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Thursday, May 31, 2012
"HIGH SCHOOL" JUNE 1st 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Erin Brockovich Blu-ray jUNE 5TH 2012
e story of Erin Brockovich-Ellis (as she's now known) seems tailor-made for the movies. The heroine is bold, brash and memorable. She goes from obscurity, debt and near-starvation to success and respectability, and she does so by helping others in a classic David-and-Goliath struggle (or "David and what's-his-name", as she says in the film). And the villain of the piece isn't just a big corporation going about its business, but the entire world of conventional wisdom that assumes "little" people should behave and do as they're told.
By the time the film was released in 2000, Brockovich had already established herself as an effective investigator of toxic torts with her work for California lawyer Ed Masry on behalf of the residents of Hinkley, California, against Pacific Gas & Electric . The film, based on that case, so burnished her credentials that a cottage industry arose of experts devoted to debunking Brockovich's work against PG&E and her reputation in general. Even though PG&E was still subject to a clean-up order from California for the Hinkley pollution, articles appeared regularly that PG&E shouldn't have had to pay large sums to the town's inhabitants. One epidemiologist generated a Washington Post article in 2010 arguing that the cancer rate in Hinkley was perfectly normal. The article has been much cited, but it's no longer available in the Post's online archive. Maybe someone figured out that this particular epidemiologist, who was something of a crusader, achieved his results by factoring in all forms of cancer, including those not associated with the hexavalent chromium discharged by PG&E into the ground water. But I digress.
Efforts to undermine Brockovich only serve to highlight the magnitude of what she and Masry accomplished in the PG&E case. Toxic tort cases are notoriously difficult to prove, because the essential element of causation is so hard to demonstrate.Brockovich and Masry assembled a sufficiently compelling case that PG&E settled for large sums, whereas initially they were offering little more than nuisance value. To put it differently: Brockovich and Masry forced PG&E to take the Hinkley residents seriously.
At bottom, that's what Erin Brockovich is about, and the theme is so thoroughly realized that the film will remain compelling long after any controversy over PG&E's actions has disappeared. Julia Roberts won the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of the title character, and contrary to what some dissenters voiced at the time, the award wasn't a sop to a reigning box office champ. The role required Roberts to stretch in ways that no part has before or since. Among other things, she had to risk being thoroughly dislikeable, forgoing the thousand-watt smile (for the most part) and the infectious laugh in exchange for a foul mouth and a bulldozing ruthlessness about getting what her character wanted no matter who stood in her way.
The core of Erin Brockovich is the volatile partnership between Erin (Roberts) and her employer, Ed Masry (Albert Finney, who has never been better). "I really hate you sometimes, I really do", Masry says to her, just after they've met with PG&E's flunky from the claims department, and it's dawned on Masry that Erin has landed him in a tough, risky battle. But he's laughing as he says it. Masry wouldn't have become a plaintiff's lawyer if he didn't enjoy a good fight.
Erin meets Masry when she retains him to sue an ER doctor who slammed his Jaguar into her car as she was leaving a disappointing job interview. It's a small case in the scheme of things, but not to Erin, who incurred major debt for her medical treatment. When the case goes badly (whether through Erin's poor behavior or Masry's lack of preparation is unclear), Erin pressures him into giving her a job as a legal assistant. The other women in Masry's office immediately resent her for her provocative attire and pushy attitude.
The turning point in Erin's life comes by pure chance. She's given a box of papers for what's described as a pro bono real estate matter and told to organize them. When no one can be bothered to explain to her why files for land sales in the small town of Hinkley are full of medical records (and it's a good question), she makes her own inquiries and discovers why PG&E is trying to buy up all the homes in Hinkley: The ground water is contaminated with hexavalent chromium, an anti-corrosion agent used in cleaning the cooling towers at PG&E's nearby compressor station—and also a known carcinogen. Sure enough, many current and former residents of Hinkley are suffering from cancer and other ailments.
After a bumpy start (Masry thinks she's been goofing off and fires her), Erin and Masry sue PG&E. Erin becomes the principal researcher, as well as friend and liaison to the Hinkley plaintiffs. The same "unprofessional" style that so offends the staff in Masry's office is an asset in Hinkley, where the quickest way to alienate people is to act like a typical lawyer. When Masry brings on big time co-counsel to share the labor and the financial burden of a contingency case (because the attorneys advance all costs), the new lawyers make the mistake of trying to bypass Erin. The people in Hinkley react badly and are on the verge of bolting from the case, until Masry and Erin call a town meeting and Masry lets Erin go door to door to restore their faith.
The film doesn't skimp on showing the personal toll exacted by Erin's commitment to the cause and the long hours she spends collecting information and maintaining client loyalties. The most obvious casualty is her relationship with her latest boyfriend, the biker George (Aaron Eckhart), but that's hardly a surprise. Erin's early resistance to George, not to mention her two failed marriages, makes it immediately obvious that she isn't the sort of person to sacrifice career opportunities for the sake of a relationship. Whether or not one approves of that attitude, it's a quality Erin shares with plenty of men. But the more poignant price is the one paid by her own children, which becomes clear when Erin's son, Matthew asks why his mom has to look out for a kid from Hinkley. Why can't the kid's own mom do it? Erin gives an answer that appears to satisfy Matthew, but she herself isn't wholly satisfied.
The script by Susannah Grant and the direction by Steven Soderbergh do a fine job of paring down the complexities of mass toxic tort litigation to the essentials so that they can get to the film's real story, which is Erin's determination to speak up on behalf of powerless people who are pushed around. (It's payback for all the times when Erin has felt the same way.) A lot of lawyers, especially plaintiffs' lawyers, started out with the same ideal, but it often disappears with age, routine and the practical necessities of running a business. Ed Masry was obviously a firebrand once, and working with Erin reconnects him with that part of himself. It's that shared passion that allows these otherwise wildly dissimilar individuals to work well together.
The most famous scenes in the film are the ones where Erin tells off somebody—whether PG&E's lawyers or her own officious co-counsel—but the best scenes are those between Erin and Masry, as they go from being strangers who find each other incomprehensible to partners who play off each other's strengths. Even in confrontations with third parties, the funniest sight in the frame is usually Masry's face, because Albert Finney so thoroughly grasped the dynamic of their partnership that he's able to show every flicker of Masry's reaction to Erin's profanity-laced tirades. More often than not, he can barely restrain the laughter. It's fitting that the final exchange of the film involves Masry getting even for all the times Erin has balled him out, right back to when he represented her in the traffic accident case. As he builds to his conclusion with the practiced ease of an experienced cross-examiner, you can see Masry savoring every second, and when he's finished, he practically dances out of the room. And why not? He's just done the impossible. He's left Erin Brockovich speechless.
Universal previously released Erin Brockovich on HD DVD. While the Blu-ray has obviously been remastered, due to the inclusion of lossless audio, it's unclear whether a new transfer has been done. In any case, the 1080p, VC-1-encoded Blu-ray is acceptable but nothing to get excited about. The film was the last of Soderbergh's on which he used an independent cinematographer, Ed Lachman, who shot Soderbergh's previous film, The Limey. Lachman is especially skilled at a highly stylized, artificial style, which is why he's a favorite collaborator of Todd Haynes but for Erin Brockovich, he maintained a more realistic look in keeping with the "true story" element of the film. The notable exception is the pervasive sickly yellow tint in the Hinkley scenes, which suggests the inescapable taint in the environment.
Detail is quite good, as are black levels. Where the transfer suffers is in minor but pervasive sharpening that detracts from the film-like appearance one expects from the best Blu-rays. The sharpening isn't so severe as to create obvious edge halos, but it does make the image appear more digital and "processed" than it should. Nor does the sharpening appear to be an attempt to compensate for detail lost through noise reduction or high frequency filtering, since plenty of fine detail remains. Rather, it looks like a bad habit left over from an older generation of telecine colorists, whose practices were developed for DVD and smaller viewing screens than are found in the average home theater today. I don't think the issue is serious enough to warrant recommending against the disc, but it's enough to merit comment.
The soundtrack was mixed by Larry Blake, who is the sound guru for all of Steven Soderbergh's films, and it reflects Blake's usual approach, which is sparing in its use of discrete rear channel effects, but sensitive in its achievement of mood and tone. For Erin Brockovich, Blake relied heavily on the atmospheric score by Thomas Newman, which uses synthesized sounds almost as sound effects rather than instruments, so that it seems to blend in and out of the mix. As presented on the Blu-ray's DTS-HD MA 5.1 track, the score has wonderful presence and depth; it feels like it's reaching out and enveloping the listening space. Dialogue is always clear, and there are some ambient sounds appropriate to various environments tucked gently into the mix. This soundtrack may not be "demo" material, but it blends seamlessly with the film's images to tell an effective story, which is all one can ask.
To the extent any supplements from Universal's 2000 DVD have been omitted, they can be found on the included DVD, which appears to be identical to the 2000 release. The extras listed below are those on the Blu-ray.
Soderbergh was nominated for the best director Oscar for Erin Brockovich but lost—to himself, for Traffic. No doubt Academy voters were wowed by Soderbergh's virtuoso control of the latter film's multi-stranded narrative, but I've always found the precision balancing act of Erin Brockovich to be a more impressive demonstration of the director's art. There were so many places where the tone could have gone wrong: by making the townspeople too pathetic, PG&E and its representatives too villainous, the alienating co-counsel too insensitive, the Brockovich kids too cloying, the heroine herself too offensive. With so many opportunities for the film to fall off the cliff, it takes assured directorial guidance to keep everyone on the straight and narrow. Highly recommended, even if it is a Universal catalog title.
