Day: February 14, 2020

Will Criterion Teal-ize “The Great Escape”?

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Now that Criterion has established itself as an outfit that likes to add teal tints to highly regarded classics (Teorema, Midnight Cowboy, Bull Durham, Sisters), I’m naturally dreading what might happen with their forthcoming Great Escape Bluray, which will street on 5.12.

Make no mistake — with four teal-tinted disasters to their credit, a Criterion Bluray of a late 20th Century color film is now something to be feared.

To go by DVD Beaver captures that I’ve posted three or four times, what they’ve done with the above four titles is nothing short of vandalism. I’m especially concerned with DVD Beaver‘s Gary W. Tooze having complained seven years ago that MGM’s 2013 Great Escape Bluray was “a little heavy on the teal.”

Even if Criterion doesn’t screw the colors up, their 4K remastering almost certainly won’t deliver a “bump” to John Sturges’ 1963 war classic. I’ve seen this film ten or twelve times, most recently a restored projected version at the 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival, and it just doesn’t look all that extra–level. It never did and it never will. Daniel Fapp‘s 35mm cinematography is perfectly fine but except for two or three sequences that were either shot in fog or tinted misty-gray, there’s nothing about his widescreen visuals that really stand out.

I don’t know why Criterion is even releasing a 4K digital restoration, but God forbid they”ll make it look worse than even before.

“Underwhelming Great Escape“, posted on 4.27.13: “I caught yesterday afternoon’s TCM Classic Film Festival screening of The Great Escape, and I’m sorry to say that it was a pleasant but no-great-shakes experience.

“John Sturges‘ classic World War II action drama has been remastered for a forthcoming Bluray (due May 7th) and I was assuming that the DCP version would make this 1963 film look and sound a little spiffier and brassier and more eye-filling than it did the last time I saw it in a theatre, which was sometime in the ’80s.

“Especially, you know, if the DCP guys scanned the original negative and were given the funding from MGM Home Video to do an extra nice job.

“I’m kidding, of course. MGM Home Video is renowned as a bargain-basement outfit. They don’t want to spend a dime more than they have to. If MGM Home Video ran an airline you wouldn’t want to fly with them, trust me. The result is that they probably scanned an inter-positive rather than the original Great Escape negative with an order to do the best job they could within a tight budget. I don’t know any budgetary facts but what I saw on the big Chinese screen looked like a handsomely-shot film that had been mastered by the Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company.

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BB 2020

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Woke progressive purist twitter is currently doing what it can to weaken if not destroy Michael Bloomberg‘s chances of wrangling the Democratic nomination. Earth to WPPT: Stop-and-frisk, okay, but the redlining complaints are misleading. The 2008 financial collapse came about largely because predatory banks began offering home loans to people who clearly didn’t financially qualify — did anyone see The Big Short? Among the underqualified were African Americans and other loan recipients of color.

WPPT has already gone to work on Pete Buttigieg and drawn a fair amount of blood (too moderate, not gay enough, weak with POCs). And WPPT has done everything it can to promote Bernie Sanders, who of course will lose to Donald Trump if he comes the Democratic nominee. With Biden and Warren all but finished, only Amy Klobuchar has yet to cope with the WTTP takedown treatment.

One way or another, the combined forces of WPPT and voters of color will almost certainly give us another four years of Donald Trump. Thanks, fellas. I despise you with all my heart.

What Democratic ticket would I like to see at this point? Bloomberg-Buttigieg. Sure to be hated by WPPT, but they’d definitely defeat The Beast.

“Have A Little Courage, That’s All”

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A person quickly glancing at today’s Rotten Tomatoes summary might lump Downhill and Fantasy Island together as roughly equal bad greenies. That would be an incorrect perception. Because Downhill (though admittedly a questionable film to see on Valentine’s Day) really isn’t half bad. Especially if you’re able to divest yourself of the idiotic presumption that because it stars Will Ferrell and Julia Louis Dreyfus it must be a laugh riot.

In no way, shape or form is Downhill a “comedy”. At best it offers a few chuckles. At the same time it’s not my idea of a problematic film — it’s smart, attuned, watchable. And it really ends brilliantly. Is it as good as Ruben Ostlund‘s 2014 original? Some say no; I say it doesn’t matter.

Repeating: I found it better than decent — adult, well measured, emotionally frank, well acted and cunningly written. (Faxon and Rash shared screenplay credit with Jesse Armstrong.) It’s not a burn, it’s not about a ‘black and white situation’ (as one of the less perceptive characters puts it) and it provides ample food for thought and discussion. It’s not silly, stupid or frivolous but (gasp!) a serious film fused with sharp, occasionally amusing dialogue.

Paul Schrader quoted on 11.30.18: “There are people who talk about the American cinema of the ‘70s as some halcyon period. It was to a degree but not because there were any more talented filmmakers. There’s probably, in fact, more talented filmmakers today than there was in the ‘70s. What there was in the ‘70s was better audiences.

“When people take movies seriously it’s very easy to make a serious movie. When they don’t take [them] seriously, it’s very, very hard. We now have audiences that don’t take movies seriously so it’s hard to make a serious movie for them. It’s not that us filmmakers are letting you down, it’s [that] audiences are letting us down.”

Latest Polanski Meditation

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For as long as I can remember the pitchforkers have come out of the woodwork almost every time Roman Polanski is mentioned in any context. They certainly jumped in yesterday when I posted about the Cesar Academy having announced its intention to resign following the 45th Cesar Award telecast on 2.28, “partly for the crime of handing out 12 Cesar nominations to Polanski‘s An Officer and a Spy, and partly for insufficient nursing of political ties with feminist or #MeToo-supporting filmmakers.”

The piece was titled “French #MeToo-ers Boot Cesar Academy,” but before you could turn around the discussion had devolved into a condemnation thread about Polanski’s predatory behavior with under-age girls in the ’70s and ’80s, which allegedly included rape and assault. Rape is obviously a vicious crime, but because I tried to mitigate the vitriol by referring to European cultural imprints about ages of consent between 14 and 16, I was called a “piece of shit”; another Polanski qualifier was called a “loathsome fuckstick.” As if we were somehow attempting to excuse the odious scenario of a 42 year-old man having it off with a 13 year-old girl.

This morning I noted that “Americans have always plugged their ears over the European age-of-consent norms but cultural imprints matter, and the vast majority of European countries set their ages of consent between, believe it or not, ages 14 to 16, which strikes me personally as way too young. I’ve always thought 18 was a decent benchmark.

“13-14 is definitely, emphatically too young. Ditto 15. When you hit 16 you’ve stepped into American cultural imprint territory because of Ringo Starr’s ‘you’re sixteen, you’re beautiful and you’re mine’ and Randy Newman‘s ‘half pound of cocaine and a 16 year-old girl in a long black limousine on a hot September night.’ But 16 is too young, I feel, and so is 17. 18 seems right. We all know about teen hormones and that nobody’s going to stop basic impulses, but women under the age of 18 are arguably lacking in judgment. They should be entitled to all-hands-off status if they want that, and the law should enforce this.

“And in terms of older guys having it off with younger women, they should steer clear of anyone under 20. Once women hit 20, or the average age of a junior in college, they’re on their own.”

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