What Blu-Ray did you watch last night?

[Osi Osgood]

We just bought the blu-ray release of the complete "Babylon 5", a TV series from the mid 1990's. Until now, we have only been able to see this on fairly worn DVD's, which a very marginal image quality. Now the whole 110 episodes have been restored from they're 35mm masters, and it's like night and day! The story arc was tremendous in this show, (especially compared to Star Trek in the 90's) and we've never tired of watching this, and now, we'll be able to see it better than ever!

[Graham Ritchie]

This was tonight at the movies being Saturday night watching this stunning blu-ray transfer from Arrow, you can't get better than this.

Highly recommend you add this one to your shopping list.

Over the moon watching this movie projected using the Epson tonight, it looked great plus 5:1 sound

[Graham Ritchie]

Returned to another screening of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" from 1973 two nights ago. I first watched it on its cinema release, how quickly time passes.

[Ed Gordon]

George Pal produced The Naked Jungle, and later used some of the footage in his production Atlantis The Lost Continent. I agree with Martin Scorcese who called Naked Jungle a "guilty pleasure":

In 1978, Martin Scorsese listed the film as among his "100 Random Pleasures" in a section of films which "are not good. They're guilty. But there are things in them that make you like them, that make them worthwhile.

You can pair this one with another 50's jungle movie, Elephant Walk, and double your guilty pleasure!

[Graham Ritchie]

Watched this gem from Imprint bought new this week, what a stunning color transfer to blu-ray and who can forget those ants.

Highly recommend getting this one

[Graham Ritchie]

"The Great Escape" 1963 the 50th Anniversary Edition blu-ray, taken from the original camera negative and studio source elements. One of the films I remember watching at the old La Scala cinema during the 60s,

[Brian Fretwell]

Catchimg up (a little ) on previous purchases last night it was "Carry on Jack" a naval comedy that only had two members of the regular "Carry on Team" in it (Charles Hawtree and Kenneth Williams) though had future regular Jim Dale in a small role. Mainly great picture quality, but the high definition really showed up the duped in sailing shots taken from othe films, the bit rate went down by a third during these as well showing the lack of detail. I'll have to watchi it agin with Bernard Cribben's narration.

[Ed Gordon]

Remember when you were a kid, and you could never understand why the adults praised the movies of their time when all you saw were old scratched films on the small black and white TV screen?

As Mark Twain observed:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

I recently watched a restoration of the 1953 film Beat the Devil.

The 2k restoration was made from a 4k scan of the original camera negative. The original sound track was also restored. As for the film itself, Roger Ebert said:

John Huston's "Beat the Devil" (1953) shows how much Hollywood has lost by devaluing its character actors. In an age when a $20 million star must be on the screen every second, this picture could not be made. Huston has stars, too: Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, but his movie is so funny because he throws them into the pot with a seedy gang of charlatans. "We have to beware of them," the Jones character warns her husband. "They're desperate characters. Not one of them looked at my legs."

"Beat the Devil" went straight from box office flop to cult classic and has been called the first camp movie, although Bogart, who sank his own money into it, said, "Only phonies like it." It's a movie that was made up on the spot; Huston tore up the original screenplay on the first day of filming, flew the young Truman Capote to Ravallo, Italy, to crank out new scenes against a daily deadline and allowed his supporting stars, especially Robert Morley and Peter Lorre, to create dialogue for their own characters. (Capote spoke daily by telephone with his pet raven, and one day when the raven refused to answer he flew to Rome to console it, further delaying the production.)

There are times during the movie when you can sense Capote chuckling to himself as he supplies improbable dialogue for his characters. Lollobrigida, the Italian sex star, was making her first English-language movie, but Capote has her explain, "Emotionally, I am English." She claims to take tea and crumpets every afternoon, and quotes the writer George Moore, who I believe has not been quoted before or since in any movie. Bogart describes his early upbringing: "I was an orphan until I was 20. Then a rich and beautiful lady adopted me." And Lorre of course has his famous dialogue about time, which deserves comparison with Orson Welles' "cuckoo clock" speech in "The Third Man." "Time . . . time," Lorre says. "What is time? Swiss manufacture it. French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Do you know what I say? I say time is a crook."

If "Beat the Devil" puzzled audiences on its first release, it has charmed them since. Jones told the critic Charles Champlin that Huston promised her: "Jennifer, they'll remember you longer for `Beat the Devil' than for `Song of Bernadette.' " True, but could Huston have guessed that they would remember him more for "Beat the Devil" than for the picture he made next, "Moby Dick"?

