Alamo
Bay
(1985/TriStar/Sony/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/All
The President's Men
(1976/Warner Blu-ray w/DVD)/Jane
Eyre
(1944/Fox/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/The
Way We Were
(1973/Columbia/Sony/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)
Picture:
B-/B-/B-/B Sound: B- Extras: C+/B+/B-/B- Films: C+/B/C+/B-
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Limited Edition Blu-rays of Alamo
Bay,
Jane
Eyre
and Way
We Were
are now all our of print, but All
The President's Men
has been reissued in a 4K upgraded edition and you can read more
about it at this link:
https://fulvuedrive-in.com/review/16779/All+The+President's+Men+4K+(1976/Warner+4K+Ultra
Now
for a solid group of serious dramas now arriving on Blu-ray, three of
which are limited editions...
Louie
Malle's Alamo
Bay
(1985) is the ambitious, if mixed story about a young, joyous
Vietnamese immigrant (Ho Nguyen) who comes to a small town in Texas
to become a fisherman and join other immigrants in the town, even
getting a job with a longtime businessman (Donald Moffat) before
trying to strike out on his own, but racism of the South is
unfortunately alive and well. With a sense of reactionary
self-righteousness, eventually encouraged by a no-good politician,
the caucasian workers start to torment and gang up on the Vietnamese,
though this unfolds slowly in the film's 98 minutes, making me wonder
if this was originally a little longer.
Some
of this unfolding happens with a troubled man (Ed Harris in a complex
if thankless role) as a man who cannot make enough money for his new
family and possibly to keep his boat. Amy Madigan is the moral
center in town caught in the middle of the mess and Caroline Williams
is among the very convincing supporting cast. We do believe this is
based on a true story, but the film still misses the mark somehow.
Still, it is worth a look for all the things that work.
Alan
J. Pakula's All
The President's Men
(1976) has been issued just in time for the latest political season
and re-reminds us about how pure journalism in its most basic form
exposed the Watergate break-in at Democratic Party Headquarters and
how there were many times the hideous truth almost never made it to
the public and changed the course of history, No, politicians and
others have changed politics (i.e, making it uglier and more
divisive) in a way to ignore how ugly Watergate was and no, we have
not allowed ourselves to learn a thing to fix the system, especially
since many are making the system more broken to get political gain.
However,
what Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin
Hoffman) accomplished was a breakthrough that showed how the founding
father's original design of the country was meant to stop such
corruption and third-world country-style takeovers of the government.
It could be argued we have had that a few times since and the
ongoing WikiLeaks affair shows the power of exposing lies and
secrets, but Woodward and Bernstein did this in the analog era with
limited help at first and now more than ever, it is a story that
needs to be told and retold because it is a triumph of integrity that
is all to rare and more than a few likely thought this would
continue. With the current war on real journalism, the opposite
happened and the world is suffering from this as a result.
Jason
Robards, Hal Holbrook, Martin Balsam, Jack Warden, Jane Alexander,
Ned Beatty, Meredith Baxter, Steven Collins, Robert Warden, F. Murray
Abraham, Penny Fuller, Valerie Curtin, Polly Holliday and Lindsay
Crouse make up the great supporting cast in what is a classic film.
See it!
Robert
Stevenson's Jane
Eyre
(1944) is one of no less than five adaptations of the novel by
Charlotte Bronte, but we actually reviewed this Orson Welles/Joan
Fontaine feature film version on DVD at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5374/Jane+Eyre+(2006/WGBH/BBC+++1944/20th+Centu
As
visually capable as the others, no one has really hit it on the head
for me as the best version, but this is as visually compelling and
strong as any understanding the film is as much a gothic horror tale
as a romance, though too many just want to ditch the dark side and
play up the romance in a Pollyannic way. Though it has some issues,
this Blu-ray is a fine upgrade from the DVD in picture, sound and
extras. See more below.
Finally
we have Sidney
Pollack's The
Way We Were
(1973) which, like All
The President's Men
three years later, was yet another huge hit for Robert Redford,
making him one of the biggest box office stars in history. Joined by
Barbra Streisand in a tale of two people who love each other
throughout different important time shifts of political, world and
personal change from 1937 to about 1955, the film is admittedly a
little more melodramatic than some might like, but their chemistry,
Pollack at his directorial best, the very serious & mature
political issues discussed and the late, great Marvin Hamlisch's
music score (down to that immense title song) made this a huge
critical and commercial success.
Streisand
was also on the rise as a major box office star, especially thanks to
the huge success of What's
Up Doc?
(1972, see the Blu-ray review elsewhere on this site) and this only
furthered her status as one of the top women on film. The
screenplay's liberalism and challenging ideas are as fresh as they
ever were and supporting turns by Lois Chiles, Bradford Dillman,
Patrick O'Neal, Viveca Lindfords, Murray Hamilton, Sally Kirkland,
Herb Edelman, Susan Blakely and James Woods helps this film hold up
very well. I am surprised a film this major is only coming out in a
limited edition, especially considering how prominent the music is,
so make sure you order this one in particular if you are a fan before
it is too late.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Bay
can show the age of the materials used, but this is far superior a
transfer to the few previous video releases of this film, all
standard definition. The same 1.85 X 1 HD presentation on Men
has one too many shots that look worn in detail and with more than a
few shots were the color is off, but you can still see plenty of
shots that demonstrate what a well-shot film this really was.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black and white digital High Definition image transfer
on Eyre
can also show the age of the materials used and that the film needs
some more restoration work, but this is a fine, solid enough
improvement from the recent DVD release in better gray scale, deeper
Video Black and cleaner Video White.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Way
is the visual winner here with a very clean print for its age, some
work has been done to clean and preserve the film without ruining it
(much like Funny
Girl,
reviewed elsewhere on this site) and was shot in real 35mm anamorphic
Panavision and issued in a dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor
prints. This color here often shows how good that color must have
looked. Director of Photography Harry Stradling, Jr., (Little
Big Man,
Midway,
Convoy,
The
Prophecy,
Midway)
takes a very smooth, practical approach to using the widescreen frame
in a way that is always involving and makes you feel like you are
just in the corner of the events seeing
them, almost able to be there, yet not totally. The use of color is
a plus and this is some of his best work.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Way
has what we would expect to be the best sound on the list with that
kind of channel usage, but thew film was originally an optical
monophonic theatrical release like Bay and Eyre which both sport
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 1.0 lossless Monophonic tracks, so it is not
really able to get much past the age of its audio, though the attempt
at a soundfield is at least ambitious.
Men
has a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono track reflecting its optical
monophonic theatrical sound, but it too shows its age. When you take
all the pros and cons of each film's sound as presented here, they
even out to equal each other.
Extras
on all releases save Men
include a nicely illustrated booklet on the respective films
(standard with
all Twilight Time releases) including informative text, illustrations
and essays by Julie Kirgo, while the discs add Isolated Music Scores
(usually in stereo!) and Original Theatrical Trailers. Men
and Way
add feature length audio commentary tracks, with Way
having a one track with Pollack and the other with Kirgo and film
scholar Nick Redman, plus both also have vintage featurettes and Men
also adds a Vintage Interview with Jason Robards on the Dinah Shore
talk show Dinah!
and the bonus DVD has a terrific new featurette All
The President's Men Revisited
that is more timely than you could ever imagine.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
