Acker
Bilk: Stranger On The Shore
(2008/Intermusic/Top Music International/Super Audio CD/SACD/SA-CD
Hybrid)/The Boy Friend
(1971/EMI/MGM/Warner Archive Blu-ray)/Dancing
Lady (1933/MGM/Warner
Archive DVD)/Finian's
Rainbow (1968/Seven
Arts/Warner Archive Blu-ray)/How
To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
(1967/United Artists/MGM/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)
Picture:
X/B/C+/B/B Sound: B+ & B/B-/C/B-/B- Extras: C-/C/C/B-/B-
Main Programs: B-
PLEASE
NOTE:
The How
To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
Blu-ray is now only available from our friends at Twilight Time, is
limited to only 3,000 copies and can be ordered while supplies last,
Acker
Bilk
is available from the Top Music website directly and The
Boy Friend
Blu-ray, Finian's
Rainbow
Blu-ray & Dancing
Lady
DVD are now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner
Archive series. All can be ordered from the links below.
Here's
our latest music offering, mostly Film Musicals, but a few other
releases in the same ballpark....
Acker
Bilk: Stranger On The Shore
(2008) is
the newest release here, from the man born Bernard Stanley Bilk, an
exceptional clarinet player. This album's title song is a remake of
his smash 1952 hit, joined by a selection of covers of well known
recent hits like This
Masquerade
(a good fit), Memory
(The Theme From 'Cats'),
Always
On My Mind,
Arthur's
Theme,
I Just
Called To Say I Love You,
Truly,
Just
When I Need You Most,
Three
Times A Lady,
Do
That To Me One More Time,
To All
The Girls I've Loved Before,
I Want
To Know What Love Is
and If
Ever You're In My Arms Again
contributing to the 18-track tally for this Super
Audio CD reissue of the album.
Top
Music, a big backer of the underrated format, has delivered another
demo-quality release, albeit two-channel stereo only. For tech fans,
the transfer by Povee Chan included...
32Bits/192kHz
High Resolution Mastering
SADiE
DSD Digital Precision
Mastering
Monitor: Almarro M
Monitor
Amplifier: Octave Jubilee Preamp
Power
System: Isoclean Power Conditioning System
Mastered
with Fap Cable
Hybrid
Stereo, Plays on all SACD and CD Players
Made
in by Sonopress
I
was amused by the mix of choices to record, but Mr. Bilk does a good
job on these songs, with the underrated #1 Randy Van Warmer hit Just
When I Need You Most
and Foreigners' laid-back smash I
Want To Know What Love Is
particularly interesting choices and performances. This was overall
a pleasant surprise and one music lovers will enjoy if it is their
kind of songs.
A
paper pullout with an essay on the album is the only extra.
Ken
Russell's The
Boy Friend
(1971) is
the eccentric director's larger-than-life feature film adaptation of
the most popular stage Musical in British theater history. We
reviewed the DVD release a little while ago at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13177/The+Boy+Friend+(1971/MGM/Warner+Archive+DV
Warner
Archive has now reissued it on Blu-ray in a brand-new HD master,
remastered and it only increases the impact of the surreal world
Russell and company (with more of a limited budget than it looks)
created. I like the density, quirkiness and eccentricity, even if it
does not always work in 2+ hours of screen time. Still, I'd rather
see Russell go for broke than not and I cannot imagine a film version
better of this classic than the one he made. Blu-ray delivers is
more vividly and that makes it more enjoyable.
A
vintage featurette on the making of the film that was also on the DVD
version is repeated here.
Robert
Z. Leonard's Dancing
Lady
(1933) sounds
like it would be an outright musical and with its plot of a young
Joan Crawford (in her pre-Noir sound film glamour phase) the title
character trying to go from low-rent dancing to a big stage hit, you
would think Backstage Musical. However, until the last few minutes,
it is a comedy/drama in which she is being beckoned by a rich young
Franchot Tone. However, there is another man in her life, maybe, the
rough, streetwise stage director played by Clark Gable. Even that
triangle only occasionally offers any conflict as Gable is turned off
by Crawford stalking him for a mere audition, but the film is sort of
an event release from MGM with big stars then and to come.
