Film_Fatale
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Posts posted by Film_Fatale
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> {quote:title=filmlover wrote:}{quote}
> Warner Bros. is bringing Paul Newman's "Cool Hand Luke" to Blu-ray high def in September.
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Thank you for posting, filmlover!
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For Hitchcock fans: B-)
*50 Years of Dizzy, Courtesy of Hitchcock*
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/movies/11raff.html?ref=movies
By TERRENCE RAFFERTY
?I LOOK up, I look down,? says Detective John (Scottie) Ferguson of the San Francisco police, standing nervously on a stepladder in an early scene of Alfred Hitchcock?s ?Vertigo.?
Scottie (James Stewart) is trying to cure himself of the title affliction, recently discovered during a rooftop chase in which his fear of heights resulted in the death of a fellow officer. So, impatient with his recovery, he gingerly mounts the three steps of the ladder, looks up, looks down, looks up and looks down again, then collapses into the arms of his college friend Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes), who always seems ready to catch him when he falls.
Fifty years and two days ago, at a preview in San Francisco, moviegoers looked up at the screen and saw ?Vertigo? for the first time, and maybe some of them looked down too in confusion or dismay, wondering, as in a dream, where they were and how they had gotten there and how they would make it back to safer ground.
With ?Vertigo? you never know. It?s a movie that ? even if you know that it will always end the same way, tragically ? never takes you to that inevitable conclusion by the same route. You feel as if you are wandering, which is the word Scottie and the object of his desire, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak), use to describe their days.
Neither, actually, is quite as purposeless as that sounds. Madeleine is chasing the ghost of her great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdes, and Scottie is tailing Madeleine, a private-eye job he?s doing as a favor for another old college chum, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), who is her husband. But it?s a desultory sort of surveillance, which turns gradually and with a mysterious inexorability into something else: a love story in which Scottie and Madeleine wander together, pursuing the past and running, with all deliberate speed, from themselves.
You can?t help wondering what those first Bay Area viewers 50 years ago must have thought as they watched this strange, drifty, hallucinatory romance unfold on the big screen, with the strains of Bernard Herrmann?s lush score ? brazenly echoing the ?Liebestod? from Wagner?s ?Tristan and Isolde? ? swelling on the soundtrack. It wasn?t what they had come to expect from Hitchcock, the beloved portly ?master of suspense,? who had been making impishly macabre thrillers for 30-some years and had since 1955 also been the host and impresario of a very popular mystery-story anthology series on television.
?Vertigo? ? based on a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, the authors of ?Diabolique? ? features one murder and two other deaths, but it isn?t built like an ordinary suspense film. Its only action sequence is the first scene, that rooftop chase. The detective never really investigates the movie?s lone murder because he doesn?t know until just before the end that one has been committed; the killer is not brought to justice.
And Hitchcock doesn?t content himself simply with violating genre conventions. He seems determined to unsettle every reasonable expectation ? anything that could give us a footing in the shifty, unstable world he?s creating before our eyes.
A couple of years later he notoriously killed off his lead actress in the first 40 minutes of ?Psycho,? but that is only marginally more perverse than what he does with Kim Novak in ?Vertigo?: in the first third of the picture, when Scottie is following her, she has precisely one close-up and not a single line of dialogue. And in the movie?s final third, every supporting character drops off the screen, leaving Mr. Stewart and Ms. Novak to work out their characters? awful fate alone. Along the way Hitchcock also throws in a bizarre, partly animated dream sequence and a startling scene in which, as the lovers kiss, the camera pans 360 degrees around them and the background changes from a small hotel room to the stables of an old Spanish mission, where they had kissed once before. You never do know quite where you are in ?Vertigo.?
The film wasn?t a hit in its initial release, and it wasn?t enthusiastically reviewed either. But its stature has increased exponentially in its five decades of screen life, especially in the 12 years since its brilliant restoration by Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz; it now routinely places in the Top 10 in critics? and viewers? polls of the greatest movies ever made.
For a movie so revered, ?Vertigo? hasn?t been terribly influential. The films that try hardest to recapture its twisted, doomy romanticism, like Brian De Palma?s 1976 ?Obsession? (with a score by Mr. Herrmann) and Mike Figgis?s 1991 ?Liebestraum? (in which Ms. Novak plays a supporting role), always wind up proving that Hitchcock?s dark vision is too wayward, too eccentric to be imitated: there?s never enough wandering in them.
