What Blu-Ray did you watch last night?

[Graham Ritchie]

Guess what I was watching on blu-ray tonight

[Graham Ritchie]

Boy has the years past since we ran this at the cinema, still kicking myself not to find a away of hanging onto the print before they went to landfill, drat. Anyway watched the blu-ray again tonight using the Panasonic VP. It got me thinking I should find a way of including some of the promo stuff into the 8mm display at Ferrymead Heritage Park soon.

PS What model of Eumig projector is that shown below?

A couple of screen shots taken tonight, I am finding this film growing on me more and more after all its Super8

[Graham Ritchie]

Watched "Islands In The Stream" from Imprint again last night. Its a film that I think grows on you, George C Scott is perfect in the part. Filmed in 1976 and released in 1977 and based on Ernest Hemingway novel. If you get a chance to watch it, its well worth it. both picture and sound are very good .


A couple of past screen shots from the Imprint blu-ray

[Mike Newell]

The Outside Man (French: Un homme est mort) neat thriller from 1972. Great remastering and crystal clear sound.

[Ed Gordon]

Again tonight on blu-ray

Graham, I have been pursuing a Bluray of Splice Here: A projected Odyssey for some time now. The only thing offered in the US was a DVD from Amazon. In the meantime I found that it is now being streamed by Hoopla free of charge. Hoopla is a free streaming service that is hosted by your local library in the US. You can use your browser or an app for Android and Apple devices. You can even download content to view on your mobile device.

Splice Here is aimed primarily at the film buff/collector. The best part to me was the section on future of film and how digital is allowing restoration of film that would be lost forever without it. Douglas Trumbull's work with Showscan has great potential. I hope someone will pick up where Trumbull left off. His vision of expanding digital technology to take us far beyond the initial impact of immersive technologies such as Cinerama and Todd AO is fascinating. His observation is that current digital technology has a long way to go, when the best it can do is a 2k/4k version of film which can deliver nearly 20k resolution with current large format film. Digital replaced Film to save money, not improve presentation.

I have finally found a 3D Bluray of The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet. I have only previewed it so far, and the 3D is simply astounding. I am looking forward to a full viewing soon. I may close my eyes to avoid the rattlesnake jumping out of the grass scene.

[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.