By the time the film was released in 2000, Brockovich had already established herself as an effective investigator of toxic torts with her work for California lawyer Ed Masry on behalf of the residents of Hinkley, California, against Pacific Gas & Electric . The film, based on that case, so burnished her credentials that a cottage industry arose of experts devoted to debunking Brockovich's work against PG&E and her reputation in general. Even though PG&E was still subject to a clean-up order from California for the Hinkley pollution, articles appeared regularly that PG&E shouldn't have had to pay large sums to the town's inhabitants. One epidemiologist generated a Washington Post article in 2010 arguing that the cancer rate in Hinkley was perfectly normal. The article has been much cited, but it's no longer available in the Post's online archive. Maybe someone figured out that this particular epidemiologist, who was something of a crusader, achieved his results by factoring in all forms of cancer, including those not associated with the hexavalent chromium discharged by PG&E into the ground water. But I digress.
Efforts to undermine Brockovich only serve to highlight the magnitude of what she and Masry accomplished in the PG&E case. Toxic tort cases are notoriously difficult to prove, because the essential element of causation is so hard to demonstrate.Brockovich and Masry assembled a sufficiently compelling case that PG&E settled for large sums, whereas initially they were offering little more than nuisance value. To put it differently: Brockovich and Masry forced PG&E to take the Hinkley residents seriously.
At bottom, that's what Erin Brockovich is about, and the theme is so thoroughly realized that the film will remain compelling long after any controversy over PG&E's actions has disappeared. Julia Roberts won the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of the title character, and contrary to what some dissenters voiced at the time, the award wasn't a sop to a reigning box office champ. The role required Roberts to stretch in ways that no part has before or since. Among other things, she had to risk being thoroughly dislikeable, forgoing the thousand-watt smile (for the most part) and the infectious laugh in exchange for a foul mouth and a bulldozing ruthlessness about getting what her character wanted no matter who stood in her way.
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The core of Erin Brockovich is the volatile partnership between Erin (Roberts) and her employer, Ed Masry (Albert Finney, who has never been better). "I really hate you sometimes, I really do", Masry says to her, just after they've met with PG&E's flunky from the claims department, and it's dawned on Masry that Erin has landed him in a tough, risky battle. But he's laughing as he says it. Masry wouldn't have become a plaintiff's lawyer if he didn't enjoy a good fight.
Erin meets Masry when she retains him to sue an ER doctor who slammed his Jaguar into her car as she was leaving a disappointing job interview. It's a small case in the scheme of things, but not to Erin, who incurred major debt for her medical treatment. When the case goes badly (whether through Erin's poor behavior or Masry's lack of preparation is unclear), Erin pressures him into giving her a job as a legal assistant. The other women in Masry's office immediately resent her for her provocative attire and pushy attitude.
The turning point in Erin's life comes by pure chance. She's given a box of papers for what's described as a pro bono real estate matter and told to organize them. When no one can be bothered to explain to her why files for land sales in the small town of Hinkley are full of medical records (and it's a good question), she makes her own inquiries and discovers why PG&E is trying to buy up all the homes in Hinkley: The ground water is contaminated with hexavalent chromium, an anti-corrosion agent used in cleaning the cooling towers at PG&E's nearby compressor station—and also a known carcinogen. Sure enough, many current and former residents of Hinkley are suffering from cancer and other ailments.
After a bumpy start (Masry thinks she's been goofing off and fires her), Erin and Masry sue PG&E. Erin becomes the principal researcher, as well as friend and liaison to the Hinkley plaintiffs. The same "unprofessional" style that so offends the staff in Masry's office is an asset in Hinkley, where the quickest way to alienate people is to act like a typical lawyer. When Masry brings on big time co-counsel to share the labor and the financial burden of a contingency case (because the attorneys advance all costs), the new lawyers make the mistake of trying to bypass Erin. The people in Hinkley react badly and are on the verge of bolting from the case, until Masry and Erin call a town meeting and Masry lets Erin go door to door to restore their faith.
The film doesn't skimp on showing the personal toll exacted by Erin's commitment to the cause and the long hours she spends collecting information and maintaining client loyalties. The most obvious casualty is her relationship with her latest boyfriend, the biker George (Aaron Eckhart), but that's hardly a surprise. Erin's early resistance to George, not to mention her two failed marriages, makes it immediately obvious that she isn't the sort of person to sacrifice career opportunities for the sake of a relationship. Whether or not one approves of that attitude, it's a quality Erin shares with plenty of men. But the more poignant price is the one paid by her own children, which becomes clear when Erin's son, Matthew asks why his mom has to look out for a kid from Hinkley. Why can't the kid's own mom do it? Erin gives an answer that appears to satisfy Matthew, but she herself isn't wholly satisfied.
The script by Susannah Grant and the direction by Steven Soderbergh do a fine job of paring down the complexities of mass toxic tort litigation to the essentials so that they can get to the film's real story, which is Erin's determination to speak up on behalf of powerless people who are pushed around. (It's payback for all the times when Erin has felt the same way.) A lot of lawyers, especially plaintiffs' lawyers, started out with the same ideal, but it often disappears with age, routine and the practical necessities of running a business. Ed Masry was obviously a firebrand once, and working with Erin reconnects him with that part of himself. It's that shared passion that allows these otherwise wildly dissimilar individuals to work well together.
The most famous scenes in the film are the ones where Erin tells off somebody—whether PG&E's lawyers or her own officious co-counsel—but the best scenes are those between Erin and Masry, as they go from being strangers who find each other incomprehensible to partners who play off each other's strengths. Even in confrontations with third parties, the funniest sight in the frame is usually Masry's face, because Albert Finney so thoroughly grasped the dynamic of their partnership that he's able to show every flicker of Masry's reaction to Erin's profanity-laced tirades. More often than not, he can barely restrain the laughter. It's fitting that the final exchange of the film involves Masry getting even for all the times Erin has balled him out, right back to when he represented her in the traffic accident case. As he builds to his conclusion with the practiced ease of an experienced cross-examiner, you can see Masry savoring every second, and when he's finished, he practically dances out of the room. And why not? He's just done the impossible. He's left Erin Brockovich speechless.
Erin Brockovich Blu-ray, Video Quality
Universal previously released Erin Brockovich on HD DVD. While the Blu-ray has obviously been remastered, due to the inclusion of lossless audio, it's unclear whether a new transfer has been done. In any case, the 1080p, VC-1-encoded Blu-ray is acceptable but nothing to get excited about. The film was the last of Soderbergh's on which he used an independent cinematographer, Ed Lachman, who shot Soderbergh's previous film, The Limey. Lachman is especially skilled at a highly stylized, artificial style, which is why he's a favorite collaborator of Todd Haynes but for Erin Brockovich, he maintained a more realistic look in keeping with the "true story" element of the film. The notable exception is the pervasive sickly yellow tint in the Hinkley scenes, which suggests the inescapable taint in the environment.
Detail is quite good, as are black levels. Where the transfer suffers is in minor but pervasive sharpening that detracts from the film-like appearance one expects from the best Blu-rays. The sharpening isn't so severe as to create obvious edge halos, but it does make the image appear more digital and "processed" than it should. Nor does the sharpening appear to be an attempt to compensate for detail lost through noise reduction or high frequency filtering, since plenty of fine detail remains. Rather, it looks like a bad habit left over from an older generation of telecine colorists, whose practices were developed for DVD and smaller viewing screens than are found in the average home theater today. I don't think the issue is serious enough to warrant recommending against the disc, but it's enough to merit comment.
Erin Brockovich Blu-ray, Audio Quality
The soundtrack was mixed by Larry Blake, who is the sound guru for all of Steven Soderbergh's films, and it reflects Blake's usual approach, which is sparing in its use of discrete rear channel effects, but sensitive in its achievement of mood and tone. For Erin Brockovich, Blake relied heavily on the atmospheric score by Thomas Newman, which uses synthesized sounds almost as sound effects rather than instruments, so that it seems to blend in and out of the mix. As presented on the Blu-ray's DTS-HD MA 5.1 track, the score has wonderful presence and depth; it feels like it's reaching out and enveloping the listening space. Dialogue is always clear, and there are some ambient sounds appropriate to various environments tucked gently into the mix. This soundtrack may not be "demo" material, but it blends seamlessly with the film's images to tell an effective story, which is all one can ask.
Erin Brockovich Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras
To the extent any supplements from Universal's 2000 DVD have been omitted, they can be found on the included DVD, which appears to be identical to the 2000 release. The extras listed below are those on the Blu-ray.
- Deleted Scenes (SD; 1.85, enhanced for 16:9; 30:07): These eighteen scenes (depending on how you count sequences composed of several distinct elements) represent only a portion of the trims necessary to reduce the film's first assembly to its current running time. Director Soderbergh discusses the editorial process in an optional commentary to theses scenes.
- Erin Brockovich: A Look at a Real Life Experience (SD; 1.33:1; 3:58): Interviews with the real Erin Brockovich and Ed Masry.
- Spotlight on Location: The Making of Erin Brockovich (SD; 1.33:1; 15:12): Starting with executive producer Carla Santos Shamberg, who shared a chiropractor with Brockovich, this short documentary traces the history of the project. Other interviewees include Brockovich, Masry, Soderbergh, Roberts and Finney.
- Theatrical Trailer (SD; 1.85:1, non-enhanced; 2:33): This trailer played widely in the summer before the film's release and effectively built anticipation.
- 100 Years of Universal: Academy Award Winners (HD, 1080p; 1.78:1; 9:35): A survey of Oscar-winning roles and films.
- 100 Years of Universal: The Lot (HD, 1080p; 1.78:1; 9:25): A tour of the studio backlot, with comments from numerous people who have worked there, including Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, Ron Howard, John Carpenter, John Landis and Phil Alden Robinson.
