Day: June 4, 2009

Tony Scott‘s The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (Columbia, 6.12) , which I saw last night, is an unquestionably better film — more rousing and flavorful, zippier and craftier — than the 1974 Joseph Sargent original. I haven’t time to do a review and that would be stretching my agreement anyway, but it’s a very satisfying summer-crime fuckall flick. A retread, yes, but with an attitude all its own…pow!

Scott’s Pelham is first-rate crackerjack escapism because (a) it knows itself and is true to that, (b) it’s content to operate in its own realm (i.e., isn’t trying to top the chase sequences, effects and explosions in the last big urban actioner…it’s not playing that game) and (c) it’s just a solid all-around popcorn movie,full of focus and discipline. Scott exhibits the same precision and intelligent pizazz he used for Man on Fire and Crimson Tide. Is Pelham some kind of drop-to-your-knees golden fleece movie? No — just another urban slam-banger but smart, clever and muscle-car sweet.

The New York subway-kidnap hostage thriller has more intricate plotting than the ’74 film, richer characterizations of the top MTA guy (Denzel Washington in the old Walter Matthau role) and top-dog hostage-taking badass (John Travolta in the Robert Shaw role) and a slew of supporting performances across the board that are much more vivid and interesting than those from the class of ’74, and at the same time less broad and farcical.

Plus the Travolta and Washington characters are more psychologically layered; more work has put into their rationales and backstories. In hindsight Matthau’s performance seems humdrum and almost glib in comparison to Washington’s. And Travolta…my God, he’s a friggin’ madman in this thing! Fierce, irate, flying off the handle, lunging — his finest bad guy since the “”ain’t it cool?” guy in Broken Arrow. And James Gandolfini‘s New York Mayor isn’t the buffoon figure from the ’74 film — he’s playing a rationale, practical, somewhat full-of-shit politician, and he does so with an unforced attitude..

The 2009 Pelham was made by a guy who understands and respects the original, and who sincerely wanted to make a better film — and he did! Integrating it very nicely and believably into a 2009 realm. And very grippingly and thrillingly. There’s no boredom to be had, and it never overcranks it. And if I say any more this’ll be a review, which I promised not to write.

So David Carradine is gone, found hanging in a Bangkok hotel room. And he wasn’t that old either (i.e., plenty of gas in the tank). I’m sorry for the guy and his loved ones. He was working on a film so it’s not like he was destitute, but then he apparently had flirted with the idea of offing himself from time to time.

His last public appearance, to my knowledge, was at Santa Monica’s Aero theatre during a panel discussion following a screening of Hal Ashby‘s Bound for Glory, in which Carradine played Woody Guthrie.

I don’t have a favorite Carradine performance per se, but I’ve always had a soft spot for his work in Larry Cohen‘s Q — The Winged Serpent. His Kill Bill performance never did it for me.. But I liked him in Martin Scorsese‘s Boxcar Bertha. I don’t mean to sound facile. The man is dead and I’m sorry. Better to hang out than to fade away.

Film in Focus coverage of Tuesday night’s Manhattan premiere of Sam Mendes‘ Away We Go, which I couldn’t attend due to seeing The Hangover and then going to the Nurse Jackie premiere.

The forthcoming 45th anniversary Dr. Strangelove Bluray (Sony Home Video, 6.16) is more than a visual disappointment — it’s a flat-out burn. I paid $35 bills for it yesterday afternoon and I’m seething. It’s hands down the worst grainstorm experience since Criterion’s The Third Man because Sony’s preservation and restoration guy Grover Crisp went the monk-purist route in the remastering and retained every last shard of grain in the original film elements. No John Lowry-styled finessing whatsoever.

Capture from the new Dr. Strangelove Bluray, out on 6.16.

Captured from the 2001 “special edition” DVD.

I understand and respect the fact that Dr. Strangelove (’64) was always intended to look somewhat grainy. I realize that the inside-the-B-52 scenes used source lighting and that the combat footage outside Burpleson Air Force base was supposed to resemble newsreel footage, and these conditions were meant to result in stark and unprettified images. Which is fine. But I’ve been watching this film for decades and the Bluray version is easily the grainiest rendering yet. The grain isn’t just noticable — it’s looks much more explicit.

I’m speaking of an aesthetic concern common to all Bluray discs of older black-and-white films, which is that Bluray masterings and Bluray viewings on any decent-sized plasma or LCD screen (I have a 42-incher) tend to make the untreated natural grain elements in an older monochrome film seem much more vivid and distinct. The result is that this new Bluray version could almost be called a kind of remake. It’s Strangelove reshot in a low-lying Egyptian swamp with Peter Sellers, Sterling Hayden, George C. Scott, Slim Pickens and Keenan Wynn covered in swarms of micro-sized mosquitoes.

For comparison’s sake I popped in my favorite Dr. Strangelove DVD, which is the 2001 “special edition” with the full 1.33 to 1 aspect ratio intact. My Sony Bluray player and 42-inch plasma screen makes this version look a bit grainier than it did on my old 36-inch Sony analog flatscreen, but at least the grain isn’t amplified and underlined like it is on the Bluray, and the alternating 1.33 to a and 1.66 to 1 aspect ratio means you’ve got a taller and fuller (i.e., more aesthetically correct) image to boot.

Repeating the rant and caveat emptor — the visual textures contained in the new Strangelove Bluray make it a total visual rip. Do not buy this thing. If you have an old set with a seven-year-old DVD player or a newish plasma or LCD with a Bluray player, buy the 2001 “special edition” Strangelove and stay with it. It obviously doesn’t have the image density that the Bluray version has but you’ll be seeing more of what Stanley Kubrick originally shot and it looks reasonably acceptable in terms of sharpness and monochrome tonal correctness, etc.. And it looks somewhat less grainy and is therefore less problematic. Not a perfect rendering but better than the Bluray.

I obviously haven’t addressed the Bluray extras — the documentaries, the intro section and chaptering graphics, the packaging, etc. All of these elements are fine, entertaining, attractive, stimulating, first-rate.

The text of President Barack Obama‘s speech today in Cairo. I found it well phrased, intelligent, empathetic but frank, morally correct, etc. The haters on all sides will pause for a few minutes out of respect before reverting right back to square one