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A PEEK AT CINDERLLA LIBERTY (1 Viewer)

haineshisway

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I was a little late to the party in terms of peeks at the latest Twilight Time releases, which have A Few Words About and reviews, but this one seems to have not been talked about at all. So, I'm talkin' here, I'm talkin'.

First of all, the movie is wonderful. There are only two "reviews" of the Blu-ray that I could find - one so ignorant that I won't even dignify it with comment, and the other from the Beaver, who likes the film and the transfer, even though he cannot help himself with the "very dark" comments while immediately qualifying them with this is how the film probably looked. And his "caps" are perhaps the worst caps imaginable - they literally look nothing like the Blu-ray. James Caan is great, Marsha Mason is great, the kid, Kirk Calloway, is great, Bruno Kirby (Bruce Kirby, Jr.) is hilarious, Eli Wallach, Dabney Coleman, and special kudos to Allyn Ann McLeary for taking what could have been a cliched role and making it completely humane and wonderful. For me, the only performance I didn't care for was Burt Young, but that's a me thing - I find him so off-putting and mannered and he's literally the same in every movie - same tics, same mannerisms - well, not for me, I'm afraid. The score by John Williams is also terrific, never overused and just right. The photography is Vilmos Zsigmond and it's really beautiful - beautiful in its gritty way - I mean superb work that suits the story perfectly. The dialogue is tops (Daryl Ponicsan from his own novel) and it is perhaps the only Mark Rydell film I find perfect. It's funny, it's romantic, and at times it is very touching.

As to the transfer - it's perfect. Are some of the interiors dark - of course, precisely as they were meant to be and have always been. The outdoor daylight scenes gleam and glow with blindingly blue skies, just as they were meant to be. The outdoor neon-filled night scenes are gorgeous. For me, a perfect transfer from the fine folks at Fox, beautifully authored by the fine folks who author for the fine folks at Twilight Time. Highly recommended by the likes of me, and while you're at it, the other incredible Twilight Time transfers of late, for me, are My Sister Eileen, Blue Denim, No Down Payment, Next Stop Greenwich Village, Hilda Crane and others I'm still watching.
 
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PMF

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Well, if this is the only Mark Rydell film that you find to be perfect, then this is a definite blind-buy purchase for me;
as I have always favored his other works, i.e. "On Golden Pond", "The Cowboys" and "The Reivers".
 

Josh Steinberg

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I agree that the disc looks great. I'm still working my way through the bonus features on the review copy I was sent, but hope to have a review posted in the not too distant future. But for anyone on the fence who doesn't want to wait for the full review, I am happy to say that it's another fine transfer from Fox that the Twilight Time folks have once again used as the basis for a very nice looking disc.
 

haineshisway

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Nice to see some positive words, but Glenn gets so silly sometimes. Let's start with this: "In one scene John takes Kirk Calloway’s Doug to a western movie; we worry that someone will accuse John of being a child molester." See, that's just bad film criticism. No one in 1973 would have accused OR thought of John being a child molester because he took a kid to see a movie. Oh, but now in 2018 someone might think that because that's what people do now. Not then. Silly. Then we get to: "Correspondent ‘B’ long ago made me aware that in Cinderella Liberty director Rydell seemingly seriously emulated the style of Robert Altman. ‘B’ theorized that Rydell decided to act in The Long Goodbye to learn what he could of the director’s modus operandi. Liberty is stylistically a departure from Rydell’s previous films. The presence of cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and designer Leon Ericksen and the different feel of the score by John Williams suggests that the director liked what he learned from Altman."

There is nothing in this film that's Altman-like of that period, not in my opinion anyway. It's a classically made film, never has the feeling of being improvised, lines aren't jumbled and spoken on top of each other, and nothing seems off-the-cuff. The Long Goodbye wishes it were this good.
 

Josh Steinberg

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