- pocketBLU
- My Scenes
- BD-Live
Erin Brockovich Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
Soderbergh was nominated for the best director Oscar for Erin Brockovich but lost—to himself, for Traffic. No doubt Academy voters were wowed by Soderbergh's virtuoso control of the latter film's multi-stranded narrative, but I've always found the precision balancing act of Erin Brockovich to be a more impressive demonstration of the director's art. There were so many places where the tone could have gone wrong: by making the townspeople too pathetic, PG&E and its representatives too villainous, the alienating co-counsel too insensitive, the Brockovich kids too cloying, the heroine herself too offensive. With so many opportunities for the film to fall off the cliff, it takes assured directorial guidance to keep everyone on the straight and narrow. Highly recommended, even if it is a Universal catalog title.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Snow White and the Huntsman review
In stark contrast to recent Snow White romp Mirror Mirror, this re-imagining of the fairy-tale is dark as thunderclouds, providing an ideal backdrop for Twilight star Kristen Stewart. She leads the charge against her evil stepmother, but Charlize Theron still outshines her in that role with a multifaceted performance. For her, the mirror has many faces.
When the Queen kills Snow White's father, the king, there's a sense of something more than pure evil driving her. There are flashbacks to a painful childhood, but these aren't necessary - and in fact, they're a touch crass - because it's already evident. She is suspicious of men who are so easily dazzled by her beauty, still she preserves it with magic because she feels it is her only power.
Snow White is forced to dig deeper for a sense of empowerment. She is literally face down in the mud, lost in the enchanted woods when she's discovered by the Huntsman - a grieving widower played with a boggling variety of accents by Chris Hemsworth. Sadly, his doltishness doesn't work as well for him.
The Huntsman leads the Queen's snivelling brother (Sam Spruell) to Snow White in the misguided belief that Her Evilness can bring his wife back from the dead. But Sanders plays this card too early on - before the Huntsman falls in love with Snow White - and thereby robs us of a meaty dilemma.
It's a bad decision compounded by the fact that there is no sexual tension between Stewart and Hemsworth. As the Prince of a nearby kingdom, Sam Claflin is supposed to be the third corner of a love triangle, but his presence barely registers at all. As a result, the story feels disjointed, as if scenes have been cut in a rush to get to the action.
The dwarves who help Snow White along the way (including likeably gruff turns by Ray Winstone, Ian McShane and Toby Jones) help to raise spirits, but humor is used sparingly. When it comes to spectacle, though, British director Rupert Sanders delivers in spades.
This, his first feature film (graduating from commercials) is chockfull of gorgeous, ethereal imagery and spellbinding effects - including the eerie sight of Theron withering with age and reverting to youth in a matter of seconds. Every shot is beautifully composed and Sanders is able to create an atmosphere that draws you into a scene. It's just that, once inside, there are no great reveals.
It may have been asking too much of the director to extrapolate a mythology of true depth and meaning from a simple children's fairytale. Only Theron comes close with her tragic portrayal of the Queen. Despite the gloomy pall that hangs so seductively over everything, this is pure light entertainment, which only goes to show that you shouldn't judge by appearances.bystellpapamichael
When the Queen kills Snow White's father, the king, there's a sense of something more than pure evil driving her. There are flashbacks to a painful childhood, but these aren't necessary - and in fact, they're a touch crass - because it's already evident. She is suspicious of men who are so easily dazzled by her beauty, still she preserves it with magic because she feels it is her only power.
Snow White is forced to dig deeper for a sense of empowerment. She is literally face down in the mud, lost in the enchanted woods when she's discovered by the Huntsman - a grieving widower played with a boggling variety of accents by Chris Hemsworth. Sadly, his doltishness doesn't work as well for him.
It's a bad decision compounded by the fact that there is no sexual tension between Stewart and Hemsworth. As the Prince of a nearby kingdom, Sam Claflin is supposed to be the third corner of a love triangle, but his presence barely registers at all. As a result, the story feels disjointed, as if scenes have been cut in a rush to get to the action.
The dwarves who help Snow White along the way (including likeably gruff turns by Ray Winstone, Ian McShane and Toby Jones) help to raise spirits, but humor is used sparingly. When it comes to spectacle, though, British director Rupert Sanders delivers in spades.
This, his first feature film (graduating from commercials) is chockfull of gorgeous, ethereal imagery and spellbinding effects - including the eerie sight of Theron withering with age and reverting to youth in a matter of seconds. Every shot is beautifully composed and Sanders is able to create an atmosphere that draws you into a scene. It's just that, once inside, there are no great reveals.
It may have been asking too much of the director to extrapolate a mythology of true depth and meaning from a simple children's fairytale. Only Theron comes close with her tragic portrayal of the Queen. Despite the gloomy pall that hangs so seductively over everything, this is pure light entertainment, which only goes to show that you shouldn't judge by appearances.bystellpapamichael
John Carter Blu-Ray June 5th 2012
"No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature." That's right, dear readers. Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the "Tarzan" and "Barsoom" serials and series, was the Michael Bay of early 1900s pulp fantasy and science fiction. Reading Burroughs isn't a stirring intellectual experience, especially in this day and age, and his flights of Mars-bounding fantasy haven't exactly withstood the test of time. Quaintly old fashioned, filled with the sort of strange beasts and four-armed aliens that now adorn every junior high artist's sketchbook, and relayed by a chummy, opinionated -- I've come this far, so I'll just say it -- occasionally racist narrator who insists on pausing the action to speak directly to his audience, it's surprising that so many filmmakers have worked so hard to keep the Barsoom torch burning over the last hundred years.
There's a certain early 20th century American nostalgia for Burroughs' work, sure -- largely fueled by affection for the author's "Tarzan" tales -- but, let's face facts, John Carter isn't Tarzan. Few people have heard of John Carter, making the film's title as unremarkable as its paint-by-number theatrical trailers. And without a known property, without an A-list actor to draw a crowd, without a world that looks unlike anything audiences have seen before, with a gravity-given semi-superpower that allows our hero to *gasp* jump really, really high and really, really far, is it any wonder that John Carter came and went without much buzz or fanfare? That Disney's $250 million early spring tent-pole only drummed up $72 million at the U.S. box office? And barely eeked out $270 million worldwide? Is it any wonder at all that John Carter fell flat on its face after leaping so high?
When former Confederate soldier and once-and-future Mars messiah John Carter (Taylor Kitsch, X-Men Origins: -- John Carter... J. Carter... JC... messiah... I know I'm missing something here... what am I missing? -- is transported to the Red Planet by an alien medallion, he finds himself caught up in a Civil War between the humanoid city-states of Zodanga and Helium. Carter's arrival coincides with the proposal of a peace treaty that hinges on Helium princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) marrying the Zodangan king, Sab Than (Dominic West). The princess, though, refuses, escapes and heads for the hills, where she meets one John Carter of Earth, who's just recently discovered that Barsoom's gravity allows him to leap tall buildings... ahem, great Martian chasms in a single bound. Eventually, after some convoluted political wranglings, Carter and Thoris elicit the help of the more distinctly alien Thark king, Tars Tarkas (Willem Defoe), and his daughter, Sola (Samantha Morton). Soon Carter finds himself fighting on the front lines, facing the villainous Matai Shang (Mark Strong, ever the token villain), and choosing between love on Barsoom and life on Earth.
Those looking for more ammunition in the war against George Lucas will adore John Carter, as it casts light on just how much material Lucas "borrowed" from Burroughs when dreaming up the Star Wars prequels. One of Carter's chief set pieces -- the arena battle -- is more than a little reminiscent of Anakin and Obi Wan's fight for freedom on the dusty red-desert planet of Geonosis, and the sense of déjà vu that accompanies it is unavoidable. Writer/director Andrew Stanton and co-writers Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon go to great lengths to sow seeds of passion and romance in the first chapter of what was meant to be a sweeping sci-fi saga, but so many elements of "A Princess of Mars" have been raided by so many filmmakers over the years that everything about John Carter is dishearteningly familiar. When the "Barsoom" serials and stories first gained popularity, they offered a fresh, dazzling vision of alien life on the red planet; a vision that captured the imagination of young readers and transported them to Mars, right alongside John Carter. That boundlessness, that creative spark, is missing from Stanton's adaptation, mainly because it's too faithful to Burroughs. There's nothing new here. Nothing truly alien. Nothing we haven't seen a hundred times before. Nothing is remotely engaging or intriguing. It's simply a classical tale told classically. Stanton and his writers have carefully stripped away the racism and altered tainted character arcs and subplots, thank God, but the movie is almost as antiquated and generic as the original stories have become.
That said, John Carter still works as popcorn-munching family fare and pure adventure-driven entertainment. Most adults will shrug their shoulders when Carter hurtles through the sky across the Martian plains; older kids, on the other hand, will beg for more. Most adults will yawn, weary from a sense of been-there, seen-that; kids will cheer as battles rage, laugh infectiously as Carter faces a pair of enormous white space-apes, and peek through their fingers as the Barsoom-bound hero races to save a princess, fights for the lives of thousands, and brings peace to an entire world. It doesn't make it a great film, as Burroughs would likely assert, but it makes for a fun two-hour ride. If, that is, you're able to shut off the critical centers of your brain, accept John Carter on its own terms, and settle for a fairly standard silver-screen Mars populated with cartoony, computer generated alien hordes. Kitsch and Collins are a touch stiff, but this isn't a movie about fine performances; it's a visual effects extravaganza. Had the same film come to be in the '50s or '60s, courtesy of Ray Harryhausen or his contemporaries, it would have been a stop-motion marvel. To his credit, Stanton plums Old Hollywood for inspiration and, as big and flashy as the film's visual effects try to be, the results ooze Old Hollywood grandeur and pseudo-Harryhausen style. In 2012, though, John Carter feels as if it's late for dinner by a good fifty or sixty years.
