Seven days ago I raved about the Kino Lorber Bluray of Marty Feldman‘s The Last Remake of Beau Geste (’77), which is considerably enhanced by Alan Spencer‘s delicious, I-was-there-because-I-was-Marty’s-friend commentary track. A day or two later I watched a KL companion disc — a Bluray of Feldman’s In God We Tru$t, a 1980 anti-religion, anti-corporate … Read more
An occasional drama or comedy will acquaint us with a young kid version of a lead character. Every so often the young actor won’t look like the older actor at all, and sometimes (or usually) he/she will offer a reasonably decent resemblance (like the kid who played young Vito Adolini/Corleone in The Godfather, Part II). … Read more
Roughly 30 years before Hollywood Elsewhere became a huge, earth-shaking deal, I ran into the great Marty Feldman at Izzy’s Deli (1433 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica). It was sometime in early ‘75, 9 or 10 pm. The place was fairly crowded. I had ordered and eaten, and was alone at a table for four. On … Read more
Except for the Four Fakers aspect, Martin Scorsese‘s Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story was pretty much a purely pleasurable experience for everyone who saw it during the summer of ’19. It’s been on Netflix ever since, of course. And now Criterion has a 4K Bluray version coming on 1.19.21. What’s my richest musical … Read more
Guys like Jeff Sneider don’t understand the concept of owning Blurays, and to be honest half the time I question it myself, given the excellent quality of high-def streaming these days. But I’ve just ordered Kino Lorber’s 60th anniversary Bluray of William Wyler’s The Big Country, and for two good reasons: (1) It’s been newly … Read more
After 91 and 1/2 years, the feisty and flinty Jerry Lewis is gone. The indisputable king of comedy during the Martin & Lewis heyday of the early to mid ’50s (although their partnership actually began in Atlantic City in ’46), and a boldly experimental avant-garde comedic auteur from the late ’50s to late ’60s. And … Read more
Martin Scorsese to BigStory’s Jake Coyle: “Cinema is gone. The cinema I grew up with and that I’m making, it’s gone.” HE to Scorsese: Grand ornate cinemas showing first-run movies in VistaVision and Super Panavision 70 and at 1.66:1 and via 30-frame-per-second Todd AO…movies made by top-tier, world-class talents and featuring big stars…yes, that era … Read more
Spotlight is not flashy but is fairly dazzling in its efficiency. That’s what I’ve loved about Tom McCarthy‘s film from the start. Clean, true and always on-point. Tom McArdle‘s cutting doesn’t call attention to itself, but every transition is smooth and fleet as a fox. Not for nothing has McArdle, a longtime collaborator of McCarthy’s, … Read more
Two days ago Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh posted about 11 under-the-radar performances “that haven’t been buzzed about enough, but deserve Oscar consideration. To my surprise I agree with six of his assessments. I’ll start with these and conclude with my four disagreements. No comment on Helen Mirren‘s Woman in Gold performance as I haven’t seen the … Read more
Hollywood Elsewhere’s American Airlines flight landed at Dulles around 4:10 pm, and 20 minutes later at the baggage carousel I ran into producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa (Nebraska, Little Miss Sunshine) and Steve Golin (The Revenant, Spotlight) plus four or five industry-related ladies whose names I didn’t solicit or have forgotten — no offense. … Read more
Here’s hoping that the forthcoming Bluray of David Weisbart and Gordon Douglas‘s giant-ant movie, Them! (’54), will be presented in a boxy (i.e., 1.33:1) aspect ratio. I don’t know if work on the Bluray has been completed or if the guys in charge are 1.85 aspect-ratio fascists, but please. Remember the bravery of Kino Lorber’s … Read more
The most persistent argument against my Beware of Brownfellas piece is that (a) the 2007 Bluray version of Goodfellas was artificially brightened and (b) the new Goodfellas Bluray is a truer, more film-like rendering of what the original answer print looked like — i.e., nice and dark and murky. My response is simple. The 2007 … Read more