Let’s Watch a Film; a Little Showing Soon, Christmas Ghosts… December 15, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, DVD News & Info, Showing Soon , trackbackLet’s watch a film…
Long time ago, in a country far, far away, that opening proposition would probably have lead to Mrs H leafing through the local newspaper and the two of us choosing a film, and a cinema, within a couple of minutes.
The advent of video didn’t change the routine that much, except that I haunted the disappointingly tiny sections in both HMV and Virgin devoted to widescreen transfers (though I never, ever, called them ‘transfers’) on VHS tape. I begrudgingly paid the premium such a luxury demanded, but our pre-recorded tape collection never amounted to much. Laser disc was both far beyond my pocket and my ken.
Around the same time that VHS was pulverising Betamax, along came our family, money was scarce, time was even more so, and our cinema going was much curtailed, revived, principally, for the odd family film. Thanks to a combination of cinema visits, tape, and the movie oriented OCD that I seem to have passed to my children in my genes, I am word perfect in both dialogue and lyrics to The Lion King. God help me.
But behold the mighty riches held chez Hodson on Digital Versatile Disc; 1000s of films in a library any minor satellite film channel (who, maybe, would like an ‘Eve Arden Evening’ or a ’Michael Ripper Festival’) would be proud of. Films from all eras, covering most genres, suitable for every mood; so, let’s watch a film.
Tricky.
First there is the issue of trying to satisfy other tastes. I’m not a solitary viewer, if there are riches I prefer to share the wealth and, bless her, Mrs H has been most accommodating over the years even if the entertainment on view hasn’t been her preference. We came out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I could barely contain myself. Mrs H said it was ‘okay’. I was apoplectic.
Heaven forfend if I present a less than flattering portrait - it was Mrs H who brought Bergman to the table, who loved The Seven Samurai and Depardieu’s Cyrano de Bergerac. It’s just that when I’m in the mood for something that’s a little grim, a little demanding these days, my partner, at the end of a long tiring day, wants something to lighten the mood. Something to make her laugh.
Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garica? No, it’s Arsenic and Old Lace. Again. Not that I have anything against Capra’s wonderful farce, but, I’m not in a Cary Grant mood. Bring me the head of Warren Oates dammit. However, I’m old enough, wise (well, maybe not wise exactly…) enough to know what’s good for me. Chaaaaaaaaaaarge!
That leaves some titles that will only ever be watched in my own company, usually last thing at night (Mrs H only has to hear a few bars of a James Bernard score to begin yawning, and making a nice milky drink…). Down goes the sound, off go the lights, and within 20 minutes I’m aware of an extraneous noise akin to a butcher’s saw hacking its way through gristle and bone. And I’m not even watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s me, I’m making the bloody noise, snoring loudly, head on chest. Drooling.
Bugger.
Finding a time slot during any evening where I’m bright-eyed and bushy tailed, where I can have some ‘me’ time is a problem. Someone absent-mindedly trots in front of the screen, asks me sweetly if I want a coffee, the ‘phone rings, or I can hear the ‘thumpety, thumpety’ of my 15-year-old’s sound system, all the above make the veins on the side of my head throb, and that other noise is my teeth grinding. Or maybe it’s me bellowing like a marooned James Tiberius Kirk. Oh, fer gawd’s sake - what happened then!? Stop, rewind, try again. And repeat.
There are occasions when I stand before the ranks of DVD cases, staring at the titles on the spines, trying to focus, to square the circle of film / mood / time. After 20 minutes or so, at least one of the aforementioned prerequisites has changed and I wonder away, defeated, literally spoilt for choice. Probably to watch a film on the telly, the haphazardness of a TV schedule somehow more preferable. It does occur to me that sometimes the very act of choosing, taking the disc out of the box, switching over the amplification, the monitor, waiting for the DVD to boot up, dodge past the ads, the FBI screen, is simply too much trouble. I can’t be bothered.