One
moment comes from an early appearance of The Three Stooges when they
were still with comic Ted Healy, who has a big supporting part here,
as well as before the tiro landed up at Columbia Pictures. Crawford
and the other women trying for the lead in Gable's stage musical are
going to co-star with ''Freddie'' as Gable calls him, or ''Mr.
Astaire'' on the verge of immortal success at RKO.
David
O. Selznick produced this little gem and Warner
Archive has issued it on DVD in time for La
La Land
to hit home video, so it is definitely worth a look.
Extras
include two Musical shorts with Ted Healey & his (Three) Stooges:
Plane Nuts and Roast Beef & Movies, plus an Original Theatrical
Trailer.
Francis
Ford Coppola's Finian's
Rainbow
(1968) is the director's first big film for a major studio, though
Warner Bros. had remarkably just been bought out (including their TV
and record company divisions) by the Seven Arts company, who had just
had a string of hits through various distributors. Recycling sets
from Warner's big budget musical Camelot,
Coppola loved the music (but had not read the book) connected to this
musical, then set to make it into a big screen feature film (they
shot 35mm film knowing they'd do 70mm blow-up prints, copies Coppola
says cut off parts of the dancing, especially for Fred Astaire; they
didn't letterbox those prints then) but it still has a nice sense of
largesse.
After
being on DVD for a good while, Warner Archive has issued the film in
a very upgraded Blu-ray from a new HD master. Astaire had not done a
Musical in years, but he loved the idea of this one as the title
character and this time, his leading lady would be his daughter. The
next coup for the film is that they got longtime singer (she was a
child singing star back in the day) Petula Clark for that role, all
because she had just had an amazing adult run of international hit
records in the later 1960s including Downtown,
Don't
Sleep In The Subway
and I
Know A Place.
She was in rare peak from for the film, a red hot artist
commercially, a perfect match for Astaire and to everyone's shock,
she could even act!!!
So
they are literally traveling across the United States (by walking!!!)
and land up in a mysterious valley threatened by greed (Keenan Wynn
is great as the greedy Southerner still stuck in some pre-Civil War
ways) backed by local police that can be inept (save Dolph Sweet of
TV's Gimme
A Break,
as the most formidable cop) all threatening the integrated community
our father/daughter team from Ireland have arrived at by taking it
away from them in a land-stealing plot. Al Freeman., Jr is the
scientist/community leader helping to save then with the arrival of
guitar-playing and also-political Woody (Don Francks) and Finian it
turns out has some stolen gold of his own... from a leprechaun (Tommy
Steele)!
This is long at 145 minutes in this
longer version that includes an Intermission, opening and closing
instrumentals to get audiences in and out of the theater, but even
Coppola admits he'd have cut this down had he know what final cut for
a director was. Warner ought to allow him to do just that as an
alternate cut for a 4K version, but offer both cuts in the same
release. As it stands there's still enough energy, joy, music and
fine dancing (down to ballet by a silent woman played by Barbara
Hancock) and the film's Irishness always rings true. Definitely see
this one, but be sure to prepare for a long film.
Extras
include an intro by Coppola along with a feature-length audio
commentary track he created for the DVD release of the film years
ago, plus a full color vintage featurette of the film's premiere in
New York City and an Original Theatrical Trailer. For more on
Clark's hits, try this Super Audio CD (with regular CD tracks) of her
hits entitled Kiss
Me Goodbye,
which also happens to be issued by our friends at Top Music and
remains the best release version of those hits to date at this
link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10092/Petula+Clark+%E2%80%93+Kiss+Me+Goodbye+(I
Finally
we have David Swift's How
To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
(1967), adapting another stage musical that also needed some
updating, with Robert Morse (recreating his stage role) as a window
cleaner who starts reading the paperback of the title (humorously
narrated by an unidentified voice with comic irony throughout) and
all of the sudden, he finds himself working at a ridiculous
corporation with wacky workers, beautiful women, quirks and some
silly secrets.
