Search Results for: criterion strangelove

I was surprised to discover that the 1.66 to 1 crop used in the new Criterion Bluray of Paths of Glory feels relatively satisfying. All I can finally say is that it looks “right,” as if 1.66 to 1 was the idea all along. And I sat down with this disc ready to dislike what … Read more

A friend mentioned last night that one of the most intensely desired Blu-rays is Stanley Kubrick‘s Barry Lyndon. Intensely so for its curious absence, and intensely so for months, years and decades after it’s released, I’m sure. Everyone will have to own the most precisely rendered and visually faithful digital version of one of the … Read more

In all modesty, I would like to believe that my 2009 war against the Blu-ray grain monks may have been…well, at least a significant anecdotal factor in the evolution of industry thinking about how to wisely master Blu-rays of classic films. I ranted about this over and over, but the best-written column article on the … Read more

I picked up the Criterion DVD of The Friends of Eddie Coyle yesterday. There’s a little booklet inside that contains a reprint of a superb Rolling Stone set-visit piece by Grover Lewis (a great journalist who died in ’95 of lung cancer) called “The Last Celluloid Desperado.” It also contains an eloquent essay by Kent … Read more

Sandstorm-strength grain is a technological blight that classic-era filmmakers had no choice but to work with as best they could. Bring the great directors back to life — Wilder, Lubitsch, Fleming, Capra, Hawks, Ford, Griffith, Keaton, Hitchcock — and they would all say, “Yes, naturally, obviously, of course…ask Lowry Digital‘s John Lowry to do what … Read more

Nobody is more queer for Blu-ray monochrome than myself. The principal cause of this mania is the recent Casablanca Blu-ray, which made Michael Curtiz‘s classic film look 15% to 20% better than it ever had before. I’m so consumed by this hunger that I didn’t let my disappointment with Criterion’s Third Man Blu-ray get in … Read more