Read Ebert's full review at: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/g...the-devil-1954

[Mike Newell]

Poor Things. Interesting movie. Definitely different from the Marvel Universe 😂

[Graham Ritchie]

Yes and she did all her own stunts much to the praise of the stunt people and cast, including of her fitness by Dwayne Johnson in the making of. It really does come across that everyone got on really well on set. The Epson can do 3D as well, so its one movie to watch every so often in that format.

[Brian Fretwell]

Jumanji, Welcome to the Jungle. I'd seen this on TV a few times but as the HD box attached to my projector packed up not on the big screen, so when I saw the disc fr £2 second hand I had to get it. woth it for the scenery alone. (I am NOT talking about Karen Gillan)!!!

[Mike Newell]

Avatar The Way of Water and Indiana Jones Dial of Destiny. Avatar was faultless and brilliant despite long running time. Indiana Jones was fine but CGI effects were definitely a bit dodgy at the start. Reminded me of Polar Express.

[Steve Klare]

We found out something kind of astounding about our son the other night: twenty-one years old, he had never seen a James Bond movie! What makes this disturbing is being the son of a film collector, he's been pretty generously exposed to culture beyond his own century: he knows who Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin were and if you say to him "Moses supposes his toeses are roses" he's likely to answer "-but Moses supposes erroneously!".

-so despite the years sending this kid to college, we had an obvious gap in his education to fix!

The solution came with my Blu-ray of You Only Live Twice. This is actually a very special movie to me. It just may be the first big-screen movie I ever saw, and is absolutely the earliest one I remember. I was five years old, enjoying that last summer of sweet freedom before I was sentenced to Kindergarten! (I made parole the following June...) We were renting a cottage next to a lake in way-upstate New York and there was a drive-in theater down the road. The car was Mom's one year-old 1966 Mustang coupe. I remember the speaker hanging in Dad's window, the astronaut being stranded out in space, and particularly the helicopter with the big magnet dropping that Toyota sedan full of bad-guys in the water. (James Bond's...interludes with multiple gorgeous women wouldn't make a strong impression until Junior High: a five year old just isn't...equipped to process these ideas!)

It's all about showmanship, so I needed to set the scene for my kid. I told him the story of when I first saw the movie. I got the drive-in speaker and set it up in front of the screen. I often lead with some film-based shorts, and in this case I went with the Pathé Pic, Auto Cine on Super-8:

Auto Cine (1967)

-about Rome's brand new drive-in theater. It was a nice choice because this just happens to be the same summer we went to see You Only Live Twice at the Starlite drive-in six time zones away, and by a happy coincidence there is also a '66 Mustang coupe in attendance.

While 007 was romping in the Murphy bed with that spectacular young woman, I said "Can you imagine how my parents felt seeing this with two young kids in the car?" -as a young adult, he understands this completely because he sometimes has to sit through...intense scenes with his Mom and Dad there! (Opposite, yet Equal!).

We on the other hand enjoy these moments: good for a lecherous smile at least!

On reflection, five decades later: I'd say You Only Live Twice was mostly a movie for Dad! (In my own way, I enjoyed it too!)

So now our kid has at long last seen a Bond film. Now don't get me wrong here: this educational process is an ongoing thing! For example he's pretty firm on just who Bing Crosby was, but we still have a way to go on Bob Hope.

(We'll keep at it!)

[Ed Gordon]

That's true Ed I have "Witness" on blu-ray, overall I think to that its a better film than "The Mosquito Coast". I don't think it did well on its cinema release. Harrison Ford character came across as a person totally absorb in himself to the cost of his family. I have never read the book, but understand he was even worse in the novel.

Your comment about Ford's character being "a person totally absorb in himself to the cost of his family" may be the reason the film did not do to well. I only watched it once, and the only thing that stayed with me was a dislike of Harrison Ford's character (Han Solo can't ever be a bad character!). Another factor may be that Paul Schrader wrote the script. His style worked well in Taxi Driver, but did not work in Mosquito Coast.

Siskel & Ebert agreed with us on Witness:

Maurice Jarre did the score for both films. His Witness score is a highlight of this scene of the barn building:

[Graham Ritchie]

That's true Ed I have "Witness" on blu-ray, overall I think to that its a better film than "The Mosquito Coast". I don't think it did well on its cinema release. Harrison Ford character came across as a person totally absorb in himself to the cost of his family. I have never read the book, but understand he was even worse in the novel.