Blood & Sand (1941/Fox Blu-ray)/Freud (1962/Universal/Umbrella
Region Free Import PAL DVD)/London River
(2012/Cinema Libre DVD)/Love & Honor
(2012/IFC/MPI Blu-ray)/Sirens: 20th
Anniversary Edition (1994/Umbrella Region Free Import Blu-ray)
Picture:
B/C/C/B-/B- Sound: C+/C/C+/B-/B- Extras: B-/D/D/C/C+ Films: C+/B-/C/C/C+
PLEASE NOTE: The Freud PAL DVD and Sirens Blu-ray are both Region Free imports and can be ordered from
our friends at Umbrella Entertainment at the website address provided at the
end of the review.
Now for a
new set of dramas for you to consider seeing…
Fox
originally issued Rouben Mamoulian’s Blood
& Sand (1941) on DVD as part of their Tyrone Powers Collection which we
covered at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5751/Tyrone+Power+Collection+(The+Black
They have
now released the Technicolor bullfighting drama on Blu-ray and though I am not
a big fan of the script or the subject matter of bullfighting, which is forever
regressive, the film holds up because it was such an amazing color film for its
time and all time, Fox went all out to make it and the cast that includes
Tyrone Power, a scene-stealing Anthony Quinn, Linda Darnell, Rita Hayworth,
John Carradine and J. Carroll Naish is top rate. These are the only reasons I can still sit
through it, but if you have never seen it, the use of color and how great the
stars are make for a must-see-once experience no matter how dated some of the
ethnic (mis-)casting may be.
The only
extra repeats an outstanding feature length audio commentary by one-time
President of the American Society Of Cinematographers and Director of
Photography in his own right, Richard Crudo recorded for the older DVD that is
a crash course in understanding the art of visual filmmaking, color filmmaking
and is one of the last long-form looks at filmmaking before higher HD formats
started joining 35mm film (and some 16mm film) for feature film production. Always sharp, thorough and amazing, it holds
up extremely well and is worth getting the disc even if you are not a fan of
the film.
John
Huston’s Freud (1962) was a project
in the works for years and Jean-Paul Sartre even wrote an early screenplay that
was apparently way too long and complicated to film. However, a comparatively shorter script was
penned and Montgomery Cliff was well cast in the title role of a film that was
still considered a bit daring for its time (this is two years after Psycho and as Twilight Zone is a TV megahit; it owes something to Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1944) as well) and the
result is that the 134 minutes still holds up pretty well with some great black
and white cinematography, fine casting (Susanna York, Larry Parks, Susan
Kohner, David McCallum) continues to make for compelling viewing.
Some of
it never seems dated and since I first saw it so long ago, the world has even
caught up to some of what is here.
Huston manages to direct a biopic that skips the formula and conventions
because it is also involved with dealing with the dark sides of the subjects
Freud became famous for popularizing.
This deserves an eventual Blu-ray.
There are
no extras, but definitely catch the film, especially if you never saw it. It also compares well to the 1984 British TV
Mini-Series on Freud we covered at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9884/Freud+(1984+TV-British+Mini-Series/B
Rachid
Bouchareb’s London River (2012) is a mixed drama with
Brenda Blethyn as a woman looking for her missing daughter circa 2005 after
some recent terrorist bombings in the country.
In Guernsey, she finds out her daughter was living in a heavily Muslim
neighborhood and all this comes as a culture shock as she meets a West African
man (Sotigui Kouyaté) looking for his missing son. They keep running into each other, but it
turns out to be for reasons they will soon discover and it is not pretty.
A little
predictable and definitely slow at only 88 minutes, I liked the performances
(Blethyn is underrated in The States in particular) and it was worth a look for
the scenes that worked. I just thought
the slowness mixed with some predictability did not help it and so I can only
recommend this to the most interested viewers.
There are
no extras.
Danny
Mooney’s Love & Honor (2012) is
a drama set in the Vietnam era with opening sequences that weakly approximate
that fiasco (it is too lite for what really happened), but it has us follow two
best friends (Liam Hemsworth and Austin Stowell) as they go AWOL (temporarily)
to see the latter’s girlfriend who he wants to marry. There they have some culture shock meeting
endless groups of flower children and politically radicalized youth, but the
film is more interested in its drama with some comedy that dealing with the
politics or realities of the period.
Fortunately,
the cats is likable and this can be a good-looking work that has some good
moments, but it could have been about any war period and by the end, its
shortcomings make its weak conclusion show how weak and not so well thought out
it all was to begin with. Aimee
Teegarden, Teresa Palmer and Chris Lowell are among the decent supporting cast,
which makes it all the more a shame this did not work as it should have.
Extras
include a Making Of featurette and a Trailer.
Finally
we have John Duigan’s somewhat controversial and still-discussed Sirens (1994) now arriving on
Blu-ray. We cove red the previous
Umbrella PAL import DVD at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9946/Picnic+At+Hanging+Rock+(1974/Umbr
It was
not that long ago I re-watched it and it is still interesting, if not always
successful here on what is its 20th Anniversary (already?) but found
it more watchable than the DVD by a simple upgrade in fidelity. See it this way if you can over any DVD
edition.
Extras
repeat all the previous offerings on the DVD version including an ABC
(Australian Broadcasting Company) Lively Arts interview with Norman Lindsay,
feature length Audio Commentary by Director Duigan and Producer Sue Milliken,
Press Clippings/Script PDFs that are BD-ROM accessible and an informal “chat”
between Duigan and Grant on the film from the time.
The 1080p
1.33 X 1 AVC @ 35 MBPS digital High Definition image transfer on Sand is easily the image winner here,
with the print restored and used for this Blu-ray pretty close to a total
representation of a dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor version of the film,
but I found a few places where it could use a little bit of work, but not
often. Director of Photography was by Ernest Palmer
and Ray Rennahan, creating stunning work in almost every shot that holds up as
well now as it did then. There are many
demo shots here that will challenge the best HDTVs and upcoming Ultra HDTVs
too.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Honor
and 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on Sirens tie for second place for playback performance, but have some
minor issues. Both have been styled down
to portray another time and place with Honor
not doing a bad job on the late 1960s, but it has its share of shots that lack
detail and depth while Sirens has
its share of diffused light, soft shots and the like that cut into its
fidelity.
The
letterboxed 1.85 X 1 image on Freud
and anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on London
are much softer than I would have liked and would both look better on
Blu-ray. I’ve seen Freud look better than this, while London simply has detail
and depth issues that show a mixed transfer.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Honor and 2.0 Stereo lossless mix on Sirens tie for the best-sounding film here. Both are dialogue-based, but Honor did not have to be so restricted
to the front and center speakers, while Sirens
is a quiet film at times, but is well recorded and has some Pro logic type
surrounds. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
1.0 Mono lossless mix on Sand and lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on River
both have background noise throughout and even some harmonic distortion that
hold playback back, so they are the sonic runners-up. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Freud is sadly a few generations down
and too soft and quiet, even affecting the great Jerry Goldsmith score, so it
is the biggest sonic disappointment here.
As noted above, you can order the import version of the Freud PAL DVD and Sirens Blu-ray exclusively from Umbrella at:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
- Nicholas Sheffo
