dvd report from florida

[blunted by community]

CASABLANCA:
i just finished watching IT. haven't watched it in years. i was knocked out. what a great film. bogart is a megastar. ingred bergman has an incredible talent for making her eyes water, and making one nostril flare. or is it flair?? anyway, she had that nostril going. when the germans are in rick's and they are singing their anthem, and lazlo approaches the house band and gets them to play the french anthem, it was really emotional. i'm getting chills now writing about it. i can imagine in ww2 america, people in the theaters must have been on their feet cheering.

this is the highly touted new transfer, and bonus disc. there is no commentary track. the transfer looks as good as it looked every time i saw a glimpse of it switching channels, and the bonus disc is nothing special.

TRIUMPH OF THE WILL
excellent. the dvd looks good, and there is more nazi crap in it then what is on my vhs copy. there is a commentary track, but most of the time the guy is just parroting the text instead of giving the subtext, which is what the viewer wants. he says, "here are the nazis shaving." well, i can see that.

GLENN GARY GLENROSS
bonus disc blows. the commentary track on the movie blows. of course, the movie kicks ass.

KEY LARGO
no extras, but it looks great.

RIO BRAVO
no extras, but it does not need them. the movie looks great

MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE and THE SEARCHERS
both transfers look incredible, a few interesting extras.

THE WHO AT ISLE OF WIGHT
excellent. great sound, and they are a solid band

THE NEW LED ZEPPELIN DISC
incredible. almost 2 hrs of live concert footage and only a bit was from the awful THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME. however, page does get a bit overbearing with that violin bow

THE MAKING OF ELECTRIC LADY LAND
from rhino. this is a 4 star offering.

also got 2 killer sinatra concert dvds, but can't think right now what the heck the titles are.

[Cole]

I don’t know, Blunto. My recollection is that “The Song Remains the Same” was pretty good. With the exception of the Danmarks Radio program, I was relatively disappointed with the recent Led Zeppelin DVD’s.

For a very interesting film showing a rock group from that era, “Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii” is definitely worth watching, and was recently released on DVD. I didn’t know this when I first watched it years ago, but the cinematography is by Willy Kurant who was of course the cinematographer for “The Immortal Story” and “The Deep.” Artistically speaking, it’s one of the most impressive rock videos I’ve seen.

[Cole]

…as to Key Largo and Casablanca, both good Bogart films. I just watched him the other night in “To Have and Have Not.” A superb actor he was. Bogart could make any ordinary, conventional Hollywood film seem great

[mteal]

I liked SONG REMAINS THE SAME too, and have it on LD. I've been thinking about that new Zeppelin DVD set, but haven't gotten it yet. PINK FLOYD AT POMPEII is another one of my favorites, which I'd like to see on DVD soon- ECHOES I in particular is stunning. That's interesting info about Willy Kurant, I had no idea. Speaking of Pink Floyd, I was reading a website recently about Jodorowsky's planned film of DUNE, with Orson Welles set to play Baron Harkonnen and Salvador Dali (!) as the emperor, and many other great talents involved, including Floyd to do the music. Could've been a great film, but then I suppose it could have been a disaster too, like Lynch's Dune. Anyway, it's too bad Welles had to settle for Manowar instead of Pink Floyd.

As far as other new DVDs go, MGM's release of the 1940 THIEF OF BAGHDAD was released with not much fanfare at $14.95, and it doesn't have much in the way of extras, but the transfer is immaculate and the colors are ripe to bursting.

[blunted by community]

the zep dvd i got is not a set, it's just one dvd. the playing is strong, and surprised me because i expected it to be so-so, but i love the band so i took a shot, and was pleased. it has that denmark radio show concert. it has some footage with page looking like a skeleton, wearing white pants and a baby blue shirt, and the version of kashmeer in that concert kicks.

i never liked the playing on THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME. first time i saw it was at a midnight show and i fell asleep.

their road manager, steve cole wrote in his book that they had everything planned. they would do that tour, and end the tour with a 2 or 3 day show at madison square garden, and that is where the filming would be done. the train of thought was that by the end of the tour everything that could go wrong would be worked out, and the show would be great. the one thing they did not count on is that the band discovered heroin on that tour and by the madison square garden shows that THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME were edited from they were messed up.

