A PEEK AT THE CRIMSON KIMONO AND LOTS MORE (1 Viewer)

[haineshisway]

Finally been going through three batches of Twilight Time releases - not much being said about any of these, frankly, so I thought I'd make one of these posts

The Crimson Kimono - a Sam Fuller film from start to finish and one of my favorites from this period. Wonderful location photography in Little Tokyo and other parts of downtown. Some classic Fuller hard-boiled dialogue, fun performances, lurid, and for real fun two of the off-camera voices are - Sam Fuller himself. The transfer from Sony is fantastic, beautiful black-and-white and the film has an excellent score by Harry Sukman. Highly recommended by the likes of me.

State Fair - an enjoyable film for several reasons - Pat Boone, Bobby Darin, Tom Ewell, and Alice Faye, but especially the not-to-be believed Ann-Margret. And, course, some excellent Rodgers and Hammerstein songs - for me the problem with the film rests firmly with the lumpen direction of Jose Ferrer. The sound is grand and it looks very good to my eyeballs.

You'll Never Get Rich - clearly not top-tier Fred Astaire, but certainly with its pleasures - the chief pleasure here being a spectacularly good transfer - luscious would be a good word. For me, Mr. Astaire can do no wrong, Rita is gorgeous, and Robert Benchley is always good for a few laughs. And I really liked the title sequence. One can never have enough Fred on Blu-ray especially when it looks as good as this.

Inferno - caveat: I don't have a 3-D TV so I could only watch it flat. In fact, I've never seen this one in 3-D. But flat it's a fun little trifle that moves swiftly, and the transfer has nice color and looks pretty damn good. If you have the Brit release, which I do, I think this one may have a slight edge, but it's most likely the same transfer.

The Quiet American - here's one of the occasional wonderful transfers from MGM/UA. The movie doesn't quite work but it's Mank via Greene and the story is always interesting and the photography is great and I enjoyed the Mario Nascimbene score. But the transfer is the real star - just looks really good.

More coming shortly.

 

[Dick]

Inferno - caveat: I don't have a 3-D TV so I could only watch it flat. In fact, I've never seen this one in 3-D.

I'm curious, Bruce -- why your decision not to go 3D?

 

[Matt Hough]

Finally been going through three batches of Twilight Time releases - not much being said about any of these, frankly, so I thought I'd make one of these posts

Well, I certainly had my say on three of them: State Fair, Inferno, and The Quiet American. But my reviews went up weeks ago, so they're likely many pages back. Your comments will hopefully spur some fresh discussion.

 

[haineshisway]

Matt, I wish there was a better way for the reviews - I often miss them, and always look forward to them.

 

[haineshisway]

I'm curious, Bruce -- why your decision not to go 3D?

I've just been waiting and, of course, now the OLED I've been drooling over isn't supporting 3-D. Annoying.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Matt, I wish there was a better way for the reviews - I often miss them, and always look forward to them.

https://www.hometheaterforum.com/community/forums/blu-ray-and-uhd.88/?prefix_id=2

 

[haineshisway]

https://www.hometheaterforum.com/community/forums/blu-ray-and-uhd.88/?prefix_id=2

Well, see, there's the problem - pages and pages to find The Quiet American review and not one single comment left on the review. So, glad I did this new thread because it's a really interesting movie with a great script and central performance by Michael Redgrave. Now that I've read the review I'd have to say that any of the first unit soft shots Matt mentions - every one of them are opticals. As soon as we're out of the optical, it's sharp as a tack again. And interestingly, the only little bits of debris seem to be baked into those same opticals. For MGM/UA this is a really good transfer That said, I think the movie doesn't quite come off and I think I attribute that to two simple words: Audie and Murphy. What a terrible actor he was, IMO. His voice is irritating, and his whole manner is amateurish.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Well, see, there's the problem - pages and pages to find The Quiet American review and not one single comment left on the review. So, glad I did this new thread because it's a really interesting movie with a great script and central performance by Michael Redgrave. Now that I've read the review I'd have to say that any of the first unit soft shots Matt mentions - every one of them are opticals. As soon as we're out of the optical, it's sharp as a tack again. And interestingly, the only little bits of debris seem to be baked into those same opticals. For MGM/UA this is a really good transfer That said, I think the movie doesn't quite come off and I think I attribute that to two simple words: Audie and Murphy. What a terrible actor he was, IMO. His voice is irritating, and his whole manner is amateurish.

