Blu-ray Review Lost Horizon (1973) Blu-ray Review (1 Viewer)

[Virgoan]

Actually, I like "Dick Tracy" very much. It's interesting visually, has a superb underscore by Danny Elfman, and the songs by Stephen Sondheim are very sophisticated. Beatty has some great moments with "the kid". The supporting characters are way overdone/hammy, IMO.

To turn down the sound on "The Blue Lagoon" is to commit frontal lobotomy. Yes, the film is gorgeous to watch, but the photography is genuinely enhanced by some of the best sound design I've had the pleasure of experiencing. The wind rustling the palm fronds, the gorgeous Basil Poledouris score, the sound of the rain and the breezes rustling bushes make this film one of the most exquisite sensory pleasures for me. the two characters could not have been older than 9 when they were shipwrecked.

"Lost Horizon" is, basically, a very badly directed film with little to nothing of merit for its actors. The songs -- by themselves -- are really quite interesting. Attached to the film, and performed for the film, they seem atrocious. Yet, there is "something" there.

The wold is a "circle", indeed! ; )

I messed up by trying to edit and ended up quoting myself. I wanted to add to my paragraph on "The Blue Lagoon":

As far as the dialogue being "inane", I'm hard pressed to figure out how sophisticated it could possibly be when the two characters could not have been older than 9 when they were shipwrecked.

 

[Christian D66]

Late to this lovely, ridiculous blu-ray but I keep thinking the only way this would have worked is if the contrast between 70 cynics and a musical paradise was played for more meta-laughs. The film's direction lacks the pizzaz needed and Bobby Van (who should have been Gene Kelly) could have had a big moment when he realizes he's in his own singing dancing paradise when he joins in "The World Is A Circle", etc. But the grassy topography doesn't work for the dancing. And all that arm swingin'...

Worse, the film is just plain miscast with a misplaced score and no amount of Surtees can disguise the smog valley where they filmed MASH - Shangri-La has no scope or atmosphere (the sets in the same year's FLESH GORDON had more creative vision). The pointy holy headgear is hilarious and the film jumps the shark when John Gielgud intros himself as "Chang." But I adore big musical disasters like this, especially perfectly preserved as on the TT disc.

BTW, the only big piece of film missing is a reprise of "Living Together" with Sally Kellerman and George Kennedy's only singing moment after he builds the irrigation system. You can see actual bits of this footage in the old making-of featurette on the blu-ray.

"The world is a circle..."

 

[Ethan Riley]

The thing with this movie is that I first viewed it on television. They were playing it at about 4 in the afternoon and I assumed it had been a made-for-tv film. Judging it on those merits, I found it passable. I didn't find out until years later that it had been a notorious theatrical. Trust me--it would have worked much better had it played on tv for free. Stakes were much lower for tv movies in those days, and you would get more or less the same cast because all of those people together looked like a typical guest cast for the Love Boat.