i liked everything about THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME except the playing. all the back stage stuff was great.

their manager, the big guy with the odd looking beard, was a thug, and had no reservations about using violence to get the band's money. a friend was in a band and played the same club zeppelin played on their first tour of america, but they were THE NEW YARDBIRDS then, and he said the first 3 days the band was there that big guy with the odd beard, peter grant, had beaten the crap out of a series of customers because the band looked different from american bands, and some of the guys in the audience laughed at them. after that the word got around the club and no one laughed at them. there is nothing like beating your audience into submision.

i love Pink Floyd, will have to check out that dvd. i did not like the movie THE WALL. but the concert that aired on direct tv, THE WALL, with the later version of the band, wow, very effective. it affected me. i got the message. the wall seperating the band from the audience.

mteal, yes, DUNE, what a mess. it was like lynch was trying to do sheakespeare in space.

and i love TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. i need to get that dvd.

[dmolson]

Blunted,
have you checked out any other of Warners' 2-disc classic series, 'Yankee Doodle Dandy', 'Treasure of Sierra Madre', 'the Adventures of Robin Hood'? As with Casablanca, the production values really shine as tho made yesterday, with bonus pieces like classic Looney Tunes, documentaries and footage!
Also got my stinkin' paws on the 35th anniversary of 'Planet of the Apes', 2-disc set with tonnes of extras. Haven't watched it yet...
That scene in Casablanca -- actually the whole episode of the second night at Rick's, with the Bulgarian couple, the simmering anger between Ilsa and Rick, the smerm of Maj Strausser and the gambling 'Shocked!' luck of Capt Renaud -- just trumps everything. When Lazlo steps out of Rick's office and hears the german 'Rhine' song, marches down to the small band and demands they play 'les marseille', a lump hits my throat.
Of course, its the first Hollywood edition of the 'Battle of the Bands'....

[Sir Bygber Brown]

I was very impressed with the Casablanca transfer, and i also thought the special features were great. I thought Carrotblanca was lots of fun, and the bogey docos are great.

[blunted by community]

yankee doodle dandy i don't like

the treasure of the sierra madre 2 disc set kicks ass.

wellesfan highly recomended the robin hood 2 disc set.

the problem i had with the casablance supplenent was that i had seen all that before and i wanted something more clinical, something based more on analysis than retelling the facts, but yes, bogey documentaries are ALWAYS great.

and just thinking about that moment when lazlo gets the band to play the french anthem wells up my eyes and i also get a lump in my throat. the next day i was trying to tell mrs blunted about what i experienced, and i could not without my voice cracking and eyes almost begin to tear. before this the only other movie that made me do that was THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE.

maybe i need to try yankee doodle dandy again

[Cole]

To go back to Pink Floyd briefly, “Live at Pompeii” is nothing like the film “The Wall.” In “Live at Pompeii” you get to see the band playing at a Roman coliseum, and the music is that “trippy” pre-Dark Side of the Moon stuff. The cinematography is very interesting as it blends in footage of the band playing music with images of ancient Roman society in and around Pompeii. As Mteal indicates, it’s especially captivating to watch during their rendition of “Echoes,” that quintessential example of “drug music.”

I also thought “Dune” was a dud. It was quite a disappointment coming as it did in the wake of “Erarsurehead” and “Elephant Man.” But a version of Dune with Welles, Dali, and music by Pink Floyd? Wow, that sounds like my kind of film!

[mteal]

I guess you could call Jodorowsky the "Chilean Orson Welles", although he sounds alot screwier. I've seen two of his films, SANTE SANGRE and EL TOPO, both of which were quite strange, but with haunting moments, especially EL TOPO. I've heard these are available on Japanese DVD, but I'm not sure how to track them down. The story of how his Dune film collapsed is an interesting one. Here are a couple of links:

http://www.hotweird.com/jodorowsky/dune.html
http://www.hotweird.com/jodorowsky/disinfo.html

[Glenn Anders]

Dear mteal: I did not know that Korda's 1940 THE THIEF OF BAGDAD [sic] had been released on DVD. Along with the ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, it is probably the most beautiful and accomplished of pre-World War II Technicolor films. No doubt Welles hoped to capture some of its magic, in documentary form, when he filmed Carnival in Rio for IT'S ALL TRUE, two years later.

