The French Connection - Blu-Ray

After typing this up – it’s more a product review than a movie review – so you’ll be warned.

I liked the movie quite a bit – but the blu-ray print was so awful that it seriously detracted from the film in such a way that I’m left thinking about the digital noise more than the story. Apparently the director added digital fuzz and filters to lend the film a grittier look for the blu-ray – which distracted me quite a bit. There was a scene where they were tailing someone – and they showed a shot outside their window and it was so fuzzy and grainy it took me right out of the moment. Then another scene where Popeye was across the street from his tail and he clapped his hands together – and they showed a close-up of that – and it looked like a big gray and black grainy mess – and I had to sit and think what that was all about. I couldn’t tell you about how the color filters affected the film – because it was my first viewing – but I almost felt like I was watching a bootlegged VHS copy it was so dark and ugly.

This is not how you release a “classic” on any format – it was pathetic. I don’t care if you want your film to have a different look – it’s a slap in the face of all the people who worked on the film – who have watched it and hold it up as a classic and even first time watchers who don’t want to see a bunch of disgusting digital fuzz and just watch what everyone keeps talking about. Put your fucking Ego away – and make a different film with all the elements you wanted – and leave the original alone.

The film was really interesting though – I loved that car chase under the elevated-train – that was intense – it’s exactly what action movies don’t have these days. I liked that 70’s cop movie feel that just kind of leaves you scratching your head and wondering about it all.

Y is for... [part 2]

If you were to argue that Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein ranks among the top-ten funniest movies of all time, nobody could reasonably dispute the claim. Spoofing classic horror in the way that Brooks's previous film Blazing Saddles sent up classic Westerns, the movie is both a loving tribute and a raucous, irreverent parody of Universal's classic horror films Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Filming in glorious black and white, Brooks re-created the Frankenstein laboratory using the same equipment from the original Frankenstein (courtesy of designer Kenneth Strickfaden), and this loving attention to physical and stylistic detail creates a solid foundation for nonstop comedy. The story, of course, involves Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) and his effort to resume experiments in re-animation pioneered by his late father. (He's got some help, since dad left behind a book titled How I Did It.) Assisting him is the hapless hunchback Igor (Marty Feldman) and the buxom but none-too-bright maiden Inga (Teri Garr), and when Frankenstein succeeds in creating his monster (Peter Boyle), the stage is set for an outrageous revision of the Frankenstein legend. With comedy highlights too numerous to mention, Brooks guides his brilliant cast (also including Cloris Leachman, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, and Gene Hackman in a classic cameo role) through scene after scene of inspired hilarity. Indeed, Young Frankenstein is a charmed film, nothing less than a comedy classic, representing the finest work from everyone involved. Not one joke has lost its payoff, and none of the countless gags have lost their zany appeal. From a career that includes some of the best comedies ever made, this is the film for which Mel Brooks will be most fondly remembered. Befitting a classic, the Special Edition DVD includes audio commentary by Mel Brooks, a "making of" documentary, interviews with the cast, hilarious bloopers and outtakes, and the original theatrical trailers. No video library should be without a copy of Young Frankenstein. And just remember--that's Fronkensteen. (synopsis provided by Amazon.com)

released 1974

directed by Mel Brooks

U is for...

Winner of four Academy Awards, including best picture, director, supporting actor, and best editing, Clint Eastwood's 1992 masterpiece stands as one of the greatest and most thematically compelling Westerns ever made. "The movie summarized everything I feel about the Western," said Eastwood at the time of the film's release. "The moral is the concern with gunplay." To illustrate that theme, Eastwood stars as a retired, once-ruthless killer-turned-gentle-widower and hog farmer. He accepts one last bounty-hunter mission--to find the men who brutalized a prostitute--to help support his two motherless children. Joined by his former partner (Morgan Freeman) and a cocky greenhorn (Jaimz Woolvett), he takes on a corrupt sheriff (Oscar winner Gene Hackman) in a showdown that makes the viewer feel the full impact of violence and its corruption of the soul. Dedicated to Eastwood's mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel and featuring a colorful role for Richard Harris, it's arguably Eastwood's crowning directorial achievement. (synopsis provided by Amazon.com)

released 1992

directed by Clint Eastwood