haineshisway
Senior HTF Member
Thanks to being alerted in another thread, I bought the Night of the Following Day Blu-ray from France. I saw the film the day it opened in 1969 - I was living in NY that year. It was a seriously strange movie but there was something hypnotic and mesmerizing about it and I went back several times to see it. Even then I knew that several of the scenes were bonkers and that Brando and company were just making it up as they go along because frequently what they were improvising made no sense at all. That is especially true of the long scene between Brando and Jess Hahn, and also a couple of Rita Moreno's scenes. But still... just the way the movie was shot and directed was, for me, really gray and moody, which I loved, and I also loved the score by Stanley Myers. And like most people, I was a fan of Pamela Franklin, who only says a few words in the entire film. And Richard Boone is really scary. The film was based on a novel by Lionel White, who also had films made from Clean Slate (Kubrick's The Killing) and The Money Trap. In the mid-1970s I managed to get a 16mm dye transfer print, which I ran all the time for people. I introduced more people to this film and The Swimmer via my prints because at the time not many folks had seen either film.
This is one of those infamous Universal things where they shot new scenes for its TV airings, adding in new characters who explain everything that's going on. It was horrible, but I wish they'd include these things as extras. Of course I bought the DVD the minute it came out. It was okay for a DVD - not great, not bad. I'm happy to say this Blu-ray is pretty good and pretty much resembles my 16mm dye transfer print in every way. My print was, of course, open matte, but here we get the original ratio or close to it, although the one nitpick is the window boxed titles, something I'll never understand, since the actual type is nowhere near the edges of the frame. The color is perfect. The photography was always odd in this film with some scenes slightly out of focus - that's always been there and the opticals are the opticals.
And all these years later I still love this movie for reasons I can't explain. So, if you like slightly strange movies, this one comes highly recommended by the likes of me.
And a word about Gidget, which I finally got around to watching. What a transfer that is. And the movie is really kind of charming. But the color and sharpness is fantastic, and Sandra Dee was adorable.
Sayonara, another Brando film I'm very fond of. This is a standard-issue MGM/UA transfer, i.e. it's okay. For some reason this one has gotten much more of a pass than a lot of MGM/UA transfers that are better - don't get it, really. This transfer is pretty okay - color's not quite right - but the movie is just wonderful and anyone who likes a good drama that is, in its own way, still timely, this also comes highly recommended by the likes of me.
And I finally got a look at the new 4K Seventh Voyage of Sinbad from the UK and it's really good.
This is one of those infamous Universal things where they shot new scenes for its TV airings, adding in new characters who explain everything that's going on. It was horrible, but I wish they'd include these things as extras. Of course I bought the DVD the minute it came out. It was okay for a DVD - not great, not bad. I'm happy to say this Blu-ray is pretty good and pretty much resembles my 16mm dye transfer print in every way. My print was, of course, open matte, but here we get the original ratio or close to it, although the one nitpick is the window boxed titles, something I'll never understand, since the actual type is nowhere near the edges of the frame. The color is perfect. The photography was always odd in this film with some scenes slightly out of focus - that's always been there and the opticals are the opticals.
And all these years later I still love this movie for reasons I can't explain. So, if you like slightly strange movies, this one comes highly recommended by the likes of me.
And a word about Gidget, which I finally got around to watching. What a transfer that is. And the movie is really kind of charming. But the color and sharpness is fantastic, and Sandra Dee was adorable.
Sayonara, another Brando film I'm very fond of. This is a standard-issue MGM/UA transfer, i.e. it's okay. For some reason this one has gotten much more of a pass than a lot of MGM/UA transfers that are better - don't get it, really. This transfer is pretty okay - color's not quite right - but the movie is just wonderful and anyone who likes a good drama that is, in its own way, still timely, this also comes highly recommended by the likes of me.
And I finally got a look at the new 4K Seventh Voyage of Sinbad from the UK and it's really good.