And in a way the wandering is all that matters when you?re watching ?Vertigo,? for the first time or the 10th or ? like the fictional correspondent of Chris Marker?s beautiful essay-film ?Sans Soleil? (1982) ? the 19th. This movie isn?t constructed, as most thrillers are, to get us from point A to point B as swiftly and as efficiently as possible. ?Vertigo? instead circles compulsively around a set of visual and verbal (and musical) motifs ? spirals, towers, bouquets, the words ?too late? ? which keep bringing us back to the same places, turning us in relentlessly on ourselves. There?s a wonderful scene in which Scottie follows Madeleine through the dizzying streets of San Francisco to his own home. He looks puzzled, utterly disoriented, and the viewer knows exactly how he feels.
Seeing ?Vertigo? on DVD is maybe a shade less overwhelming, less deranging, than seeing it as its first audience did, but it has the compensating quality of seeming a more solitary and more intimate experience, and this is, always has been, a movie that makes you want to be alone with it. It?s like Scottie?s surveillance of Madeleine: he watches from a distance, then there?s no distance at all, just him and her, no one else around. Jean-Luc Godard once described the difference between cinema and television as the difference between raising your eyes to the movie screen and lowering them to the TV screen. Whether you look up at ?Vertigo? or look down, the effect is the same: You fall and hope that somebody?s there to catch you.
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> {quote:title=filmlover wrote:}{quote}
> Heck, we have to get the new people picking up HDTVs past the black borders on the left and right for pre-widescreen releases
True enough, filmlover, true enough.
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> {quote:title=Poinciana wrote:}{quote}
> Spartacus
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> NW: Cringe
*Whatever Happened to Baby Jane*
NW: automaton
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> {quote:title=filmlover wrote:}{quote}
> The age doesn't really have anything to do with how much grain one will see.
Um. Generally, it shouldn't, except that many viewers these days get used to see new movies that were either shot digitally or are digital animation (like Pixar) and get used to watching movies that are essentially grain-free.
So I think the point they were trying to make is that for viewers like those, watching any amount of grain in a high-def transfer of classic movies makes them think there's something wrong with the transfer.
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I can imagine that, and I would love to look at it when it comes out on BR.
One thing that does worry me, tho, and that was recently mentioned in digitalbits.com, is that a lot of people who get classic films on Blu-Ray or otherwise watch them on high-definition formats are apparently complaining about the film grain once it becomes noticable. They do no seem to understand this is exactly how those movies looked when you watched them on a theater screen!!!
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So glad to see Marie Dressler get her day during August under the Stars.
And of course I look forward to the showing of *Tugboat Annie*
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.... and more news on the upcoming restored *Godfather* trilogy...
Also today, we wanted to let you know that American Cinematographer magazine has just posted a great feature story on the new restoration of *The Godfather Trilogy* that was recent completed by our very own Robert A. Harris, a longtime regular contributor to The Bits. Robert's Film Preserve has previously been responsible for meticulous restorations of such films as Vertigo and Lawrence of Arabia, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that his work on the Godfather films is nothing short of a marvel. The article is an excellent read, and we recommend you all check it out if you're interested in the subject. According to the story (and our own industry sources), Paramount is planning to release new DVD editions of the films in September here in the States (they're already announced for release in Europe on 6/2 - see the European cover art below). Our sources say there's a decent chance that the films will be released on Blu-ray Disc as well, so cross you fingers. In the meantime, enjoy the article (and know that Robert will be writing on the subject himself in his own Yellow Layer Failure column here at The Bits in the coming weeks).
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Is this supposed to be any good?
*Marihuana* (1936)
Drugs lead to tragedy and loss for a young girl who is gradually transformed into a big-time drug dealer.
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Thank you, filmlover.
I don't think I've seen this posted here so far - it will only be of interest to those who already have multi-region DVD players:
*Optimum Home Entertainment have announced the UK Region 2 DVD release of Screen Icons: David Niven on 2nd June 2008 priced at ?34.99.*
With a career spanning over five decades, David Niven was one of Britain?s greatest ever movie stars. Urbane, sophisticated and debonair, he was cinema?s quintessential gentleman - instantly recognisable with his trademark pencil moustache, wily smile and affable manner. A prolific actor, Niven started his career as an extra on westerns and worked his way up through the Hollywood studio system to the very top. Although best known for his screen comedies, Niven was an incredibly versatile actor and excelled in dramatic roles, winning both an Oscar and a Golden Globe as Best Actor.