At least no one can fault Disney's otherworldly 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer for John Carter's woes. While the precision crafted presentation makes some of the film's more problematic CG shots that much more problematic, blame can't be assigned to the encode itself. Colors are warm, sun-bleached and striking, with strangely earthy alien-desert browns and yellows, dazzling golds, blazing reds, brilliant blues and deep, cavernous blacks. Skintones never falter either, under the hot glare of the Martian sun, below the planet's surface, or beneath the night sky. Detail is extraordinary as well; not so sharp as to suggest artificial means, but crisp, exacting and oh-so-filmic. Textures leap to life, refined and meticulously resolved. Edges are perfectly defined, without any significant ringing or aliasing to worry over. Delineation is revealing, pulling back the curtain of Barsoom's shadows just enough to get a glimpse of anything that lies within the darkness. And clarity and contrast are consistent and unwavering, leaving little room for criticism. Artifacting, crush, smearing and other issues are held at bay, and the tiny hints of banding that occur are so negligible and fleeting that it almost seems silly to mention them. Regardless of whether or not John Carter amazes you, its high definition presentation will do nothing less.
The adventure spills over into Disney's DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround track too. Ships pass overhead, giant monsters smash their meaty fists on the ground, Tharks thunder across the Martian plains, arena spectators roar, energy weapons disintegrate aircraft, flying chariots whiz past... John Carter delivers a wealth of sonic wonders. LFE output is bold and bewildering, taking every thoom and rumble to task. Even when the visuals don't feel properly grounded, the film's lossless mix lends welcome weight and brings the action back down to Earth (or Mars as it were). The rear speakers step up as well, expanding and enriching the Barsoom cities, the Martian deserts, and Michael Giacchino's genre score with unflinching ambient support, stirring directional effects, and exceedingly effective cross-channel pans. Meanwhile, dialogue, ever distinct and perfectly intelligible, stands strong and weathers any chaos Carter's enemies unleash. Voices are clear and nicely centered, distant shouts and screams emanate from every direction, and crowds envelop the listener and draw filmfans deeper into the world of Barsoom than Disney's 3D video presentation. Suffice it to say, John Carter sounds every bit as good as it looks, and fans will be delighted with the results.
John Carter was a box office flop, pure and simple. So can it redeem itself and find an audience on home video? I'm sure some will flock to the cozy comforts of its grand, Old Hollywood space adventure, but without outstanding performances, a stirring story or anything that might distinguish it and carry it through the ages, Stanton's throwback sci-fi romp is doomed to be just another CG spectacle; one that will continue to weaken as its CG becomes more and more archaic over the years. Thankfully, fans in the present can count on a fantastic Blu-ray release, complete with a gorgeous video transfer, an absorbing DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround track, and a high-quality selection of worthwhile extras. Ultimately, though, if you don't have a lot of cash to spare, I'd recommend renting John Carter before taking any leaps of faith.
There's a certain early 20th century American nostalgia for Burroughs' work, sure -- largely fueled by affection for the author's "Tarzan" tales -- but, let's face facts, John Carter isn't Tarzan. Few people have heard of John Carter, making the film's title as unremarkable as its paint-by-number theatrical trailers. And without a known property, without an A-list actor to draw a crowd, without a world that looks unlike anything audiences have seen before, with a gravity-given semi-superpower that allows our hero to *gasp* jump really, really high and really, really far, is it any wonder that John Carter came and went without much buzz or fanfare? That Disney's $250 million early spring tent-pole only drummed up $72 million at the U.S. box office? And barely eeked out $270 million worldwide? Is it any wonder at all that John Carter fell flat on its face after leaping so high?
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When former Confederate soldier and once-and-future Mars messiah John Carter (Taylor Kitsch, X-Men Origins: -- John Carter... J. Carter... JC... messiah... I know I'm missing something here... what am I missing? -- is transported to the Red Planet by an alien medallion, he finds himself caught up in a Civil War between the humanoid city-states of Zodanga and Helium. Carter's arrival coincides with the proposal of a peace treaty that hinges on Helium princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) marrying the Zodangan king, Sab Than (Dominic West). The princess, though, refuses, escapes and heads for the hills, where she meets one John Carter of Earth, who's just recently discovered that Barsoom's gravity allows him to leap tall buildings... ahem, great Martian chasms in a single bound. Eventually, after some convoluted political wranglings, Carter and Thoris elicit the help of the more distinctly alien Thark king, Tars Tarkas (Willem Defoe), and his daughter, Sola (Samantha Morton). Soon Carter finds himself fighting on the front lines, facing the villainous Matai Shang (Mark Strong, ever the token villain), and choosing between love on Barsoom and life on Earth.
Those looking for more ammunition in the war against George Lucas will adore John Carter, as it casts light on just how much material Lucas "borrowed" from Burroughs when dreaming up the Star Wars prequels. One of Carter's chief set pieces -- the arena battle -- is more than a little reminiscent of Anakin and Obi Wan's fight for freedom on the dusty red-desert planet of Geonosis, and the sense of déjà vu that accompanies it is unavoidable. Writer/director Andrew Stanton and co-writers Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon go to great lengths to sow seeds of passion and romance in the first chapter of what was meant to be a sweeping sci-fi saga, but so many elements of "A Princess of Mars" have been raided by so many filmmakers over the years that everything about John Carter is dishearteningly familiar. When the "Barsoom" serials and stories first gained popularity, they offered a fresh, dazzling vision of alien life on the red planet; a vision that captured the imagination of young readers and transported them to Mars, right alongside John Carter. That boundlessness, that creative spark, is missing from Stanton's adaptation, mainly because it's too faithful to Burroughs. There's nothing new here. Nothing truly alien. Nothing we haven't seen a hundred times before. Nothing is remotely engaging or intriguing. It's simply a classical tale told classically. Stanton and his writers have carefully stripped away the racism and altered tainted character arcs and subplots, thank God, but the movie is almost as antiquated and generic as the original stories have become.
That said, John Carter still works as popcorn-munching family fare and pure adventure-driven entertainment. Most adults will shrug their shoulders when Carter hurtles through the sky across the Martian plains; older kids, on the other hand, will beg for more. Most adults will yawn, weary from a sense of been-there, seen-that; kids will cheer as battles rage, laugh infectiously as Carter faces a pair of enormous white space-apes, and peek through their fingers as the Barsoom-bound hero races to save a princess, fights for the lives of thousands, and brings peace to an entire world. It doesn't make it a great film, as Burroughs would likely assert, but it makes for a fun two-hour ride. If, that is, you're able to shut off the critical centers of your brain, accept John Carter on its own terms, and settle for a fairly standard silver-screen Mars populated with cartoony, computer generated alien hordes. Kitsch and Collins are a touch stiff, but this isn't a movie about fine performances; it's a visual effects extravaganza. Had the same film come to be in the '50s or '60s, courtesy of Ray Harryhausen or his contemporaries, it would have been a stop-motion marvel. To his credit, Stanton plums Old Hollywood for inspiration and, as big and flashy as the film's visual effects try to be, the results ooze Old Hollywood grandeur and pseudo-Harryhausen style. In 2012, though, John Carter feels as if it's late for dinner by a good fifty or sixty years.
John Carter Blu-ray, Video Quality
At least no one can fault Disney's otherworldly 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer for John Carter's woes. While the precision crafted presentation makes some of the film's more problematic CG shots that much more problematic, blame can't be assigned to the encode itself. Colors are warm, sun-bleached and striking, with strangely earthy alien-desert browns and yellows, dazzling golds, blazing reds, brilliant blues and deep, cavernous blacks. Skintones never falter either, under the hot glare of the Martian sun, below the planet's surface, or beneath the night sky. Detail is extraordinary as well; not so sharp as to suggest artificial means, but crisp, exacting and oh-so-filmic. Textures leap to life, refined and meticulously resolved. Edges are perfectly defined, without any significant ringing or aliasing to worry over. Delineation is revealing, pulling back the curtain of Barsoom's shadows just enough to get a glimpse of anything that lies within the darkness. And clarity and contrast are consistent and unwavering, leaving little room for criticism. Artifacting, crush, smearing and other issues are held at bay, and the tiny hints of banding that occur are so negligible and fleeting that it almost seems silly to mention them. Regardless of whether or not John Carter amazes you, its high definition presentation will do nothing less.
John Carter Blu-ray, Audio Quality
The adventure spills over into Disney's DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround track too. Ships pass overhead, giant monsters smash their meaty fists on the ground, Tharks thunder across the Martian plains, arena spectators roar, energy weapons disintegrate aircraft, flying chariots whiz past... John Carter delivers a wealth of sonic wonders. LFE output is bold and bewildering, taking every thoom and rumble to task. Even when the visuals don't feel properly grounded, the film's lossless mix lends welcome weight and brings the action back down to Earth (or Mars as it were). The rear speakers step up as well, expanding and enriching the Barsoom cities, the Martian deserts, and Michael Giacchino's genre score with unflinching ambient support, stirring directional effects, and exceedingly effective cross-channel pans. Meanwhile, dialogue, ever distinct and perfectly intelligible, stands strong and weathers any chaos Carter's enemies unleash. Voices are clear and nicely centered, distant shouts and screams emanate from every direction, and crowds envelop the listener and draw filmfans deeper into the world of Barsoom than Disney's 3D video presentation. Suffice it to say, John Carter sounds every bit as good as it looks, and fans will be delighted with the results.
John Carter Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras
- Audio Commentary: Director Andrew Stanton and producers Jim Morris and Lindsey Collins deliver a spirited overview of the film, beginning with the project all but dropping into their laps and quickly moving on to its development, casting, production and visual effects. Great care is devoted to outlining the technical challenges, commenting on the live and computer-generated performances, and charting the 100-year journey from page to screen.
- Disney Second Screen Interactive Experience: Explore John Carter's journal with Disney's Second Screen app. Simply download the corresponding app to your iPad or laptop, sync the film with your device, and enjoy additional content.
- Deleted Scenes with Optional Director's Commentary (HD, 19 minutes): Ten deleted scenes are available (among them an alternate opening), but they're in various states of disrepair. Some have been cobbled together using near-finalized footage and storyboards, some have been hurried to the disc with incomplete visual effects, and some rely on overlays and pre-viz CG to convey the events of any given shot.
- 100 Years in the Making (HD, 10 minutes): Though much too short, this excellent featurette examines Edgar Rice Burroughs' life, the genesis and success of the original "John Carter" series, the many attempts filmmakers from almost every era made to bring his stories to the silver screen, and the eventual adaptation that finally made it into theaters some one-hundred years later.
- 360 Degrees of John Carter (HD, 35 minutes): This extensive day-in-the-shoot production diary pays a visit to the costume and makeup departments, follows Stanton as he goes about his routine, and watches as the cast and crew prepare to film several shots.
- Barsoom Bloopers (HD, 2 minutes): Not much to laugh at here. Move along.
John Carter Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
John Carter was a box office flop, pure and simple. So can it redeem itself and find an audience on home video? I'm sure some will flock to the cozy comforts of its grand, Old Hollywood space adventure, but without outstanding performances, a stirring story or anything that might distinguish it and carry it through the ages, Stanton's throwback sci-fi romp is doomed to be just another CG spectacle; one that will continue to weaken as its CG becomes more and more archaic over the years. Thankfully, fans in the present can count on a fantastic Blu-ray release, complete with a gorgeous video transfer, an absorbing DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround track, and a high-quality selection of worthwhile extras. Ultimately, though, if you don't have a lot of cash to spare, I'd recommend renting John Carter before taking any leaps of faith.
When "Jaws" Took Over The Movies
No one could have foretold, in the lazy, post-Watergate summer of 1975, that the Spielbergian tide swelling on the horizon would forever wash away tried-and-true traditions in the summer movie business. Nor could anyone have guessed how the success of a single film about a fish with very big teeth would lead to the kind of movie lineup we face this summer, going on 40 years later.
Summer 2012 is overripe with superhero fantasies, pumped-up fairy tales, video game and board game adaptations, cartoon movies umpteenth entries in brain-dead series and franchises. 'Tis the season of tentpoles, every one of them hankering to be this summer's "Jaws." Really, is this all there is?
"But," some fan boy protests, "isn't that what summer at the movies is supposed to be?" Yes, according to the marketing mavens and dealmakers and packagers, that's the plan. But it wasn't ever thus. Leaving Spielberg's big fish out of it, what was the summer slate of '75 like? How was it different from the kind of present-day cinematic fare we credit "Jaws" for spawning?
But first, how did the revolution begin? In 1975, against considerable odds and with myriad technical difficulties, the Zanuck-Brown unit of Universal Pictures and young hotshot director Steven Spielberg brought novelist Peter Benchley's summer 1974 page-turner "Jaws" to the screen. Universal opted for an unprecedented 450-theater release supported by a marketing blitzkrieg, and the great white shark movie rose swiftly to become Hollywood's new box-office champion. Summer tentpole madness was born.
It's important to note a difference between "Jaws" and the vast majority of "high-concept" tentpole offerings that followed: "Jaws" was a really good movie. Spielberg and company didn't just deliver the requisite suspense and scares. They crafted a film rich in atmosphere, sense of place and situation, and above all, character -- the sort of engagingly quirky humanity that has remained a hallmark of the director's best movies.
And yet already something was going amiss. During its opening week, audiences for "Jaws" sat riveted throughout the film, but by Week 2 a new pattern had set in. Younger viewers, especially, spent a lot of time chatting, even getting up from their seats to move around the auditorium and visit with friends. Whenever the time drew nigh for the shark's next nosh, they'd pause, watch the screen, and whoop with satisfaction. Then the shark took a deepwater break and socializing resumed.
The movie, with its stellar performances and shrewd rhythms, had essentially ceased to matter -- had been deconstructed into designated high points and dispensable filler. And a new style of film-watching had been culturally sanctioned.
"Jaws" looms as the most evolutionarily consequential event of that movie season, but if we set aside its spectacular box office and impact on the film industry, it was, for the consumers of the day, just one attraction among many in a diverse field.And instead of Aryan superheroes, comic-strip fantasy and the endless irreality of CGI, the bill of fare at the multiplexes was largely movies with true movie stars, real-life plotlines, adult genres and visions attentive to whole actions in the real world.
Let's start at the summit. The week before "Jaws" went into release, a cornucopia of a film opened on somewhat fewer than 450 screens across the land. Robert Altman's "Nashville" came on as a vibrant mashup of everything cockeyed, corrupt and glorious about modern American life, media, politics, show business, aspiration and desperation. Twenty-four"stars" careened through nearly as many converging or ricocheting story vectors during several days in the country-music capital. A viewer rarely had the luxury of feeling sure about which sector of the wide, wide screen to be watching most closely. No one had ever seen anything quite like it, even in the already notable, and notably iconoclastic, career of its director. "Nashville" and "Jaws" would end up as rivals for the Academy Award.
Social comment was more conventionally front and center in "Smile," Michael Ritchie's take on American competitiveness, as refracted most memorably through the gamesmanship of a smalltown beauty pageant. The movie's drugstore-Fotomat look was a brave choice for stellar cinematographer Conrad Hall, who heated up an entirely different color palette to catch the rotten-sunlight atmosphere of "The Day of the Locust." Director John Schlesinger's ambitious attempt to adapt Nathanael West's classic novel of '30s Los Angeles mostly misfired ("an embarrassingly constipated apocalypse," one critic observed), but at least a major Hollywood studio was willing to let him try it.
Comedy, too, was ambitious in '75. With his fourth directorial effort, "Love and Death," Woody Allen made merry with the classic Russian novelists, the ghost of Eisenstein, the music of Prokofiev -- and yeah, a smidge or two of Ingmar Bergman. "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" told the terrible truth about the killer Rabbit of Caerbannog and the Knights who say Ni, but to this very day the world remains unready for such revelations. With "The Return of the Pink Panther," director Blake Edwards and star Peter Sellers picked up the Inspector Clouseau thread abandoned after "A Shot in the Dark" more than a decade earlier; it was a return more fond than inspired, but a pleasant enough way to pass a summer evening.
In 1975 they still had movie stars worth the candle, even if it was an off year for some of them. Paul Newman reprised his private eye Lew Harper in "The Drowning Pool," but the already-dubious sassiness of 1966's "Harper" had turned sour and glum. Robert Mitchum, premier icon of RKO film noir, was summoned to play Philip Marlowe in a new version of Raymond Chandler's "Farewell, My Lovely" (RKO had done two in the 1940s, sans Mitchum). It looked -- and played -- more like a nostalgic magazine spread than a movie, but that wasn't Bob's fault. John Wayne had two late-career showcases: "Brannigan," featuring him as a fish-out-of-water Chicago cop cracking a case in London, and "Rooster Cogburn," for which he re-donned his "True Grit" eyepatch. The Western's ad campaign unofficially changed the title to "Rooster Cogburn ... and the Lady," stressing that Katharine Hepburn, no less, was the Duke's co-star in a movie willing to be mistaken for a distant cousin of "The African Queen."
The Western genre was more nobly served by writer-director Richard Brooks, whose "Bite the Bullet" bypassed cliché at every turn to recount a days-long, overland horse race. (Incidentally, the film made its Blu-ray bow last month.) "Bite the Bullet" was also one of three summer '75 titles boasting Gene Hackman in the lead. This superb actor become unlikely movie star also returned, like John Wayne, to the role that had brought him an Oscar: maverick cop Popeye Doyle of "The French Connection." Although it didn't repeat the 1971 film's success with the public or the motion picture Academy, "French Connection II," a sequel deeper and more powerful than its predecessor, benefited from director John Frankenheimer's gift for portraying troubled men on the edge of obliteration.
"Night Moves," Hackman's third movie of the season, won little attention, mixed reviews, and the bum's rush from the few screens showing it, yet this haunting Arthur Penn picture is the quintessential '70s film. Spiritual kin to the previous year's "Chinatown," the movie adopts the framework of a private-eye picture even as the mystery at its core keeps slipping away -- as if "Night Moves" were a Michelangelo Antonioni film in disguise, and there were enigmas of character, motivation and human nature no design could encompass. Hackman's performance as the P.I., a former football player with a marriage on the rocks and a sense of decency he'd be more comfortable without, may be his finest. (And Melanie Griffith, a very ripe 16, gives off whiffs of sad corruption.)
There's one more film to single out from summer '75, and although it comes nowhere near the brilliance or zeitgeist aptness of a "Night Moves" or a "Nashville," it was a moment to cherish then and now. "The Wind and the Lion" was a large-spirited adventure movie from an eternally adolescent writer-director, John Milius (a contemporary and colleague of Steven Spielberg, in fact) who clearly yearned to revive the grand scale of golden-age Hollywood epics. Telling a rousing period story loosely inspired by an actual 1904 incident, he undertook an amazing balancing act that entailed being mindful of the self-congratulatory hipness of the contemporary audience while also keeping faith with the red-blooded, unashamedly heroic tenets and passions of old-school, often jingoistic movie adventurism. And Milius pretty much pulled it off, surprising the viewer each time the viewer thought he had everything figured. The director succeeded in telling an adult version of a child's adventure story, but not adult enough to spoil it.
Key to the film's triumph was Sean Connery, savoring the juiciest star part in recent memory and making the most of it. His character (the Lion? The Wind?) is the Berber chieftain El Raisuli, prepared to match wits and wills against a distant enemy he will never meet (Brian Keith as U.S. president Teddy Roosevelt -- the Wind? The Lion?). Part of the beauty of the film and the performance is that we never for a moment forget Sean Connery; even his inconcealable Scots burr is flaunted as though it odd to be perfectly acceptable as an aural replica of what a cultured Berber chieftain talked like. Almost certainly no one was planning it, but the actor's performance in "The Wind and the Lion" marked the first installment in an unofficial trilogy completed by John Huston's "The Man Who Would Be King" (released Christmastime 1975) and Richard Lester's "Robin and Marian" (summer 1976): rich portraits of aging heroes confronting defeat and death with dignity and grace. It's the sort of cinematic genealogy that enables audiences, sharing the (never-CGI'd) spiritual and emotional journey through the films, to grow.
That's the summer that was in 1975, a halcyon season that delivered a veritable feast of great movies, movie stars and bigger-than-life adventures -- and yes, "Jaws," the first of the tentpole mutations that have come to dominate our summers, devouring box offices, crowding out other, less single-minded forms of filmmaking. Let 2012's summer feeding frenzy begin!
Summer 2012 is overripe with superhero fantasies, pumped-up fairy tales, video game and board game adaptations, cartoon movies umpteenth entries in brain-dead series and franchises. 'Tis the season of tentpoles, every one of them hankering to be this summer's "Jaws." Really, is this all there is?
"But," some fan boy protests, "isn't that what summer at the movies is supposed to be?" Yes, according to the marketing mavens and dealmakers and packagers, that's the plan. But it wasn't ever thus. Leaving Spielberg's big fish out of it, what was the summer slate of '75 like? How was it different from the kind of present-day cinematic fare we credit "Jaws" for spawning?
But first, how did the revolution begin? In 1975, against considerable odds and with myriad technical difficulties, the Zanuck-Brown unit of Universal Pictures and young hotshot director Steven Spielberg brought novelist Peter Benchley's summer 1974 page-turner "Jaws" to the screen. Universal opted for an unprecedented 450-theater release supported by a marketing blitzkrieg, and the great white shark movie rose swiftly to become Hollywood's new box-office champion. Summer tentpole madness was born.
It's important to note a difference between "Jaws" and the vast majority of "high-concept" tentpole offerings that followed: "Jaws" was a really good movie. Spielberg and company didn't just deliver the requisite suspense and scares. They crafted a film rich in atmosphere, sense of place and situation, and above all, character -- the sort of engagingly quirky humanity that has remained a hallmark of the director's best movies.
And yet already something was going amiss. During its opening week, audiences for "Jaws" sat riveted throughout the film, but by Week 2 a new pattern had set in. Younger viewers, especially, spent a lot of time chatting, even getting up from their seats to move around the auditorium and visit with friends. Whenever the time drew nigh for the shark's next nosh, they'd pause, watch the screen, and whoop with satisfaction. Then the shark took a deepwater break and socializing resumed.
The movie, with its stellar performances and shrewd rhythms, had essentially ceased to matter -- had been deconstructed into designated high points and dispensable filler. And a new style of film-watching had been culturally sanctioned.
"Jaws" looms as the most evolutionarily consequential event of that movie season, but if we set aside its spectacular box office and impact on the film industry, it was, for the consumers of the day, just one attraction among many in a diverse field.And instead of Aryan superheroes, comic-strip fantasy and the endless irreality of CGI, the bill of fare at the multiplexes was largely movies with true movie stars, real-life plotlines, adult genres and visions attentive to whole actions in the real world.
Let's start at the summit. The week before "Jaws" went into release, a cornucopia of a film opened on somewhat fewer than 450 screens across the land. Robert Altman's "Nashville" came on as a vibrant mashup of everything cockeyed, corrupt and glorious about modern American life, media, politics, show business, aspiration and desperation. Twenty-four"stars" careened through nearly as many converging or ricocheting story vectors during several days in the country-music capital. A viewer rarely had the luxury of feeling sure about which sector of the wide, wide screen to be watching most closely. No one had ever seen anything quite like it, even in the already notable, and notably iconoclastic, career of its director. "Nashville" and "Jaws" would end up as rivals for the Academy Award.
Social comment was more conventionally front and center in "Smile," Michael Ritchie's take on American competitiveness, as refracted most memorably through the gamesmanship of a smalltown beauty pageant. The movie's drugstore-Fotomat look was a brave choice for stellar cinematographer Conrad Hall, who heated up an entirely different color palette to catch the rotten-sunlight atmosphere of "The Day of the Locust." Director John Schlesinger's ambitious attempt to adapt Nathanael West's classic novel of '30s Los Angeles mostly misfired ("an embarrassingly constipated apocalypse," one critic observed), but at least a major Hollywood studio was willing to let him try it.
Comedy, too, was ambitious in '75. With his fourth directorial effort, "Love and Death," Woody Allen made merry with the classic Russian novelists, the ghost of Eisenstein, the music of Prokofiev -- and yeah, a smidge or two of Ingmar Bergman. "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" told the terrible truth about the killer Rabbit of Caerbannog and the Knights who say Ni, but to this very day the world remains unready for such revelations. With "The Return of the Pink Panther," director Blake Edwards and star Peter Sellers picked up the Inspector Clouseau thread abandoned after "A Shot in the Dark" more than a decade earlier; it was a return more fond than inspired, but a pleasant enough way to pass a summer evening.
In 1975 they still had movie stars worth the candle, even if it was an off year for some of them. Paul Newman reprised his private eye Lew Harper in "The Drowning Pool," but the already-dubious sassiness of 1966's "Harper" had turned sour and glum. Robert Mitchum, premier icon of RKO film noir, was summoned to play Philip Marlowe in a new version of Raymond Chandler's "Farewell, My Lovely" (RKO had done two in the 1940s, sans Mitchum). It looked -- and played -- more like a nostalgic magazine spread than a movie, but that wasn't Bob's fault. John Wayne had two late-career showcases: "Brannigan," featuring him as a fish-out-of-water Chicago cop cracking a case in London, and "Rooster Cogburn," for which he re-donned his "True Grit" eyepatch. The Western's ad campaign unofficially changed the title to "Rooster Cogburn ... and the Lady," stressing that Katharine Hepburn, no less, was the Duke's co-star in a movie willing to be mistaken for a distant cousin of "The African Queen."
The Western genre was more nobly served by writer-director Richard Brooks, whose "Bite the Bullet" bypassed cliché at every turn to recount a days-long, overland horse race. (Incidentally, the film made its Blu-ray bow last month.) "Bite the Bullet" was also one of three summer '75 titles boasting Gene Hackman in the lead. This superb actor become unlikely movie star also returned, like John Wayne, to the role that had brought him an Oscar: maverick cop Popeye Doyle of "The French Connection." Although it didn't repeat the 1971 film's success with the public or the motion picture Academy, "French Connection II," a sequel deeper and more powerful than its predecessor, benefited from director John Frankenheimer's gift for portraying troubled men on the edge of obliteration.
"Night Moves," Hackman's third movie of the season, won little attention, mixed reviews, and the bum's rush from the few screens showing it, yet this haunting Arthur Penn picture is the quintessential '70s film. Spiritual kin to the previous year's "Chinatown," the movie adopts the framework of a private-eye picture even as the mystery at its core keeps slipping away -- as if "Night Moves" were a Michelangelo Antonioni film in disguise, and there were enigmas of character, motivation and human nature no design could encompass. Hackman's performance as the P.I., a former football player with a marriage on the rocks and a sense of decency he'd be more comfortable without, may be his finest. (And Melanie Griffith, a very ripe 16, gives off whiffs of sad corruption.)
There's one more film to single out from summer '75, and although it comes nowhere near the brilliance or zeitgeist aptness of a "Night Moves" or a "Nashville," it was a moment to cherish then and now. "The Wind and the Lion" was a large-spirited adventure movie from an eternally adolescent writer-director, John Milius (a contemporary and colleague of Steven Spielberg, in fact) who clearly yearned to revive the grand scale of golden-age Hollywood epics. Telling a rousing period story loosely inspired by an actual 1904 incident, he undertook an amazing balancing act that entailed being mindful of the self-congratulatory hipness of the contemporary audience while also keeping faith with the red-blooded, unashamedly heroic tenets and passions of old-school, often jingoistic movie adventurism. And Milius pretty much pulled it off, surprising the viewer each time the viewer thought he had everything figured. The director succeeded in telling an adult version of a child's adventure story, but not adult enough to spoil it.
Key to the film's triumph was Sean Connery, savoring the juiciest star part in recent memory and making the most of it. His character (the Lion? The Wind?) is the Berber chieftain El Raisuli, prepared to match wits and wills against a distant enemy he will never meet (Brian Keith as U.S. president Teddy Roosevelt -- the Wind? The Lion?). Part of the beauty of the film and the performance is that we never for a moment forget Sean Connery; even his inconcealable Scots burr is flaunted as though it odd to be perfectly acceptable as an aural replica of what a cultured Berber chieftain talked like. Almost certainly no one was planning it, but the actor's performance in "The Wind and the Lion" marked the first installment in an unofficial trilogy completed by John Huston's "The Man Who Would Be King" (released Christmastime 1975) and Richard Lester's "Robin and Marian" (summer 1976): rich portraits of aging heroes confronting defeat and death with dignity and grace. It's the sort of cinematic genealogy that enables audiences, sharing the (never-CGI'd) spiritual and emotional journey through the films, to grow.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (also known simply as Madagascar 3) is an upcoming 2012 American computer-animated comedy film, produced by DreamWorks Animation, and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is the third installment of the series, following Madagascar and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, and it is the first 3-D film in the series. The film is directed by Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath and Conrad Vernon, and is set for general release on June 8, 2012. The film's world premiere was at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2012.
Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Melman the Giraffe, and Gloria the Hippopotamus set out to return to New York after escaping to Africa. Dependent on the mechanical know-how of the notorious chimpanzees and penguins, their plan inevitably goes awry and they find themselves stranded in Monte Carlo, where they try to escape Europe from animal control led by Captain Chantel DuBois by joining up with a traveling circus by chance. Led by the venerable Siberian tiger Vitaly, the animal-centered circus has seen better days. During the course of a tour through a series of European cities that ends in a fabulous big top in the heart of London, Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria help Vitaly the tiger, Gia the jaguar, and Stefano the sea lion, rediscover their passion for show business and reinvent circus performance.
