Castle
Keep
(1969)/Bobby
Deerfield
(1977/Sony/Columbia/Mill Creek Director
Spotlight Sydney Pollack
Blu-ray)/Sydney
Pollack: A Subliminal Existentialist by Wes D. Gehring
(2022/Hardcover/Indiana Historical Society Books)/Toni
(2023/Icarus/Distrib DVD)/12
Strong 4K
(2018/Warner 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray)
Picture:
B-/B-/C/B Sound: B-/B-/C+/B Extras: D/D/C-/C Films:
B-/C/C+/C Book: B
This
latest group of dramas includes a deeper look at a director who was
at his best in that genre...
A
double feature of two earlier films by the late Sydney Pollack,
Castle
Keep
(1969) and Bobby
Deerfield
(1977) are an entry in a new series (we hope it goes on for a while)
called Director
Spotlight
now on a single Blu-ray disc from Mill Creek. Hard to believe we
never got to Keep
before, but we have covered Deerfield
twice. I covered the DVD edition a long time ago at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6706/Bobby+Deerfield+(1977/Sony+DVD
The
another one of our great writers covered the Limited Edition Twilight
Time Blu-ray version:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/14610/Bobby+Deerfield+(1977/Warner/Columbia/Sony/T
Copies
of that one are remarkably still in print as we post. Al Pacino is a
great actor and Deerfield
was a chance for a character study, something he and Pollack are
capable of, but the film still misses the mark, despite some sincere
efforts. Seeing it again years alter, it looks more ambitious,
though.
Keep
is an unusual epic film and war film for Pollack with Burt Lancaster
leading the cast as a group of soldier get a Count (Jean-Pierre
Aumont) to help them fight the Nazis during The Battle Of The Bulge
rages nearby in a castle he hopes they can protect from Axis
destruction. With its share of interesting moments and developments,
the supporting cast is convincing enough with other soldiers played
by no less than Peter Falk, Patrick O'Neal, Bruce Dern, Scott Wilson,
Al Freeman Jr., Michael Conrad and future film director Tony Bill.
The fights and battles are as god and the rest of the cast is as
well.
The
screenplay was co-written by Daniel Taradash (Rancho
Notorious,
Golden
Boy,
Storm
Center,
Picnic,
Morituri,
Alvarez
Kelly)
and David Rayfiel (Sabrina,
The
Way We Were,
Valdez
Is Coming,
Three
Days Of The Condor,
Jeremiah
Johnson,
Out Of
Africa,
Absence
Of Malice,
The
Firm)
delivering storylines that take the material, situation and the
audience seriously as so many that came out that year did. Even when
some things don't work or work as well now, it is not for lack of
trying.
However,
it is a rare film for Pollack, the kind Hollywood seems incapable of
making anymore (an intelligent, realistic epic for grown adults) and
is worth a look for all it still has to offer.
There
are sadly no extras, but Keep
deserves some when they can expand and further restore the film,
while the Twilight Time Limited Edition has some and you can find out
more about that at the link above.
Sydney
Pollack: A Subliminal Existentialist by Wes D. Gehring
(2022) is a recent book on the late director that is decent, though I
would debate how existential his films are, his argument has some
validity, even if it is not outright so for me. Is this his way of
saying that Pollack's films hold the same place the movie directors
Robert Kolker holds high in his classic book A
Cinema Of Loneliness
(reviewed elsewhere on this site) and is as relevant?
Starring
in the 1960s and going into the early 1980s as home video permanently
took hold, tons of books on film (starting with Robin Wood's classic
Hitchcock's
Films)
were written, published and became staples of serious film libraries,
film schools and film fan collections that would be either
biographies, film analysis, or a good combination of the two as we
get here. Castle
Keep
came out of the relationship between Pollack and still very
formidable superstar Burt Lancaster that started on The
Scalphunters,
further launching Pollack behind the camera and continuing
Lancaster's amazing run of great work and luck in part from hard work
and uncanny choices.
The
book is good on the biographical side, but also on behind the scenes
of select films and not his entire directorial feature film output,
which some might not be happy with. Thus, The Slender Thread,
This Property Is Condemned* The Scalphunters before and
any films after his odd financial bomb (odder since it has longtime
collaborator Robert Redford in the lead) Havana (The Firm,
the Sabrina remake, Random Hearts, The Interpreter*)
plus one well liked in the middle (The Yakuza*, co-written by
Robert Towne and Paul Schrader, et al, so maybe their participation
cut into a pure Pollack vision?) are hardly discussed and this book
has no index either. (*Indicates a review elsewhere on this site).