This collection brings together some of Niven?s very finest moments. Bonnie Prince Charlie is a rip-roaring historical epic about the 1745 Scottish revolt. The Love Lottery is a sharp satire on Hollywood and celebrity from Ealing Studios. Happy Ever After is a hilarious comedy of errors. Eternally Yours sees Niven star as an enigmatic magician opposite Loretta Young. And Happy Go Lovely is a high-kicking romantic musical comedy featuring dancing star Vera-Ellen.
All are presented in 1.33:1 Full Frame with English Mono sound. With the exception of Eternally Yours all are listed as ?restored?. There are no extras.
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> {quote:title=Edgecliff wrote:}{quote}
> Yes Film Fatale, I guess its hopeless, but he's difficult to tune out.
True. But if his sense of self-worth is so closely tied to getting attention (even negative attention) then the attention is probably just going to encourage him.
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> {quote:title=Edgecliff wrote:}{quote}
> CelluloidKid, with the exception of the title change I have already listed this DVD info, then you cut and pasted all the same info from ClassicFlix on March 31. Was it necessary to post this information for the third time with almost the exact same info because of the DVD title change? I am sure when ClassicFlix lists the specs for this DVD set you will again copy and paste, listing all the same information (plus the specs) for a fourth time. No wonder this thread has become overloaded and hard to wade through.
It is no use, Edgecliff. He won't listen to reason. Maybe he craves attention so badly that he will do anything just to have someone, even complete strangers on the Internet, give him a little bit of attention and make him feel "important".
I'd just suggest you put him on ignore. He will never, ever listen to reason.
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Critierion's just announced it's first Blu-Ray titles:
Our first Blu-ray discs are coming! We?ve picked a little over a dozen titles from the collection for Blu-ray treatment, and we?ll begin rolling them out in October. These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions.
Here?s what?s in the pipeline:
The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear
Alongside our DVD and Blu-ray box sets of *The Last Emperor*, we?ll also be putting out the theatrical version as a stand-alone release in both formats, priced at $39.95. Our Blu-ray release of *Walkabout* will be an all-new edition, featuring new supplements as well as a new transfer; we will also release an updated anamorphic DVD of Nicolas Roeg?s outback masterpiece at the same time.
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> {quote:title=shearerchic04 wrote:}{quote}
> I wish the administrators would ban CelluloidKid. He's so damn annoying.
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> {quote:title=molo14 wrote:}{quote}
> *The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 1943* is coming up tonight. There is also a day of Valentino films tomorrow.
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> I would like to mention one film coming up tonight.
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> 5/5/08 9:30pm Pacific - 10:30pm Mountain - 11:30pm Central - 12:30am Eastern :
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> *I Know Where I'm Going - 1945* Wendy Hiller stars as Joan Webster, a headstrong and determined woman who has her life all mapped out. She heads off to the western coast of Scotland to meet her rich fiance who she is determined to quickly marry. While trying to reach his island she becomes stranded, due to a storm, on the Isle of Mull. While there she meets a young Naval officer played by Roger Livesey and the local way of life on the island begins to effect her outlook. Wendy Hiller did not make a lot of films. This and the better known *Major Barbara* were the only films she made in the 1940's. This is one of those films that really takes you back to another place and time with interesting locals and locales. It's worth the journey. Hiller (whose character is not always likable), Livesey and a fine supporting cast help make it so. It was written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. If you haven't seen it take a look.
Gotta love P&P movies.
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> {quote:title=Hibi wrote:}{quote}
> She'd be 79 if she were still with us..............Sometimes I feel she still is....
Well in a very special way, she will always be with us.
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> {quote:title=PeggyElliott wrote:}{quote}
> What they want for the Essentials is someone who can play off Robert O, is well-spoken, enthusiastic, preferably has the youth demographics they're hoping to attract and Rose McGowan fits this profile quite well.
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> She's not the world's greatest expert on these movies, but she doesn't have to be: Robert O. is and there's no need to compete there and the audience is still benefiting from his knowledge.
