What are your biggest remaining video wants?

That Harlan Ellison story is crazy: I mean I get that the producers have budgets to work with and all, but I'm sure they could have cut something else in the budget to pay Ellison $700.00... Saying he was a part of the extras would have made for good print on the Blu-Ray packaging, since Harlan is quite a well known name (at least in certain fan/Sci-Fi circles)...

 

This is one I can sink my teeth into being a huge Pacino fan and a huge fan of the film.

Cruising has many offensive parts...what the hell is it supposed to do? How is one supposed to feel about murder, rape, and police brutality? If you are feeling good and not repulsed by parts of what you see, something is wrong and the film is not doing its job.

Many times, these protests that are going on, are either people that are completely and utterly clueless, or are feeling exactly as they should, and are going out and doing something about it (though often for the wrong reasons).

Kevin Smith protesting with the group when Dogma came out was a riot, and in many ways, what was going on with his film, is what was going on with Cruising. It is an artist portraying what he sees through a distorted prism to give a message, even if that message is meant to make us uncomfortable.

What I always find comical is that the police brutality will often not even get a nod, while the gay men in the film doing "shocking" acts get all press. Without getting the gorts jumping in, lets just say that nothing in the film was any worse than what is going on in the "normal" side of things and isn't batted an eye at. Take Vinegar Syndrome. I can't imagine transferring and looking for hours on end going frame by frame at points and seeing what is happening there. There is plenty to be offended by and without naming names of films and drawing attention, there is certainly some things that could very much be questioned.

Then again, the same goes for any film industry where artists have come out and straight up say that they were assaulted etc...

Cruising is a masterpiece for many reasons to me, but most of all it is because of its honesty. One of the key things that spoke to me, is how the killer had no face and how this kaleidoscope feel (because of the added visual) that spun off the track and landed straight on a place that gives you pause. That is what films should be made of.

 

I snipped this last part because I don't want to see the first part of my post deleted, but I still have something to say and I would like to say it when I am feeling it.

I love seeing a discussion be productive and many times over there is a chance to see this and it is often stopped cold because of personal feuds (I can include myself in this criticism) that end in personal attacks.

Sometimes I wish the "like" function was disabled. While it can and does show without responding that a post is appreciated, many times over it is has a result that is like kids in school showing support only for the people that they "like" as opposed to the actual post. I myself can "like" any poster with any point of view and I take pride that I really and truly have no "friends" but rather a community of strong minded individuals that bring all kinds of personalities to the table that have the capacity to get one common goal (I would hope) accomplished. We all learn from each other. I "like" out of reluctance, but at least I have expressed where I am coming from.

At least there isn't a dislike. I would probably have a negative score by this point, and there would be at least 5 people who would be putting it down to hell itself if given a chance to do multiples.

 

This story reminds me of the issue Noel Neill and Jack Larson had when asked by WB to do a commentary on The Adventures Of Superman DVD set.
WB (those cheap bastards) refused to pay them and so Noel and Jack did it gratis for their fans and their love of the show. How do I know...they both told me this in person.

 

What are your biggest remaining video wants?

As most kids do, I enjoyed cartoons. I never stopped enjoying cartoons. There are some (but, honestly, not many) good cartoons made today. In the early-to-mid 2010's there were some good kid's cartoons. I don't care if I'm approaching middle age, if I find a show enjoyable, I'll watch it. Besides, most "adult" cartoons are all comedy series full of gross-out gags and sex jokes. Last good adult animation I saw was the "Gen13" pilot, which came out as a direct-to-video movie.

Anime not included in that little rant.

Anyway, the vast majority of cartoons that I like have never been released on DVD. In fact, most of what I have found was released in the U.S or U.K. but not Australia because we're apparently not good enough. Although, we have also had a few releases that never came out overseas as well. But as for making a list, if I did that, this page would suddenly be five times as long. It's not just kid's cartoons, though. Most teenage shows from the last 30 years or so are rotting in various vaults at TV companies around the world.

Ah, maybe I'm just the odd one out and the market is so small there's no point in releasing any of the stuff. And as for streaming, well, obviously there's no money in that, so no point in putting stuff on those services. So it can just rot and perish in those vaults.

 

That's terrible! They should have at least given them some minimum "honorarium" payment, covered their expenses, and gave them truckloads of free videos and stuff. Disgraceful.

 

I hate corn beef sandwiches, watermelon, and cherry pie, and wouldn't eat them if you paid me $100. But the difference is, I'm not going to try to convince you I'm right and you're wrong if you think they're wonderful to eat. There is no arguing matters of taste.

 

I'd eat all three for nothing. Just sayin'.

 

Is it true that a good number of Criterion bonus feature participants are paid in free discs from the closet?

I also remember an interview in the late 90's when million selling recording artist Barenaked Ladies were give access to the Warner warehouse. Allowed to take as many personal copies of Warner releases as they wanted.

