Atlas Shrugged, Part One (2011/Fox Blu-ray)/Ray Harryhausen Double Feature (She (1935) + Things To Come
(1936)/Legend Blu-ray w/Most Dangerous
Game (1932) DVD)
Picture: B-/B-
+ C+/Colorized Versions: D Sound: B-/C+ & C Extras: D/B- Films: D/B-/B-/B
Science
Fiction is still with us, even though technology and some of what we expected a
future might be like is with us, the visions and ideas about the future loom
large and the ones that did not come to pass still return to cinema thanks to
the confines of the genre. It is also a
genre that has much to say at its best and become political in ways no other
can. A few new Blu-ray releases show us
how and the extent of how this can go well or go wrong.
Unhappy
with the second Bush Administration, Donnie
Darko director Richard Kelly delivered the inane Southland Tales back in 2006.
I knew we were in trouble when it was a film that wanted to say
something, but cast the likes of The Rock, Justin Timberlake, the overrated
Sarah Michele Gellar and usually outright comic Seann William Scott. Things got worse when it was more of an
anti-Republican diatribe that had major issues dealing with possibilities of
the future and twisted things to be essentially a propaganda piece more than an
intelligent film. Now, it is the turn of
conservatives and Republicans to be as shallow with a remarkably horrid
adaptation of an Ayn Rand classic.
Letting
us know we are being set up for more bad cinema, the obnoxiously titled Atlas Shrugged, Part One (2011) is an
absolute mess, implicitly blaming the Obama Administration for total collapse
of the country (he was against oil, so the country lands up in worldwide war
and trains become the new dominant form of transportation?!?) with the same
overreaching panic and idiocy the Kelly film had five years ago except that
they butcher an important book as part of a larger, more disturbing campaign
(that includes fans and persons that are part of a Rand organization) to revise
Rand’s work falsely as ultra-Right Wing junk.
Director
Paul Johansson and writers Brian Patrick O’Toole & John Agualoro have
ruined the book and its context, have no idea what the book is about, what the
Science Fiction genre is about and have come up with one of the most
feebleminded films of the last few years down to its awful acting, very bad
digital effects, laughable dialogue and warmed-over revival of the Modernist
look that conveniently flies in the face of the post-modern Blade Runner look (they are fighting
the ideology of that film among others) in a truly sloppy, embarrassing mess. This is worse than I had even heard and runs
on and on and on for 97 very loooonnnnggg minutes.
Before
the events of 9/11, an event this film handles in odd ways, Francis Coppola was
working on a film called Megalopolis
that he dropped after 9/11 and lost interest in. Had that been made, I doubt this wreck would
have. The only question we can ask is,
can the next part be even worse? The
thin extras include a slideshow, two making of featurettes and feature length
audio commentary by O’Toole, Agualoro and co-producer Harmon Kaslow that is one
of the most disposable in home video history.
The
Modernist Science Fiction look began with parts of Lang’s Metropolis (1926, reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site),
Fox’s 1930 Sci-Fi Musical Just Imagine
and William Cameron Menzies’ 1936 British hit Things To Come based on H.G. Wells’ classic book The Shape Of Things To Come which is
surprisingly now on Blu-ray in the odd release dubbed The Ray Harryhausen Double Feature.
As the great stop-motion animator really had nothing to do with either
film, it is a new Blu-ray/DVD set from Legend Films featuring three classic
films colorized including Things To Come
and the 1935 version of She on the
Blu-ray and 1932 classic The Most
Dangerous Game on a separate DVD.
She (later done as a hit with Ursula
Andress in 1965) is about a journey to find immortality and how those who take
the journey run into the title character Ayesha, who runs a secret society
(here played by Helen Gahagan) and full-blown civilization. One of several “journey to other mysterious
lands” films that were popular at the time and RKO was especially good at
making, this holds up better than you might expect and is solid Classical
Hollywood filmmaking.
The Most Dangerous Game (co-directed by Irving Pichel and
Ernest B. Schoedsack) is even more successful and one of the most imitated
thrillers of all time, but the film is also much more as Count Zaroff (Leslie
Banks) is a mad hunter who has moved onto humans and an able-bodied man (Joel
McCrea) joins others already there (Robert Armstrong, Eve Trowbride, Fay Wray) are
about to find this out the hard way. Yes,
this was issued a while ago on DVD by Criterion (maybe they’ll do a Blu-ray
soon?), so this has a so-so low def transfer (we’d rate it a C at best) and the
colorized version of this and the two films on Blu-ray (also offered in black
and white) are also here all hideously colorized. Sadly, Mr. Harryhausen has been an advocate
of the practice and appears in a very brief interview about bringing color to
the films that don’t need them. We’ll
count the DVD as an extra, but with reservations.
So back
to Things To Come, British Cinema’s
answer to German and Hollywood
versions of the future is the biggest production here. Wells had unprecedented creative control on
the production of the film, Menzies is best known for his groundbreaking
Production Design on other films but does a good job here with the material
covering 100 years of human’s rise, fall, rise and possible permanent fall in a
sweeping adaptation of its source book that is older that Atlas by 75 years old, but actually takes itself more seriously, is
more effective, has better acting and has more fine moments than it gets credit
for.
The
biggest point of the film is asking what the price of progress is and it takes
the on road in this respect to its credit.
No, it is not perfect and some of its predictions did not come true,
others did and some of the technology is obviously dated, yet the ambition and
energy embarrasses so many of the hundred-million-dollar digitally-plastered
blockbusters with no point we get every month or so. Raymond Massey, Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir
Cedric Hardwicke and many other big names in British cinema (or big names to
be) are here and the film deserves more respect than it often gets. Arthur C. Clarke loved the film, but Stanley
Kubrick did not and it is reported that when Clarke got Kubrick to finally see
it, Kubrick said he would never take up Clarke on any more of his movie
recommendations. Oh, well.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 AVC @ 30 MBPS digital High Definition image on Atlas is poor and degraded for both style and to apparently
accommodate the bad digital work throughout making this surprisingly bad for a
new release including some compression, staircasing, slight aliasing and color
limits that are all as obnoxious as the final cut. The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black and white digital
High Definition image on She may
have problems and the film needs some restoration, but this actually looks as
good as Atlas with some good Video
Black and a consistent print considering the film’s age. It is not as good as Criterion’s recent
Blu-ray of Island Of Lost Souls
(reviewed elsewhere on this site), but not bad considering the circumstances and
the best we will see of the film for a while.
The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black and white digital High Definition image on Things is sadly not even that good, yet
after dozens of bad public domain DVDs, VHS and even Beta tapes, this is the
best edition by default. Needless to say
the film needs major restoration and preservation as it deserves it.
As for
sound, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Atlas is obviously going to be the best sounding of all the films
here as it is much harder to botch the sound, yet the mix is still too much
towards the front speakers for my liking.
The rest of the films (including Game
on the DVD) have Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono that show their age and all deserve
lossless restored tracks down the line.
Again, She fares better than Things, but both have had much worse
sound.
- Nicholas Sheffo
