What's on your Daily Viewing List? (2 Viewers)

[bujaki]

Wednesday night, 4 films.
Steamboat Round the Bend (TCM app) 1935. John Ford and Will Rogers (his final film) in a piece of Americana. Leisurely paced with just an exciting boat race at the end in order to save a young man from the gallows. Stepin Fetchit, a man who garnered a fortune playing to the white man's idea of the stereotype of the lazy, slow-witted Black man, is the main blemish in this good film. The print shown looks like a new HD transfer that will never see the light of day in a shiny disc.
Gunsmoke (Peacock) 1953. Old transfer with combing. Audie Murphy stars as ex-outlaw out to make a new life. He wins a ranch but must fight a crooked man who wants to own all the ranch land. Cattle drives, wild fires, gun fights...not bad.
Untamed Frontier (Peacock) 1952. Another old transfer with combing. This is a more ambitious western with wide vistas and darker elements. Joseph Cotten, Shelley Winters and Scott Brady star. Cotten and Brady play characters similar to the Lancaster and Walker types in Vengeance Valley (watched recently). There's Lee Van Cleef playing a bad guy, and Fess Parker playing a good guy.
The Cimarron Kid (Peacock) 1952. Audie Murphy, but this time directed by Budd Boetticher, playing Bill Doolin tagging along with the Daltons on their last exploits. He does try to go straight but the fates are against him. Hope of redemption at the end. A much better transfer, but the colors are boosted and everybody looks afflicted by a bad case of scarlet fever.

 

[bujaki]

Thursday night, the 4 films included in very good transfers in the Universal Horror Collection, Volume 6:
The Black Castle 1952. More a Gothic than a Horror film, it does have a fine atmosphere redolent of terrible things to befall our leads. Of course, Chaney and Karloff add to this perfumed aura; Stephen McNally, John Hoyt and Michael Pate are a triumvirate of evil. Richard Greene displays some fine swordsmanship and eventually saves the day with the aid of a Romeo and Juliet philter.
The Thing that Couldn't Die 1958. Actor have to eat. Entertaining and the kind of film that I'd have enjoyed as a child (and now), but certainly not good.
Cult of the Cobra 1955. Russell Metty did a fine job lighting this film, particularly in making Domergue look mysterious and deadly. The film is quite good, with the scene at the bowling alley standing out as it builds the suspense. Can a cold-blooded reptile's blood turn warm and learn to love?
The Shadow of the Cat 1961. For cat lovers everywhere...and for would-be murderers with cats as witnesses...beware! Tabitha reigns supreme in this murder tale of retribution where the feline is the instrument and the consciences of the murderers do the rest. Beautifully shot and propelled by an excellent score by Mikis Theodorakis (Zorba the Greek), and acted by Hammer stalwarts. Very good film.

 

[Thomas T]

 

[Dave Moritz]

August 28th, 2020 Friday

Wow it is almost September!

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt1
4K Blu-ray / HDR10
Dolby Atmos

Tomorrow I will watch the final part, Mockingjay Pt2!

RIP Chadwick Boseman! Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman dies of colon cancer at 43!

Will be watching Black Panther tomorrow!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Either The Flying Leathernecks or The Long Voyage Home on HBO Max.

 

[Thomas T]

 

[Dave Moritz]

August 29th, 2020 Saturday

RIP Chadwick Boseman!

Black Panther
4K Blu-ray / Dolby Vision
Dolby Atmos 7.1.4

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt2
4K Blu-ray / HDR
Dolby Atmos 7.1.4

 

[bujaki]

An Anne Shirley double feature via the TCM app:
Music in Manhattan 1944. Pleasant musical with Shirley and Joan Crawford's 3rd husband in a More the Merrier kind of situation with fake marital mix-ups.
Saturday's Children 1940. Revisiting a much better film, co-starring John Garfield and Claude Rains. Excellent performances with Garfield playing a low-key working class man who can barely make ends meet. He's full of ideas but falls in love, marries and feels trapped. It is a well-developed portrait of low middle class Americans, struggling to survive. I wish the transfer were better as this was shot by James Wong Howe.

 

[BobO'Link]

My 9yo granddaughter came over and requested:

And I followed those with:

to which she asked "OK... just what *is* that, Pa?"

 

[bujaki]

Night Passage (Peacock) 1957. The Mann that got away from Stewart. Would it have been better? It's academic now. Maybe there would have been less time spent on accordion playing and Stewart warbling some ditties. The casting is still strange, reminiscent of a later movie with Arnold and Danny (Twins), or Mutt and Jeff. Could Stewart and Murphy have been half-brothers? Duryea hams up the villainy; De Wilde was about to use the baby fat to sprout into teenagehood. The women, except for Olive Carey, were there, somewhat drab and colorless. The scenery, as caught by William Daniels, looked spectacular. But hey, it still works. As it has a thousand times before.
Raw Edge (Peacock) 1956. 2.0 ratio but a strangely uneven transfer. Rory Calhoun is the stalwart stranger; Yvonne De Carlo and Mara Corday are the only females (except for some servants who promptly return to the tribe) in the remote outpost in 1842 Oregon. Women are chattel to be taken by the first man to claim them. Brutal, with rape and murder lurking just around the corner. Different, to say the least.
All-American Co-Ed (Classic Flix DVD) 1941. A Hal Roach Streamline Musical starring Frances Langford and Johnny Downs (and the Jrs., Noah Beery and Alan Hale). A short and deliciously subversive gay comedy that transcended all censorship because it is so coded. Watch it now and revel in its daring.