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> It's obvious Rose really likes these movies and even though I'd hoped she would be a bit more "fun" she is quite personable and hasn't really embarrassed herself.
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> I was so disappointed in Carrie Fisher, knowing she has a terrific sense of humor, excellent connections, a strong personality that's very comfortable giving her opinions and standing up for her point of view.
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> It was downright painful to watch her! When compared to Rose McGowan, Rose comes out, well, smelling like her namesake! (Sorry, couldn't help myself....)
I was also disappointed with CF, knowing that she's an accomplished screenwriter made it all the more painful.
Go, Rose!!!!
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> {quote:title=brattykimv wrote:}{quote}
> I think Rose is a breath of fresh air and a very contempory actress to help the younger generation of avid movie watchers to appreciate the classics. I am 28 and have been a fan of TCM for about 2 years now. And besides anyone who loves 'A Place In the Sun" is a good judge of movies in my book!! Keep up the good work Rose.
Yes, that is definitely one of her strengths.
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> {quote:title=Caramia wrote:}{quote}
> *Tootsie*
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> New word...... Strength
*Hercules*
Nw: margarita B-)
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> {quote:title=Edgecliff wrote:}{quote}
> An annoying thing about your posts Celluloid is the cutting and pasting word for word of EVERYTHING that is posted from other websites re new releases. There is no need to copy paragraph after paragraph summarizing about what the film is about or awards, etc. By editing down to only vital info regarding the upcoming DVD releases these posts would not be so lengthy A link could be given if someone wanted that kind of info.
Some people simply have no manners, that's just the plain truth.
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The *Glory* score, which I'm listening to right now that the movie is on TCM, is pretty good.
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WHV and TCM by extension (lzcutter explained it already) benefit from having not only WB classics, but also the MGM and RKO classics. I mean, MGM was like the Rolls-Royce of movie studios. And WB and RKO put out some very quirky movies.
Which is not to say that you could probably have almost as many worthy titles if you put together all the other ones - the classic film libraries of Universal, Paramount, Fox, Columbia, as well as the old Disney classics.
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> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote}
> These are all great suggestions.
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> There is just one problem and its not with the suggestins but with the series.
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> The purpose of the *Essentials* is not to engage film buffs like us. We already love classic film and/or film of all types. We have likely seen the films shown more times in our lifetimes than we can remember.
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> The purpose of the *Essentials* is to engage the non-film buff into watching a classic film and liking it enough to come back and watch some more. That's why Rose is there, she loves classic era films. Some of these she is discovering for the first time, just like the audience that TCM hopes to engage with this series. It is hoped that her enthusiasm for a film coupled with Robert O's comments will help engage those who don't know very much, if anything at all, about classic film.
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> When they are just starting out watching a film, they don't want to be overwhelmed with information (though, we the film buffs beg to be overwhelmed) but with an idea of what the film is about.
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> There is five minutes at the top to talk about the film and five minutes at the end to talk about the film.
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> Which is not enough time to talk about the actual film but to talk about how the co-hosts feel about the film.
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> The *Essentials* is not designed, no matter how many here want it to be, to be an in-depth behind the scenes look at the spotlighted film.
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> That is a different series entirely and one that should be lobbied for because it fits with TCM Programming.
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> But, the *Essentials* is not going to be that series and to keep on ragging on Rose because of that, is not fair to her.
I agree with you completely.
[b]50 Years of Dizzy, Courtesy of Hitchcock[/b]
in Hot Topics
Posted
> {quote:title=CineSage_jr wrote:}{quote}
> As for Rafferty, his pieces in the NY Times don't carry an e-mail address at which he can be contacted and set straight (such correspondents, correspondents and columnists are, in my view, cowards for isolating themselves from criticism in this way).
You can still send a letter to the editor:
*Letters to the Editor*
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Letters for publication should be no longer than 150 words, must refer to an article that has appeared within the last seven days, and must include the writer's address and phone numbers. No attachments, please.
We regret we cannot return or acknowledge unpublished letters. Writers of those letters selected for publication will be notified within a week. Letters may be shortened for space requirements.
Send a letter to the editor by e-mailing letters@nytimes.com or faxing (212)556-3622.
You may also mail your letter to:
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