Men In Black 3 Review
Fifteen years ago, Men in Black was released in theaters. It further cemented Will Smith‘s star status, gave his high-energy style a perfect foil with Tommy Lee Jones‘ dour-yet-playful performance, and provided a fun, upbeat experience that was delightfully silly and bizarre (I still crack up when Smith tells Jones, “Awww. You brought that tall man some flowers!”). Strangely, Men in Black 3 doesn’t draw strength from anything that made the original film an enjoyable experience. Instead, the latest sequel finds its heart in supporting characters, and letting special-effects makeup guru Rick Baker run absolutely wild as he swings his marvelous alien creations into the 1960s. It’s a shame that Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones’ performance, and the humor can’t match Baker’s bravado and creativity.
Alien assassin Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) has escaped from a space prison on the moon, and has his sights set on killing Agent K (Jones), the man who took Boris’ arm and whose actions led to the extinction of his violent and dangerous species. For Boris, it’s not enough to simply kill K; he must go back to 1969 and kill K in the past so that Boris’ species won’t be destroyed, and can invade Earth. When his plan is successful, Agent J (Smith) must travel one day further back in time, save the young Agent K (Josh Brolin), stop Boris and young Boris’ nefarious plot, thereby once again protecting the Earth from the scum of the universe.
The first act of Men in Black 3 is a surprisingly joyless experience with Jones and Smith acting like two kids who have been forced to go to summer school. The two characters have been partners for almost fourteen years, and yet they seem even further apart for no apparent reason other than the movie needs J to wonder why young K is so much more fun. When J finally travels back in time and teams up with young K, the movie develops a lighter, more buoyant tone, although it’s not from J. Smith’s shtick is no longer fresh prince , and in Men in Black 3 his performance feels redundant to the point of self-parody. When he looks at grotesque, giant fish alien inside a tank at a Chinese restaurant and says, “You must be from the planet daaaaaamn,” we don’t laugh. We cringe.
There aren’t many of these cringe-worthy moments, but there aren’t many laughs either. When J is walking through his new alternate universe, and doesn’t understand what’s going on, he thinks everyone at MIB HQ is playing a prank on him. “The prerequisite for the joke,” J tells MIB chief O (Emma Thompson), “is that it’s supposed to be funny.” The movie should have taken this piece of advice to heart. Occasionally a good joke will come along, but most of the laugh-lines land with a deafening thud.
Despite a dull first act, Smith’s phoned-in performance, and the flat comic dialogue, Men in Black 3 at least has some liveliness to offer. As the young K, Brolin channels Jones’ performance but makes it feel new, not only because the character is generally happier, but also because Brolin seems to be having fun with the experience. If Sony is looking to move the Men in Black franchise forward, they should let Brolin be the new lead and give him a new partner.
The other scene-stealer is Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays Griffin, an alien who can see all possible timelines. The character functions as a kind of plot-laxative designed to remedy the script problems that plagued the production in the middle of shooting. Sending in a screenwriter surrogate (he can see all outcomes and tells characters what to do and where to go) should come off as jarring and crass, but Stuhlbarg’s warm and charming performance makes Griffin the character we care about the most. And as for Clement, he gets to shout and wield a catchphrase, but he also gets a big boost from Rick Baker’s stellar make-up effects.
Baker won his fifth Best Makeup Oscar for the original Men in Black (he’s racked up seven to date), and he could be due for at least another nomination for his work here (it would be his thirteenth). Director Barry Sonnenfeld let Baker have carte blanche, and the makeup effect genius had a field day not only crafting aliens, but sending them through a 1960s filter. Baker uses the bright, psychedelic colors to come up with some particularly imaginative designs, but Boris is the standout. The character has disgusting skin tendrils that wrap around dark sunglasses, and hide a creepy insectoid that can fire lethal darts into his prey. If I were six-years-old, I would have nightmares about Boris the Animal.
Unfortunately, there’s simply not enough imagination and energy to go around. There have been three Men in Black movies, and all of them have the bad guy trying to get to a spaceship. There are also plot-holes and gimmicks that even Griffin can’t fix (the movie wants the joke of having a giant deneuralizer in the 1960s, but later we see that they have portable ones simply because they’re convenient for the plot). These kinds of shortcuts overshadow the proof that there’s still life left in the franchise, and it’s frustrating to see far too much reliance on aspects that no longer work or needed more polishing. The Men in Black aren’t dead. They’re just snoozing.by mattgoldberg
Rating: C-
Alien assassin Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) has escaped from a space prison on the moon, and has his sights set on killing Agent K (Jones), the man who took Boris’ arm and whose actions led to the extinction of his violent and dangerous species. For Boris, it’s not enough to simply kill K; he must go back to 1969 and kill K in the past so that Boris’ species won’t be destroyed, and can invade Earth. When his plan is successful, Agent J (Smith) must travel one day further back in time, save the young Agent K (Josh Brolin), stop Boris and young Boris’ nefarious plot, thereby once again protecting the Earth from the scum of the universe.
There aren’t many of these cringe-worthy moments, but there aren’t many laughs either. When J is walking through his new alternate universe, and doesn’t understand what’s going on, he thinks everyone at MIB HQ is playing a prank on him. “The prerequisite for the joke,” J tells MIB chief O (Emma Thompson), “is that it’s supposed to be funny.” The movie should have taken this piece of advice to heart. Occasionally a good joke will come along, but most of the laugh-lines land with a deafening thud.
The other scene-stealer is Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays Griffin, an alien who can see all possible timelines. The character functions as a kind of plot-laxative designed to remedy the script problems that plagued the production in the middle of shooting. Sending in a screenwriter surrogate (he can see all outcomes and tells characters what to do and where to go) should come off as jarring and crass, but Stuhlbarg’s warm and charming performance makes Griffin the character we care about the most. And as for Clement, he gets to shout and wield a catchphrase, but he also gets a big boost from Rick Baker’s stellar make-up effects.
Unfortunately, there’s simply not enough imagination and energy to go around. There have been three Men in Black movies, and all of them have the bad guy trying to get to a spaceship. There are also plot-holes and gimmicks that even Griffin can’t fix (the movie wants the joke of having a giant deneuralizer in the 1960s, but later we see that they have portable ones simply because they’re convenient for the plot). These kinds of shortcuts overshadow the proof that there’s still life left in the franchise, and it’s frustrating to see far too much reliance on aspects that no longer work or needed more polishing. The Men in Black aren’t dead. They’re just snoozing.by mattgoldberg
Rating: C-
Sunday, May 27, 2012
'Chernobyl Diaries': Reviews
"Chernobyl Diaries" arrives in theaters this weekend on nearly 2,500 screens, but you'd be forgiven for not realizing it exists. After all, with "Men In Black 3" and Will Smith sucking up all the Internet bandwidth, who has time for some cheapie horror movie about a bunch of young adults who visit Prypiat, the Ukrainian city that was abandoned following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986?
Critics haven't been kind to "Chernobyl Diaries," which comes from the mind of "Paranormal Activity" producer Oren Peli. The film has a mere 42 precent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and that number could drop lower as more reviews file.
"'Chernobyl' is about as lazy, routine and hilariously absurd as horror movies get," wrote Geoff Berkshire in his D+ review for HitFix. "It also has the added baggage of appearing exploitative of a real life tragedy (while also uncomfortably recalling Japan's nuclear disaster just last year, which made worldwide headlines six months before this film went into production)."
About that exploitation: "It is terrible that such a tragic event as Chernobyl is being sensationalized in a Hollywood horror film," a representative for Friends Of Chernobyl Centers U.S. told TMZ this week. "Thousands of people have died and over 400,000 people were evacuated from their homes. Today over 5 million people still live on contaminated land. The horror is not mutants running around, the real horror is the effect that Chernobyl continues to have on the lives of millions who have been devastated physically, emotionally and economically."
Still if there is a silver lining to be drawn from "Chernobyl Diaries," it could be that the film makes more people interested in researching the disaster, which its trailer presents as something people might not even remember.
"'Chernobyl Diaries' did inspire me to come home and read more about the Chernobyl disaster and the city of Prypiat on Wikipedia," wrote Jordan Hoffman for ScreenCrush, "so that I consider time well spent."by christopherrosen
Critics haven't been kind to "Chernobyl Diaries," which comes from the mind of "Paranormal Activity" producer Oren Peli. The film has a mere 42 precent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and that number could drop lower as more reviews file.
"'Chernobyl' is about as lazy, routine and hilariously absurd as horror movies get," wrote Geoff Berkshire in his D+ review for HitFix. "It also has the added baggage of appearing exploitative of a real life tragedy (while also uncomfortably recalling Japan's nuclear disaster just last year, which made worldwide headlines six months before this film went into production)."
About that exploitation: "It is terrible that such a tragic event as Chernobyl is being sensationalized in a Hollywood horror film," a representative for Friends Of Chernobyl Centers U.S. told TMZ this week. "Thousands of people have died and over 400,000 people were evacuated from their homes. Today over 5 million people still live on contaminated land. The horror is not mutants running around, the real horror is the effect that Chernobyl continues to have on the lives of millions who have been devastated physically, emotionally and economically."
Still if there is a silver lining to be drawn from "Chernobyl Diaries," it could be that the film makes more people interested in researching the disaster, which its trailer presents as something people might not even remember.