 

[Thomas T]

 

[Dave Moritz]

August 30th, 2020 Sunday

The Fugitive
HD Blu-ray
DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 upmixed to Auro 7.1

Man Of Steel
4K Blu-ray / HDR10
Dolby Atmos upmixed to Auro 3D 7.1.4

 

[Matt Hough]

Tonight I watched Skyjacked from the TCM app. The movie, with its line-up of famous faces in an airplane-in-peril story, is trying desperately to latch on to the huge box-office enthusiasm for disaster flicks begun by Airport. Don't know how this movie escaped me all these years. I had seen bits and pieces of it but never all the way through.

The print shown by TCM was super disappointing. SD (soft with dull, lackluster color) and a cropped windowboxed variation of the original Panavision. At least Warners could bring the movie, even in its mediocrity, up to code.

 

[dana martin]

Tonight's Feature Presentation


the bonus film with Pandora and the Flying Dutchman from Cohen

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey
Originally Released: 07/19/1991
Watched: 08/29/2020
4K UHD digital streaming on Apple TV app via Roku Ultra

I'm one of the few people who enjoys this movie more than the first one. The low brow humor is the same, but the canvas is bigger and more surreal.

I also like the depiction of the future better in this one; it feels less like a generic eighties depiction of a utopian future and more like what a utopian future specifically inspired by Bill & Ted would feel like.

And the adventures in heaven and hell push the high concept of this franchise even further. To this day, the movie's depiction of hell -- long dark corridors with too-low ceilings, every door opening to a different personal nightmare -- is what I think of when I think of hell.

And William Sadler's portrayal of Death is one of the great comedic creations of the twentieth century.

As with the first movie, this was my first time watching it in high definition and its original aspect ratio, rather than pan & scan on VHS or on cable. I actually don't think it benefited as much from the 4K upgrade; Tim Suhrstedt's cinematography for the first movie was mostly razor sharp, while Oliver Wood's cinematography for the second film is often considerably softer.

* * *

Bill & Ted Face the Music
Originally Released: 08/28/2020
Watched: 08/30/2020
Digitally projected onto the Hollywood Drive-In screen, with FM analog radio stereo audio

My thoughts on this movie are available here. To summarize: a badly needed ray of sunshine in the middle of a dark and gloomy year.

 

[Robin9]

Last night I watched Outcast Of The Islands. Kino's Blu-ray disc is excellent.

Today I'll sample the commentary track and also the second half of the commentary on This Gun For Hire.

 

[bujaki]

Endeavour: The Complete Seventh Season (PBS BD) 2019. Binged on the 3 episodes comprising the season. The growth/strain of the relationship between Thursday and Morse is the most interesting part of the arc. The main crime is compelling; the secondary investigation is marred by a convoluted affair; and a nationalistic, jingoistic strand is left unexplored.
Flash Gordon (Arrow 4K UHD) 1980. Absolute eye-popping popcorn stolen by the outrageous sets and costumes, not to mention the luscious Ornella Muti in just about every scene in just about any costume she wears. Sam Jones almost gives her some competition when he dons that very tight ass-hugging black diaper on his way to the gas chamber, but she wins hands down. Max von Sydow relishes every second he's on camera. The transfer brings out the beauty of the cinematography and the extreme palette of colors.
Beau Geste (Peacock) 1966. Surprise, surprise. Gorgeous widescreen transfer worthy of BD release. No, I wouldn't take it over the first 2 versions of the story, but if you're unfamiliar with those, you'll still find plenty to enjoy in this one. Savalas is fine as the sadistic sergeant who makes the stalwart hero's life a hell. The motivation for Beau to join the Legion has been changed and is not as convincing. One brother has been excised and the siblings are now Americans. But, hey, the Arabs still attack Fort Zinderneuf, there's a "Viking" funeral in the desert, etc., et cetera.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Beau Geste (Peacock) 1966. Surprise, surprise. Gorgeous widescreen transfer worthy of BD release. No, I wouldn't take it over the first 2 versions of the story, but if you're unfamiliar with those, you'll still find plenty to enjoy in this one. Savalas is fine as the sadistic sergeant who makes the stalwart hero's life a hell. The motivation for Beau to join the Legion has been changed and is not as convincing. One brother has been excised and the siblings are now Americans. But, hey, the Arabs still attack Fort Zinderneuf, there's a "Viking" funeral in the desert, etc., et cetera.

I have it on my Peacock Watchlist, but still haven't watched it yet. I haven't seen this movie version, since, I was a kid back in the 1960s.

 

[Thomas T]

 

[Matt Hough]

I was shocked with this season's Endeavour, not only because of its briefness (previous seasons have had more than three episodes) but also the rather obvious "love triangle" which I found just a bit too convenient and obvious and was proven correct. Earlier seasons had better plotted mysteries. The falling out between Morse and Thursday was also painful.