The
Mirisch Corporation in their contract with United
Artists go all out to bring the material alive and I think they did a
pretty decent job, though some moments are more dated than others
(though the time capsule aspect is nice) with Michelle Lee (later of
TV hit Knots
Landing)
his eventual love interest (the joke is he's too distracted by his
instant success to pay attention to her like she does instantly to
him) and she looks great!
The
supporting cast of character actors is also impressive including
singer Rudy Vallee, Maureen Arthur, Anthony Teague, Ruth Kobart,
Sammy Smith, Robert Q. Lewis, Jeff DeBenning and underrated John
Mythers. MGM, who now own United Artists, has decided to issue this
via Twilight Time as a Limited Edition Blu-ray and it is a fine
special edition all fans will want to snag while they last.
Extras
include an illustrated booklet on the film including informative text
and yet another excellent, underrated essay by the great film scholar
Julie Kirgo, while the Blu-ray adds an Isolated Music Score with
select Sound Effects, new, separate on-camera interviews with Morse
and Lee and an Original Theatrical Trailer.
Onto
picture performance. All three Musicals on Blu-ray are presented in
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers in full color
that offer fresh new HD masters. Boy
Friend
seems to have been retransferred since the DVD a few years ago and
the improvements are fine, Rainbow
is also a new HD master as is Business,
so they too look better than they ever have on home video and not
just in incidental improvements. Each was also issued in a different
color format. Boy
Friend
was in MetroColor and I cannot imagine it looking much better,
Rainbow
was issued in dye-transfer,
three-strip Technicolor and this copy has enough fine moments that
you can see that kind of color and Business
was from the DeLuxe lab showing off some great color few its own, but
it has a few spots with slight fading or off-color. All three were
also shot in real 35mm anamorphic Panavision, making for three fine
widescreen viewings, so they have that tying them together as well.
The
1.33 X 1 black & white
on Lady
is from a fine print with few flaws and I as good as this film is
going to look on DVD, a top rate MGM production where the money is
definitely on the screen.
In
the sound department, the lossless DSD (Direct Stream Digital) 2.0
Stereo on Bill
is as fine-sounding as any presentation here, very strong for a
two-channel presentation with some demo sonics and the audio champ
with ease. However, it PCM 16/44.1 2.0 Stereo tracks are not bad and
are a bit of a comedown from the lossless tracks, but solid just the
same.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on Boy
Friend
and Rainbow
are well mixed and presented upgrades from their 6-track magnetic
soundmasters with traveling dialogue and sound effects from their
70mm blow-up presentations, but parts of the audio (on set dialogue,
other elements) can sound more dated than others (pre-recorded,
studio recorded singing) so that holds the mixes back a bit.
Business
has DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 and DTS-MA 2.0 Stereo lossless
mixes, but it seems to have only been a monophonic theatrical
release, so they are both fine, but show their age as much as the
other Musicals. Wonder if a six-track master existed for 70mm
blow-ups never produced?
That
leaves the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Lady,
which is not bad, but a little weaker than I expected for even a film
of that age, but I have a feeling it is in the transfer and not the
available soundtrack. A lossless upgrade would help here.
You
can order the Acker
Bill
SA-CD from Intermusic at this link...
http://www.topmusic.com/ud-sacd8932.2.htm
...to
order How
To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
limited edition Blu-ray, buy it and other great exclusives while
supplies last at these links:
www.screenarchives.com
and
http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/
… and
to order The
Boy Friend
Blu-ray, Finian's
Rainbow
Blu-ray and/or Dancing
Lady
DVD, go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive
releases at:
http://www.wbshop.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo