Josh's Blind Buys: Watching The Unseen Collection (2 Viewers)

[Josh Steinberg]

It will be interesting because Ed Harris is in both The Right Stuff and Apollo 13.

He's phenomenal in both films. I love that he's the voice of Mission Control in Gravity, that seemed like the perfect tribute to both Harris and those earlier films.

 

[Nelson Au]

Josh, I've seen Gravity twice, once in the theater and once on the blu ray. I had no idea Harris was the voice of Mission Control!

I just dug out my copy of When We Left The Earth, I thought I had bought it! But it's the DVD. I'm really wanting the blu ray though!

 

[B-ROLL]

Now you just need to watch Capricorn One !

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Now you just need to watch Capricorn One !

I love Capricorn One! I think Peter Hyams is an underrated filmmaker - I was talking maybe a month ago in the "2001: A Space Odyssey" thread about how good I think his work on "2010" was. And there are plenty more Hyams movies I love. To name just one, Timecop might be the best Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Yeah, Capricorn One gets a recommendation from me, and the Blu-ray that came out within the past couple years is a major step up from the old DVD.

 

[BobO'Link]

From the Earth to the Moon was shot on 35mm film and protected for WS presentation. The WS DVD edition has slightly improved visuals, is on more discs which increases bit rates, but framing suffers on occasion due to scenes shown FS in 4:3 ratio on TV screens. That is, those full screen shots of TV footage are now cropped, causing some loss of information. It's nothing too critical but looks a bit sloppy. They could have easily switched to a 4:3 pillarboxed frame for those scenes and not cropped them at all. Overall, it's a very good presentation and the cropping to WS doesn't lose much in the process. That's the version I purchased and didn't know about a 4:3 version until I read a few reviews. So... Yes, why hasn't there been a BR release of this one? It certainly deserves one!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I wonder if HBO Go offers it for streaming, and if so, whether that's in HD. Sometimes they have HD copies of things that are DVD only.

 

[Nelson Au]

I'm going to rethink Capricorn One once I complete the viewing of films that are based on the real manned spaceflight program. Thanks for the encouragement Brian and Josh. I hadn't realized its a Hyam's film. I saw Capricorn One once a long time ago and the idea of it did stick to me. I remember the sequence with Elliott Gould in his car.

If we're going to go there, I have to also mention Marooned. I suspect its hasn't aged as well, but I saw it and really liked it. I can't recall if I have a DVD copy of it, I know I have the laserdisc. It has a good cast.

Howie, thanks for the overview from someone who has the widescreen edition of From the Earth to the Moon. Glad to hear the cropping is OK for the most part, but it does affect some scenes. The other upgrade I understand is the audio.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I have to also mention Marooned.

I don't think I know that one....

 

[Nelson Au]

Marooned is a 1969 film at the height of the Apollo program. It concerns an Apollo mission to a fictional orbiting space station that goes well, but when the crew leave the station, they find they are trapped in orbit. So it's not very science fiction-y, but very much grounded in the technology of the day. Kind of like Gravity. It stars Gregory Peck as the Flight Director, and Gene Hackman, James Franciscus and Richard Crenna as the astronauts. With David Jansen and Mariette Hartley, Lee Grant and Nancy Kovack as the wives of the astronauts. I'd be curious what the others think if its recommendable. I liked it, but some may find it either slow. I think it was pretty gripping. I just looked for it, I don't have a copy, so there goes a few more bucks!

 

[Doug Wallen]

I remember watching this as I was very intrigued by the whole space program ( Mercury, Gemini and then Apollo). I liked James Franciscus and Richard Crenna. I know I first saw this on television as a movie (having been aware of Janssen as the Fugitive and Franciscus as Brent from the Apes sequel). I don't remember much else other than that I found the film interesting and the effects work (for the period) very believable. Sure would like to see it again.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Oh! That movie! I've never seen it but TCM showed it earlier in the year and the short description sounded interesting, so I recorded it. Haven't gotten to it yet. I am so behind on movie watching! I saw four different U2 shows in three different cities in the second half of June, so that's where most of the time has gone. And I've basically been recreating those shows at home with a mix of live concert DVDs and BDs since getting home. I also have four brand new U2 tshirts that I'm happy to be wearing.

It's funny, all year I basically haven't listening to much music but have watched a ton of movies, and the past few weeks have been all music and no movies. Balance may not be my strong suit!

But if you're a U2 fan and you saw the stagecraft they had for Where The Streets Have No Name, you'd probably be stuck in musicland too!

 

[Mike Frezon]

If we're going to go there, I have to also mention Marooned.

I've never seen it either.

But I sure do remember the Mad Magazine parody:

 

[Matt Hough]

The Mad Magazine parodies of the 1960s are among the best satirical jabs at movies and TV I've ever read, and I treasure them.

