Annie
Get Your Gun
(1950/MGM*)/Broadway
Melody Of 1940
(MGM*)/Damn
Yankees
(1958*)/The
Great Caruso
(1951/MGM/*all Warner Archive Blu-rays)/Mean
Man: The Story Of Chris Holmes
(2020/Cleopatra**)/Chris
Squire: Fish Out Of Water
(1975/Atlantic Records/Cherry Red U.K./Esoteric Recordings/**both MVD
Blu-ray)
Picture:
B+/B/B/B/B+/B- Sound: B-/C+/C+/B-/B/B Extras: C+/C/C-/C+/C/B
Main Programs: C+/B-/B-/C+/B/B-
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Annie
Get Your Gun,
Broadway
Melody Of 1940,
Damn
Yankees
and Great
Caruso
Blu-rays are now only available from Warner Bros. through their
Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the links below.
Here
are some great music releases, from musicals to biographies to
biopics and more...
George
Sidney's Annie
Get Your Gun
(1950) took a while to get made, but it was one of MGM's biggest
musical productions of the time as the Classical Hollywood Musical
was peaking, telling the (exaggerated a bit?) tale of legendary
shooting expert Annie Oakley and how she became a worldwide star.
Featuring the music of Irving Berlin, including a few classics like
There's
No Business Like Show Business
and Doin'
What Comes Natur'lly,
it is an energetic biopic and Rogers and Hammerstein actually helped
with the stage production before going off on their own in one of the
most prolific runs in musical history.
So
any problems with the film? The casting works, including Howard
Keel, Louis Calhern, Keenan Wynn, J. Carrol Naish and Edward Arnold.
The money is on the screen, including lush three-strip Technicolor
and the costumes and sets to match. The sound recording of the time
was as state of the art as it got (stereo was about to surface,
though) and the cast has chemistry. So anything left? Yes. Its
portrayal of Native Americans is hideous and all over the place,
which is why it was pulled from circulation in 1973 until its 2000
home video release. It is a problem when Judy Garland (who left for
health reasons) and Frank Morgan (who died during production) made it
and it continues to be so here, much like all versions of Show
Boat
have their racism issues. Thus, it is a marred work of cinema that
has its moments, but will not be easy for many to watch. Outside of
that, the film still has biopic limitations that limit the biography
and paint the lead unrealistically in some saintly terms. Otherwise,
it is worth a look if you can overlook its issues.
Extras
include several outtakes (many with the film footage intact) of Judy
Garland's original work on the film before she dropped out, all
remarkable, some Betty Hutton outtakes (in stereo), a 2000 DVD intro
by legendary TV soap opera actress Susan Lucci for the film at a time
she played Annie in a hit Broadway revival and an Original Theatrical
Trailer.
By
the time Fred Astaire made Norman Taurog's The
Broadway Melody Of 1940
at MGM, he was one of the biggest movie stars in the world and his
series of dance musicals with Ginger Rogers at RKO were legendary.
His contract at RKO was over at this time and MGM was still the top
Hollywood studio, known for lavish musicals like no other. One of
their top stars was the amazing dander, tap dancer and actress
Eleanor Powell, so the pairing of the two was bound to cause a stir
and it did.
Astaire
plays a performer who gets a job unexpectedly that leads to him
meeting a successful dancer and singer (powell) and a courtship
ensues, set to the music of Cole Porter, used to fine effect here.
Whether together, on their own or otherwise (Astaire and George
Murphy have a comical early number) work so well and there has just
been always something between Astaire and Porter's work (as in
Donen's Funny
Face
(1956) that just meld together so well. Astaire and Powell have
excellent chemistry together and their numbers together are amazing.
This is my favorite musical here and on the list of titles we covered
this time out and is a must-see for all fans of serious musical,
dance, vocal and music films. Frank Morgan leads the rest of the
solid supporting cast.
Extras
include (in low definition, 1.33 X 1) the hilarious Our Gang short
film The
Big Premiere
in which the gang try to make a movie so they can have a glamorous
premiere like the big Hollywood stars (the camera cannot do sound, so
they have to fill that in too, along with not knowing how to handle
concrete!) that has aged well, the great Ann Miller hosts the
featurette Cole
Porter: In Hollywood: Begin The Beguine,
the beautiful Technicolor MGM animated cartoon short The
Milky Way
and an Original Theatrical Trailer.
George
Abbott and Stanley Donen's Damn
Yankees
(1958) was a huge stage musical hit when the Hollywood Musical was
starting to go into decline. The story is an odd one, a fantasy
comedy that combines baseball and satanism (not a stretch since
baseball always has come with some superstitions) but sometimes, a
film is so odd, you cannot believe it as you watch, though having two
directors (including Donen, just coming off of his brilliant Funny
Face
with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn) but having an odd density that
would foreshadow the non-musical TV sitcom.
