What Blu-Ray did you watch last night?

[Graham Ritchie]

Again tonight on blu-ray

[Osi Osgood]

I watched a blu-ray of Star Wars, but it was pretty lousy, it didn't do anything. I watched it, and I watched it, and it still didn't do anything, than I put it in the blu-ray player, and it was fine!

[Graham Ritchie]

Well tonight was a bit of a surprise, I had picked out a second hand blu-ray a while back called "Slow West" from a $5 dollar pile in town. To be honest it really didn't look like much on the cover, but thought I might get around to watching it one night. Tonight was that night, first of what was New Zealand film commission in the opening credits as its a Western? , then the BFI in the UK came up, again I thought what are they doing funding a Western?. mmmmm strange, well soon after it started I could see it was filmed here in the South Island as well as Scotland.

The location photography really looked great, so if you want to see a bit of New Zealand this is a good one to watch. Right as for the story, well it turned out to be very interesting, certainly a lot better than I thought it might be. The cast were also very good, watching "Slow West" turned out to be a good nights entertainment, anyway here is the trailer projected using the Panasonic.

[Ed Gordon]

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2018)

Ignore the title. This is actually very entertaining. The user review below from IMDB gives a nice summary:

Great performances, it will leave you scratching your head though.

darrenbjones29 September 2019

In Empire Strikes Back, Luke is about to enter a cave, he asks Yoda what is in there. The answer, "Only what you bring with you." This is really at the heart of The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot. The tale follows Calvin Barr, played in youth by Aiden Turner and in age by Sam Elliott, both of whom give outstanding performances. As a young man he is tasked with hunting down and killing Hitler, as an old man he's drawn into hunting down and killing The Bigfoot. But is that really what this film is about? I saw it as an allegory on aging, vulnerability and Alzheimer's but reading other reviews it clearly means different things to different people. From an allegory on America's fight against Fascism and then Communism, through a man rewriting his past, a weak man trying to give the mistakes in his life meaning, to a story about a man who genuinely killed Hitler and then Bigfoot. There are many other reviews that offer different readings on this film. This movie seems to hold up a mirror to the audience and you put your own meaning on it. What isn't up for debate are the fantastic performances of the cast, from Elliott and Turner, through to Larry Miller as Calvin's brother and Caitlin Fitzgerald as Maxine, Calvin's lost love. It's a mesmerizing film and you'll debate what it's trying to say for a long time afterwards. It's definitely worth a viewing or two.

The full film is available to view on YouTube

[Graham Ritchie]

Picked up this title "I Am David" the other day I had never heard of it before, it was something a bit different based on the novel. But what caught my attention reading about it, was the cast in particular Joan Plowright, so I thought I would give it a go projecting it using the Panasonic tonight, although its just a DVD not blu-ray the picture quality was very good. The acting and story was also very good and it certainly kept my attention right to the end, good movie.

[Ed Gordon]

...Ed Of all the discs I have, I only replaced two DVDs "The Night To Remember" from Criterion imported from the US and locally the Warner Bros release of The Cowboys. Apart from those two never had a problem with any others.

I am seeing a lot of complaints about Warner. What I don't see is any mention of whether or not the Warner discs are "off the shelf", i.e. manufactured in large lots, or the disc they burn on demand (one at a time). I would expect the "made on demand" discs to be less reliable.

[Graham Ritchie]

Last night I watched "The Last Projectionist" on DVD, its a very interesting story of the oldest working cinema in Britain. The DVD was made back in 2011, sadly since then, it closed due to Covid, then sold to another owner and at present its closed with a uncertain future.


PS Ed Of all the discs I have, I only replaced two DVDs "The Night To Remember" from Criterion imported from the US and locally the Warner Bros release of The Cowboys. Apart from those two never had a problem with any others.

[Ed Gordon]

The Three Stooges Blu-ray Collection

The Three Stooges come to high definition in this limited edition 20-disc Blu-ray™ gift set including 100 treasured shorts to celebrate 100 years of Columbia Pictures! This set also includes 8 feature films, over 20 additional shorts with Shemp Howard, Joe Besser and Joe DeRita, plus cartoons and The Three Stooges Scrapbook.

The quality of the transfers is very good, and includes many extras, including complete feature films.

The first item in the specials collection is Nertsery Rhymes.

Nertsery Rhymes is a 1933 American Pre-Code musical comedy short film starring Ted Healy and His Stooges, released on July 6, 1933 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is the first of five short films the comedy team made for the studio....

Nertsery Rhymes was the first of three MGM Stooge-related shorts filmed using the two-color Technicolor process, originally billed as Colortone Musical Revues. This process would also be used in Hello Pop! (1933), again starring Healy, Bonnell and the Stooges, as well as Roast-Beef and Movies (1934), a film featuring Curly Howard's only known solo appearance apart from the Stooges. The use of color was predicated on the decision to build plot devices in Nertsery Rhymes around the following discarded Technicolor musical numbers from 1930 MGM films

From Wikipedia

It is interesting to see them so young, doing the gags and bits that would carry on for decades to come. The short is available on YouTube

[Ed Gordon]

Tonight we both watched "One Life" on blu-ray, highly recommend it.

I have that one in my queue to watch. It looks good, but I tend to avoid films that wallow in failures of humankind. You're comment and the review from from the LA Times are encouraging.

“One Life” is a slow burn, slowly establishing Winton’s modest character as a younger and older man, but when it cracks open, it is a deeply moving portrait of true human goodness. The emotional resonance comes not from the dramatic wartime events, but rather from the long-term effects of Winton’s efforts many years later. His story proves that a few months of helping others can turn into generational legacies, that 600 souls can turn into 6,000, and that one life can have a lasting impact on the world.

[Graham Ritchie]

Tonight we both watched "One Life" on blu-ray, highly recommend it.

[Osi Osgood]

We started watching our newest acquisition, the Indiana Jones complete series, in a steelbox. OK, it's not all five films, but they left enough room for when we get the fifth and final film to add to the collection. It is quite superior to the DVD box set, to be sure

[Graham Ritchie]

After watching "Prometheus" last week, it was time to continue with this Saturday night follow on "Alien Covenant" however another blu-ray I watched lately, and its Imprint release, and that's "Islands In The Stream" from 1976 starring George C Scott based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway projected using the Epson this time. If you like movies with a good story "Islands In The Stream" is one I would recommend. I did take a couple of screen shots and think Imprint did a good transfer job.









And lastly back to the trailer for Alien Covenant, the alien planet just happen to be filmed here in the South Island down at Milford sound

[Brian Fretwell]

Started watching the ITC series Gideon's Way from the 1960's, shot on B&W 35mm film. Much improved from the earlier DVD release.

[Ken Finch]

Just another example of the gratuitous violence that permeates the screens these days. Not the kind of film I would want to watch. I am not squeamish by any means, it just that there are far more better thought provoking films to see. The real world is violent enough as it is .

[Melvin England]

Watched this the other evening. All I can say is that for a film where two of the rules of the experiment where "No touching an inmate" and " No violence" for two weeks or the $14000 per man salary goes up the swannee, there was one hell of a lot of violence. You will need a strong stomach, even for the pre story intro which was a bit of a gut wrencher (and probably unnecessary) too.

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