 

[BobO'Link]

I've saw it on TV sometime in the early-mid 70s. Keep in mind it's been a very long time, and I've always been rather critical of space movies, either drama based, like this one, or pure SF. This is in spite of it being my favorite genre and loving the films in spite of the issues I have with the productions and scripts. By the time I saw it my tastes had also matured. After all, I'd seen 2001, and Planet of the Apes, both of which colored my opinions of SF films for decades. It's funny that I'm rather forgiving of SF/Fantasy films produced before 1969 and extremely critical of those after 1969. I also saw it after the real life disaster of Apollo 13, which also somewhat influenced my opinion of the film.

Due to all the TV actors employed in its cast it felt more like a "better" made-for-TV effort to me. In all honesty, I watched it as much for the women, Lee Grant, Nancy Kovac, and Mariette Hartley, as for the story. The effects were good by 1969 standards but still exhibited many of the things that've always annoyed me. Obvious miniatures, some wobbly sets, and bad mattes being the more glaring issues. I'd also been somewhat spoiled by the excellent visual effects in 2001. Some of the dramatic moments were good, especially the wives of the astronauts speaking with their husbands after learning they might not return, but I felt it was, overall, rather boring, predictable, and a "by the book" film. Pretty much the same feelings I had towards Gravity, although it has better visuals. Yeah, I'm that guy. I never purchased a copy of Marooned due to my original feelings towards the film. I'd like to see it again to see if I still feel the same way, but tend to think I will as my first impressions of a film rarely change.

 

[BobO'Link]

Thanks for that link to the MAD Magazine parody, Mike! I loved it! I've purchased MAD off-and-on over the decades and those late 60s years were "off" ones so I'd never read that one before.

 

[Nelson Au]

Howie, you're reaction to Marooned is pretty much what I think most here at the HTF were. Which is kind of surprising in a way as this movie came out at the time the space race was peaking, so I don't know how well it did then. But I'd think it did ok business. I first saw Marooned as a very young kid who followed the Apollo missions so I have an impression set from that stage. I know it's not a great movie, but I liked it. At my next opportunity, I'll give it a watch.

I did watch Apollo 13 last night, had not seen it in about 4 or 5 years, since the blu ray was released. Everyone looks so young! It really did well to capture the look and feel of 1969 and 1970 from the fashions, make-up, cars and recreations of the ships and mission control. And there was a lot of smoking! I'd seen this movie a lot when it was first released on laserdisc and DVD. All involved were terrific. Its pretty cool that in The Right Stuff, Chuck Yeager is in the film and interacts with the actor playing him and his wife, in Apollo 13 Hanks salutes the real Jim Lovell on the carrier.

I've been getting more into classic vintage wrist watches of that era and I could see many were wearing the Omega Speedmaster that NASA issued to the astronauts.

It's interesting that the style of Apollo 13 feels similar to Hidden Figures. And The Right Stuff is sort of a contrast in styles, but still celebrates these guys.

I'd seen those Mad Magazines, but I never really got into them. I remember seeing the Star Trek one years later. As I recall seeing the piece where they spoofed 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey Josh, I get what you mean about being all sucked into something! It's a sort of temporary madness of obsession. I've been there.

 

[RMajidi]

Hey Josh, I get what you mean about being all sucked into something! It's a sort of temporary madness of obsession. I've been there.

Me too. I call it HTF ...except it's not so temporary.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I temporarily participated in the U2 forums, which are not nearly as fun as HTF. Now that my tour dates have passed, I'm done posting there until the next time they tour. HTF, you're stuck with me for the next 2-4 years until that happens again!

 

[benbess]

#24 - Lonesome Dove (1989)
Viewed on: February 13th - February 17th, 2017
Viewing Format: Blu-ray (Mill Creek)

Though I had planned on keeping this thread just about movies, it seemed appropriate to make an exception for Lonesome Dove. Originally released as a four part miniseries which aired on consecutive nights in February 1989, it's a show I had heard about many times but had never actually seen for myself until now. I had all of these misconceptions about what it was about, but to quickly sum it up, I had mistakenly thought this was a very cheesy, very melodramatic love story with an old west backdrop. Well, there is some melodrama, there is a love story, but that's not primarily what Lonesome Dove is about. When my stepdad recommended it to me after noticing I was watching a bunch of westerns, I decided to look it up, and the short description sounded like something I'd actually watch. Amazon had the Mill Creek release onsale for $7, and it seemed worth a shot. In an effort to better appreciate the miniseries as it was originally shown, I made a point of watching only one part per night rather than cramming it into a single day.

The plot of Lonesome Day is too long and sprawling to recap in a short review; I also think part of the joy of watching a good miniseries is getting to see it unfold and take different twists and turns, so I'd be hesitant to describe events too far beyond the first part anyhow. Broadly speaking, Robert Duvall is the lead, a former Texas Ranger, friendly womanizer, stable owner, and all around likeable character. Tommy Lee Jones co-stars his former Ranger partner who now works with him at the stable. Also living and working there are a former scout (Danny Glover), and an orphaned teenage boy (Ricky Schroder) whose mother was a prostitute and whose father may or may not be Tommy Lee Jones. When their former partner (Robert Urich) returns with the idea of stealing cattle from the other side of the Mexican border and driving them to Montana to live the ranch life, Duvall and Co and decide to do it, taking along the town prostitute (Diane Lane) who Urich has fallen in love with. Along the way, they encounter characters played by such fine actors as Chris Cooper, Glenne Headly, Anjelica Huston, D.B. Sweeney, Steve Buscemi and more.