The
film opens as an older husband (ignoring his wife) is watching the
latest New York Yankees game on his big black and white analog TV
(color had barely been invented, so it is a sort of separate world
from the color of the film, as we see a few times) and wishes he was
young again so he could help them win. Suddenly, he becomes young
(now played by Tab Hunter) and becomes a new national baseball star
out of nowhere. How? Well, the intervention of The Devil himself
(played with glee by the great Ray Walston, who would later stretch
the possibilities of the TV sitcom as the title character in the hit
TV sitcom My
Favorite Martian,
reviewed elsewhere on this site) with the help of a perfect
seductress (the dynamic Gwen Verdon in her early prime) named Lola.
Add
the stunning choreography by Bob Fosse (isn't that him in that one
scene?) and you get as faithful an adaptation as possible, which also
serves as more of a time capsule of the time than expected. So on
the one hand, the 111 minutes covers all the bases (ha ha) it needs
to in the plotting and story, but it also has the problem of some of
the ideas being obvious and repetitive, like some lesser pre-All
In The Family
sitcoms (Jean Stapleton is actually here in a hilarious supporting
turn) get long and drawn out with their obviousness (which led to two
of the worst TV comedy series ever: My
Mother The Car
and Me
And The Chimp)
means it is the songs, acting and dancing that help lift this above
some other issues.
The
result is a mixed bag showing how the feature film version of the
musical was getting played out (and not just because of the arrival
of Rock N Roll music) but also pointed to new possibilities we would
see later. This one is worth a good look, no matter what you land up
thinking of it.
An
Original Theatrical Trailer is the only extra.
Richard
Thorpe's The
Great Caruso
(1951) takes
singer Mario Lanza (a hugely successful singer of the time critically
and commercially, singing opera (!!!) at the time) and rightly casts
him as the legendary Enrico Caruso, who Lanza loved and is still
considered one of the greatest opera singers of all time. It is a
biopic, but with 27 songs, it is also enough of a Backstage Musical
that it counts as a musical just the same.
Ann
Blyth plays his love interest (the film was based on a book by
Caruso's wife) and it is what you would expect, done with some
serious money, Technicolor values and a pace that works just well
enough to save it from convention. Opera fans will always consider
it a film that keeps the art alive, though we now see operas coming
out on disc every month, keeping opera alive in the face of new music
(Rock was on the way) is always an ambition of this high art and the
film honors it as well as it can in its 109 minutes.
Lanza
is convincing and the supporting cast is good, but the story is what
you would expect and not much more, plus we do not know what the film
had to exclude from the book because of censorship of the time.,
However, none of that could have amounted to any great scandals.
Despite the lack of depth in telling the true story, it is worth a
look and opera fans will say more so.
Extras
includes an Original Theatrical Trailer and featurette Mario
Lanza: Singing To The Gods that shows us his massive recording
career and why he was the only choice at the time to play Caruso.
A
chaotic but fun film centered on the life of legendary W.A.S.P
guitarist Chris Holmes, Mean
Man: The Story of Chris Holmes
(2020) paints an interesting portrait of the
musician who is a has been in the rock world of America, but is given
a new opportunity in Cannes, France to start over from scratch with a
new band. The film tells of Holmes' famous years and the ones that
were not so much, and is ultimately a cinematic piece that is aimed
at inspiration for those who dare to dream to hold a spot in the
music industry.
The
film features Holmes himself along with Pierre-Anthony Allard,
Catherine-Sarah Holmes, Dani Filth, Scott Ian, Johnny Rob, Gian
Zamparelli, Bob Nalbandian, and is directed by Antoine de Montremy
and written by Laurent Hart.
Special
Features:
Trailer,
Image Slideshow and Bonus Footage.
Last
but definitely not least, a Blu-ray audio edition of the first solo
album of one of the greatest bassists, musicians and vocalists in
Rock music history, the co-founder of the greatest of all Progressive
Rock music: Yes. Chris
Squire: Fish Out Of Water
(1975) arrived as the band was releasing their most epic album, Tales
From Topographic Oceans,
a double album with four sides, each side a single song. Like all
great bands, some of its members have material that just do not make
the group's actual albums and this is an example of that. The five
tracks that makes up this release include:
1.
Hold Out Your Hand
2.
You By My Side
3.
Silently Falling
4.
Lucky Seven
5.
Safe (Canon Song)
Though
Yes members Bill Bruford and Patrick Moraz appear on some of the
tracks here, it is still very much a solo album and gives you a
chance to hear Squire singing on his own in a way that shows how big
his contribution to Yes always was. The music also sounds like the
band without sounding like a ripoff or lesser version (or imitator,
of course) of the band and has the same love of music his work with
the band does.
Though
none of the songs are a standout for me, I always thought this was a
decent album and is a bit underrated. Now that you can hear it with
much higher resolution than ever before (save choice vinyl copies for
fans of that format) that it deserves a second look and listen like
many of Jon Anderson's solo works.
