A Few Words About A few words about...™ A Man for All Seasons -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Paul Rossen]

The 1994 Robert Benton film with Newman and Jessica Tandy. Fine film.

Agree...Nobody's Fool, a really fine film. The story, directing, acting, music, locations etc. One of Paul Newman's best films...and that's saying a lot.

 

[Paul Rossen]

After watching 4 seasons of The Tudors (which ended in 2010) i was left wanting more. So I watched AMFAS (for the first time) on Netflix in HD. A very enjoyable, well made, written, and acted film.


After 5 years, I think it's time to upgrade to TT's new BD.

You may really enjoy WOLF HALL which is a completely different take on the story. I find it slow moving but fascinating.

 

[Cine_Capsulas]

Can't believe his "The Day of the Jackal" (1973) still isn't on Blu

Never released anamorphically on DVD, either. Absurd!

 

[Alan Tully]

You may really enjoy WOLF HALL which is a completely different take on the story. I find it slow moving but fascinating.

Well there's a thought that a period film tells you more about the decade it was made in, than the era it's set in. So, A man For All Seasons (& Far From The Madding Crowd) are sixties versions & the new stuff reflects now.

 

[Reed Grele]

You may really enjoy WOLF HALL which is a completely different take on the story. I find it slow moving but fascinating.

Thanks. Will definitely check it out.

 

[Raul Marquez]

Just think of those $60 laser discs 30 years ago and it's a little easier to swallow.

Yup,


And the multiple laserdisc boxed sets of Terminator 2.... CAV, CLV, Special Editions, Ultimate Editions.......


take care,


Raul

 

[Robert Harris]

Just think of those $60 laser discs 30 years ago and it's a little easier to swallow.

$60?! Try $150.

 

[Dave B Ferris]

$60?! Try $150.

Except during the annual "parking lot sale" at the late, lamented, Ken Cranes.

 

[David_B_K]

$60?! Try $150.

As a Columbia title, the laserdisc would probably have sold for around $34.95 as I recall. However, being from Columbia, it would probably have succumbed to laser rot, necessitating several repurchases, thereby reaching $150.

 

[davidmatychuk]

$60?! Try $150.

They'll get my MAGNIFICENT $150 laserdisc box sets when they pry them out of my cold, dead, got-their-money's-worth hands. The "My Fair Lady" box, wondrous content aside, is a beautifully-crafted, meticulously-designed art object, if you don't mind my saying so. Is there any question about the lasting impressiveness of the ($250) original "Star Wars" box? And I couldn't put a dollar value at all on the look on Charmian Carr's face when she saw (for the first time, she said) the "Sound Of Music" box I asked her to sign back in 2002.

 

[Paul Rossen]

Well there's a thought that a period film tells you more about the decade it was made in, than the era it's set in. So, A man For All Seasons (& Far From The Madding Crowd) are sixties versions & the new stuff reflects now.

Agree. However, AMFAS makes Thomas More as a saint who wouldn't bend his beliefs to save his life. The Tudors shows him willing to do dastardly things to people who didn't conform and Wolf Hall shows basically the same thing. That does not take away from AMFAS which is a marvelous film drama first seen as a Roadshow at the FineArts theatre in Manhattan so many years ago.

 

[PaulDA]

Agree. However, AMFAS makes Thomas More as a saint who wouldn't bend his beliefs to save his life. The Tudors shows him willing to do dastardly things to people who didn't conform and Wolf Hall shows basically the same thing. That does not take away from AMFAS which is a marvelous film drama first seen as a Roadshow at the FineArts theatre in Manhattan so many years ago.

The more recent efforts reflect a bit of over compensation for the image presented in A Man for all Seasons (to be expected when the major characters, especially in Wolf Hall, were rather hostile to More and, in the latter case, the author admits to reacting to her Catholic upbringing with the goal of "correcting" what she sees as the hagiography of More in earlier works, both fiction and non-fiction).

 

[Dr Griffin]

$60?! Try $150.

I wasn't making much more than minimum wage back then and drew the line at $60.

 

[David_B_K]

Wolf Hall also tries to make Thomas Cromwell a complex character who merely did his sovereign's bidding. To me, Cromwell would have made a good Nazi or NKVD head who 'followed orders'.

 

[Dr Griffin]

Wolf Hall also tries to make Thomas Cromwell a complex character who merely did his sovereign's bidding. To me, Cromwell would have made a good Nazi or NKVD head who 'followed orders'.

He also suffered a similar fate as some Nazis.

 

[Robert Harris]

Wolf Hall also tries to make Thomas Cromwell a complex character who merely did his sovereign's bidding. To me, Cromwell would have made a good Nazi or NKVD head who 'followed orders'.

He did his best to survive as long as possible, under the circumstances.

 

[Richard Gallagher]

Agree...Nobody's Fool, a really fine film. The story, directing, acting, music, locations etc. One of Paul Newman's best films...and that's saying a lot.

Most of the location filming was done a few miles from me, in Beacon, N.Y. The diner is still there, but it has been remodeled.

 

[PaulDA]

It is very difficult, from our vantage point, to truly understand the mindsets of societies half a millennia ago (something I try very hard to get my students to understand--in history, context is king). Both Cromwell and More were multifaceted, complex individuals who've been oversimplified (one way or another) in the intervening centuries. Film and TV (even with more run time) are forced to take a reductive approach. But that's true of more classic presentations of history as well (I've spent most of my professional life examining the relationship between popular culture representations of history--mostly through film, in my case--and the actual periods/events portrayed on screen). The bottom line (literally and figuratively) is that such productions are commercial enterprises and the needs of coherent dramatic storytelling outweigh an exact hewing to the facts. And that's fine, as well as to be expected. The key to extracting anything useful, from an academic standpoint, from such productions lies in acknowledging the very different nature of the enterprise of historical feature films, as distinct from historical monographs, and eliciting from feature films the best of what they offer as a supplement to more traditional presentations. I use films either to introduce or enhance discussions of various topics--never as a substitute for more traditional history. Done with care, the experience (as I've noted over nearly 20 years now) is usually quite gratifying. The least interesting way to deal with such material, however, is obsessive nit-picking over "accuracy" (a degree of scrutiny rarely levelled at print material, incidentally, and for which print would be found sorely lacking were it so scrutinized).


Okay--I guess that's enough of me ranting. I should get back to marking my students' final assignments (an analysis of various historical feature films dealing with Native American history in one class and Modern Middle Eastern history in the other).

 

[RMajidi]

John Hodson shared the following Sam Peckinpah quote on the AMFAS pre-release thread (http://www.hometheaterforum.com/topic/339850-a-man-for-all-seasons-coming-to-blu-ray/page-3#entry4226748).

It bears revisiting here perhaps:

"Because we are dealing with a legend, everyone seems to feel that it must be authentic. I am not interested in authenticity. I am interested in drama..."

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I use films either to introduce or enhance discussions of various topics--never as a substitute for more traditional history. Done with care, the experience (as I've noted over nearly 20 years now) is usually quite gratifying.

I think that's the best approach. I've been in classes, whether it was elementary or high school or college, where different teachers have taken both approaches, and I think it's always worked better when the movie wasn't the main event. I don't think we ever watched "A Man For All Seasons" in class (although I did cite it in a presentation about Thomas More I did in high school that I can barely remember), but I completely agree that for a history class, it's a fantastic introduction to the topic, but perhaps not the best final (or only) word on the subject. And not because there's anything wrong with the movie, but just because watching a movie in and of itself feels incomplete compared with the experience of reading different texts and participating in group discussions and research and writing assignments, etc.