The Bed Sitting Room June 4, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : Film & DVD Reviews, British Film , 4 comments“How long is this shit going to go on for?” snapped a United Artists executive at director Richard Lester during a pre-release screening of his 1969 comedy The Bed Sitting Room. That’s not, I would venture, a good start for any movie…
UA fast-tracked The Bed Sitting Room into production with a million dollar budget held over from Lester’s previous project Up Against It, still-born after its unlucky screenwriter Joe Orton had his skull smashed in by his lover. They wanted Help! or at the very least A Hard Day’s Night, sans the songs and the moptops. They got ‘this shit’.
Actually what they got (eventually - UA didn’t know what the hell to do with it for months after completion) was a quirky, surreal, very British, absurdist satire with barbed gags that zing off the screen like honey coated pieces of shrapnel; you don’t necessarily have to be a mature denizen of this sceptred isle to fully appreciate The Bed Sitting Room - after all, the Philadelphian born Anglophile Lester made the most British of British films - but it helps.
The Bed Sitting Room is spine no. 001 in the BFI’s exciting Flipside line, a new label dedicated to “films that were overlooked, marginalised, or undervalued at the original time of release, or sit outside the established canon of recognised classics”. It certainly fits that bill.
Developed from the play by long-time collaberators John Antrobus and the unique talent that was Spike Milligna (the well known typing error), fans of The Goons but more particularly Milligan’s anarchic ‘Q’ TV shows will instantly hear his master’s off-kilter voice shot through Antrobus’s screenplay. The Bed Sitting Room was contemporaneously compared to the work of Samuel Beckett (”with better jokes”), but you’ll see the lineage that lead from Goonery to Python, with a dollop of home Cookery (that’s Peter Cook-ery, gentle reader…) chucked in for seasoning.
Focusing on a tiny group of survivors following the “nuclear misunderstanding” that was World War 3, all of two minutes and 28 seconds long “including signing the peace treaty”, we find a disparate cross-section of British society muddling through in a radiation ravaged landscape…and slowly mutating into a parrot (Arthur Lowe in full pompous mode), a wardrobe (the ever delightful Mona Washbourne), a dog (get down Dudley Moore!) plus, best of all, the eponymous bed sitting room (the eye-wateringly wonderful Ralph Richardson, as the unfortunate Lord Fortnum of Alamein).
Lord Fortnum of Alamein: “It’s the latest early warning hat, it gives you an extra four minutes in bed.”
The BBC: “I’ve never worn a hat in bed. I’ve been a Catholic person for a long time now and I wouldn’t know where to begin. Is this your car sir?”
Lord Fortnum of Alamein: “It is. I acquired it from Lord Snowden…”
The BBC: “…not THE Lord Snowden?”
Lord Fortnum of Alamein: “No, A Lord Snowden.”
The BBC: “Ah, yes, the woods are full of them.”
Milligan plays a post-apocalyptic postman, popping up to deliver, well, all manner of useless stuff, not least a custard pie in the kisser for the starving Michael Horden, a doctor who spends his day atop a mountain of shoes, sorting the footwear of the 40 million or so dead, and dreaming of Hovis. It’s Horden and especially Milligan’s characters that betray the film’s origins, first as a one-act play, then a longer stage piece. Both Antrobus and Milligan were said to be unhappy with The Bed Sitting Room’s translation to the big-screen, a fact with which both contemporary critics, and much to the suits at UA’s chagrin, audiences seemed to agree. As pacy as it can be, you can see that it would probably have had far more energy on stage, bringing the style much closer to black farce, ironically more Orton-esque.
As it stands, and accepting the flaws, it’s a heroic effort. How could it not be given the talent on show? Yes, it does seem a tad languorous at times, Lester having seemingly fallen in love with the quarry in Surrey that stands in for a blasted and scorched central London. Cinematographer David Watkin lingers on unfeasibly vast piles of crockery, false teeth, used lightbulbs. On Everests of stone, rivers of lord knows what, valleys of rusted automobiles that will never run again, and we play a guessing game of longshot or closeup (are those huge boulders or small stones..?) We see the dome of St Paul’s rising out of the muck, an Underground escalator hangs in mid-air, and doorways, indeed whole porches, stand in acres of solitude, waiting for the visitorial proprieties. Take a bow Assheton Gorton, the art director also responsible for painting an entire South-east London street red for Blow Up.
This is not, despite the premise, as full on bonkers as, say, Milligan’s delightfully nuts The Great McGonagall; director Lester had, after all, a terrific track record of transmogrifying a script that had a quirky nature into a commercial success, something that Milligan sometimes appeared to care less about…as long as it made him giggle. However, it does say something that Lester rode in on the project his star ascendant - it was to be nigh on five years before he made another movie.
On the plus side, Milligan and Antrobus let no-one, not one scintilla of contemporary British society - politics, religion, the health service, the military, the police, the class-system, the bigots, the concept of mutually assured destruction, the whole fact of ‘hanging on in quiet desperation’ being the English way - escape their often acid satire. Absolutely bristling with ideas, even if, it must be said, some of the ambition is unfulfilled, The Bed Sitting Room is as much a product of time and place as Help!, but with the extermination of millions, starvation, survival and atomic mutation on the menu, even this most surreal bill of fare, it’s certainly not quite as cuddly.
Watching it today, though we aren’t as absolutely positive that we will end our days as shadows on the pavement as we were 40 years ago (and hence the potency of the anti-nuclear message is ever so slightly diminished), The Bed Sitting Room seems only to increase in stature. Not only because this particular form of comedy - and no-one could whip up a melange of satire, surrealism, hoary old jokes and cream pie gags quite like Spike - seems to be a long dead art. But were that not the case, have we the 21st century equivalent to perform it? As much as I admire Sir Ian, could McKellen stand in for Richardson, Paul Merton for Milligan? How about Peter Cook; who could possibly fill his boots…no, I give up.
Police Inspector: I expect you may be wondering why I’ve invited you all here this afternoon. I’ve just come from an audience with Her Majesty, Mrs Ethel Shroake, and I’m empowered by her to tell you that, in the future, clouds of poisonous nuclear fog will no longer be necessary. Mutations will cease sine die and, furthermore, I’m the bringer of glad tidings. A team of surgeons at the Woolwich hospital have just accomplished the world’s first successful complete body transplant. The donor was the entire population of South Wales, and the new body is functioning normally. I, myself, saw it sit up in bed, wink, and ask for a glass of beer.
All in all, I think we’re in for a time of peace, prosperity and stability, when the earth will burgeon forth anew, the lion will lie down with the lamb, and the goat will give suck to the tiny bee.
At times of great national emergency, you’ll often find that a new leader tends to emerge. Here I am - so watch it.
Keep moving, everybody, that’s the spirit! Keep moving!
The cast, listed in the credits in order of height (naturally), is wholly excellent. Added to those mentioned above we have Frank Thornton as the living embodiment of the BBC, Harry Secombe as the seat of regional government (boyo), an 18-months pregnant Rita Tushingham, delivering a surprisingly pretty (and surprising) prose poem in praise of boyfriend Richard Warwick at the film’s mid-point, Roy Kinnear (heavily into rubber…), and Jimmy Edwards, who only needs 17s 6d to get him out of left luggage. The comic genius that was Marty Feldman makes his film debut in full nurses uniform, performs his own stunt (typically) as he makes a ‘Tarzan’ swing into a tree and fells it, and is given the best sight gag in the movie on his introduction. The eyes have it…
You will enjoy Ronnie Brody, the holocaust’s bemirrored transport chief, Henry Woolf, pedaling furiously to keep the Circle Line operational, Ronald Fraser is the whole British army, Jack Shepherd, as the underwater vicar (sounding for all the world like Ronnie Barker, mostly because he was revoiced by the versatile Mr B), Dandy Nichols (as Mrs Ethel Shroake of Leytonstone; otherwise HM The Queen. Sing: “God Save Mrs Ethel Shroake of 393a High Street Leytonstone…”) looks distinctly uncomfortable astride a horse, and Peter Cook, initially a police inspector to Dud’s barking sergeant, then revealed by Horden (”…That IS God - I recognise the voice…”) to be deified. Two years earlier, Cookie was the devil and now he’s the Lord God Almighty.
Well, we all know that REALLY don’t we?
The Disc
Some have found the BFI’s Blu-ray disc to have lip-sync problems; I can, happily, report none at all. Player related? Player/amp/connection related? Who knows - all this HD stuff is still uncharted territory for many. All I can say is that there are no problems here. The MGM sourced 1.85:1 (most probably the original ratio for at least U.S. screenings) transfer is excellent, sharp and more than reasonably detailed with no outstanding dirt or damage of note. Things do get a little less clear during the latter third when Lester uses heavy filters to give the impression of a nuclear sunset, but this is precisely how the film should look. Like previous BFI HD transfers, this is very film-like, very commendable. The uncompressed mono sound came over loud and clear on my system too; more than adequate.
The extras are not plentiful (apparently, apart from supporting the release - according to the BFI’s, and fellow FJ blogger, Michael Brooke - Lester declined to be involved per se in the production, hence no commentary, no new filmed interview), but they are utterly fascinating; previously unbroadcast interviews by Bernard Braden for his Now and Then TV show with Cook (30 minutes), Milligan (40 minutes) and Lester (17 minutes) in 1967 (hence the latter discussing How I Won The War and Cook puffing Bedazzled). These filmed interviews are beautifully preserved time capsules - I thought Milligan’s was particularly personally revealing. Had the disc contained the interviews alone, it would, in my humble opinion, still be well worth a purchase. There’s a trailer, in HD, in not quite as good condition as the main feature, but it’s nicely done and makes me want to watch the film all over again.
You’ll also find a handsome 28-page booklet inside the case with stills from the film, an essay by the aforementioned Mr Brooke, an April 1970 review of the movie by Russell Cambell, a write-up on Lester by Neil Sinyard, and some very much appreciated contextual notes on those Now and Then interviews. There are sub-titles for the hearing impaired in English and the whole is coded BD Region ‘B’.
So, a hit, a palpable hit for the new BFI Flipside line, The Bed Sitting Room belongs on the shelves of any fan of British cinema. Possibly the shelf in your bed sitting room - it’s also available on SD DVD for you luddites (I jest, before you send a hit man round…). For many different reasons, I loved it, I really did; I’m sure you will too.
Can I also commend to you clydefro’s take on the film and disc at DVD Times, which you will find here, and for actual screencaps of the film itself - capturing HD seems to be a black art I cannot master - see DVD Beaver here. Incidentally part of that ’support’ from Lester I mentioned earlier included taking part in a Q&A at a recent screening of The Bed Sitting Room at the NFT, and this BBC Podcast, in which, amongst other films, he discusses the movie. Download it while you can (*EDIT* - now removed by the Beeb; you missed it!) .
Keep moving! Keep moving everybody..!
Nothing Succeeds Like Cine-Excess..? May 31, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info , 5 commentsWhile across The Pond initiatives on the home video front seem to have largely stalled (the jury is still out on Warner’s nascent Archive programme though Sony have suddenly - and thrillingly - woken from their coma), it’s good to see that there’s plenty for UK film enthusiasts to enjoy. Even if the major studios here appear to have retreated to their bunkers and slammed the doors firmly shut*.
Smaller labels like Odeon and Network continue with a steady stream of catalogue titles, Optimum’s output appears undiminished (indeed, they have embraced Blu-ray wholeheartedly and have a number of high definition catalogue titles planned for the coming months), and the BFI have defied the recession with their exciting Flipside line**.
Now we have the new Cine-Excess label to look forward to. The press release from Roobarb’s Forum:
In what is believed to be the UK’s first ever cross commercial-academic film venture, Brunel University’s School of Arts Cult Film Archive, via its Cine-Excess project, has been given the rights to the archive of some of the 300 movies owned by the legendary B-movie producer and film director, Roger Corman. The university’s intention to “take trash seriously” in an academic respect and to release the films from the Corman archive on DVD has led to the university’s lecturer in Film and TV Studies and director of Cine-Excess, Xavier Mendik, seeking out the services of the prestigious London-based art film outlet, Nouveaux Pictures, as a joint distributor of its forthcoming titles.
The aim of the Nouveaux Pictures/Cine-Excess label is to bring the very best examples of cult cinema to both the commercial consumer and to the cult film studies educational sector. Extra features on the label’s releases will include university academics discussing the films, many of which have been, or are being remade in Hollywood, but may also have a “retro” appeal to new audiences and are of interest to film studies students.
The first DVD release from Nouveaux Pictures/Cine-Excess will be VIVA, the debut full-length feature by LA-based artist and filmmaker Anna Biller (The Hypnotist; A Visit From The Incubus). Future releases will include the Corman-directed NOT OF THIS EARTH and ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS and Ron Howard’s directorial debut feature, GRAND THEFT AUTO, along with such well-known cult cinema titles as SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, BIG BAD MAMA, DEATH SPORT, THE CRY BABY KILLER starring Jack Nicholson, plus Dick Maas’ AMSTERDAMNED and a Special Edition of Dario Argento’s classic, SUSPIRIA.
VIVA (cert. 18) will be released on DVD (£15.99) by Nouveaux Pictures/Cine-Excess on 6th July 2009.
Sounds good!
*Yet another reissue of Audrey Hepburn’s most famous films doesn’t count, even if this is the 80th anniversary of her birth. And, yes, Paramount, I’m looking at you…
**Reviews of two of the first Flipside releases at DVD Times can be accessed by clicking the titles: Primitive London, London In The Raw.
C’est Magnifique - The Red Shoes Wows Cannes May 20, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, DVD News & Info, British Film , 4 commentsIn my previous post, I mentioned that Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger and (it would be churlish not to give him equal billing) Jack Cardiff’s The Red Shoes had been meticulously restored and was set for a special screening at the 62nd Cannes International Film Festival earlier this month.
The Guardian’s report accurately sums up the reception this eye-popping British masterpiece was accorded. Charlotte Higgins wrote:
…I had never seen The Red Shoes on the big screen, leave alone like this. The restoration is stupendous. Its director of photography, the late Jack Cardiff, was a stickler for colour – he even, according to the man sitting next to me at the screening, mixed his own house paint.
The colours of the restored Red Shoes absolutely leap from the screen. Moira Shearer is all icy skin, palely freckled. And then there is her hair, that miraculous sheet of red-gold fire. As she walks towards the Royal Opera House in an early scene, that vivid shade is visually echoed by a bunch of amber chrysanthemums from the flower market briefly seen at the front of the shot. Then, dramatically backlit during the extended, surrealistic scene in which she dances the ballet The Red Shoes, it suddenly flames a shocking scarlet.
There are a couple of scenes on the railway station at Monte Carlo, and the restoration shows us just how carefully they were made – a woman in a crimson coat here, a burst of purest blue delphiniums there. Dressed in a cloud of tulle in a shade somewhere between peacock and ocean green, Shearer mounts the steps of a Monte Carlo villa, the sky hotly Mediterranean, transformed into a kind of sea goddess. Imagine you possess a faded, tattered photograph of someone you love, and then, quite unexpectedly, you see them again, solid, living and breathing. That was what watching the restored Red Shoes felt like…
Be sure to watch the Thelma Schoonmaker interview video on that page linked above; fascinating stuff, and you get a few glimpses of the finished restoration.
The news piece at the Film Foundation website - here - also makes for interesting reading, especially the roster of just who was in involved in the project. Three cheers for the press… Also, check out ‘The Red Shoes’ shines anew from The Los Angeles Times in which Robert Gitt of UCLA fame appears, I’m sure inadvertently, to give a good kicking to the BFI, who provided the original elements from which his digital restoration was made:
…Not that restoring those colors to their original brilliance was easy. First, it turned out that every reel of the original negative, which had been stored in Great Britain, had been attacked by mold, causing what Gitt describes as “thousands of visible tiny cracks and fissures…”
By the way, at the bottom of that Film Foundation page, you’ll find a link to the Film Foundation’s lush Preservation Booklet on The Red Shoes in PDF format, presumably the same booklet handed round to the audience at Cannes, and containing some interesting notes from Martin Scorsese and Ian Christie (plus the confirmation that The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp is also on the slate for a similar full wash and brush up). Says Christie:
…Seen in full-scale projection, The Red Shoes is not only one of cinema’s great sensuous experiences, but a profound meditation on the power and the price of all-consuming spectacle. Beyond the intensity of its performances and the beauty of its images, it is this reflexive quality, shared with other masterpieces of the 1940s, that makes it a true classic, capable of being endlessly re-interpreted and rediscovered…
Incidentally, Scorsese, of course the driving force behind this as so many restoration projects, earned himself a standing ovation at Cannes for his impassioned pre-screening eulogy to Powell, Pressburger and The Red Shoes:
…passion drives every single, extraordinary moment of The Red Shoes, and it’s what makes the film’s glorious Technicolor images so forceful and moving, now restored to their full, shimmering beauty. The characters and their world are brought to life with the aching beauty they themselves long to create. The vivid reds and deep blues, the vibrant yellows and rich blacks, the lustrous fleshtones of the close-ups, some of them ecstatic and some agonizing, or both at once…so many moments, so many conflicting emotions, such a swirl of color and light and sound, all burned into my mind from that very first viewing, the first of many…
And the restoration will be seen all over the world. ITV Global Entertainment (who were, you may recall, Granada International, who merged with Carlton; oh, do keep up…) is said to have struck more than 20 international home entertainment licenses for the digital restoration of The Red Shoes since the Cannes screening. The licenses include: Atlantic Films AB (Scandinavia), Magna Pacific (Australia), Filmax (Spain) and (of course, being their own home entertainment division) ITV DVD (U.K.).
ITV Global Entertainment director of home entertainment & digital Steve Gallant said “We’re delighted to be announcing these new international deals for Michael Powell’s brilliant and lovingly restored The Red Shoes. This is part of our ongoing film restoration commitment, preserving our critically acclaimed and hugely popular library of landmark British film titles for a new generation of film lovers.”
ITV DVD is set to release the new restoration on both DVD and Blu-ray on June 29 in the U.K., though the BD of The Red Shoes looks to be, at least initially, a HMV exclusive; with Janus credited with helping the project, a Criterion ‘do-over’ can’t be far behind. Don’t forget to look out for digital screenings of The Red Shoes in the U.K. from this December.
Rule Britannia - Scorsese and Schoonmaker on British Cinema
While we’re on the subject of P&P and S&S, there’s excellent news from Screendaily.com on Scorsese and Schoonmaker’s long-gestating feature documentary about the history of British cinema:
…Speaking to ScreenDaily as he took a thee-day break from post-production on his new feature, Shutter Island, to attend tonight’s (May 20) Cannes Classics screening of The Red Shoes, Scorsese said: “As soon we finish mixing Shutter Island, which will be in August, Thelma and I are going to go back and take up where we were in the British documentary and hopefully construct a rough cut by the time I shoot my next picture.”
Scorsese is a passionate fan of many British films and he cites such movies as Basil Dearden’s The Blue Lamp, Guy Hamilton’s An Inspector Calls as well as work by Joseph Losey, Seth Holt, Ronald Neame and John Gilling as important early influences on him. He also acknowledges that his own approach to using voice-over in his own movies was directly influenced by Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets.“Kind Hearts and Coronets was a big favourite among my family and people who were watching television in the early 1950s. It’s a film that influences a great deal what I do with voice-over,” Scorsese added…
Two posts in a month; I’m in danger of becoming prolific…
Spend Sundays With James Bond… May 9, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, British Film , 1 comment so farIn celebration of the centenary of producer Albert R. ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, born April 5, 1909, a season of classic James Bond films have been digitally restored and are returning to UK cinemas distributed by classic film specialists, Park Circus.
During June, restored versions of four classic James Bond films, DR. NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, GOLDFINGER and ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE, will be screening on consecutive Sundays at over 60 cinemas around the country.
The four classic films will be screened via the UK Film Council’s Digital Screen Network, enabling, say Park Circus, audiences ”to enjoy the outstanding picture quality and improved sound offered by this technologically advanced format”. The digital release is Lottery funded through the UK Film Council’s Prints and Advertising Fund.
The Bond films in the Broccoli centenary season have been digitally restored, as per the recent Blu-ray releases, frame by frame by Lowry Digital Images, the world’s leader in digital restoration and image enhancement. The process involves taking moving pictures that show signs of age and wear, removing the fading, dirt, scratches and other defects that occur over time, and returning them to their original condition. Park Circus were behind the nationwide digital screenings of Goldfinger a couple of years back; a spectacular experience.
Sunday 7 June: DR. NO
Sunday 14 June: FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
Sunday 21 June: GOLDFINGER
Sunday 28 June: ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE
The following Picturehouse venues will be taking part in the screenings:
• Aberdeen - Belmont Picturehouse
• Bath - The Little Theatre Cinema
• Brighton - Duke of York’s Picturehouse
• Cambridge - Arts Picturehouse
• Exeter - Picturehouse
• Greenwich - Picturehouse
• Henley-on-Thames - Regal Picturehouse
• Liverpool - Picturehouse at FACT
• London - Clapham Picturehouse
• London - Gate Cinema Notting Hill
• London - Stratford Picturehouse
• Norwich - Cinema City
• Oxford - Phoenix Picturehouse
• Stratford-upon-Avon - Picturehouse
• York - City Screen Picturehouse
Plus the following selected cinemas:
• Belfast - QFT*
• Belper - Ritz*
• Bo’ness - Hippodrome
• Birmingham - Electric Cinema
• Bristol - Showcase Cinema De Lux
• Bristol - Watershed Cinema
• Cardiff - Chapter Cinema
• Cumbria - Graves Cumberland
• Cumbria - Workington Plaza
• Derby - Quad
• Derby - Showcase Cinema De Lux
• Dublin - Light House
• Dundee - Dundee Contemporary Arts
• Glasgow - Glasgow Film Theatre
• Inverness - Eden Court Theatre*
• Ipswich - Hollywood Film Theatre
• Leicester - Showcase Cinema De Lux
• London - Everyman Belsize Park
• London - The Lexi Cinema
• London - Phoenix Cinema East Finchley
• London - Screen on the Green
• Newbury - Corn Exchange
• Newcastle - Tyneside Cinema
• Prestatyn - Scala
• Reigate - Screen*
• Richmond - Curzon
• Sheffield - Showroom Cinema
• Somerset - Wells Film Centre
• Stirling - Macrobert
• Winchester - Screen
• Wolverhampton - Light House
* check venue for details of screenings, as they may vary from the above schedule.
CLASSICS AT CANNES…
More from Park Circus; the UK based outfit says that the beautiful restoration of the Powell/Pressburger classic THE RED SHOES and a new print of the groundbreaking thriller VICTIM have been selected to screen at the 62nd Cannes International Film Festival (May 13-24) as part of the Cannes Classics strand.
Academy Award-winning THE RED SHOES is widely considered to be one of the greatest films ever made. The film has been restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive in association with The British Film Institute, The Film Foundation, ITV Global Entertainment Ltd. (formerly Granada International), and Janus Films. Restoration funding was provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, The Film Foundation, and the Louis B. Mayer Foundation. THE RED SHOES will be presented in the Debussy Theatre with Martin Scorsese, honorary President of Cannes Classics 2009, and Thelma Schoonmaker-Powell in attendance. The film is also scheduled for a limited UK theatrical release in December (as is THIS SPORTING LIFE in June and THE GODFATHER from September).
The sixth annual selection of Cannes Classics, a showcase for restored and rediscovered films, will also screen Jean-Luc Godard’s PIERROT LE FOU (1965), Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA (1960), Luchino Visconti’s SENSO (1954) and Jacques Tati’s comedy favourite MONSIEUR HULOT’S HOLIDAY (1953).
Cannes Classics will also celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of US film-maker Joseph Losey, with screenings of ACCIDENT (1967) and a new print of DON GIOVANNI (1979).
Scorsese’s own World Cinema Foundation will present three films: Edward Yang’s A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (1991), Shadi Abdei Salam’s AL-MOMIA (1969) and Emilio Gomez Muriel and Fred Zinnemann’s REDES (1936).
Also, in celebration of Columbia Pictures’ 85th anniversary, and as a tribute to composer Maurice Jarre, David Lean’s multi-award-winning classic LAWRENCE OF ARABIA will be screening at the Cinema On The Beach in Cannes.
Finally, Park Circus say it now has worldwide rights to screen movies in the Rohauer Film Collection, which includes the works of Buster Keaton, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks, as well as films such as Hitchcock’s JAMAICA INN the Joan Crawford classic SUDDEN FEAR and the recently restored PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN; could that presage a DVD release..?
According to the Film Foundation, ’Pandora’ was “…restored by George Eastman House, in cooperation with The Douris Corporation, at Cineric, Inc. in New York City. After an exhaustive worldwide search, no original negatives could be found. Working from separation master positives created in 1951, the film was restored photochemicallyusing the Cineric Single Pass System to re-register the color records and manufacture timed separation negatives. Sections of the film were scanned 4K resolution to perform digital dirt and scratch removal. Additionally, the soundtrack was fully restored by Audio Mechanics in Burbank, California. Funding was provided by The Film Foundation, the Franco-American Cultural Fund, and the Rome Film Festival.”
A Day In The Life… December 23, 2008
Posted by John Hodson in : General , 2 comments…or Christmas, bloody Christmas.
My typewriter’s melting.
I hit the keys of the Olivetti and they don’t make that familiar clack; instead, it’s an insipid thud as they bash the roller. And stick to it.
I go to flick them back into place and my fingers sink into the rubber, which is a fondouesque consistency. I can’t get them out. Stuck. Like they’re superglued. Someone asks me what the hell I’m doing, and, bugger me, it’s my old editor. Bizarrely, he doesn’t look a day older than the last time I saw him 20 years ago. Balls. He’s dead isn’t he? Am I still working for the Evening News? When did I last use an Olivetti? Uh, oh…
Even as I rise out of sleep, I know it’s a nightmare. I really shouldn’t eat so much post watching The Day The Earth Caught Fire. That’ll learn me. What would Freud have made of that? Either I am Barton Fink or sometimes a typewriter is just a typewriter…
The clock. Lord help me, it’s 9:12am; I’d promised Mrs H I’d take the kids (23 and 16; no matter how old you are, you will always be your parents ‘child’…) into the gaping consumerist maw of the Trafford Centre while she pops out for some wrapping paper and fusses over the last few Christmas details. The thought of my going ’shopping’ is suddenly, predictably, depressing as she leaves the house. I munch my croissant, sip my coffee and decide to leave my offspring abed for just a wee while longer.
I take a look at my FilmJournal and check out the ever lengthening list of unfinished blogs. In a breathtaking bravura development, I add a paragraph to a piece on John Huston’s The Dead, a film, based on Joyce’s short story, that is so utterly beautiful, nothing I write can ever do it justice (which is also why I have several Ford blogs in various stages of undress). Turns out not that ’bravura’ as I’m in no danger of transforming it into anything remotely interesting or coherent. It’s the first time I’ve added to the piece for many months, and thus the appreciation - started November 2007 - remains incomplete. With no end in sight. I’ll wrap it up around the time they put the finishing touches to Barcelona’s La Sagrada Familia.
Still, better than that ever so slightly pretentious blog on ‘Englishness’ that was started, with all the very best intentions, summer the same year. It seemed important then and still, for some obscure reason, does. But I know that it’s almost certain no-one else will ever read it. Like the rest of the orphan pieces. My FilmJournal has gone to hell in a handcart, all my 2008 resolutions come to nothing. Ho-hum.
After that burst of energy sapping creativity, I switch on the TV and channel hop to TCM; oh, look - they’re 20 minutes into Casablanca. The print isn’t a patch on the DVD I’ve owned for some few years now, but I snuggle into my armchair, wrap my dressing gown around me, and bask in a little Bogie and Bergman. And it’s an exuse not to stare at my forlorn FJ.
Rick: I’m saying it because it’s true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.
Ilsa: But what about us?
Rick: We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have, we, we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.
Ilsa: When I said I would never leave you.
Rick: And you never will. But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that. Now, now… Here’s looking at you kid.
Casablanca is simply the perfect movie; I can’t - won’t - fault it, I watch it over and over, loving it more and more. This time, I amuse myself by marvelling at just how bloody great Claude Rains is. One a scale of 1-10? Eleven. It’s December 2008 in Bolton, what time is it in Casablanca..?
Crikey. It’s gone 11 o’clock, Renault and Rick started their beautiful friendship three cups of coffee ago, the kids are still in bed, I’m still to dress and - ding-dong - Mrs H returns asking, perfectly reasonably, what in the name of all that is holy am I still doing here? I’m gone baby, long gone…
I cross the River Styx to join the condemned at The Trafford Centre…and it is credit crunched. There is actually room on the car park, and only a few nutjobs seemed determined to drive their vehicles like they are Stephen Boyd, riding hell for leather round the Imperial Coliseum. Colour me amazed; Merry Christmas Bedford Falls.
Second wonder of the day. My darling daughter manages to pick up three gifts for £15 in less than 90 minutes, a new Worlds and Olympic record.
Lunch. Mrs H isn’t with us, so, eschewing that nice Italian, the unpredictably predictable Spanish and rather decent value for money Thai restaurant, I wickedly suggest to my son the vulgar, nasty, greasy burger joint. His eyes light up, and we have a moment - “Umm, ummm” he intones in a rather passable Sam Jackson impression “That IS a tasty burger”. For the next few minutes we trade Tarantino quotes, managing to sidestep, rather cleverly and astonishingly, any that involve his colourful use of Anglo-Saxon (I’m a modern dad, but not quite that modern), and my daughter looks skyward, shakes her head and giggles - “You guys.” We are on the verge of a perfect day.
Back home for 3.00pm, my ears drumming to the sound of my arteries hardening having comsumed unfeasibly large volumes of saturated fats. Mrs H throws herself at the front door on our return. “You’re early!!” she hisses “Go AWAY!” We agree on a compromise. She lets us in if the kids close their eyes and run blindly upstairs, and after a quick check, I’m allowed in to survey the mass of cardboard, paper, Sellotape and price tags that are the trademark of these Christmas week frenzies.
The passing years have meant the detritus level has decreased, however, Mrs H confesses to finding the whole experience a tad stressful. But it is getting easier as the kids grow older and easier to buy for; prezzies this year include the complete Sex and The City for my little girl, three series of Scrubs for the boy, and I know I’m getting The Complete Steptoe and Son…because I ordered it. A few years ago, my darling wife made the DVD devotees’ ultimate faux pas of buying a box set from town. And, gulp, paying full price for it. I needed counselling. Never again, even the memory is painful.
The post has arrived, and in it, the last of my DVD orders for 2008; Amazon has come good on its promise to deliver The Stewart Granger Collection (ordered, like ‘Steptoe’, as it finally dropped to a price I considered a bargain in a Yuletide sale) before the big day. Mrs H graciously declines my offer for her to wrap it for me and add it to my pile, and urges me to open it now, as a pre-Christmas treat. True love.
I like Granger; he was always good value for money, made the leap to Hollywood successfully, and when interviewed by Parky many moons ago, didn’t seem to have that much of an ego, though he was, for a time, a huge international star.
The ITVDVD collection brings together 12 films from his early career, though looking at the package it beggars belief how the home entertainment division of Granada International got it to market without someone, somewhere, asking themselves, once again, ‘is this the best we can do?’
Only four of the film titles are mentioned on the packaging; pick up the sealed package in a bricks and mortar store and you wouldn’t have a clue as to the exact contents. The marketing bods are probably blaming everybody but themselves for indifferent sales.
I crack it open and, quite randomly, pick a disc and slap it in the player. Ah, Waterloo Road, A Gainsborough Picture, with Granger, atypically, playing a not wholly unattractive London spiv out to get into the knickers of Joy Shelton, the wife of soldier John Mills. It strikes me that the slightly risque 1945 comedy drama was addressing a problem, their lives brutally interrupted, that would face 1000s of returning troops. Decent story, decently played, and decently transferred to DVD. A great punch-up ‘twixt Granger and Mills, all this and Alastair Sim too. What’s not to like?
The DVD player is nicely warmed up, it’s dark outside, and I can hear the low thud, thud, thud of my son’s music. He’s taught himself guitar (and quite good he is too); there he goes now, writing and performing his own electronic compositions. It’s hardly Dooley Wilson and ‘As Time Goes By’, but I recently played him some John Carpenter themes and he’s sampled a couple into his own stuff; not half bad my boy, not half bad.
I’m going to interrupt the flow. He groans when I ask him to watch a DVD with me, then relents when I play my ace and tell him it’s Laurel and Hardy; this gert hairy adolescent cannot resist something that made him guffaw as an eight year old. I go for a sure fire winner; The Music Box. We laugh like drains as Ollie stares resignedly into the camera for the umpteenth time.
Quick, while we are on a winner, Towed in The Hole. Ollie: ‘Fresh Fi-iiiiiish! Just caught this mooooorninnng!’. Stan: ‘Paaarppp!’ We howl. Timeless stuff. Bliss.
I’m on my own for several hours. Daughter is off to a friends, son is beat boxing away in his room, Mrs H is doing the rounds, visiting mum (who will ask, again, just precisely who she is, bless her little 87-year-old cotton socks), having her hair done. I watch an old episode of Porridge, which is pure gold, then trawl the PVR and find an M.R. James Ghost Story For Christmas recorded from this time last year; The Treasure of Abbot Thomas. I’ve been meaning to buy a DVD recorder, but like so many other things, I know I’ll never get round to it, so watch it again before I hit the delete button. I’ve alway admired Michael Bryant, one of those actors who always seemed to be on our screens in quality productions, then disappeared for a while. When I saw him again a couple of years before he died, I recall being slightly stunned that he had gotten so old. He probably felt the same way about me.
I love James’ take on horror, the cloying claustrophobia of something unutterably petrifying out of the corner of one’s eye, all shadows and terrifying suggestion, and the Beeb production is typically pared down to the essentials. With source material so good there’s no need for anything else. I also have the first part of Mark Gatiss’s new BBC4 portmanteau horror, Crooked House, on the PVR; one can only hope it’s a fraction as good.
Bob Wallace: I have a feeling I’m not going to like this.
Phil Davis: I have a feeling you’re gonna hate it.
Bob Wallace: Then why should I do it.
Phil Davis: Let’s just say we’re doing it for an old
Bob Wallace, Phil Davis: pal in the army… yeah
Getting late now, well 10-ish; Mrs H returns, frazzled. We crack open a bottle and relax. Let’s watch a film; Holiday Inn or White Christmas? I choose the former, Mrs H the latter. She wins, naturally. Before Crosby and Kaye have even got into their stride, before Rosemary Clooney has cracked her makeup into a smile, I glance over and her head rests gently on her chest - she’s fast asleep.
That’s the third year on the trot; at this rate Dean Jagger may have to resort to The Samaritans…maybe next year Bing and Danny will, at last, save the day. Time for bed…
Happy Christmas; God bless us, one and all.
Watching Brief; Hammered… October 18, 2008
Posted by John Hodson in : Film & DVD Reviews, Watching Brief , 2 commentsTEN MORE FROM Watching Brief; in the order in which they were viewed…
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976; R2 DVD); What really happened during the period when Sherlock Holmes disappeared, temporarily as it turned out, from the pages of The Strand magazine? Nick Meyer scripts an original Holmes tale, taken from his own novel, which finds our hero in the grip of his cocaine habit and half out of his mind obsessing over an arch-enemy that only he truly believes in (’Moriarty’ - another ’70s cameo from Larry Olivier). The always riveting Nicol Williamson makes a quite superb, invigorating ’Holmes’, Alan Arkin is truly enjoyable as ‘Sigmund Freud’, and Charles Gray sketches a ‘Mycroft’ that he was to reprise opposite the late, great Jeremy Brett.
Alas, no-one could pluck up the courage to tell the usually otherwise brilliant Robert Duvall (Watson) that his English accent is to the Home Counties as Dick Van Dyke’s was to the East End. Think Noel Coward with a very nasty cold. And a speech impediment. It doesn’t fatally damage the film, but it helps that Duvall’s dialogue is significantly briefer than Arkin’s (whose character is, incidentally, more Watsonian than Watson himself).
An engaging and good humoured romp, directed with considerable verve by Herbert Ross, and a great twist. Fremantle’s transfer is in the original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and though not unmarked, it’s pretty clean and quite handsome. It’s also very cheap; the box claims that there is a stills gallery on the disc (the solitary extra), but I’m beggared if I can find it.
The Black Shield of Falworth (1954; R2 DVD); Universal’s first film in the then brand spanking new Cinemascope format comes to DVD, and at this point, as we enter the panto season, feel free to yell: “oh no it isn’t!”
Apparently the well-publicised fire at Universal Studios a few months ago destroyed a number of video masters, and the result is, sadly, a 1.78:1 cropped print is the best they could do for this Eureka! Classics release, and the best we’ll see until they extract digit, go back to the negative and make another.
‘Falworth’ was not only shot in 2.55:1 by director Rudolph Maté, but also shot again and framed in 1.85:1 while at the same time (are you still with me?) protected for Academy ratio, so that it could be screened in any of the three formats as theatres across the U.S. scurried to go wide in the mid-’50s. But this is not a transfer of a 1.85:1 master, the opening titles trumpet ‘A Cinemascope Production’…and soon it’s fairly clear that not only is it cropped at the sides, it looks to me to be chopped top and bottom too, so tight is the framing.
The good news (and there really isn’t much after that is there) is while it’s not free of the odd specks and marks, ’Falworth’ is reasonably clean (though it could do with a digital do-over), and the colour is really quite good, not the very best that can be achieved, but quite representative of a Technicolor film of the period. As for the film, ‘Falworth’ is right into Prince Valiant territory, indeed it was Universal’s riposte to Fox’s swords ‘n shields romp of the same year. Both films featured Janet Leigh and her pointy, pointy medieval breasts, but in the end it was Robert Wagner’s pageboy haircut in a straight showdown with Tony Curtis’s carefully coiffed, mean ’n moody Middle Ages D.A.
Trial by tonsor; no contest - no-one, after all, ever walked into a barber shop and said “…gimme a Robert Wagner…”
Both pictures are great fun; ‘Valiant’ featuring Arthurian nights in a 15th century setting battling Long Horn Vikings, while ‘Falworth’ has our hero in some bizarre boot camp, marines (verily) in chain-mail, under the blazing hot Californian sun of Merry Olde England, mouthing contemporary phrases, while adding a nod to the period setting by chucking in the odd ‘prithee’ or a ‘mayhap’. What’s not to like?
The story is engaging, the stunts and set piece fights are excellent, sound engineers working overtime to add more weight to balsa lances, and resin maces, and dammit, Tony Curtis, his Bronx accent not too great an impediment, is fab. It’s just a damned shame that The Black Shield of Falworth, a landmark in the history of both Universal and ’scope, could not be presented in OAR. Kudos to Eureka! for providing the screener for this blog, knowing full well it contained disappointing news.
The Seventh Victim & The Leopard Man (Both 1943; R1 DVD); a double-bill from Warners Val Lewton box set, the former a truly eerie and unsettling story from director Mark Robson, ostensibly about urbanised devil worshippers, but, like much of the producer’s films, is really about something else, and something far more interesting, entirely. I was reminded again and again of David Lynch; the closing scene chilled my flesh, but it’s hard to pin down precisely why. Sam Shepherd, describing a Terrence Malick film once likened it to a poem that touches something within. Sometimes you just don’t know why, it defies analysis, but it’s enough that it does. Isn’t that one of the many reasons why we love movies?
Much the same can be said about Jacques Tourneur’s The Leopard Man (taken from a Cornell Woolrich novel), the opening reel of which contains a beautifully directed, and still quite spine-tingling, scene in which a young girl is savagely killed by a an escaped big black cat. As others die in similar circumstances, the film becomes a who - or what - dunnit. Both pictures are supreme examples of tight, intelligent, low budget chillers that go well beyond their remit and leave viewers begging for more.
The Ghost Ship (1943; R1 DVD); And more came the following evening in the shape of another Mark Robson film, again from 1943. Yet another cracker from Warners Lewton set - not many ghosts, well, none to be honest, but an absolutely stunning study of madness aboard the Altair (named, aptly, after the ill-omened star of astrology). Seemingly affable, intelligent, ‘Capt. Stone’ (former RKO western star Richard Dix; who knew he could act…), muses on the nature of authority with greenhorn third officer ‘Tom Merriam’ (Russell Wade), but when Merriam finds out that this extends to a homicidal God-complex, he attempts, at landfall, to have his Captain dismissed. Failing, and finding himself ostracised, Merriam gets knocked unconscious in a brawl…and by sheer bad luck, hauled back aboard the Altair where the murderous, maniacal Stone wants his revenge.
Once more, a delicious slice of top quality, low-budget, movie-making from Mark Robson, this tight 69 minute noir-like thriller is filled with quirky characters and dialogue. Robson bookends the film with another typically off-beat figure, a mute, played by the deliciously named Skelton Knaggs, and yet another whose appearance evokes Lynchian comparisons. Is there a better scripted portrayal of insanity at sea (it’s a quite small, but high quality genre…), I don’t think so (and I include The Caine Mutiny). Loved it.
Scream of Fear (aka Taste of Fear, 1961; R1 DVD); Four films in the new Icons of Horror; Hammer Films set, and first, a Seth Holt directed Hammer shocker, scripted by the prolific Jimmy Sangster, that springs no real surprises plot-wise (okay, one…), but still has the capacity to make the viewer (yep, this viewer) jump out of his or her skin. Lots of moody, black and white deep focus, Christopher Lee (and ees verree nawty accent français…) has little to do except attract the punters, but I grow fonder and fonder of Ann Todd with each film of hers I see. Susan Strasberg and Ronald Lewis co-star. A neat, twist filled thriller that does exactly what it says on the tin.
Sony’s 1.66:1 anamorphic transfer is quite beautiful and, though it may look a tad soft on occasion, I suspect it reflects the film as shown theatrically. There’s just the right amount of grain, the contrast is nigh on perfect and I could not detect one significant mark on the print. Bravo Sony. The slightly hysterical sub-Saul Bass trailer, presented in 1.85:1 and also in great shape, yells at us to make sure we see the film ‘from the start!’ But why wouldn’t we…?
All we are missing is a Sangster commentary, and perhaps a featurette on Hammer’s Hitchcockian output. It would have been the cherry on a very tasty cake.
The Gorgon (1964; R1 DVD); “There’s nothing wrong with The Gorgon” said Christopher Lee, referring to the less than special special effects that made the rubber snakes on wires atop Magaera’s head writhe, well, like rubber snakes on wires, “except the Gorgon”. He could also have made mention of his own ludicrous wig and ‘tache, clearly a failed audition for the part of ‘Doctor Who’ that co-star Peter Cushing made his own the following year. In a ludicrous wig and fake moustache of course. Barbara Shelley, as love interest ‘Carla’, suggested to producer Anthony Nelson Keys that they use real snakes woven into a skull cap, but time and budget precluded that. After the premiere, Keys told Shelley that they should have gone ahead with her idea. Alas, too late.
In truth there is nothing wrong with The Gorgon, period. It is top quality ‘Golden Age’ Hammer, with beautiful sets and production design, a decent story, excellent cast, James Bernard at the baton, and a stirring denouement that has Cushing (hero or villain; we are kept guessing to the end) roaring about Bray, grappling with Richard Pasco, like a man possessed, and in his best ‘Van Helsing’ manner. Though I crack wise, Lee is excellent too, oddly enough his ‘Prof. Meister’ only a short nod away, in terms of character, from Stoker’s vampire expert.
Sony’s new R1 transfer is absolutely breath-taking. Again, in anamorphic 1.66:1 it boasts eye-popping colours and a level of clarity that gives it the look of a film shot, not 44 years ago, but yesterday. There is not a mark on it; it’s bloody gorgeous and, like the rest of the transfers in the Icons of Horror; Hammer Films set, emanates from the original negative. The only extra is a trailer, also in 1.66:1, that appears just as newly minted.
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960; R1 DVD); Terence Fisher helms this relatively lavish Hammer, ‘MegaScope’ production, the twist, courtesy of screenwriter Wolf Mankowitz, being that Jekyll is a hirsute, boring, deep voiced, buffer, while Hyde is a fresh faced handsome, sotto voce young devil, both played by Canadian Paul Massie (possibly best known for The Rebel). You can’t help feeling that Christopher Lee would have been better served in the title role rather than as Jekyll’s debauched friend, and Jekyll’s wife’s lover, ‘Paul Allen’. No transformation scenes as such, a slight voice change, beard and wig whipped off/on where necessary but Massie doesn’t, I feel, quite have the acting chops to pull it off (no pun intended).
Not only - Hyde being rarely seen to be truly eee-vil and Massie looking naturally boyish - do you suspect that he’s so fiendish that the worst he does is take two lumps of sugar in his tea (the cad), but in close-up, as Jekyll, our star looks alarmingly like a Gerry Anderson puppet. Think ‘Parker’ with a beard.
Still, it’s 1960 (before sex was invented) and, for the day, some of the scenes are quite risqué (the film was banned in Finland for instance; those Finns purely loved to censor Hammer films - this is the full uncensored version). In London’s most brightly lit brothel, Fisher unwisely concentrates his camera on Norma Marla’s nethers (well, she wears a mask, so conceivably it could be a double) as she does the rumba with a large python. She then - yikes! - fellates it; the snake seems suitably unimpressed, but it is without doubt the most horrifying scene in the whole picture. Please, no more. Put it away Norma.
It is in the same setting (the brothel, not in flagrante betwixt a snake charmer’s ample thighs) that we catch our first sight of Ollie Reed in a Hammer film, as ’Nightclub Bouncer’, a proto-Bill Sykes.
There are better tellings of Stevenson’s tale out there (Lee in I, Monster being one), but there are also worse. Perhaps the oddest thing about the film is the main title music, which suggests that we are about to get a musical. Now there was an idea, since taken up by ‘The Hoff’ no less…
Another spiffy transfer from Sony, in the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, not quite as boggling as The Gorgon, but really, it’s hard to fault it. Again, the only extra is a trailer, also in ’scope, also in excellent fettle.
The Curse of The Mummy’s Tomb (1964; R1 DVD); Hammer’s second entry in their short ‘Mummy’ cycle, made five years after their original, and written and directed by Michael Carreras. ‘Curse’ is a combination of Stoker’s original ‘Mummy’ story, Howard Carter’s curse of King Tut, with a smidge of King Kong chucked in. That last bit is Fred Clark’s amusing ‘Alexander King’, first cousin to ‘Carl Denham’, the showman (friend of P.T. Barnum, and the man, apparently, who named Turkish Delight) whose plan to tour the relics and remains of ‘Ra-Antef’ ends, predictably, in disaster.
Rich smoothy Terence Morgan is not quite who he first seems, but like archaeologist and love rival Ronald Howard, he also wants to gets his hands on Jeanne Roland’s undiscovered treasures, while Michael Ripper boasts, I think, his briefest ever Hammer appearance. We all know what’s coming, as lumbering, asthmatic ’Ra-Antef’ (Dickie Owen wrapped in the bandages) is revived and rampages round foggy old London town. It’s a bit Elstree bound (there’s not a single exterior) and the low budget, despite the ‘Techniscope’ pretensions, is obvious.
But ‘Curse’, despite lacking any of Hammer’s heavyweights in the cast, is not without its charms during its quite brief 80 minutes. As a horror icon, the Mummy character is always undeniably creepy, and Carreras has some fun (Ripper’s windy moment, the woman’s goosed squeal as the lights go out during King’s premiere, King’s line: “Of course I’ve got enemies, I’m in show business!”). The end suggests Hammer were hot to trot for more, which of course, they were, but it wasn’t a franchise that had real legs. It lumbered too much.
Sony’s R1 2.35: 1 transfer is another beauty; it beats the hell out of the current UK release on several counts. For a start, it has a portentious trailer (again in ’scope, and again in super condition) and a proper menu system (no scene selection menu on the R2). The picture is markedly crisper, slightly more detailed and certainly boasts better colour. The mono soundtrack is quite adequate. Like the other films in the Icons of Horror; Hammer Films set, it’s remarkably unmarked and though it hails from a HD master made from the original negative, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a Blu-ray release; buy NOW.
Charley Varrick (1973; R2 DVD); Don Siegel opens his crime thriller with a montage, a homage to small town America under the titles. It’s an odd way to introduce us to Charley Varrick and his band of bank robbers, Lalo Schifrin’s bouncy score telling us everything’s just dandy. But if we have a hero (albeit an ambivalent one) in Varrick, then perhaps it’s Siegel’s way of acquainting the audience to his idea of heaven. Charley doesn’t want much really; he just wants to get by.
Walter Matthau started his film career as a bad guy, moved smoothly into comedy, and by the ’70s had the kind of easy versatility whereby he could star in something as fairly hard-nosed as Charley Varrick in the eponymous lead. Varrick has no compunction about shooting up a small town New Mexico bank, but despite his undoubted violent criminal nature, Matthau effortlessly manages to make Charley a sympathetic anti-hero.
Maybe we’re rooting for the man whose motto is ‘The Last of The Independents’ because he stands squarely outside ‘The Combine’. It was big business that did for Varrick’s ‘mom and pop’ crop-dusting venture, and it’s the criminal version of the same who are after the bag stuffed tight with hard cash - their money - Charley inadvertently steals. Rugged individualism, so we are told, built America, and Varrick is one resourceful, rugged individual; eluding the law, the mob, and a bullet in the back from his erstwhile partner, forms the plot of the entertaining Charley Varrick. Siegel packs alot of film into his typically taut 111 minute picture; lots of neatly painted characters with excellent dialogue, and lots of business that seemingly has little to do with the narrative but gives them substantive colour; hats off, then, to Howard Rodman and Dean Reisner’s script from John Reese’s novel, The Looters.
There’s an excellent cast; Andy Robinson’s expendable, mouthy ‘Harman’ makes you wonder how Charley ever got tied up with him in the first place, Joe Don Baker’s apparently unstoppable mob hit man ‘Molly’ is a nasty sadistic racist, and hot on Charley’s tale. John Vernon is the smooth be-suited financial front for the Mafia, ‘Maynard Boyle’, who warns, sweaty, terrified bank manager ‘Harold’ (Woodrow Palfrey): “They’ll strip you naked and go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch”. Sounds familiar. The only mis-step is having Varrick bed Boyle’s secretary ‘Sybil’, but as she’s played by Jack Lemmon’s then wife, Felicia Farr, I suspect an in joke.
I read somewhere that Matthau didn’t care much for the film; perhaps he was uneasy with this criminal character apparently getting away with it, and at the same time winning us over. And he’s right. The ending is a bit of a stretch, but what the hell - we are all rooting for Charley Varrick, last of the independents, to get one over the big boys aren’t we?
The good news is that Fremantle’s new, very reasonably priced, R2 DVD is transferred in anamorphic 1.85:1, unlike Universal’s R1 from the despised and thankfully short lived ‘Studio Selections’ line, which was open-matte. Like The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, it’s not perfect; particularly in the first reel there are numerous nicks and white flecks, and reel change markers are still evident. It’s also slightly window boxed, but you shouldn’t notice this if you are watching on a monitor with any kind of overscan. Colour and detail are all, mostly, they should be and, with a nice menu design (missing totally from the R1) and good strong English mono sound; I do love a solid Schifrin score. There are no subtitles, but this time, the stills gallery is most certainly present. Overall, a pretty good effort.
I should point out that Fremantle were kind enough to also send me check discs for their latest iterations of Junior Bonner, Hell in the Pacific and They Shoot Horses Don’t They. It’s a massive disappointment to see them all cropped to 4:3 (the latter is also a horrible transfer in any format), and as such, despite their being priced lower than either the recommended The Seven-Per-Cent Solution or Charley Varrick, they get the thumbs down from me.
Watching Brief; Newman’s Own… October 12, 2008
Posted by John Hodson in : Film & DVD Reviews, Watching Brief , add a commentLAZY, LAZY, LAZY JOHN. I sit in front of my computer screen, with all the best intentions and staring VERY hard indeed, meaning to post, promising myself. Honest injun I do. But, well, stuff - ya know; ’stuff’ - just gets in the way. How about a series (providing I can extract digit - okay; how about ’occasional’ series?) of mini-reviews describing what I’ve been viewing on DVD recently? Stuff (that other stuff won’t get in the way of) that doesn’t require too much effort, yet keeps my internet self out of intensive care and merely in rehab? Stuff like this in fact. Sounds like a plan…
In no particular order, ten from Watching Brief…
The Verdict (1982; R1 DVD); big beasts James Mason and Paul Newman slug it out for acting honours in Sidney Lumet’s cracking courtroom drama. It’s a film, scripted by David Mamet, that naturally loves language; Lumet lets the camera linger 
lovingly on Newman’s voluble, electric, silences, but it’s Mamet’s magnificent dialogue that ups the voltage. Newman’s panic stricken scene where he realises that he is absolutely, totally and irrevocably screwed is a master class of screen acting. Fantastic. This was Fox’s first attempt at a DVD transfer of The Verdict with decent extra features, and while it’s acceptable, it has apparently since been bettered.
All or Nothing (2002; R2 DVD); Mike Leigh’s tale of a London taxi driver, his dysfunctional family and life on a sink estate showing that it’s grim dahn sarf. Typically hypnotic, with the ever brilliant Tim Spall in the lead, and a host of Leigh’s stock company in ‘blink and you’ll miss ‘em’ roles. The two hours plus running time flies by, but the unsatisfying conclusion appears oddly rushed and against all expectations. Not first rank Leigh, but even then better than most. Nice transfer from Pathé; I have yet to listen to Leigh’s commentary, but, if past efforts are any measure, it’s bound to be fascinating.
No Country For Old Men (2007; Region Free BD); The Coens at the top of their game, with all the visual and verbal pyrotechnics that marks the brothers very best work. Essentially a chase film, it begs questions that most men of a certain age must ask themselves about fate and chance and our place in a dead eyed world that regards us without pity or sentiment. Ostensibly the narrative follows good (Tommy Lee Jones) who chases evil (the wonderful Javier Bardem), as evil chases Josh Brolin’s suddenly cash rich Llwellyn Moss. Moss, with $2m in white hot drugs money under his arm, stands in a nether world between the two; mere happenstance led him to that case crammed with crisp $100 bills, the moment he picked it up, Moss put it all on the line. The whole bundle. Everything.
Jones, heading a fine cast, proves himself, once again, one of the finest screen actors working today, and the brothers Coen, well, they have nothing to prove really. But prove it they do.
My first BD viewing; yes, I know what I wrote a few posts back, but I was doomed the moment I saw clips of How The West Was Won in Smilebox. Damn you George Feltenstein…
Paramount’s Blu-ray presentation of No Country For Old Men is impeccable, or at least, if it’s not, I cannot see how it can get any better with a lossless audio track that’s as impressive as the visuals are eye-wateringly sharp. Accompanying featurettes pay handsome homage to the Coens, and quite rightly so.
Macbeth (1948; R2 DVD); Welles version of The Scottish Play famously bombed on it’s premiere (apparently Stateside audiences had problems with the accents) 
and it wasn’t until relatively recent years that the original version, as premiered, surfaced once more. Welles monkeys around with the Bard a little (who hasn’t?), shuffling characters, lines even whole speeches, to cram the text into 107 minutes. It was a play of which he was intensely intimate, having triumphed with it on stage for over a decade; the result is a work incredibly imaginative, accessible and polished, yet supremely cinematic. While the whole defies the budget and speed of shooting (21 days) some of the imagery is typically, and mind bogglingly, breath-taking, as Welles homicidal and psychotic Thane bestrides a brutal, alien landscape.
The Mercury Theater’s actor manager long suffered under the burden of being dubbed ‘genius’; there is no other word, frankly.
Second Sight’s transfer starts off a little shakily, but gets significantly better after the first 20 minutes or so, is available cheaply and well worth adding to your collection.
The Spanish Gardener (1956; R2 DVD); Dirk Bogarde reunited with his young Scots co-star Jon Whiteley from Charles Crichton’s Hunted four years earlier, and as cracking as that film was, Philip Leacock’s The Spanish Gardener is pisspoor. Bogarde was never too comfortable playing workin’ clarrrss fugs (the reasons explained, to some degree, in his recently published letters), but he just gets away with it in Hunted. Here, he deals with impersonating Jose, the eponymous gardener, by the simple expedient of blessing him with the accent of a contemporary BBC newsreader (World Service), and the fashion sense, oddly, of not a horny handed son of toil but a fast rising, louche, British act-or…
The boy’s Scottish accent is explained away by the fact his mother lives north of the border, while father Michael Horden, whose received English has impinged on the boy not one jot, grumps around being a royal pain in the arse, painfully arrogant and keeping both the child and Johnny Foreigner firmly in his place. It really is tedious, inconsequential fluff.
Optimum’s transfer, part of the generally very good Dirk Bogarde; Screen Icon Collection, is merely okay, the colours are a little faded, and the print is dirty and scratched. But the real disappointment is that it’s a VistaVision film, which should look much better, and is presented not only full-frame, but, I suspect, cropped heavily on both sides (and thus not even open-matte).
The Appaloosa (1966; R1 DVD); What seems vibrant, imaginative and in keeping with the whole in the stylish The Ipcress File (down to Peter Hunt’s superb editing or am I being unkind?), gets plain bloody irritating during Sidney J. Furie’s Mexican western. I lost count of the number of over the shoulder (hat, rump, gun, you name it…) shots, and every nook and cranny is used as a frame. It’s almost a parody of a Furie film.
As each shot is reshot, relit and come at again from every conceivable (and inconceivable) angle, I empathised more and more with lead Marlon Brando. His patience with Furie snapped early on, to the point where he refused to acknowledge his director, preferring to pointedly read a book on set from the moment Furie said ‘Cut’ until he begged his moody star into ‘Action’ once again.
Pretty in parts, but fer cripes sake Sid, keep the bloody camera still. Part of Universal’s Marlon Brando Collection, the transfer, as per most recent efforts from the studio, is typically excellent.
Brothers In Law (1957; R2 DVD); There’s something uniquely comforting about a Boulting Brothers comedy. Set in time like a mosquito in amber, they have a reassuring niceness, and a sense of culture that’s only a short, slightly more vulgar, step away from Ealing’s England. It is, as we know, a country that never really existed but we wish with all our hearts that it did. Brothers In Law features a wonderful cast from the Boulting’s stock company; it doesn’t glitter as, say, the more acerbic I’m Alright Jack, but it’s amiable enough. Ian Carmichael plays yet another hapless lead (nobody did it better), and any film with Miles Malleson in the castlist is usually the guarantee of a pretty good time. Later to become both a hit radio and TV series with Richard Briers as the bumbling junior barrister.
Optimum’s DVD transfer, part of their Terry-Thomas Collection, is a little shaky, and doesn’t take too kindly to being zoomed to 1.85:1 (which looks a little better than 1.66:1, but either will do) from open-matte, but it’s watchable. It’s hardly a Terry-Thomas film by the way; the Great Gap plays the junior part of, believe it or not, a Cock-er-nee wide boy.
Othello (1955; R2 DVD); Or to give it it’s full title; The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice. As reviled as Olivier’s Moor is in some quarters these days, Welles portrayal is considered as one of his finest achievements. Having said that, it may be slightly heretical to say I preferred his Macbeth (see above), but from that bravura opening shot of the magisterial landscape that is Welles Big Giant Head to the final silhouetted funeral procession (which forms both the beginning and end of the film), there’s much to admire. The legendary Micheál MacLiammóir, revered by both Welles and Ford (there; I’ve shoehorned in my mandatory reference), is also impressive; his Iago is truly loathsome, so much so, one wonder’s what the Moor of Venice saw in him to keep such a vile creature so close to his bosom in the first place. Spare a thought for poor old Robert Coote’s Roderigo, for reasons best known to the director, revoiced by Welles himself.
Second Sight trumpets that this is the ‘restored’ version, and it’s not bad, though technology has moved on so much since it was cleaned up that today’s digital do-dahs would no doubt produce an end product far better. It is sometimes excellent, sometimes not, but part of the restoration included re-recording the music soundtrack…and in full, squeaky clean 5.1 surround it simply sets my teeth on edge, like a wristwatch seen on an extra, and permanently in shot. I would love it if someone of the stature of, say, Criterion got their hands on Welles Shakespearian forays, particularly Chimes at Midnight. We can but dream.
Winter Kills (1979; R1 DVD); William Richert’s political satire comes on like ‘Monty Python’s The Parallax View’, played with an almost dead straight face by a stellar cast (Jeff Bridges, Richard Boone, Anthony Perkins, Brad Dexter, Eli Wallach and John Huston in bright red under-trollies…). An off-kilter take on the Kennedy assassination, it has a nightmare quality - the all too fleeting cameos from the likes of Toshirô Mifune, Ralph Meeker, Dorothy Malone and Sterling Hayden only only serve to heighten this dream-like atmosphere - with some genuinely bizarre laugh out loud moments; from Richard Condon’s book, plus added dollops of Lewis Carroll.
Anchor Bay’s R1 transfer is very nice indeed, and is stacked with some genuinely insightful extra features rather than the usual fluff. The documentary Who Killed Winter Kills? adds to the production’s mythos, recounting the trials and tribulations during filming, the various breaks while everyone turned out their pockets and coppered up, and how one of the backers was bumped off by impatient dealers for failing to pay his drugs bill.
Cool Hand Luke (1967; Region Free BD); In The Observer, Sam Mendes told a story of how, while he was directing Road to Perdition, he saw the late Conrad Hall in floods of tears as he was filming a close up of Paul Newman. Mendes asked what was wrong, and Hall, who also worked as cinematographer on Cool Hand Luke, replied, great droplets running down his cheeks: “He was so beautiful.”
Director Stuart Rosenberg decides that the tale of this ‘natural born world shaker’ parallels the Christ story, thus we have thinly veiled representations of God (Strother Martin’s Old Testament prison warden, clad in white), the Devil who is the ‘Walkin’ Man’ (he’s in black, natch), Pharisees (the guards) and Apostles (the chain gang). And just in case you missed it, Rosenberg even captures Newman in a pose of crucifixion. Endlessly re-watchable and entertaining, 
God bless the Academy for giving George Kennedy his thoroughly deserved Oscar.
And yes, Newman was damned beautiful.
Another sumptuous Hi-Definition presentation, with an interesting featurette that set me to worrying as all the extant principals were interviewed save one, though in his absence, everyone paid fulsome tribute to their star. Turns out I was right to fret; a couple of days after my viewing, Paul Newman was dead. God (I care not which one) bless him too.
Showing Soon; British Classics ‘Exclusives’ & More From Sony… October 10, 2008
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, Showing Soon , 5 commentsSony are unveiling a new line in the U.K. next month; their ‘Classic British’ films will be, for a time at least, MovieMail exclusives, and appear (more’s the pity) to be free of extras.
The films include:
Bunny Lake is Missing (Dir: Otto Preminger); Gripping thriller from Otto Preminger about the search for a missing child. Riddled with unpredictable twists and sinister characters, this is a creepy and unbearably suspenseful watch.
‘Bunny Lake’ has been available in the U.S. for a while, and, like a few others here, was one of the much anticipated slate of Columbia films DD Home Entertainment were to release last year in partnership with Sony before they fell into receivership. DDHE rose from the ashes as SimplyHE, but the deal was not resurrected and, happily, Sony said they would release the films themselves; let’s hope the others - including the Boetticher / Scott westerns and Hammer films since slated for R1 - make it to these shores.
Age of Consent (Dir: Michael Powell); A bitter sweet comedy starring James Mason and boasting one of Helen Mirren’s first nude scenes. Mason plays an artist who 
succeeds in persuading Mirren to pose as his life model. Coming, complete with a handful of extras (restored original soundtrack, interviews with Helen Mirren, Tony Buckley (editor), Peter Sculthorpe (composer), Ron and Valerie Taylor (underwater camera) and Kevin Powell) in a set with A Matter of Life and Death, in R1 in the near future (date still to be announced). This R2 disc is said to have no extra features.
Take a Girl Like You (Dir: Jonathan Miller); Based on the popular Kingsley Amis novel of the same title, Take a Girl Like You is a poignantly comic tale about a morally upright Northern lass who moves South to teach. She is pursued by a married schoolmaster who goes to immoral lengths to get her into bed.
Zee and Co (Dir: Brian G Hutton); Elizabeth Taylor plays the immaculate Zee, a spoilt and obnoxious rich girl who is desperately trying to hold onto her philandering husband, played by Michael Caine. On confronting her husband’s mistress she soon finds out a few home truths.
Footsteps in the Fog (Dir: Arthur Lubin); An atmospheric Edwardian thriller starring Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons. Simmons plays a ruthless housemaid who threatens to reveal Granger has murdered his wife if he does not meet her demands. Fantastic performances and suspenseful to the end.
As well as the Classic British titles, MovieMail also has exclusivity on the following Sony titles:
The Front (Dir: Martin Ritt); Set in ’50s Manhattan, Prince (Woody Allen) starts acting as a ‘front’ for blacklisted writers and as a result is hailed as something of a creative genius. Ms. Barrett soon falls for Prince and his supposed talent. An entertaining commentary on the McCarthy era with some great performances.
Godspell (Dir: David Greene); This US movie version of the upbeat Christian rock opera stays true to original. Various New York dwellers who long for liberation are enlightened through parables about humility, compassion, love, and forgiveness.
QB VII (Dir:Tom Gries); Thoughtful and provocative Emmy Award winning drama in which Anthony Hopkins plays a Polish doctor accused of performing operations in a Nazi camp years earlier by an American writer. Hopkins sues and the drama unfolds in QB VII, or courtroom Queen’s Bench Room 7, where the trial is held. Based on the novel by Leon Uris.
Full details from MovieMail here.
PS - Sony; can we please still have that promised Night of The Demon; Special Edition, complete with (already in the bag) extras?
Showing Soon; ‘Scope for Improvement from Eureka! Classics… September 18, 2008
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, Showing Soon , 13 commentsApologies for the lack of activity recently, and this is merely a flying visit by way of a warning; U.K. outfit Eureka!, famed for their superb Masters of Cinema series, is also set to release a number of titles in their ‘Eureka! Classics’ line-up come November, among them Universal-International’s first Cinemascope picture, Rudolph Mate’s hugely enjoyable medieval romp The Black Shield of Falworth (which has entered movie lore for the line delivered, in a Bronx accent, by Tony Curtis: “Yondda lies da castle of my fadder.” Curtis swears it was in fact: “Yonder lies the valley of the sun, and beyond, the castle of my father…”).
Yesterday, I was astounded to read this review which reveals the transfer to be 1.78:1, cropped from the original 2.55:1. A peek at the Eureka! website listing showed the film as coming in 2.35:1, so a quick email was fired off to see what the position is. Sadly Eureka! has confirmed that the film is indeed coming butchered to 1.78:1, as you’ll see from that link, they have now amended their listing to show the film as a somewhat nebulous ‘16:9′…and references to it being Universal’s first ’scope feature have been removed.
Oh dear.
Other titles upcoming in the same range are (October) Night of The Living Dead, Jess Franco’s Eugine De Sade, Claude Pierson’s Justine de Sade, The Naked: A Psychological Film, Manina – The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, Krzysztof Zanussi’s Leben für Leben, Jess Franco’s X312 – Flight to Hell, 56 Rue Pigalle, The Benny Goodman Story, Henry Hathaway’s Souls at Sea (with Gary Cooper), Ronald Neame’s The Horse’s Mouth, Ralph Thomas’s The Clouded Yellow. In November, the offerings include Jeroen Krabbe’s The Discovery of Heaven, and The Stranglers – On Stage/On Screen. Some have extras, some don’t, check out the website for details, but following the ‘Black Shield’ debacle, I’m afraid it has to be caveat emptor.
By the way, also coming November* from Eureka! is Douglas Sirk’s A Time To Love & A Time To Die in their Masters of Cinema line, thus a little more optimism for that one.
*EDIT; now postponed ‘for a few months’ while Eureka! upgrade the title from a single to a two-disc set.
Retail Therapy… July 31, 2008
Posted by John Hodson in : General , 9 commentsLet’s see; the checklist for 2008 thus far…
There was the computer crash, which took down all the terminals in the office and at one point threatened the entire business. My fault. Well, Mr Gates and I will actually share the blame. I get all the credit for sorting it…balanced out by it costing us an unnecessary three figure sum and several dead working days. Strike one.
I barely had time to congratulate myself on what turned out to be no more than a harrowing experience, rather than a life changing one, than our home was burgled, while we slept. Electrical goods, clothing, credit cards, cash, laptops and more, all bundled into the family MPV - the keys being handily placed for the intruders to find - and then driven into the night. After hitting our gatepost and leaving part of the car on the drive as a souvenir. Strike two.
Panic ensued, not surprisingly, with chez Hodson being kitted out with a brand new, and very expensive, state of the art Alarm System that, amongst other features, rings us up to tell us if the house is being ransacked.
Or if it’s accidentally triggered at 4am by my dozy son. Oh, how I laughed…
First time we venture from Hodson Towers after the theft, my ‘phone rings and I very nearly have a pulmonary embolism. The thoughts of leaving these shores and having the alarm call me up to tell me in that monotone computer drawl that some recidivist scrote is thumbing through my DVD collection - dear God, take anything but my copy of The Searchers - while I’m an impotent 2,000 miles away, means we may never holiday again. I’m considering holing up in the dining room with a loaded shotgun. ‘Cept I need to sleep. And I don’t own a shotgun. Damn my insomnia proof, pacifist hide!
Meanwhile, the car insurance company, determined to get its pound of flesh from somewhere, asks for a copy of my driving license so that they can ‘put the claim to bed’. Like a lamb to the slaughter I happily do so, and a 19-year-old call centre monkey ’phones me up to tell me I’m a ‘very naughty boy’. I failed to declare a speeding ticket that West Yorkshire Police (lying in ambush at 7am - a few yards from a derestricted sign and safety - just outside Leeds) slapped on me in 1991. Seventeen bloody years ago. The insurance company wants it’s money back for the years that I ‘benefited from cheaper car insurance’. I suddenly feel like Nick Leeson; you’ll never take me alive, copper…
The Ford Motor Company meanwhile, cannot immediately replace my vehicle. It will be a ‘few weeks’; apparently demand is so high in Russia and China for the minions of oligarchs in Moscow and the thrusting young turks of Beijing’s tiger economy that Ford can’t build ‘em fast enough, and Brits must wait their turn to get MPV’d up. I still haven’t got it. It will be ’soon’.
Good job; allows us breathing space to shell out for the new outside security lights, the fencing and lockable side and rear gates. The wrought iron specialist asked Mrs H whether she wanted ‘balls or spikes’ atop the side gate; Silly question; of course, she wants the thieves balls on the spikes. Mrs H asked, Lady Macbeth like, if the spikes could be specially sharpened and dipped in a swift acting, extremely painful, snake venom for which there is no known antidote. Not an option, however. Sadly.
We fax the gate company with the suggestion. Look out for their Black Mamba line come 2009.
The toaster and microwave pack in; irritating. What next? I idly enquire of the Gods. You don’t want to know, they reply out of my hearing…
If only we’d have remembered the bottle of wine and not had to turn back for it. If only it hadn’t have been at rush hour, and I hadn’t been rushing. If only I’d have ignored the nice little old lady in the Peugeot who stopped and beckoned me into the gap in the traffic that she’d left (she was, I now know a succubus from Hades). If only I’d have been paying much closer attention to the line of traffic coming down her outside. And not pulled out straight in front of that big white Mazda Taxi. Ouch.
The poor bugger didn’t stand a chance. In one of those adagio moments, I see everything in an ultimate clarity; the driver’s face contorted as he wrenches the wheel, his teeth clamped hard at the physical exertion of stamping with all his strength on the brake pedal. Out of the corner of my eye, I note my daughter’s face buried in her hands. I sit there, zen-like, for the inevitable outcome. Motionless. I don’t recall there being any sound as glass, metal and plastic burrows deep into the side of the car I’m in; it’s almost like an ‘out of body’ experience. The driver of the taxi shakes his head, and I respond with a weak and totally inadequate ’sorry…’ People stand around and gawp; not one person offers any help, though there is, in truth, none that they can give. I look at them, they look at me. Now I know how a goldfish feels.
My wife’s car is now pretty much wrecked, though happily no-one has suffered any injury. The front wheel of her Citröen hanging at a nasty, spastic angle, our cars entwined as lovers. Someone shoot me now.
So here I am, my daughter very bravely adding my name to her insurance so that I can get about. And I drive Mrs H to get a hire car (’It’s HOW much!?’), in Katie’s cute little Renault. With the pink carpets and accoutrements, and the sparkly fairy tiara on the dash. Someone shoot me now - please? I call about my car on a daily basis; ’soon’ they say. Strike three - you’re out…
I need cheering up. Family expenses through the roof, right now I would, of course, be foolish in the extreme to spend money on anything more than necessities. I understand this. Completely; do I look stupid?
I order a new $399 DVD player.
It’s either that, Prozac or therapy, I really, really, can’t afford therapy, and I hate taking tablets. Besides, I don’t know any therapists with as many Michael Ripper films as I, and I’m not entirely sure that Prozac would allow me the benefit of watching my DVDs in upscaled 1080p. At least, it mentions nothing pertaining to such on the pack. Er, or so I’m told.
So, an Oppo DV-983H it is then; I’ve uhmmed and aahhed long enough, considered buying a Blu-ray player, but my obscenely humongous collection of SD discs - many of which will never see the light transferred to BD - deserves the best I can give it (that’s what the voice in my head keeps saying; obey the voice). The best at a time when we can least afford it. ‘Twas ever thus - I think I may get them to carve it on my headstone.
The Oppo will go nicely with the new monitor. Didn’t I mention that? Silly me.
The burglars very neatly (so neatly that I half expected to find a calling card a la ‘Sir Charles Phantom, the famous Lytton’…) unhooked our Toshiba LCD and hauled it to their - my - transport. The 42″ set cost over £1,600 just two years ago, but such is the march of time and technology, it was already showing signs of being very much out of date (or so I kept telling anyone that would listen. Which was no-one as it happens). Only a few days previous to the theft, I’d been mulling over how to gently persuade Mrs H that it might be replaced. Be careful what you wish for.
The house insurance company offer us a ‘like for like’ replacement. Except, instead of a ‘top of the range’ Toshiba - which it was just 27 months prior to being appropriated for drug money by a desperate junkie (police theory) - we are offered a near bottom of the range model. We take the cash value - £720, which is some depreciation to swallow, but swallow we must - and decide to put it towards something better. A quick look round (and you have to be quick because technology doesn’t exactly march as sprint these days) and we plump for a Samsung A656; because they don’t do a 42″ model, we’ll be getting a 46″ model instead. Corrrr!
It’s two days before the UEFA Champions League Final and we go to buy our new telly, from Costco, because of the excellent price, the 90-days no quibble return policy and the five year guarantee. They have none. But they do have a 52″ model - totally outrageous because it will be too big; the 42″ model was vulgar enough, but crikey Moses, with the 52″ there can be no place to hide your shame. Should ‘Ideal Home’ come to call, can you throw a sheet over it and call it a Matisse? I think not…
It is now 29 hours to kick-off, Sir Alex Ferguson needs me standing in front of my TV screaming for my team, telling them they are totally bloody useless, and won’t someone please - please - turn this stupid thing off?! At least he did in 1999. So we arrange to have the 52″ delivered; and buggeration to what the neighbours think. It is in place with hours to spare, and the rest is history. It was a damn close run thing and the denizens of Old Trafford will never know the debt they owe me; after the match, I need sponging down and a good rest in a darkened room. Football is hell.
There follows weeks and weeks of playing with the flippin’ thing, tweaking, calibrating, changing settings again and again. And again. Once upon a time, your TV came, you switched it on and either your colour was set so high that it looked like a very poor early two-strip Technicolor movie, or it was muted so low that it resembled a gently fading sepia tone lithograph. Up a lot, or down a lot; that was extent of ‘calibration’. No more, gentle reader, this is the freaky deaky technology-zone known as the 21st century, where fridges come with an internet connection.
Modern TVs have a host of confusing controls to cope with a host of conditions, environments and the variety of techno-freaks who suffer from OCD and buy large screen TVs. AKA ‘men’. And there are few LCDs on the market right now blessed with as many picture controls as the Samsung ‘6′ Series; not just brightness and colour, oh deary me no, nothing so mundane - we can control the ‘Colour Space’, the ‘Gamma’, the ‘Facial Tones’, the ‘White Balance’, the ‘HDMI Black Levels’, the ‘Tachyon Emitter’ (okay, I made that one up…) and the ‘Dynamic Contrast’ (which we subsequently learn is A Very Bad Thing. Apparently the AV Police come and take you away should you even think of touching any digital whatchermacallits). On and on, a whole host of gadgets to play with…and drive the family totally nuts. And I do, gentle reader. And how.
This is almost as good as my esoteric hi-fi days, except back then buying British - Scottish - gear was de rigeur. And keeping your CDs in the freezer was considered a major tweak. Well, it was cheap (which is more than can be said for the Scottish gear). I digress.
I can even update the firmware, which Samsung issues to solve the inevitable problems (because, as we all know, we are all beta testers now…). To check which firmware you have, you must access the Service Menu. Accessing the Service Menu, says Samsung apparently, invalidates the warranty. So, if I update the firmware, how to check if I have been successful and the serial number of my new firmware is correct? You have to go into the Service Menu. Can’t you hear Joseph Heller chuckling? Isn’t this just brilliant.
Apparently, I can pay to have my set calibrated professionally. A well-read chap will come to my house and set my TV up for me, tell me what’s good and bad; not what I like, you understand, but what is right. And I’m interested in what is right. How much? Around £300, depending on the distance. I lose interest verrry quickly. Besides, he may have to go into the Service Menu, and that’s another Very Bad Thing as we now know. I need a rulebook; quick.
But I play and play, and eventually, come across a whole bunch of settings which appear to be ideal for my monitor; I’m astonished that the picture looks as good as it does. There are the usual LCD caveats; it does look better in a room with at least some ambient lighting, but it’s substantially better than the Toshiba, which, I decide, Burglar Bill (I’m guessing; it could be Intruder Ian, or Light-fingered Larry…) is more than welcome to. SD or broadcast HD (and trust me, just a few weeks ago, I hadn’t a clue what most of these terms meant), it’s quite excellent. 52″ too big? Like hell it is…
However (and there always is a ‘however’ in these situations), the extra inches seem to be a little too much for our two years old Oppo DV-971H, a multi-region upscaling DVD player much lauded on release, and which has proved to be utterly reliable. When Oppo unveiled their flagship 983 model earlier this year, they were at pains to point out that users with screens of 50″ and above would benefit most from this most muscular deck. Suddenly, as a brand new member of that club, I began to see their point. And here, by the way, was the proof I needed to show Mrs H that we needed - we simply had to - replace our utterly reliable, up to this point, quite excellent DVD player. Which wasn’t even broken. I contemplated dropping it for good measure.
I agonised over what to do, should I spend the money, should I keep the wallet closed. Think of the poor starving children, the ravaged planet Earth. The greenhouse gases, the dwindling rainforests, the melting polar icecaps, the…
Screw ‘em. I ordered one. Forgive me, Sting, mea culpa Al Gore.
First I placed my order with a UK company; neither they, nor Oppo itself out in Mountain View, California, had any stock. And as the expected ship date slipped, then slipped again, I switched my option to Oppo direct. Within 24 hours of placing myself on their notification list, a thumbs up email arrived, the order was placed and within four days, I got the shipping notice. Five more days it was here; our (well, to be honest, my) reward for being burgled, having my car nicked, smashing up my wife’s car, allowing the toaster and microwave (no toast and scrambled egg for me, then) to break and for failing to negotiate ’super economy’ deals with any number of workmen shoring up chez Hodson’s creaking defences. It pays to be bad.
That was Monday last. Like all men, I love these toys; I love to tinker with them, sweat and strain to hook them up, twiddle the knobs to get their output perfect, then twiddle ‘em some more just for the hell of it. It’s sheer bliss. After 24 hours, I discovered I had the speakers wired up incorrectly (around the time Clint Eastwood threw something in front of him and the sound came from behind my head) and had to dismantle the whole spaghetti mess of wires and start again. Even more bliss.
The Oppo itself? Well, I can only use the cliché that it is a ‘jaw-dropping experience’. I can’t describe how much better a machine it is than the 971, you’d have to judge that yourself, but the second part of the whole ‘let’s buy the best for our SD collection, then get a Blu-ray player’ plan has now gone on the back burner. Mrs H, who happily admits she cannot tell the difference between broadcast SD and HD (it’s a ‘Venus and Mars’ thang…), and frankly couldn’t give a hoot in hell about such matters actually volunteered the information that the 983 was a huge improvement on the 971. A first. My flabber had never been so gasted; someone pass the salts…
Not content with the ‘Mrs H Seal of Approval’, the Oppo has been winning accolade after accolade, scoring an unprecedented top score in a Secrets of Home Theater test, and is said to play SD DVDs better than not only rivals costing breathtaking sums, but also any current BD player; the fact that it can also play them from any region without trauma also gives it a distinct edge over most fancied Blu-ray decks.
Colours are beautifully lush and true, the picture is so much more incredibly detailed (how can they do that?), digital artifacts have simply disappeared and once problem discs are a problem no more, non-anamorphic discs are born again. Sonically, the Oppo actually outperforms our Yamaha DSP-A1 amplifier on the decoding front; the Yamaha was a bit of a beast in it’s day, but using analogue connections from the DVD player to the amp and letting the Oppo decode is a real improvement on the previous digital coax set up.
My Bought & Watched page reflects some of the titles I’ve been revisiting (yes, the first was The Searchers), all of which have been eye-wateringly gorgeous, and that’s not listing the chunks of other films that I’ve played, knowing that they contain previously difficult material, edging my seat closer and closer to drink in each new delight. I am truly gob-smacked each time I boot one up.
Can the leap to HD, particularly for the type of films that we want to watch, be that great, that much more stunning? Possibly, but the yen to find out has eased considerably. My DVD collection has, you will be pleased to know, been revitalised and saved for this proud nation. And I can now wait for the whole messy BD business to level out. Huzzah!
Is the Oppo DV-983H worth the money? You betcha, at twice the price even (hush now, don’t tell Oppo). Would I go through the whole of 2008’s trials and tribulations again, just to reach this point?
Are you mad? This is film, we’re talking about…
Oppo Digital’s website is here, and DVD Times excellent and detailed review of the Oppo DV-983H is here.