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Discuss releases from Arrow and the films on them.

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rapta
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Re: Images

#26 Post by rapta » Thu Mar 01, 2018 8:52 pm

Looking pretty solid to me: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/dvd_revi ... lu-ray.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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mfunk9786
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Re: Images

#27 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Mar 01, 2018 9:10 pm

Looks great! Can't wait to have my pre-order cancelled

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domino harvey
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Re: Images

#28 Post by domino harvey » Thu Mar 01, 2018 9:36 pm

Don't worry, you can just pick up any of the countless other films that play the same notes of "It was all a dream/hallucination... or was it?!"

Costa
Joined: Fri Sep 03, 2010 5:10 pm

Re: Images

#29 Post by Costa » Fri Mar 02, 2018 12:18 am

Those screenshots sold me! Looks excellent!
(though I imagine many complaints about that heavy grain in some shots.. hehe)

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swo17
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Re: Images

#30 Post by swo17 » Fri Mar 02, 2018 1:16 am

mfunk9786 wrote:Looks great! Can't wait to have my pre-order cancelled
Be fair, this isn't a limited edition. The joke should be about the replacement discs never being distributed.

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tenia
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Re: Images

#31 Post by tenia » Fri Mar 02, 2018 2:54 am

gap wrote:Tenia, where do you post your reviews?
French website http://www.retro-hd.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
Though it has been 2 rather slow months lately for me, for various personal reasons.
swo17 wrote:
mfunk9786 wrote:Looks great! Can't wait to have my pre-order cancelled
Be fair, this isn't a limited edition. The joke should be about the replacement discs never being distributed.
Pretty much. Though obviously, I suppose LEs can also get replacement discs never being distributed. \:D/

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Shrew
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Re: Images

#32 Post by Shrew » Fri Mar 02, 2018 7:41 pm

domino harvey wrote:Don't worry, you can just pick up any of the countless other films that play the same notes of "It was all a dream/hallucination... or was it?!"
But how many of those films contain snippets of their lead actresses's unpublished story about unicorns?

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domino harvey
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Re: Images

#33 Post by domino harvey » Fri Mar 02, 2018 7:43 pm

As Waylon Smithers once said, even one is too many

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Colpeper
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Re: Images

#34 Post by Colpeper » Sat Mar 03, 2018 12:52 am

Shrew wrote:But how many of those films contain snippets of their lead actresses's unpublished story about unicorns?
You probably know this, but just for the record, Hodder & Stoughton eventually published Susannah York's In Search of Unicorns, a few months after the film's release. Oddly enough, one of my earliest memories is my sister reading a borrowed copy to me not long thereafter, so it must have made some impression.

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MichaelB
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Re: Images

#35 Post by MichaelB » Sat Mar 03, 2018 6:03 am

I remember that too - and I’d have been just the right age (five or six, with younger siblings). In fact, I knew Susannah York as a writer long before I ever realised she had a more famous parallel career.

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bearcuborg
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Re: Images

#36 Post by bearcuborg » Sat Mar 03, 2018 8:48 am

At five you were long aware of the author of a couple minor kids books?

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MichaelB
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Re: Images

#37 Post by MichaelB » Sat Mar 03, 2018 9:24 am

bearcuborg wrote:At five you were long aware of the author of a couple minor kids books?
I'm genuinely startled that you interpreted my post like that, as I thought I was being perfectly clear - but in case anyone else is confused, I was saying that I only found out that she was an actress many, many years (as in teens minimum) after I became aware that she was an author.

Which has tangentially reminded me of that wonderful Geoff Brown article 'Preston Sturges: Inventor' that I reproduced in Arrow's Sullivan's Travels booklet, the angle being that it was a biography of Sturges as though he was an inventor first and foremost who just happened to briefly dabble in film in the 1940s. Similarly, there are scientists for whom Alexander Borodin is much more famous as a great nineteenth-century analytical chemist - the music stuff was merely a hobby.

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tenia
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Re: Images

#38 Post by tenia » Tue Mar 27, 2018 1:41 am

The booklet states : "there are a couple of instances in which next gen dupe materials were inserted into the cut negative. At these points the quality of the image is reduced and the film grain is elevated to a noticeable level,, but we have attempted to make these shots fit in with the surrounding footage as closely as possible."

M Sanderson
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Re: Images

#39 Post by M Sanderson » Sat Apr 07, 2018 4:14 am

Overall very, very good transfer of a great film. Better than good transfers 3 Women (Arrow and Criterion), That Cold Day in the Park (Eureka); as good as Long Goodbye (Arrow); not quite up there with Short Cuts, The Player, McCabe & Nashville - releases that surely had a way bigger Blu ray production budget.

Maybe there is some variation if they had to use different elements but is it as distracting as having ten minutes of what appears SD, or at the very least an old film print, in the middle of “5 star” restorations like Anatomy of a Murder (Criterion) and Women in Love (BFI and presumably Criterion) (Two restos I mostly greatly admire, to be clear.)

Robin Davies
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:00 am

Re: Images

#40 Post by Robin Davies » Sun Apr 08, 2018 8:10 am

david hare wrote:And I go to pains to insist it's aboslutely worth buying. It's basically been unseen since the early seventies and contrary to some opinions here I consider it a major Altman.
I agree with the last comment. To my taste it's easily Altman's masterpiece. I don't know why you say it's been unseen since the early seventies though. It's been available on DVD for years.

ethel
Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:47 am

Re: Images

#41 Post by ethel » Sat Jan 04, 2020 7:35 am

Just watched this for the first time in forty years. Technically superb. Up there with Vilmos Zsigmond’s finest work. Graeme Clifford’s tremendous editing foreshadows his magnificent work on Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth. Susannah York gives her all.