Also, I used the search option located top right corner and The Quiet American review came up immediately as the first one.

https://www.hometheaterforum.com/co...-american-blu-ray-review.353105/#post-4501760

There is also a tab for blu-ray reviews located at the top of this forum section's first page in which you can browse through all the blu-ray reviews. There is another tab for RAH's " A few words about" reviews too. Another tab for UHD reviews and the same for 3-D reviews. The tabs are colored blue.

https://www.hometheaterforum.com/community/forums/blu-ray-and-uhd.88/

 

[Robert Crawford]

As to Murphy's acting ability, he wasn't good, but he was good in certain roles like The Unforgiven, The Red Badge of Courage and No Name on the Bullet.

 

[Dick]

I've just been waiting and, of course, now the OLED I've been drooling over isn't supporting 3-D. Annoying.

Have no fear...

I just two weeks ago purchased a 2016 LG 65" EF9500 (manufactured in October, which makes it the last LG OLED to support 3D) for $2400 brand new with free Amazon Prime shipping, and it's so awesome I wish I could talk a whole lot more people into seeking one out before they're simply...gone. There is a petition online that hopes to convince LG to incorporate 3D back into at least one 2018 model, and it has good support, but probably not enough to convince the company to reincorporate the chip(s) and wiring needed to make this happen.

Yet software keeps on coming out despite the fact that no 2017 units are 3D-ready. Why is that? Maybe because thousands of us have accumulated substantial libraries of 3D Blu-rays and own these pre-2017 displays, and don't want to be left out in the cold. Even Disney, which has largely dropped support of 3D Blu-ray release in this country (yet mostly offers them overseas), still does put some of them out for us (THE JUNGLE BOOK is a 3D revelation, as is MOANA).

I have a collection of 160+ 3D titles, not all of which I think are outstanding movies or even stellar examples of 3D, but, other than obvious crap movies, I collect and enjoy watching these, and my recent move from plasma to OLED is an exponential upgrade of PQ in general. I am in the process of re-watching all of these movies and experiencing them as though for the first time.

And with passive 3D (and its much reduced loss of light over active systems), ghosting is only an occasional annoyance in individual shots rather than a film-length distraction. Yes, I can now actually get all the way through DIAL "M" FOR MURDER in one sitting.

It also renders 2D superlatively. The velvet blacks are simply to die for -- 2001 looks better than I have ever seen it including on Cinerama screens -- and that is true of many outer space flicks that cry out for deep black skies. Color is more vivid and brightness/contrast elevated by leaps and bounds.

And of course the set offers UHD 4k resolution. I haven't fully committed to replacing my movies with UHD yet, although I own a few because 3D discs were included (KONG SKULL ISLAND and PASSENGERS). BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, however, will be an automatic purchase, as to this day it remains my favorite film ever.

So, Bruce...nothing much here you won't read in reviews of this display, but I'd encourage you to do the research and, if it meets your needs, grab one while you can. Buy it for the stunning blacks and overall 2D PQ and upconversion quality and 4k, and consider the 3D as being (very sweet) icing on the cake)

 

[david hare]

Which OLED BRuce? EVen the new Sony and Pannys topod the lines no longer support it. Agree about this latest batch, although I don't have State Fair. Quiet American is a major Mank, in my opinion, he re writes quite a bit of Greene's novel, for the better in fact and sort of Redgrave's character into a fairly objective observer of things. Inertesting thing is the word CIA is not mentioned once. Also realize people complan about the Mistress part being played by Georgia Moll as virtually yellowface but all the business Mank writes into the part with her and Redgrave translating for others and each other etc gets lifetd by Godard straight into his Contempt in 1963 with Bardot, Palance and Fritz Lang in which Goergia again plays the interpreter for Lang, Moll and English-only Palance. I love this sort of stuff.

 

[haineshisway]

Redgrave's performance is fantastic - one of his best. And the dialogue is great, too. Haven't read Mr. Greene's novel but I know all its anti-American stuff is obviously gone from this film - I just ordered the remake to see what that's like - my guess is I'll prefer this earlier version. And I thought Georgia Moll was great, actually, and whatever they did to her worked because it actually didn't dawn on my it was her until after I finished It was a different era and surely people can have enough brains to understand that context - yes, now you couldn't do it, but then they could and did and a lot. The most that folks who have no context filter should say is, "Gee, that wasn't right but I understand the time in which the film was made." But they can't be without their outrage because we're all about that today - well, not all.

As to the OLED - I've been looking at the new models, but also know about the one Dick purchased and I'm trying to see just what the 2017 sets offer that the 2016 set doesn't. Probably not much, knowing how these things go - and the newer sets are REALLY expensive, and the 2016 set is reasonable.

 

[lark144]

When Jean-Luc Godard was a critic for Cahiers Du Cinema he wrote a rave review of THE QUIET AMERICAN & included it in his ten best list for 1958. It's also been speculated that Godard chose Giorgia Moll for the role as the translator in CONTEMPT because of his admiration for THE QUIET AMERICAN.

PS: I've always loved Mankiewicz' THE QUIET AMERICAN (in spite of Audie Murphy, who is really good in NO NAME ON THE BULLET & THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, but not in this film) and disagree with Godard that THE QUIET AMERICAN "has everything but cinema." Many of the images from THE QUIET AMERICAN have lingered in my mind, and I haven't seen the film in 40 years. While there's something about the way Mankiewicz composes and moves his camera that somehow manages to intuitively express Graham Greene's prose to the viewer, that doesn't stop the film from being cinema. In fact, I would argue that it's the opposite, and that the form that Godard developed in his early films where the image becomes text and the text becomes an image owes a great deal to Mankiewicz and THE QUIET AMERICAN.

PSS: Of course, even in this early review, Godard is already being a provocateur, so when he writes that "THE QUIET AMERICAN has everything but cinema" he doesn't mean that the film isn't cinematic but rather the very basis of the film is literary; that Greene's prose isn't made cinematic, that is, transformed into images, but rather is transposed into the context of a film, unaltered, even though the ending is changed (which by the way, I believe Greene agreed to).

https://books.google.com/books?id=gtd3lAtcz28C&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82&dq=jean+luc+godard+on+THE+QUIET+AMERICAN&source=bl&ots=HmyitXyBx-&sig=TRxKNwbe2Xo9eIMHYfSiXqI7SQ8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1gKPq2ejVAhWq1IMKHZq1CCMQ6AEILzAC#v=onepage&q=jean luc godard on THE QUIET AMERICAN&f=false

 

[Peter Yee]

As to the OLED - I've been looking at the new models, but also know about the one Dick purchased and I'm trying to see just what the 2017 sets offer that the 2016 set doesn't. Probably not much, knowing how these things go - and the newer sets are REALLY expensive, and the 2016 set is reasonable.

I looked at the 2016 models earlier this year after the 2017 models were announced. The upgrades are minor - slightly brighter maximum output in highlights, a change to the panel so it doesn't look purple when it's off, and of yeah, that downgrade of no 3D. The 2016s were much cheaper. I got a 65" E6P for $2,800 and then used my credit card to get $500 back in price protection (there are plenty of sellers out there who offer silly low prices on OLEDs, but I preferred to purchase from an authorized dealer).

Thanks for the Twilight Time reviews. Based on what you say, I think I'll pick up Inferno and a couple of others. I get the TT emails, but it's hard to know if the movies are worth getting sometimes - some of them are unknowns to me.