Still,
with all that said, it is a good book that does a good job of getting
to the heart of Pollack's art, work, choices and character. There
are some illustrations and the author assumes you have seen all the
films, so expect spoilers throughout. Better to see the films before
you read unless you look up a specific chapter. It is very thorough,
scholarly, rich, smart and a worth addition to any serious film book
catalog. It is amazing he could have this big a career, yet not be
as remembered like many of his contemporaries, but this is a very bad
thing going on with most directors whose work happened prior to the
regressive 1980s. That is why I hope we see more work on such
filmmakers. This is not the first book and Pollack and will not be
the last, but will remain a key volume for those interested in him as
an actor and in films he helmed like The Way We Were, They
Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Three Days Of The Condor, Out
Of Africa, Absence Of Malice, The Electric Horseman,
Jeremiah Johnson and Tootsie. Recommended!
Nathan
Ambrosioni's Toni
(2023) has Camille Cottin as the title character, a mom who once had
a music career, but she had to give it up to raise five children.
Now that two of them are old enough to go out on their own, might she
a few decades later be able to reignite her stalled career with some
new-found time?
We
have seen dramas with some of this kind of regret before and the
script is aware of that, but despite a convincing cast and Cottin
being able to carry the lead, it is still too much of what we have
seen in the world of melodramas before. The biggest mistake and this
cloud have helped the film immensely is that, no matter how things
turned out, have more about the music industry, her comparing now to
back then and then seeing what she wanted to do. That would give it
more room to be a character study, et al. Instead, it falls a bit
short, thanks to a few missed opportunities.
Now
you can see for yourself.
Trailers
for this and and few other Icarus/Distrib Films are the only extras.
Nicolai
Fuglsig's 12
Strong 4K
(2018) is one of Producer Jerry Bruckheimer's little-seen, more
serious films, telling yet another tale of the events of 9/11, but
with mixed results and then dated VERY badly. Because the film tries
to make the post 9/11 situation as simple as WWII and Pearl
Harbor,
et al, that's where its troubles begin. Without ruining anything, it
gets even worse when compared to current events.
Without
ruining anything of the plot, it has the same issue the 1987 James
Bond film The
Living Daylights
has when Timothy Dalton's James Bond is working with essentially the
Taliban to bring the USSR down. Chris Hemsworth leads the cast as
the head soldier (joined by Michael Pena and Michael Shannon) as CIA
agents involved in activities in Afghanistan post 9/11. Despite some
decent moments, they are undone by the slap-dash final screenplay
(only credited to two people, including Ted Tally of The
Silence of The Lambs
fame) but you can tell it was retouched too much and too many times.
The
result is everything we have seen before, then done badly and now,
quickly dated worse than ever. That is why it did not get a big
push, but Warner and the makers wanted to have this one out there and
give it a second chance. Now it is a time capsule of misassumptions,
et al. It style is also beyond dated, so only see it if you REALLY
need to.
Extras
include a Making Of featurette and a second featurette about the
actual events entitled Monumental Effort: Building America's Response
Monument.
Now
for playback performance. The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 2.35 X 1, HDR (10;
Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition image on 12
Strong 4K
was not produced in 4K or higher Ultra HD, nor was it shot on
photochemical film of any kind, so it is a regular HD shoot and the
upscale here shows the limits of that. Too many shots of screens
too, per Bruckheimer's played-out style. Color is limited per the
visual approach they took here, so with all of its issues, it will
never look better. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is
just fine and any upgrade would have been a mistake.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 High Definition image transfers on both Pollack
movies can show the age of the materials used, but they also have
some strain and strained scenes as they share a single disc together
with only so much room for both. Color can be good, with Keep
originally issued on 35mm in dye-transfer,
three-strip Technicolor
prints, not to mention 70mm blow-up prints. Director of Photography
Henri Decae (The
400 Blows,
Purple
Noon,
Le
Samurai,
Le
Circle Rouge,
The
Boys From Brazil)
uses the very widescreen frame to its fullest extent in both cases
and it helps make both films work better. Deerfield
repeats the Twilight Time HD master, but not as well with more
limited data, but the color can come though in shots, this time in
MetroColor.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Stereo lossless mix on Keep
is a mixdown from the original 6-track magnetic sound with traveling
dialogue and sound effects, but with some flaws and issues that
effect hearing the actors and affect the score by Michel Legrand
being as clear as it needs to be. Hope they find that magnetic
soundmaster and restore it at some point. Deerfield
repeats its new 5.1 upgrade as DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless
mix and it is as good as the film can sound, though a little weaker
here than the Twilight Time Blu-ray.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Toni
is not too badly shot, but very soft and nothing extraordinary,
though consistent enough. The lossy French Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
is actually somehow better and is still not what it could be, but it
is more consistently clear.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
