What Blu-Ray did you watch last night?

[Osi Osgood]

I've always loved Amadeus! A perfect example/description of genius, how those that are genuis's not realizing that they are they're own worst enemies, and those that despise they're genius and do they're best to destroy them, but the genius lives on through the inescapable music. I have this on DVD, (special edition), but it's a pretty good picture.

[Steve Klare]

Hi Osi,

It's a great story that does both a service and dis-service to Antonio Salieri. It's possible that the idea that Salieri actively sought Mozart's death arose from a rumor started many years after the fact and may be completely untrue. That's the dis-service.

It's entirely possible that Mozart's own excesses and the pretty unhealthy environment of an 18th century city were enough to do him in without a jealous rival to help him along. We take for granted the benefits we get from things like clean municipal water supplies, sanitary sewage systems, and vaccinations in our own time.

-and yet Salieri in the movie was right: his music was fading from public awareness while Mozart's had gained immortality. The service to him is since the play and the movie came out, his music has gotten more attention than it had in the last 200 years.

F. Murray Abraham's Salieri is a great character: caught in a love-hate relationship. He hates the composer yet loves his music. This makes him...complicated. For example, he uses his influence to hold Mozart's operas to just 5 performances and then attends them all.

So we'll call it "History with a little...help" and enjoy it for being just that!

(I mean, granted: do we really need over an hour about one of Music's greatest composers dying of for example: dysentery?!!)

[Graham Ritchie]

A few years ago I bought the blu-ray of this film but never got around to watching it until last night LION is based on a true story and a film after watching it I would highly recommend. Its gripping , its also very sad as to how many youngsters live on the streets in large cities in India and how dangerous for so many just to try to survive, as shown through the eyes of a brilliant child actor in this film. During the end credits the actual family are shown

[Osi Osgood]

We had a great double feature tonight, Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven", and a personal favorite of mine, "The 13th Warrior", there's nothing like some perfect couple of non-violent movies! 😁

[Steve Klare]

Tonight on the big screen: Wallace & Gromit, Vengeance Most Fowl

We had to stream it: film prints have been...delayed for some reason! We ran about 20 feet of HDMI cable across the floor and made sure my wife's flat-screen worked again once we were finished!

It was really good!

[Graham Ritchie]

I am still keeping an eye out Steve for that one, its not been released out here yet.

Last night it was a visit to the past with the blu-ray of Gran Torino hard to believe that its been now 16 years since we screening the 35mm print. At the time we had a young projectionist who was 15 years old Gran Torino had a "R16 restricted to 16 years and over" if I remember right. I also remember asking the downstairs staff if they would look the other way if he came in through the exit door to watch it in the cinema, which they did good movie to.

[Steve Klare]

I was very impressed with it, Graham! I was a little worried that this one was going to be pure CGI, but it turns out that when Aardman found out the factory that made their clay was going out of business, they bought as much as they needed to make this movie! (Word is they are working on finding a new source, too!)

What's nice here is they brought in a lot of elements from the other stories. so it feels like you are slipping on a favorite pair of shoes: familiar and comfortable. They left a plot line dangling at the end which means to me they'd better lock in that new source of clay too!

(Yet: what became of their orange lunar rocket?)

Wallace has a "new" voice, since his original voice actor passed away some years ago. What's nice is he's so close that I only remembered this after the movie was over.

The animation it great! There is a typical Wallace and Gromit style chase between two canal boats and at one point they emerge from a tunnel and find themselves out over a deep valley on a high aqueduct. It was an awesome sight on a big screen.

There is a robotic gnome in the movie. Armed with this fact, the writers inserted many "gnome" puns. For example, Wallace has a tracking system to find out where the gnome is. He calls it a "gnoming device".

This was my son's idea. I can hook the "theater" into the cable box just fine, but it was his NetFlix account and he discovered it was available. I taught him how to thread up a 16mm projector and during our last show, he was Associate Projectionist during a 8mm-16mm changeover (My arms aren't long enough, nor would I ever want them to be!), but when you get into this stuff, it's his century, not mine and I let him contribute what he knows!