"'Chernobyl Diaries' did inspire me to come home and read more about the Chernobyl disaster and the city of Prypiat on Wikipedia," wrote Jordan Hoffman for ScreenCrush, "so that I consider time well spent."by christopherrosen
Saturday, May 26, 2012
E.T Blu-Ray Release Getting Closer
Universal Studios has released a new trailer for the highly anticipated Blu-ray release of Steven Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), starring Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore and Peter Coyote. A preliminary release date is yet to be revealed, but the promo trailer indicates that the release will be out in Fall 2012.
As usual, Blu-ray.com will bring you more details about this upcoming release as soon as such become available.by blu-ray.com
Friday, May 25, 2012
"The Possession" Release Date: August 31, 2012
"HONDO" Blu-Ray
The days when the only way to enjoy classic Hollywood films was to wait until they aired on television, which became like major events in themselves. Miss it, and you're out of luck for some time, like the hapless Al, though it wasn't as comical when it happened in real life. 'Hondo,' which is deservedly considered one of John Wayne's best films, was notorious for being shown on television only once in a few years and wasn't even made available on home video until several months after Al's second effort to watch it, but beyond that little amusing tangent, which made for a couple of really funny TV episodes, there's good reason 'Hondo' is such a great and beloved western.
Based on a short story by Louis L'Amour just before it was expanded into a bestselling novel, the film broke some minor boundaries with its tale about the complicated relationship of white settlers and the Native-American people of the Southwest. By the time the film was released in theaters, the western had become a common film type geared towards younger audiences and the weekend matinee crowd. Farrow's adaptation reintroduced certain dramatic themes to the genre which attracted adults, namely the lack of a single, easily-identifiable bad guy and that the native people were wronged and betrayed by the government. The kids, of course, weren't excluded, as there's tons of excitement and action to be had, and it comes with the sort of wild-west adventure typically expected from a film starring The Duke.
Speaking of which, Wayne delivers one of his most memorable performances as the half-Apache loner, Hondo Lane, en route to the U.S. Cavalry to deliver a dispatch. He's a skilled but complex gunfighter, caught between two worlds always at odds with one another. He's also an honest, straightforward person, which gains him some respect from others while being romantically admired from afar by the heartbroken rancher Angie Lowe (Geraldine Page in her first of many Oscar-nominated performances). What makes Hondo so fascinating is the fact that he appears to live more comfortably amongst the settlers but possesses the utmost respect for Native Americans. It's a vastly different attitude than the one usually expressed by the customary gunslinger of the time, and the film is better for it.
This reverence continues in the portrayals of the Chiricahua Apache people. Although other characters in the story speak of them as an enemy, Vittorio (Michael Pate) and his men are never actually shown as such. In fact, it's the white settlers throughout which are unlikable and somewhat untrustworthy, like the churlish Ed Lowe (Leo Gordon) or the overly-eager, wet-behind-the-ears Lt. McKay (Tom Irish). The narrative never devolves into a clear, black-and-white divide of the good guy versus the bad guy, of who's right and who's wrong. On the surface, John Farrow's 'Hondo' is your standard western, or better yet, your average John Wayne western. But really it's not as it does make the attempt at an honest portrait of the West. Even if it's an inoffensive and wholesome depiction, the endeavor is at the heart of the production, which is partly what makes the classic film — passionately cherished by Al Bundy — a great and admirable one.
As a side note, the movie was also filmed with a 3D theatrical release in mind, so when characters are flinging objects at the camera during action sequences, that's the explanation. Given that fact, the cinematography is one of the loveliest and most stunning for a 3D presentation. It's a real shame we're not allowed that option for our home theaters.
The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats
Paramount Home Entertainment brings 'Hondo' to Blu-ray on a Region Free, BD50 disc inside a blue eco-lite keepcase with a glossy cardboard slipcover. At startup, the disc goes straight to the main menu with full-motion clips and music. The package includes an advert for a Delta Vacations contest.
by m.enois duarte
Based on a short story by Louis L'Amour just before it was expanded into a bestselling novel, the film broke some minor boundaries with its tale about the complicated relationship of white settlers and the Native-American people of the Southwest. By the time the film was released in theaters, the western had become a common film type geared towards younger audiences and the weekend matinee crowd. Farrow's adaptation reintroduced certain dramatic themes to the genre which attracted adults, namely the lack of a single, easily-identifiable bad guy and that the native people were wronged and betrayed by the government. The kids, of course, weren't excluded, as there's tons of excitement and action to be had, and it comes with the sort of wild-west adventure typically expected from a film starring The Duke.
 |
Speaking of which, Wayne delivers one of his most memorable performances as the half-Apache loner, Hondo Lane, en route to the U.S. Cavalry to deliver a dispatch. He's a skilled but complex gunfighter, caught between two worlds always at odds with one another. He's also an honest, straightforward person, which gains him some respect from others while being romantically admired from afar by the heartbroken rancher Angie Lowe (Geraldine Page in her first of many Oscar-nominated performances). What makes Hondo so fascinating is the fact that he appears to live more comfortably amongst the settlers but possesses the utmost respect for Native Americans. It's a vastly different attitude than the one usually expressed by the customary gunslinger of the time, and the film is better for it.
This reverence continues in the portrayals of the Chiricahua Apache people. Although other characters in the story speak of them as an enemy, Vittorio (Michael Pate) and his men are never actually shown as such. In fact, it's the white settlers throughout which are unlikable and somewhat untrustworthy, like the churlish Ed Lowe (Leo Gordon) or the overly-eager, wet-behind-the-ears Lt. McKay (Tom Irish). The narrative never devolves into a clear, black-and-white divide of the good guy versus the bad guy, of who's right and who's wrong. On the surface, John Farrow's 'Hondo' is your standard western, or better yet, your average John Wayne western. But really it's not as it does make the attempt at an honest portrait of the West. Even if it's an inoffensive and wholesome depiction, the endeavor is at the heart of the production, which is partly what makes the classic film — passionately cherished by Al Bundy — a great and admirable one.
As a side note, the movie was also filmed with a 3D theatrical release in mind, so when characters are flinging objects at the camera during action sequences, that's the explanation. Given that fact, the cinematography is one of the loveliest and most stunning for a 3D presentation. It's a real shame we're not allowed that option for our home theaters.
 |
The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats
Paramount Home Entertainment brings 'Hondo' to Blu-ray on a Region Free, BD50 disc inside a blue eco-lite keepcase with a glossy cardboard slipcover. At startup, the disc goes straight to the main menu with full-motion clips and music. The package includes an advert for a Delta Vacations contest.
by m.enois duarte
| Overall Grade |  |
(click linked text below to jump to related section of the review) | |
| The Movie Itself |  |
| HD Video Quality |  |
| HD Audio Quality | |
| Supplements |  |
| High-Def Extras |  |
| Bottom Line | Recommended |
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Cowgirls 'N Angels
" Mighty Fine" May 25th 2012
"Moonrise Kingdom" May 25,2012
Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story
Blu-Ray Releases MAY 22-29th
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One of this week's most anticipated new releases is the Season Two set of Sherlock. Ever since its 2010 BBC premiere, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss' reimagining of the classic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle literary creation has attracted large audiences in both England and the United States, and chief to the program's success is the relationship between Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman's beleaguered Dr. Watson. Their banter is so spirited - and their performances so enormously likable - that they ensure Sherlock's appeal extends past mere narrative modernization or reboot.
Season Two covers some of Holmes' most beloved exploits; "A Scandal in Belgravia" details his first interaction with the devious Irene Adler; "The Hounds of Baskerville" finds Holmes and Watson facing a foe possessing potentially supernatural attributes; and "The Reichenbach Fall" sees the conflict between Holmes and criminal mastermind Moriarty build to a deadly confrontation.
After Sherlock, the week's notable releases come in the form of catalog reissues. Walt Disney Home Entertainment continues its handling of Studio Ghibli's output with a Blu-ray edition of the 1986 animated classic Castle in the Sky. In director Hayao Miyazaki's follow-up to his Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the acclaimed filmmaker tells the story of Sheeta, an orphaned girl whose interest in her family's history leads her on an often dangerous search for a mystical floating castle.
With Castle in the Sky, one can watch Miyazaki developing his gifts in real time, improving even on the elements that made Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind so engaging. The characters are more likable, the animation is more fluid, and the action scenes have an even more lovely grandeur. In many ways, Castle in the Sky set the standard of excellence that the director maintained from My Neighbor Totoro all the way through 2009's Ponyo.by josh katz
Also noteworthy is Blue Underground's HD version of A Bullet for the General. This rousing Spaghetti Western examines the partnership between a Mexican outlaw (Gian Maria Volonté, A Fistful of Dollars) and an enigmatic American expatriot (Lou Castel, The American Friend), and it offers Western aficionados everything they could want from the genre: gorgeous cinematography, terrific performances (including one from Klaus Kinski), and plenty of violence.
However, Damiano Damiani layers his film with meaning that extends past the surface thrills. Damiani pokes fun at the traditional Spaghetti Western tropes, satirizing its most prevalent clichés, and he also adds in some bracing political commentary. Franco Solinas - the screenwriter behind both Burn! and The Battle of Algiers - penned A Bullet for the General, and he uses the picture to study the revolutionary mindset, with a particular emphasis on how hard it is to subordinate one's own worldly interests in favor of a grand ideal.
Finally, this coming Tuesday is the street date of Warner Home Entertainment's Lethal Weapon Collection. Previously available only though region-free foreign imports, this set bundles together all four entries in director Richard Donner's blockbuster action franchise, two of which - Lethal Weapon 3 and Lethal Weapon 4 - are just now receiving their North American Blu-ray debuts.
The Lethal Weapon series has seen its appeal wane in the twenty-five years since the first film's premiere, thanks to both steadily declining sequel quality and star Mel Gibson's recent tabloid issues. Nevertheless, divorced from controversy, the films still entertain. Even the lesser sequels have good elements, and all benefit from Donner's practically-staged action sequences and the sterling buddy chemistry between Gibson and Danny Glover.
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