What Blu-Ray did you watch last night?

[Steve Klare]

Just Five Minutes until Show-Time: let's head to the snack bar!

.

.
.nnn

Not a BluRay at all but a DVD with over an hour of Drive-In movie daysets. It showed up today so I put it through the VP just to check it out.

The basic idea is when we have people over to see a show, we start this as soon as we see that first car so there's a little movie-atmosphere while they walk in the door and get settled. It's odd content on screen: really just for atmospherics, but still the same interesting enough that sometimes you can't help but watch for a minute at a time.

The images run through all sorts of quality levels including lines and fade all the way to really nice. Normally this might detract from the experience, but in this case it adds to the nostalgic feel of the whole thing.

The imbedded count-down clocks are meaningless: it was "three minutes to show-time" several times over about 20 minutes! (Don't set your watch by this!)

It's some astounding stuff! For somebody who lives in a neighborhood with a couple of really good pizzerias the very idea of Drive-In Movie pizza is kind of disturbing. Still the same, the adds are full of 1950s and 1960s cars which more than make up for that pizza!

There is actually a practical purpose being served here. I often show film shorts and then a video-based feature or concert. Once or twice I've gone to roll the video and found nothing but "HDMI#1: NO SIGNAL" on screen. After that, it's wiggling cables in front of a sitting audience (-and every so often correctly re-routing them! -Oops!) until the picture wakes up. (-not the greatest showmanship.)

By having this disk run at the beginning of the show, I know that audio and picture are both working: everything is plugged into the right place and fully seated, too!

[Graham Ritchie]

Picked up this blu-ray today and watched it on the Panasonic VP tonight. I wasn't expecting to much, as the film had mixed reviews, enjoyed it, better than I thought

[Brian Fretwell]

The start of the Dr Who season 25 set, Remembrance of the Daleks, upscaled from PAL 625/50 with new Dolby 5.1 sound (the origianl was two chanel audio) with original effects (there is an option for updated effects that I will watch later). Good picture but when projected it does show that one camera on location had a fault giving faint fine vertical lines on the picture . This set will take a long time to watch as there are ectended version too, plus commentries!

[Ed Gordon]

Yesterday I watched Despicable Me 4. Lots of laughs for kids and adults.



Watched the 1080p version with my 4k projector; the image was impressively good.

[Osi Osgood]

We started watching the complete series, on blu-ray, of the 90's cartoon show , "Samurai jack", which, along with Ren and Stimpy, were the best cartoon shows, made for TV, in the 90's and beyond, even to this day. I always admired the graphic style of this cartoon.

[Graham Ritchie]

Tonight watched all 27 videos listed below, using the Panasonic VP, great music from a great time

[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