
12 Monkeys(Arrow Video) – Another wild ride from the vivid imagination of Terry Gilliam, this 1995 sci-fi thriller (inspired by Chris Marker’s classic 1962 short film, La Jetee) has become a cult favorite.
Set in the year 2035, it’s the story of a prison inmate (Bruce Willis) who is “volunteered” to be sent back to the year 1996 to detect the origin of a mystery virus that wiped out 99% of the human race. Fate and circumstance land Willis in a psych ward for observation, where he meets two people who may be instrumental in helping him solve the mystery-a psychiatrist (Madeline Stowe) and a fellow mental patient (Brad Pitt, in an entertainingly demented performance).
I like the way the film plays with “reality” and perception. Is Willis really a time traveler from 2035…or is he what the psychiatrist is telling him-a delusional schizophrenic actually living in 1996? There are many more surprises up Gilliam’s sleeve here.
Arrow Films’ 4K restoration is a marked improvement over Universal’s previous Blu-ray; picture and audio quality are outstanding. The commentary track (by Gilliam and Charles Roven) and an 87-minute documentary (The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys) have been ported over from the Universal edition, but Arrow adds several new features-including a video appreciation by Ian Christie and an image gallery.
2001: A Space Odyssey(Warner Brothers) – The mathematician/cryptologist I.J. Good (an Alan Turing associate) once famously postulated:
Let an ultra-intelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man…however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion’, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus, the first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.
Good raised this warning in 1965, about the same time director Stanley Kubrick and sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke were formulating the narrative that would evolve into both the novel and film versions of 2001: a Space Odyssey. And it’s no coincidence that the “heavy” in 2001 was an ultra-intelligent machine that wreaks havoc once its human overseers lose “control” …Good was a consultant on the film.
Good was but one of the experts that Kubrick consulted, before and during production of this meticulously constructed masterpiece. Not only did he pick the brains of top futurists and NASA engineers, but enlisted some of the best primatologists, anthropologists, and uh, mimes of his day, to ensure that every detail, from the physicality of pre-historic humans living on the plains of Africa to the design of a moon base, passed with veracity.
Earlier this year, for the 50th anniversary, Christopher Nolan supervised a theatrical 70mm re-release of the “unrestored” version that presents it as audiences experienced it in 1968. And, not missing an opportunity to make me re-purchase it for the 6th time (VHS, DVD, “remastered” DVD, Blu-ray, and “remastered” Blu-ray) Warner has released a “restored” Blu-ray (as well as a pricier 3-disc set that adds a 4K-UHD version).
This review is based on the 2-disc Blu-ray set (one disc is for the extras). There are no technical notes included; so I can’t confirm this is a 4K scan, but after an A/B comparison with my copy of the 2007 Warner Blu-ray, I can tell you the new scan is spectacular. I can’t imagine the film looking any more crystalline, with vibrant color grading, rich deep blacks and sharp contrast. Audio has also been noticeably upgraded. Extras are identical to the 2007 version (Warner is historically stingy with those) but it’s worth the dip for those who want the best possible home viewing experience of the film.
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(Criterion Collection; box set) – I picked up this box set with trepidation. Previously, I’d only seen two collaborations between director Josef von Sternberg and leading lady Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel and Shanghai Express). While I found both quite watchable, they struck me as creaky and melodramatic; it seemed “enough” at the time to get the gist of their creative partnership.
(Studio Canal; Region “B”) – John Carpenter directed this 1981 action-thriller set in the dystopian near-future of 1997 (ah, those were the days). N.Y.C. has been converted into a penal colony. Air Force One has been downed by terrorists, but not before the POTUS (Donald Pleasence) bails in his escape pod, which lands in Manhattan, where he is kidnapped by “inmates”. The police commissioner (ever squinty-eyed Lee van Cleef) enlists the help of Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a fellow war vet who is now one of America’s most notorious criminals.
(BBC; Original 1981 UK TV series) – I’m not sure if it’s possible to “wear out” a DVD, but I’ve probably come closest to doing so with my copy of the original BBC-TV version of Douglas Adams’ sci-fi comedy cult classic.
(Criterion Collection; box set) – One of my favorite exchanges from Barry Levinson’s infinitely quotable 1981 film Diner occurs between two friends sitting in a theater watching the Ingmar Bergman classic The Seventh Seal:
(Cohen Film Collection/Sony) – The utter madness of war has rarely been conveyed in such a succinct (or oddly endearing) manner as in Philippe de Broca’s absurdist adult fable. Alan Bates stars as a WW1 Scottish army private sent ahead of his advancing company to a rural French village, where he is to locate and disarm a bomb that has been set by retreating Germans. His mission is interrupted when he is suddenly set upon by a coterie of loopy and highly theatrical residents who (literally) sweep him off his feet and jovially inform him he is now their “king”. These happy-go-lucky folks are, in fact, inmates of the local asylum, who have occupied the town since the residents fled. The battle-weary private decides to humor them, in the meantime brainstorming how he can coax them out of harm’s way before the war inevitably intrudes once again.
(Indicator; Region “B”) – This dark, dark comedy from 1971 is one of my all-time favorite films. It was directed by Alan Arkin and adapted by Jules Feiffer from his own self-described “post-assassination play” (referring to the then-relatively recent murders of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy). That said, it is not wholly political; but it is sociopolitical (I see it as the pre-cursor to Paddy Chayefsky’s Network).
(Criterion Collection) – It’s sad that the late great Orson Welles has (unfairly) become the perennial poster boy for “squandered talent” in the film industry. Granted, he was a rapscallion who loved to push people’s buttons; unfortunately, some of those “people” were powerful producers and studio heads who didn’t get the joke back in those days when “maverick” and “genius” were dirty words in Hollywood. But he was a maverick, and he was a genius…he just wanted to make the movies he wanted to make, precisely the way he wanted to make them. But alas, the “boy genius” became enslaved by his own legend soon after making Citizen Kane at age 25.
(Flicker Alley) – This marks the third collaboration between releasing studio Flicker Alley, the Film Noir Foundation, and UCLA Film and Television Archive in their mission to unearth and restore forgotten film noir gems from the classic noir cycle (it was preceded by Too Late for Tears and Woman on the Run).
(Criterion Collection) – Sex, politics, and the shallow SoCal lifestyle are mercilessly skewered in Hal Ashby’s classic 1975 satire. Warren Beatty (who co-scripted with Robert Towne) plays a restless, over-sexed hairdresser with commitment issues regarding the three major women in his life (excellent performances from Lee Grant, Goldie Hawn and Julie Christie). Beatty allegedly based his character on his close friend, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring (one of the victims of the infamous 1969 Tate-LaBianca slayings). The most memorable scene takes place at an election night event.
(Criterion Collection) – Musician/raconteur David Byrne enters the Lone Star state of mind with this subtly satirical Texas travelogue from 1986. It’s not easy to pigeonhole; part social satire, part long-form music video, part mockumentary. The episodic vignettes about the quirky but generally likable inhabitants of sleepy Virgil, Texas should hold your fascination once you buy into “tour-guide” Byrne’s bemused anthropological detachment.
(Arrow Video) – Another wild ride from the vivid imagination of Terry Gilliam, this 1995 sci-fi thriller (inspired by Chris Marker’s classic 1962 short film, La Jetee) has become a cult favorite.
(Warner Brothers) – The mathematician/cryptologist I.J. Good (an Alan Turing associate) once famously postulated: