Breaking in… July 14, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : General , add a commentI love getting DVDs in the mail; little packages, usually from beyond these shores - it’s almost like getting a gift (except (a) I’ve paid for it and (b) I usually know what it is). But I hate the security tape that Region One discs come bound up in.
Fox is the worst, all three opening sides of the box coming taped up with the fiercest of sticky backed plastic, stuff that is a beggar to get a fingerhold in, trying to peel it off without doing any damage, it clinging to the box for dear life. In the pursuit of instant gratification, I just want to cram the little silver disc, trapped inside, into my player as soon as humanly possible. The tape seems designed specifically to prevent me doing that. It’s sniggering at me.
My pockets are filled with cellophane wrapping, bits of still impossibly sticky tape, as I wrestle in Homer Simpson fashion with this infuriating, inanimate object, veins throbbing in my temples, gorge rising, I even shout at the damned, stupid, stupid box (not too loud - think of the neighbours).
Mustn’t grumble too much; I get a childlike rush of pleasure when I finally - finally - break in…and I’m ready to watch my film. Maybe it’s a feature? Like ‘interactive menus’ listed on the back of the packaging…
Boxing clever?
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General , add a commentAll things - and in this case that has to be value for money, content and quality - considered, Warners (US; Warners UK seems to be as clueless as the rest) has to be my favourite studio when it comes to slapping films on to a digital medium.
Not everything they touch turns to gold; economies of scale mean that not all films are as wonderfully restored and transferred as Casablanca, and their usually reliable output of the past four or five years, means that it’s something of a shock to receive anything that is less than top notch.
Of course, they are also capable of the occasional howler; though it looks better than I have ever seen it before, their recent 50th Anniversary Edition of The Searchers suffered from human error on the colour timing front; not disastrous, but Warners is apparently working on a corrected version. Much worse, whoever gave the go ahead to slice up and butcher Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid into a new version, attempting to second guess one of the great original visionaries of 20th century cinema (while at the same time woefully neglecting the transfer of Peckinpah’s original ‘directors cut’) is guilty of one of DVDs great crimes. For shame.
So, they aren’t perfect but the good far outweighs the bad, and without their output of recent years, this classic film fan’s world would that bit poorer (though I would be financially richer; win some, lose some…) This year alone, Warners are producing over 50 boxed sets. How much that weighs on your bank account is down to individual tastes and circumstances - these aren’t necessities, these are luxuries after all.
But Warners strategy has shifted my pattern of spending with them. I am buying more box sets; they present excellent value for money, each film (and because this is Warners, usually accompanied by decent extras) costing under £5, sometimes £3-£4. And buying more boxes means I’m buying fewer individual releases - I look at titles, at the stars therein, and if there’s a chance that it will end up in a box, at a fraction of what it would cost to buy individually, then I turn my face to it. I kid myself that I’m actually saving money…
Happy news then, that my R1 vendor of choice when it comes to boxes, Movietyme, tells me that an improved deal with their supplier means an improved deal for me.
Thus the upcoming James Stewart and Ronald Reagan Signature Collectionscan be had for £21.99, each, delivered (usually very promptly), with no potential for any, ah, ‘imperial entanglements’. Which is nice.
Boxing clever, or just plain boxed in? Hmmm…
Compulsive / Obsessive disorder…
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General , 3 commentsThe postman struggled to the door this morning, laden with another haul.
I’ve been a film fan since I was a wide-eyed child, staring at a blurry black and white rented television (thank the Lord for ‘Radio Rentals’), and wishing I was Errol Flynn, flashing blade in my hand, or John Wayne, daring the bad to guy to draw.
But the video boom came and went, and, apart from haunting the paltry ’widescreen’ sections of Virgin or HMV, I never really amassed a collection. Laser disc? Never entered my head. I suppose there were other factors. During those periods, disposable income was at a premium and DVD probably came along at just the right time - I had the money, the time and I certainly had the inclination. That quantum leap in quality from VHS to DVD, accompanied by a brand spanking new widescreen TV and a Home Cinema sound setup that I couldn’t really afford (I’ve always been a firm believer in retail therapy) had me hook, line and sinker.
But I look at my collection now, not without a little dismay; right in there are DVDs I bought, early doors, simply because they demonstrated just how good that sound system was. ‘Hear that?’ I was saying ‘Mine is much bigger and, well, more manly than yours!’ That soon stopped.
As the collection matured, bang per buck became much less of a factor. In fact, it wasn’t a factor at all; I was much more interested in seeing older films in pristine condition, with good, robust, original sound. Hence I also have in there some films which, well, quite frankly, aren’t very good. But boy, they’ve been restored to hell and back and look fantastic - question is, can I stand watching ‘em? Hello Amazon Marketplace!
And then there are the films I’ve bought ‘blind’ because I thought they were worthy, because I thought I should watch them because, well, someone else has labelled them masterpieces. They glare at me sullenly from the shelf, unwatched, unloved. I scurry passed them, sheepishly, and hope they’ll go away.
But amongst the groaning shelves are the real treasures, the films that I can watch repeatedly, seeing something new every time, actually giggling out loud from the sheer pleasure. And sometimes a treasure is found in a blind buy, or maybe in a film I’m watching for the first time in OAR, or perhaps in a film that I ‘get’ for the very first time, and it blossoms, right in front of your eyes. I bask in their glow and let them wash over me; I’ve never taken drugs (well, there was that one time…no, concealing it in a brownie doesn’t count, I think) but I can imagine the high these moving shadows give me feels slightly similar.
So here we are; the postie brings me one six disc box set, another box containing three DVDs, and an envelope that has another two; I’m Mr ‘Meat ‘n Potatoes’ now. Pretty much going with ‘old friends’, pretty much out of the Hollywood Golden Age, give or take a decade, and pretty much having a whale of a time. How many diamonds within those packages, how many old friends that will give me the orgasmic pleasure described above? Old friends - certainly. Treasures? Not one, if I’m totally honest (the films that provoke that reaction are relatively rare).
So why buy them? Well, obviously, you can’t survive on a diet of caviar and Champagne all the time; sometimes you want a fish supper and a cool brewsky (actually, bad example - if I had my druthers, I’d go for the latter. But you know where I’m coming from). The degree of pleasure may be slightly less, but, well, you get your pleasures where you can…
How else can I explain away my ‘Carry On…’ box sets?
Which reminds me…
Posted by John Hodson in : General , 4 commentsWhy am I such a wuss these days? I shed bucket loads of tears at the daftest things on screen. My wife tells me it’s my age; I’m weeping for my ‘lost youth’, watching older films only reminds me that I’m scraping my boots on the welcome mat of God’s Waiting Room.
I smile and nod and then tell her that I’m responding to displays of genuine emotion, crafted by auteur directors, demonstrated by actors of great genius. ‘Lost youth’ my arse…
Then I read that as we age, males naturally produce less testosterone (we, er, mature guys simply don’t need it. Apparently.) And so, in essence, our response to even the slightest displays of emotion is heightened. (A less enlightened blogger would say that I’ve become a big girl’s blouse. I would never dream of typing such a thing.)
In brief; my youth. I’ve lost it.
Ain’t nature cruel?
On 3 Godfathers, Mr Ford and Mr Peckinpah… July 13, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : Film & DVD Reviews, About John Ford, Westerns , 3 commentsPike Bishop: It’s his word.
Dutch Engstrom: That ain’t what counts! It’s who you give it to!Don Jose: We all dream of being a child again, even the worst of us. Perhaps the worst most of all.
It’s very nearly a record for me; shedding a tear before the film’s started. But the dedication at the start of John Ford’s 3 Godfathers (1948) does it to me every time - ‘To Harry Carey; Bright Star of the Early Western Sky’.
In long shot, a cowboy pulls his horse up and for a moment, in post-war movie houses across the world, millions of silent western fans rub their eyes in disbelief as the rider strikes three familiar trademark poses; clutching his arm, lifting his stetson before resting it high on his forehead, settling back on his horse in an easy fashion. John Ford is saying his farewells to the man who he helped to stardom and in return made him a much sought after director. Harry Carey, a huge star of silent westerns, had died the previous year.
Isn’t 3 Godfathers a peach? It’s a remake of Ford’s Marked Men, made nearly three decades previously (just think on that for a moment), and while Ford brought all the virtues of his silent cinema career to the sound era, this is possibly the perfect example of ’silent’ sound film. I’ll explain. Well, I’ll try.
3 Godfathers is gorgeous to look at, the combination of Winton Hoch’s cinematography, Ford’s unique genius for composition and that spectral Mojave Desert locale make for a film that is just full of beautiful images - lots of shots into the sun, the eponymous ‘godfathers’ silhouetted against honeyed sand dunes. On the current R1 DVD (part of the recently released John Ford / John Wayne Collection) it’s not a perfect transfer from Warners, but it’s damn near.
I don’t quite know what it is, but I can almost ’see’ the intertitles. Maybe it’s because I know the film’s back story, possibly - and I think this more likely - it’s a deliberate stylistic decision by Ford. That opening dedication is not just mere words, this whole production, script, cinematography, score, the whole darned shooting match, is Carey’s epitaph. This is a genuine heartfelt homage to Harry Carey and an era of movies that have passed into the maw of history. Joe McBride, author of the epic, essential Searching For John Ford, says 3 Godfathers has been ‘…brushed aside by most critics as minor Ford… (but) the simplicity of the film’s sentiment is balanced by the sophistication of its visual style.’
I’ll go a few steps further - I think it’s nigh on a bloody masterpiece, a stylistic triumph with a deliberate childlike simplicity to the narrative, an unashamed love letter - as can also be argued about the very different The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - to a cinema that had long gone, but a cinema that nurtured and formed one of the great, perhaps the greatest of, American directors.
McBride adds that he watched The Searchers with Hoch and ‘…the cameraman called attention to a group composition of the family moving onto the porch in the opening scene, taking their places with effortlessly fluid and beautiful movement. He exclaimed: “There’s Ford’s genius - right there.”‘
It’s almost balletic isn’t it? Makes me want to ’stand up and cheer…’
Those quotes at the beginning of this post? Well, for a while, I’ve been resisting the notion, postulated by some, that Peckinpah was a sort of anti-Ford, the antithesis of all the old man stood for and created. I think that’s pure nonsense. I reckon Sam is Ford’s natural successor in many ways - those lines, from The Wild Bunch, kind of sum up 3 Godfathers, and the richness, the depth of Peckinpah’s work emulates Fords (I may be struggling, but I also think there’s a link with the repeated use of ‘Let’s go!’ in the ‘Bunch’ with The Searchers; go on, mark me as a fool).
Mr Ford a true giant of American Cinema? I reckon…
Just what the world needs…
Posted by John Hodson in : General , add a comment…another blog. Okay; when I have the time and / or the inclination, I’ll post a few ramblings on films that move me, that improve my life and my outlook on the world and that I’d like others to share. Yes, it’s all about me (well, what’s the point of blogging otherwise?)
Quick caveat; most likely the films under discussion will be older than, well, some of my ties, possibly be filmed in black and white and may even fail to blow the dust off your sub-woofer. But they still may have the power to blow your mind.