Though made for the television, the miniseries has a look and a scope to it that would be more at home on HBO in 2017 than on CBS in 1989. The show has an epic look to it, from the big landscapes to the huge numbers of horses and cattle on display. The actors are all fantastic, to the point that I was more forgiving of characters making ill-advised choices because I was so enjoying the people playing the parts. Duvall is wonderful - he's tough when he needs to be, but underneath his gruff yet playful exterior is a warm man who can instantly read the people around him. If nothing else, Lonesome Dove would be worth watching to enjoy six hours of Duvall. There are a couple of places where the miniseries fell short to me, but with that said, I still enjoyed it. I don't think the miniseries did a great job of marking the passage of time; there will be parts where it seems that everything you're watching has happened in a very brief period of time, and then someone will say or do something that reveals its actually months later than you realized it had been. Time doesn't flow evenly throughout, and that's okay, but I wish the showrunners had given us a better indication of how time was passing (either in the dialogue or as an on-screen caption). The other thing that bothered me, without wanting to get into spoiler territory, is that some characters end up making what seem to me foolish decisions that have unfortunate results. But there are times where it sometimes feels like writers writing, rather than organic plot development. There were moments where I can tell the showrunners wanted me to have an emotional reaction, but I didn't feel one because the situation felt too contrived. Still, in a four part show running over six hours, I found far more to like than to dislike.

The version I have on Blu-ray is the newer Mill Creek release, though I understand that Genius previously issued a BD disc. The Mill Creek offers the show in 16x9 widescreen with Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo. (The Genius release apparently also offered a 5.1 remix, but I have to admit that I was satisfied with the 2.0 mix on the Mill Creek set.) Because I don't have a history with this title, it's a little hard for me to gauge exactly what it was supposed to look like. The original broadcast was 4x3, but comparing the 16x9 transfer on this disc to some 4x3 footage included in the bonus documentary, it doesn't look as if this was a simple crop job. Without having any insider information, I wonder if this might have been shot 3-perf at a wider ratio, and then cropped to 4x3 for its original television exhibition. From the shots I was able to compare, it does seem that a slight amount of headroom may be missing, but there were also many shots where it seemed equally apparent that there was more information on the sides. There are many shots in the show where the action seems perfectly framed in the center, with little more than scenery on the sides of the frame. Neither framing, to my eye, had the precisely composed look that many of the theatrical westerns I've seen lately have had. In other words: this might not be the correct presentation, but it doesn't look terrible either. The image did seem very bright to me, but I am unsure if this is part of the original photography (perhaps to compensate for the underwhelming picture quality of NTSC broadcast that they knew it was going to air as), or if its been brightened up for this disc. There are moments where there's some visible compression, particularly in the backgrounds, but then there are moments when the image looks nearly flawless. This disc does not include subtitles, but does include an hour-long making of special that appears contemporary to the show.

All in all, I found Lonesome Dove to be an enjoyable ride, particularly because of Robert Duvall's fantastic lead performance. I feel like I might have enjoyed this more had I seen it during its original airing. When it first came out, I would have been young and inexperienced with westerns, which would have made everything in the film fresh and new. Having now seen my fair share, I found Lonesome Dove to be good without being extraordinary - it's extraordinary as a broadcast television achievement, but perhaps a little less so when compared to the all time greats of the western genre. I almost wish that it had either been a little bit longer and more detailed, or a little bit shorter and faster paced. There were times when everything was firing on all cylinders and I couldn't wait to see what happened next, and other times where it seemed so obvious what would happen next that I wondered why it was taking so long to get there. In the bonus feature, it's mentioned that before Larry McMurtry wrote the novel, he originally wrote a draft as a screenplay which was intended for John Wayne (in the Jones role), Jimmy Stewart (in the Duvall role) and Henry Fonda (in the Urich role) - now that would have been interesting to see. Overall, I'd consider Lonesome Dove to be very very good, but just shy of greatness. I'm still very glad to have finally seen it.

Lonesome Dove is one of my favorite Westerns. I watched it back in 1989 when it first aired, and since I've gotten my blu-ray of it I've watched it another couple of times. Today I watched the miniseries prequel, Dead Man's Walk, which aired on network TV in 1996. Although it's not as good as Lonesome Dove, It is good and dramatic. Like LD there's humor and suffering throughout. Actors in it in include: F. Murray Abraham, Keith Carradine, Edward James Olmos, Eric Schweig, Harry Dean Stanton, Jennifer Garner, Gretchen Mol, Patricia Childress, and Darvid Arquette as the young Gus, and Jonny Miller as the young Woodrow. Good cinematography by Edward Pei. I'd rate it a solid "B." It's 4.5 hours long, and available for purchase in standard definition only from amzn for c. $4.