 

I honestly don't know. I did work on some Criterion projects in the 1980s, but the entire operation shifted to NYC once Janus Films took over the company in the 1990s. But I think this was a standard deal: give them a few hundred bucks and a bunch of free discs.

 

Thursday's Game (Gene Wilder) and Michael (John Travolta) on region 2 DVD or blu ray.
One that has quite recently come off the above list is 'One Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando) beautifully remastered on blu ray. Excellent!
Fantasy wishlist- The very early 'Doctor Who' and 'The Avengers' episodes which are currently missing from the archives. Well, one can dream...

 

I recently watched Sorcerer and To Live and Die in LA and I think I’ve put my finger on a major problem with Friedkin’s films. The characters are flat and humourless with no interesting dialogue and so you don’t care about the characters. If they live or die or fail or succeed means nothing. If you don’t like or care or take an interest in the lead characters then they don’t engage with the film. His films often feel flat because of this lack of engagement with the people on screen.

I’ve always wondered if the protesters understood Cruising as I’m convinced 99% of the audience can’t follow the movie. The story is so garbled, confused and poorly articulated that I’m surprised the protesters didn’t just shrug and go, ‘I can’t follow the story and I’ve no idea what’s going on in the second half so how can I get worked up about this piece of boring crap.’ For example is the meeting on the park bench with Richard’s father a fantasy or a flashback?

Also on the issue of the missing 40 minutes of X certificate footage. It clearly doesn’t exist. Why would a film company spend all that time, effort and MONEY shooting footage of limited narrative purpose that was never going to get past the censors? They wouldn’t. If there was 40 minutes of footage then that probably includes 30 minutes of clapperboards, multiple takes and in between mucking about with lights and performances etc.

 

My standard whines for Blu-Ray:

"Greed". Von Stroheim. When?? When can they finally do a full-0n 4K scan of the surviving version (or the 4-hr reconstruction) and get that film out there on disc? The work parts aren't getting any younger.

Bela Tarr. One of the most purely visual of film makers, and yet only "The Turin Horse" on Blu??? The man should have a luxury box by now...

"The Hill" w. Sean Connery.
"The Browning Version" w. Michael Redgrave.
"Tunes of Glory" with Alec Guinness.

For UHD disc:

Samuel Bronston's epic "Fall of the Roman Empire" 4-6K re-mastered from the cam negs if possible. It may not be a masterpiece of cinema, but it is a 65 mm-based production on a scale that would be unimaginable today, and it would be fantastic to see how much could be extracted from the original parts. "Ben Hur" gets all the love each time a new format comes around, time for Mr. B's "Empire" to shine as well.

And, out in 'dreamland', a 4K re-mastering of the beyond-huge Russian version of "War and Peace", ASSUMING the original shot-in-70-mm Russian negatives still exist, and are in something like workable form. The stories are many regarding this, but so far, no dice.

 

The Mirror, so I can complete my Andrei Tarkovsky collection. And since Criterion has the rights to it, and considering their recent releases of Stalker and Andrei Rublev, there’s reason for hope that it is incoming.

 

I realize these things are complicated, especially with rights issues or lack of good prints to work off of but there's something hilarious about Teenagers From Outer Space having a Bluray release while so many cinematic greats go wanting.

 

Oh yeah, I 'd also like The Carpetbaggers on Blu please.

 

That's a shame.

 

You know, I'm not a big tv guy, but we just watched the three seasons of Match Game on Amazon. 73' 75' 78'. Those celebrities they had, mostly dead now, were so funny, and yes, it takes me back to when I was a little kid.

 

Apparently, there was a lot of drinking on the shows that used celebrities. Hollywood Squares for instance.

 

I would not be surprised a bit.

 

I can tell you that Fox tried very hard to restore the 4-hour version of Cleopatra, and I personally went through every can of 35mm negative and IP and print the studio had in their Century City vault looking for the pieces. 15 years after I did all the work, they finally found the 65mm camera negative (!!!) in England, and that's where all the pieces had wound up. So they were eventually able to put that version together. It's very long, but at least a piece of cinema history was preserved.

 

Along with "FoTRE", "Cleopatra" should be a natural for a UHD disc. The BR of the restoration is praised as looking fantastic. Of course, the accountants may well say that there isn't enough of an audience for a UHD release of this film to make money...

 

Coming next year, a famous David Mamet film! But from a label that no one has heard of, so, will it be any better than a download?

https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Prisoner-Blu-ray-Steve-Martin/dp/B07KZGKXDN/

 

Those Superman DVDs look terrible. The worst is a great first season episode, The Stolen Costume. They used a beat to hell 16mm print that looks like **** stepped on. Here's the kicker. A fan, who has a mint perfect print of the episode, offered it to Warner to use. For FREE. They refused and used the garbage print they had.

 

That's one I haven't seen. There's never a guarantee on blu releases as for quality. But, being a newer film the negatives should be fine. I have seen some with weird color tints- green , blue that ruin it.