For me, the very considerable sticking point is with the ponderous and repetitive scenario and generally execrable dialogue. (Rene’ Auberjonois’ character suffers particularly from unspeakable line after line.) The music and effects are so good that if there was a no-dialogue option I’d watch it like that.

Altman has comparatively few credits as sole writer of his films, and they generally weren’t his finest hour (A Perfect Couple, The Gingerbread Man, though arguably 3 Women is the exception). Images comes pretty well in the middle of an almost unbroken run of masterpieces from M*A*S*H to Nashville, but the game seems rather given away by the surprisingly spoiler-packed trailer (an extra on this disc) which promises a tired slasher psychoshocker.

Images’ staging and photography are consistent with many of Altman’s finest films. In the end, the director of The Long Goodbye can be forgiven everything.

Robin Davies
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Re: Images

#42 Post by Robin Davies » Sat Jan 04, 2020 10:56 am

ethel wrote:
Sat Jan 04, 2020 7:35 am
For me, the very considerable sticking point is with the ponderous and repetitive scenario and generally execrable dialogue. (Rene’ Auberjonois’ character suffers particularly from unspeakable line after line.) The music and effects are so good that if there was a no-dialogue option I’d watch it like that.
I don't recall any problems with the dialogue. Can you give any examples?
The character of Hugh is clearly meant to be irritating.

ethel
Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:47 am

Re: Images

#43 Post by ethel » Sun Jan 05, 2020 11:11 pm

Robin Davies wrote » Sun Jan 05, 2020 1:56 am
I don't recall any problems with the dialogue. Can you give any examples?
The character of Hugh is clearly meant to be irritating.
Well, since you ask...

Scene 1: She: How was the meeting?
He: Waste of time. Jesus Christ Cathryn. Why are all the phones off the hook? [phone rings] Who the hell would call at this time? [on phone] Jesus Christ Joan! It's 4 o'clock in the morning. [to wife] About your friends! Shit. I want to get to the bottom of this phone business. ... What the hell is that supposed to mean?

[Her hysterical hallucination ensues]

He: Cathryn? Cathryn? Jesus Christ. What's the matter, baby? Are you all right? What happened? You scared the shit out of me. Are you all right baby? What happened?

Scene 2: He: Cathryn? Jesus Christ, Cathryn! Open the flue. You didn't open the flue! Turn off the gas. Turn it off. Have you - Turn it off. There. Turn it off. It's not off. Wait, here, Cat. Let me - there. Open the window. Here - let me get that. Jesus Christ.
She: Were you upstairs just now?
He: Of course not, why? Why did you ask me that? It's impossible. What are you trying to do - smoke him out?

Scene 3: He: God. My goddamn gun. Caught my hand in the goddamn breach. Sorry to make such a mess, but this goddamn thing. It's all right dear. Now I'm going to take a bath before dinner. Goddamn it! Jesus.

Scene 4: She: Don't you want me to come [shopping]?
He: No, no darling. I'm OK, I'll get it. Go back inside. Shut the door. Close, close the door.

This is pretty well all of poor Rene' Auberjonois' dialogue for the first half of the picture, delivered loud and clear, all of it. Pinter it ain't. (It's uncomfortably reminiscent of John Cleese's dialogue for the picky American hotel guest in FAWLTY TOWERS, but that only ran 25 minutes.)

The New Yorker's Pauline Kael (in her Reeling collection) wrote, "In this ornamental visual setting, with so much care given to twirling glassy baubles, the occasional flat improvised lines are like peanut shells stuck in jewellery". Writing in 1972, she concluded, "he's learning techniques that he hasn't yet found a use for. My bet is that he will; when he's bad he's very bad, but when he's good he's extraordinary." This seems right on the money in view of the string of masterworks Altman was soon to produce.

IMAGES was made for Hemdale, the British thriller outfit, and I have the feeling Altman's storyline did the job in the thriller department while doing nothing to hint at the incongruous elegance and sophistication of his images. the resulting picture is an uncomfortable mix of high and rather low, but a must for Altman completists.
Last edited by ethel on Thu Jan 09, 2020 2:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

Robin Davies
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:00 am

Re: Images

#44 Post by Robin Davies » Mon Jan 06, 2020 3:33 pm

Thanks.
It still seems to me that Hugh's dialogue is appropriate to his irritating character (particularly his excessive use of "Jesus" and "goddamn") which I can imagine partially contributed to Cathryn's neurosis and her tendency to conjure up her other lovers.
Did you like his rabbit joke?

ethel
Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:47 am

Re: Images

#45 Post by ethel » Mon Jan 06, 2020 9:57 pm

I think I'd become glassy-eyed like Cathryn by then, possibly in self defense. Remind me?

Robin Davies
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:00 am

Re: Images

#46 Post by Robin Davies » Wed Jan 08, 2020 3:36 pm

"What's the difference between a rabbit?”
“Nothing. One is both the same.”
Not surprising she went bonkers really...

ethel
Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:47 am

Re: Images

#47 Post by ethel » Thu Jan 09, 2020 2:10 am

As Billy Wilder said of the shot of Lawrence of Arabia’s goggles in the motorcycle crash montage:

“A cheap shot in a Rolls-Royce picture.”

And yes, homicide is a perfectly rational response to that dialogue.

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