[Ed Gordon]

Tonight on the big screen: Wallace & Gromit, Vengeance Most Fowl

We had to stream it: film prints have been...delayed for some reason! We ran about 20 feet of HDMI cable across the floor and made sure my wife's flat-screen worked again once we were finished!

It was really good!

I have been a Wallace & Gromit fan for years and I found this latest effort to be ok, but it was not up the the standards set by previous releases. I have all older ones on disk so I can watch them again and again, not but this one.

Another fan's review is below. I agree with his conclusions.

Charmless nostalgia-bait

I wanted to love this. It feels sacrilege to criticise something as culturally precious to us Brits as Wallace & Gromit, but given the astronomical standards set by Park & co, I have to be a dissenting voice here amid the glowing praise.

This felt like a charmless facsimile of W&G, a fan-made production where everything just felt a bit off - IMO not helped by the passing of Peter Sallis, who is replaced with Ben Whitehead's accurate but soulless Sallis impression.

That's not to denigrate the incredible craft and skill involved in making a film like this, it all looks great. Almost too great.

The problem however lies in the script, the story, and the bizarre dearth of any of the warmth or 'detail' we've come to expect from Aardman.

Anton Deck? Onya Doorstep? Up North News? Come on guys. This is first-draft energy. This is not funny or clever enough to be worthy of an Aardman production. It has the cadence of being funny without being at all funny.

The jokes - of which there are few - all fall flat, with an almost desperate overreliance on slapstick to compensate for this.

Also, did Park and co just lift the main plot driver straight out of that evil Krusty doll episode of Treehouse of Horror?

The whole story and plot feels unusually generic, like they're just going through the motions & phoning it in. At best it feels like a lazy rehash of the same formula we've seen many times before. At worst, this is a cynical nostalgia-bait corporate cash-grab that feels like it was written by one of the film's gnomes.

I hate that I am writing this, but I was just so underwhelmed and disappointed. And on Christmas Day, no less. I feel betrayed.

[Steve Klare]

Liking a film or not is a very subjective thing, Ed.

-agree to disagree!

At the very least I rank this one ahead of Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

[Brian Fretwell]

I have a feeling that the death of one of the scriptwriters between the last one and this also had an effect on this one - Bob Baker, one of the so-called "Bristol Boys" who often wrote TV scripts together.

[Phil Moors]

I cannot understand how anyone can say the ‘Wallace and Gromit, Vengeance Most Foul’ was just going through the motions, or that Ben Whitehead’s Wallace was soulless? It looks ‘great, too great?? I think in this digital age people can’t just sit and enjoy anything without making a list of things they didn’t like. We all thought it was excellent.

I remember reading a review of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny where someone said ‘Not the Indiana Jones I wanted’? Well tough, again I thought it was great. I went a lot to the Cinema in the 60’s and 70’s. People used to just enjoy films for a good night out. They didn’t debate detail like today. Why can’t people just enjoy things for what they are?

[Osi Osgood]

We watched two John Wayne classics, Big Jake and the Searchers. Ironically, the DVD that we have,, is almost right up there with the Blu-ray in quality, but I think that this is because our Blu-ray player upgrades any DVD to look great. Now, the Searchers is a real revelation! The film was painstakingly restored just recently, and I'd swear that it almost looks too good. It's brought out of the 1950's, and quality wise, it's right up there with films these days. Stunning. Big Jake also benefits from it originally being shot and processed by technicolor, so all the prints look awesome in the first place.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Adding to the Wallace & Gromit opinions, I thought Vengeance Most Fowl was brilliant. Wildly entertaining even when making points about AI & technology, I laughed out loud throughout the film.

[Steve Klare]

Yes, their take on AI was presented kind of subtly, but it made its point! There is always that fear of "when it can start making itself..." and in this case we saw the first garden gnomes capable of reproduction! (-by Manufacture: this is a Family Movie!)

I would like to have seen this one in a theater, but that simply wasn't an option in this case: there's a multiplex near us next door to a Nathan's. Coupl'a hot dogs and this movie would have been a nice night out!

-but we did the best we could at home.

[Graham Ritchie]

Well folks long before "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" there was this one released by "Imprint" I watched this blu-ray a few weeks ago and enjoyed it, both picture and sound were very good.