We should never forget that CASABLANCA was co-written by Welles' alumnus Howard Koch ("The War of the Worlds," 1938).

I'm sure you are right, Blunted, about the commentary on TRIUMPH OF THE WILL. Too many commentaries on these DVD's are just winged. I always remember Don Taylor's drunken comments on the Laserdisc of NAKED CITY (1948): "Dorothy [Hart] looks a little bloated here; her time of the month; they had to engineer her figure a bit." Etc.

Riefenstahl's OLYMPIA didn't fare well on Laserdisc either. They ruined the original frame and cut bits out.

THE WONDERFUL, HORRIBLE LIFE OF LENI RIEFENSTAHL (Muller, 1993) is the best commentary on her films.

Glenn

[blunted by community]

glenn, that's hillarious about NAKED CITY. i would have prefered a drunken commentary track on TRIUMPH OF THE WILL to the one it has now. i'd like toi hear some drunken ww2 vet, "look at these bastards. know how many i killed? hundreds. see that fella right there, i killed him too!"

the problem is these people don't get paid much to do these commentary tracks, and they are not given a lot of time to get it right; one pass and get the hell out of the studio before we have to pay for a third hour of studio time

THE WONDEFUL HORRIBLE LIFE OF LF i also got with TRIUMPH but did not burn myself a copy. it did not show enough of the lighting the nazi party used to conquor germany. they basically won over germany with geometry, and lighting. goerbels was the lightman, and geometric choreographer.

history channel showed a 3 part series called HITLER'S WOMEN. one of those parts was LR, and it really indicts her as a nazi, using her own letters to hitler, and the wonderful horrible life doesent address this issue, which i think is importnt. but the important part to me was that in HITLER'S WOMEN they showed a lot of the lighting that influenced welles.

would love to find documentaries of the neuremberg rallies.

while watching TRIUMPH, for the first time i noticed 1 out of 4 germans had a hitler mustache, women included! and you get so see the goofiest looking nazi of all time. i swear he looks like peewee herman in a storm trooper uniform. ever spot this guy?

i was not a big fan of kordas THEIF OF BAGDAHD, i much prefer the fairbanks/walsh version, but this new tranfer sounds interesting. BLACK NARCISUS has colors bursting off the screen. so vibrant looks like a disney cartoon. and has a marty scorsese and michael powell commentary. kind of hard to go wrong with such and offering.

casablanca, what snappy dialogue, i loved it. "i don't mind a parasite, i just object to a cut-rate one." "i came to casablance because of the waters." "but we are in the
desert." "i was misinformed."

i object to refering to koch as a welles amumni. kotch was his own man before, and after welles. he was a welles employee for a short time is the most politically correct way to discribe him.

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Robert Altman's commentary tracks are pathetic. That's why they got him in a group for the Gosford Park commentary. I think he thinks the movie speaks for itself, and we can all notice this and that in the movie by ourselves (because when he does speak its only to point out something in the movie he thinks we might not have noticed), so his production designer has to keep prompting him with ideas for what to talk about next. There are LOTS of big silences!

Richard Shickel does fantastic commentary tracks - you'd love them Blunted. Filled with analysis and insight - i particularly enjoyed his commentary for Once Upon a Time in America.

One of my favourite commentary tracks is the one Spinal Tap do on their special edition DVD. Its very well written and prepared - an extended series of jokes, in character, giving opinions of different people's alterior motives during the movie etc. Lots of fun.

The Shrek commentary is also lots of fun - its the three creative minds behind it in a sort of group chat. They have a ball, and its good to listen to.

[blunted by community]

what is the shrek commentary? the shrek is a movie?

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Did you not see Shrek? Shrek the ogre and his pal donkey go on a rampage through fairy-tale land satirising fairy tale myths to pieces. Its loads of fun. Eddie Murphy does the voice of Donkey, Mike Myers is Shrek and Cameron Diaz is the princess they have to rescue. You know?