Although it’s impossible to keep up with all the disks from Twilight Time, I’ve recently been binging on some of their newer releases.
Twilight Time round-up
Tag: Blu-Ray
Seeing the world in black-and-white … and shades of grey
The pleasures of black-and-white cinematography are on full display in Ken Hughes’ The Small World of Sammy Lee; shot on the streets of Soho and the East End by the great Wolfgang Suschitzky, this story of a small-time entertainer and compulsive gambler desperately trying to raise cash to pay off a gangster is a finely observed depiction of the seedier side of pre-Swinging London, shot through with bleak humour and the tentative possibility of redemption.
Criterion Blu-ray review: Jack Garfein’s Something Wild (1961)
Criterion resurrects an important American independent film with a stunning Blu-ray of Jack Garfein’s Something Wild (1961), a showcase for members of the Actors Studio and the Method.
A 3D New Year
At my annual New Year’s ritual of dinner and movies at my friend Steve’s, I finally got to sample the home 3D viewing experience; we sampled a number of movies, old and new, cheap and expensive, but while the experience had some interesting aspects, I can’t imagine wanting to watch in 3D too often.
Criterion Blu-ray review: Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog (2015)
Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog (2015) is a charming, discursive, ultimately deeply moving exploration of death, loss, grief and life. Criterion’s Blu-ray edition provides an illuminating conversation with the filmmaker about her art, her career, and her experience of life.
Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
Criterion’s Blu-ray release of One-Eyed Jacks is one of the disk highlights of the year, its restored image and sound confirming this great western’s stature. Marlon Brando’s sole directing effort is a key transitional moment between the traditional western and the national myth it represented and the modern deconstruction of that myth by filmmakers like Sam Peckinpah and Arthur Penn.
Arrow’s American Horror Project, vol 1
With a three disk first volume, Arrow Video embark on an ambitious undertaking with the American Horror Project, which intends to gather together independent, fringe features from the ’70s and ’80s, surrounded by supplementary features which provide context and possibly a cumulative history of this genre niche. Set one gathers three movies of varying quality.
Old horrors, newly packaged
Shout! Factory releases new Blu-ray editions of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist III (1990), each disk sporting a new 2K transfer and a wealth of supplementary materials.
Leonard Cohen, Robert Altman and an elegy to a national myth
Robert Altman’s masterpiece, McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), finally gets a worthy disk release. Criterion gives us a wonderful transfer along with almost three hours of informative supplements.
New releases from the BFI, 2016: Part 2
Two new BFI releases, Peter Hall’s Akenfield (1974) and Andrew Grieve’s On the Black Hill (1988), view the 20th Century through the relationships of people in rural Britain to the land, evoking physical hardship and timeless mystical connections.
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