Gregory Peck Collection from Universal in November (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

It's a great film and very few will dispute that opinion.






Crawdaddy

 

[Thomas T]

Mr. Mavis's problem is that he wants another movie. NOT To Kill A Mockingbird. TKAM is a memory piece of an adult woman recalling her childhood, specifically one summer that became a turning point in her life. The film is not about Tom, Mr. Mavis thinks it should be more about Tom. The film (and novel) is told from the perspective of the children and seen through their eyes. They didn't see Tom's killing but Mr. Mavis would have preferred the children be in attendance of Tom's killing so WE could see it too. The film is (partially) about a father instilling values in his children, of what is right and what is wrong. Mr. Mavis wants a film on Tom's life and his suffering in a racist society. While that would make a powerful film in itself, it simply isn't To Kill A Mockingbird nor was it intended to be.

It's like complaining Gone With The Wind focuses too much on Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler and not enough on Mammy, Prissy and Big Sam and the plight of slaves under the racist South. But Gone With The Wind was never intended as a treatise on racism but a romantic love story set against the backdrop of the Civil War.

Sometimes it's just best to deal with a film (or a book) on what it IS rather than you think it should be.

 

[Robin9]

Mr. Mavis: a good and shrewd assessment of Cape Fear. Thank you. Very sorry indeed to hear that the Mirage DVD has poor picture quality.

 

[rich_d]

Terrific post. Crystallized the key points much better than I could have.

 

[Kevin EK]

I'll be submitting a review later today. Been a little busy at work, but I went through the discs last week and weekend.

The short preview is: To Kill A Mockingbird is identical in presentation to the earlier Legacy Series release, down to the menus. Cape Fear appears to be a port of the earlier release, but I'm trying to verify if the transfer has been redone. Either way, it looks good. The new releases in the set all look good, with the caveat that there is some heavy grain in the darker sequences of Mirage, which I believe is likely a factor of the exposure needed. (In other words, it's part of the original print and isn't anything that could be addressed.) Some of these were pleasant surprises. Mirage and Captain Newman, M.D. were nice discoveries for me.