Also,
it about time their solo work got the high resolution treatment the
Yes catalog has received lately (though the Japanese Super Audio CD
editions were hit and miss, the out of print Audio Fidelity version
of Yes' Going For The One is amazing) and though produced by a
separate entity, this region-free Blu-ray audio belongs on the same
shelf as the several Yes concerts on Blu-ray, plus the remarkable
Blu-ray audio editions of the classic Yes albums The Yes Album,
Fragile, Going For The One and Relayer that are
still in print and though unreviewed, are very highly recommended as
well.
I
also have to add that hearing Squire sing in such higher resolution
shows that he deserves more credit as a singer as much as he does as
being one of the all-time bassist. This Fish Out Of Water
Blu-ray is more of the best evidence yet of that in his defense.
Extras
include an
illustrated booklet with lyrics, tech info and two essays, while the
disc adds an audio commentary on the album (a world's first) by
Squire that is longer than the album and additionally has him on
camera, something we have only seen on a music video collection (Pat
Benatar) resulting in a pleasant surprise, plus a vintage two-song
film of Squire performing with a band and orchestra on full length
versions of Hold
Out Your Hand
and You
By My Side
(color, 1.33 X 1) to promote the album. This makes for a nice
package overall.
Now
for playback performance. The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white
digital High Definition image on Broadway
has few flaws and looks as glossy and great as you would expect from
an older MGM musical, from what looks like a new scan from the
negative and offering detail and depth that make it all the more
impressive to watch. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless sound mix has been cleaned
up and restored as well as possible, but it still shows its age in
ways it cannot help. However, you can hear the dialogue and tapping
well enough.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Yankees
can also show the age of the materials used in a few places, but the
color is still fine and decent, though some moments (optical printing
moments) are not always as rich, but at its best, this can look
amazing. Despite being relatively a newer production, the
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless sound is a bit more
compressed and limited than expected, so something might have
happened to the sound or it was just recorded in an unusual way that
has not aged well.
Both
Annie
and Caruso
are 1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers are also
restorations that look great, especially for films that were major
productions issued by MGM in dye-transfer,
three-strip Technicolor prints, so the money was in these films along
with superior uses of color throughout. Caruso
has some fine demo shots, but Annie
is the best performer of all releases on this list and its
Technicolor is exceptional and stunning throughout with every scene
either a stunner or even jaw-dropping. This looks amazing!
Both
also offer DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless sound mixes,
but they sound the best of the four theatrical monophonic releases
here, well restored, preserved and as good as they ever will. The
combinations in both cases are a real pleasure to take in.
By
default, the menus on the Chris
Squire
Blu-ray is in
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition and montages of the album art
play as you hear it, but the audio commentary on the album is here in
the standard digital video it was shot in and the two song filmed
music performances look like an HD master that could use a little
work. Color is fine there and it looks the better of the two.
Of
course, the sound is the main attraction here, with the album offered
in four sonic versions. You get a new sound mix by Jakko Jakszyk,
intended to bring out details and even unheard parts of the surviving
soundmasters (24 and 48 tracks) for clarity nad posterity. The three
mixes that result are PCM 2.0 96/24 Stereo, PCM 5.1 96/24 surround
and DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 5.1 sound, all lossless. They all offer an
alternate version of the album that will surprise fans who are used
to the original album, yet despite the new details, still lack the
kind of density and synergy you would get from the original album or
any progressive rock music of the time, Yes included. Thus, the
lossless PCM 2.0 96/24 Stereo version of the original album still
sounds best and richest and most authentic. Sometimes new mixes work
too, along side the original(s) and we have encountered that, but the
new ones are not meant to supplant the original one.
Additionally,
some albums are just not meant to be more than stereo, including
albums up into the 1980s (Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones could
never find a 5.1 mix for Thriller
that they thought would work or sounded good, so they skipped it) and
Squire was not around to do a 5.1 himself, so this is all the honest
versions we will ever get or need of the album. When Universal
released their audio only Blu-ray of Tears For Fears brilliant album
Songs
From The Big Chair
(unreviewed, but highly recommended) as part of their series of
albums getting the higher sonic treatment, they also included new
stereo and 5.1 mixes of the album, but included (as an extra?!)
original stereo tracks of the original album and they sounded easily
the best without the new mixes offering alternate points or details.
Outside of a Super Audio CD, I doubt Fish
Out Of Water
will ever sound
any better.
Mean
Man: The Story of Chris Holmes
is presented in 1080p high definition on Blu-ray disc with a
widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78 X 1 and a lossy English Dolby Digital
2.0 mix. For being a documentary-style film, it looks and sounds
fine on Blu-ray disc and consistent audio throughout the interviews
and narrative.
To
order any of all of the four Warner Archive Blu-rays reviewed above,
go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases
at:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/ED270804-095F-449B-9B69-6CEE46A0B2BF?ingress=0&visitId=6171710b-08c8-4829-803d-d8b922581c55&tag=blurayforum-20
-
Nicholas Sheffo and James
Lockhart (Mean)
https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/