Certain, special, films I want to watch in an environment where everything has to be perfect, no thoughts of the day job buzzing through my head, no family interruptions, the real world put on hold and I’m encapsulated in a beautiful bubble with The Film and company who will appreciate same. Rare occasions. Hence, on my shelves, still in an unpackaged, unwatched petulant strop, sit Days of Heaven, Nosferatu, well, far too many to mention, save to say they are all ’special’. So special I rarely watch them. They glare at me reprovingly.
Let’s watch a film?
I know; how about Arsenic and Old Lace. Or maybe - and here’s an off the wall suggestion - let’s go to The Pictures…
Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid - The Protest That Never Was
The Cornerhouse in Manchester recently screened a Sunday matinee of Sam Peckinpah’s flawed masterpiece Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid. Reports from the U.S. suggest that the 2005 cut of the film perpetrated by Paul Seydor - which I now hate with an almost unnatural passion - is being shown in cinemas in preference to Peckinpah’s work print and I swear to God that I was willing and ready to stage a one-man protest should the same misguided fan edit appear on these shores.
I would probably have booed in an understated British way, muttering something like ‘down with this kind of thing’. And got myself thrown out of a cinema for the second time in my life. I also knew I would have been invigorated by the experience, as if I had done Sam Peckinpah a really rather grand favour. He would have owed me one. Such sacrifice.
But no, bless ‘em, a crisis the Cornerhouse were blissfully unaware of was averted when Sam’s cut hit the screen. Good job too, I would have showed them.
Probably.
Well, perhaps not.
The strange thing is that for the first time in many a year I was fully aware of the condition of the print. This is what DVD and the endless discussion of the minutiae of home cinema transfers has done to us. The huge, messy, reel change markers became the signal to watch for whole sections of the film that were in a variety of states; for instance the opening reel, unmarked and with beautiful eye-popping colours, gave way to a second that was faded and marked. And so on. Damn you DVD.
I have to say that, despite my remarks, it didn’t spoil the film in the slightest, which we both thoroughly enjoyed; even in it’s unfinished state (and in my view, it’s only a minor few edits away from being complete), it’s a beautiful piece of work that just gets better with each viewing. I accept fully that what Seydor did, he did for all the right reasons; he wanted to pay homage to Peckinpah, to complete a movie that remains majestically incomplete. But he, more than anyone perhaps, should have understood, that what you want and what you get are two different things…
I just wish Billy had offered a little help to Paco’s widow, having watched her husband murdered, her means of getting home destroyed. Not to mention being stripped and raped. What does he do? He rides away without a backward glance, or even a ‘I’m goin’ fer help’ line of explanation. What was Billy thinking? More pertinently, just what was Peckinpah on? Sadly, we know the answer to that. Bah! It’s a minor aberration in the grand scheme of things.
I was determined to return from the cinema and tap away with some more considered thoughts here. But then I re-read Mike Sutton’s DVD Times review - here - and decided, sadly, I could not trump, or even come close to equalling, that truly wonderful piece of film criticism which reflects my own views, both on the film and the current DVD, perfectly. Down to the last syllable. Brilliant stuff from Mike, one of the ‘net’s finest film reviewers.
A Mini Showing Soon
Just a few, brief notes on U.K. R2 titles coming up in the New Year, which I feel I must tell you about in advance of the next ‘Showing Soon’ proper.
ITV DVD is to celebrate the centenary of John Mills birth with at least one box set. Some etailers have a John Mills Centenary Collection: Icon Box Set as ‘Vol. 1′ which presupposes that another is on the way. The first set, released February, is six discs containing a mixture of titles both extant and new to DVD: Great Expectations, The October Man, Morning Departure, Waterloo Road, In Which We Serve plus Sir John Mills’ Moving Memories, a documentary featuring some of the 1000s of feet of home movies Mills, one of British cinema’s finest and most versatile actors, shot during his long life.
Eureka is releasing a three disc set of Luchino Visconti’s Rocco And His Brothers in February in their Masters of Cinema series. The set includes:
A new anamorphic restoration of the film in its fully uncut original 3 hour long Italian release version
New and improved English subtitles
Newsreel featurette
Interviews with with cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, Annie Girardot and Claudia Cardinale
Original Italian trailer
Les Coulisses Du Tournage: Documentary featurette
Luchino Visconti: Documentary featurette
Soundtrack CD of Nino Rota’s glorious score for the film
40-page booklet featuring archival imagery, articles by Luchino Visconti, and respected Italian film critic Guido Aristarco, and a rare interview with Luchino Visconti translated into English for the first time.
Sounds good.
There are a couple of etailer listings for two new Screen Icon sets from Optimum in February, for both Brigitte Bardot and Gerard Depardieu; no titles I’m afraid and nothing concrete on the Optimum website, so we’ll have to wait and see if / when they come to fruition.
Following up the excellent Early Hitchcock Collection from Optimum, Network is apparently planning a 10-disc set for release February, titled Alfred Hitchcock: The British Years. There are no details, not even on the Network website, but fingers crossed that not only will the set include the titles in the acclaimed German Concorde box (it must surely), but that they will be of the same very high quality. I’d be hoping for some decent extras, but this being Network, who knows? They might even replicate the titles in the Optimum set, a la the crossover between their Laurence Olivier set and ITV DVDs.
A guess, but I would hope the titles Network will license from rights holders Granada International may be: Jamaica Inn (1939), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Young and Innocent (1937), Sabotage (1936), Secret Agent (1936), The 39 Steps (1935), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), Downhill (1927), The Lodger (1927), and well, a long shot, The Pleasure Garden (1925) - anyone know better? Post away here, please!
10 discs; could be more (or less) than 10 films, of course.
It’s Beginning To Feel a Lot Like (a Ghost Story For) Christmas…
The BBC begins showing some of their marvellous Ghost Stories for Christmas tonight on BBC4. The full schedule can be found here. The season kicks off with The Haunted Airman and continues with A View From A Hill, The Stalls Of Barchester, Number 13, The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas, Whistle And I’ll Come To You (reviewed by this blog here), Lost Hearts, and ends with The Signalman on December 20. Oh, for a complete DVD box set!
And Finally…
I’ll end with a couple of bargains; Fantom Films are getting into the spirit (sorry…) offering a free MP3 download of MR James The Ash Tree, read by Ian Fairbairn (part of three-volume collection entitled Tales of the Supernatural, with readings by Murray Melvin, Gareth David-Lloyd, Phil Reynolds and Geoffrey Bayldon) here. And Amazon UK is offering the excellent 3-disc BBC Quatermass Collection for just £12.97 - here.
Have yourself a scary little Christmas with Mr. Kneale and Mr. James…
Comments»
I know just how you feel about choosing something to watch - I’ve lost count of the number of times when I’ve found myself standing glassy-eyed in front of my DVDs….and then deciding that I can’t decide after all.
That’s not a bad selection for the Mills set. I’ll almost definitely be picking this up but I’d like to see the price drop a bit.
I get the impression that this may have originally been planned as one large set that ITV DVD have now split into a couple of volumes in order to maximise profit; hence some etailers have the rrp on the Mills set as nigh on £60, others, who list it as ‘Vol.1′, are showing £50, and both have discounted accordingly. In either case, by today’s standards, I think it’s pegged a little high for a five film set.
Like you Colin, I think I’ll play the usual long game.
As I said, I’m pleased with the titles in this set - but I do hope there’s a Vol 2 with both ‘The Long Memory’ & ‘Mr Denning Drives North’ included, as these are fine movies deserving of a release.
I know the feeling - spending so long picking a film, you don’t have time to watch it…
Hope you had a good Christmas.
I did, thank you Tim; for the first time in a few years, not a single DVD in the pressie pile due to my quite sad ‘That’s great! Where did you get it? You spent how much!? You could have got it much cheaper on-line..’ attitude. Serves me right!
Have a great festive season