Posts Tagged ‘Year One’
Generally every year I’ll do a list of my favourite Christmas movies and generally I’ll include movies that aren’t considered your traditional festive movies. Obviously I consider myself very clever.
Well this year is no different!
My top five Christmas movies 2009 edition*
Die Hard – This is an easy choice and a mainstay on this yearly list. The idea of poor John McClane having to visit …
The other day I listed off ten movies that I’m still looking forward to this year and since ten is a nice round number there are obviously other films that I’ll be looking out for this year and I thought it unfair not to mention them:
I’ll address the biggest eyebrow raise in there I’m sure straight away with Full Moon the second of the Twilight films, I didn’t enjoy the first movie nor did I see it as some cinematic masterpiece, in fact far from it. However once curiosity was through killing off cats it got the better of me and forced me to watch the film because I had read the book. Curiosity is once again my co-driver in this case and I’m morbidly curious to see how this pans out.
Where the Wild Things Are is a touchstone book from mine and I suspect a lot of people’s childhood and from everything I see this is going to be really interesting and hopefully beautiful, I have faith that it will be if the studio can keep their grubby little mitts out of the mix.
Speaking of childhood touchstones, Astro Boy was a HUGE part of my childhood, we all loved Astro Boy, I didn’t watch the newer series of it but I will certainly give this a look, I’m glad they didn’t go with a live action version as that would have been tenuous at best.
I love the Universal Pictures monsters from the early days and I look forward to the Wolfman with some caution, I hope that it is really awesome however I don’t know what constitutes awesome in this case since the original is a masterpiece.
2012 is a big old bag of rubbish, however I dig end of the world films and I’m assuming a film by the creators of Independence Day will only serve to undermine the panicky idiot types who think that a wiped out race of child sacrificing people who happened to have a calender have predicted accurately the end of the world. I’m hoping there are explosions.
Gamer is one of those films that yeah sure I’m interested in seeing but I’m sure it won’t turn my world onto its ear. Of course if it does then booyah for it and me! If it doesn’t I won’t be sending Gerald Butler hate mail or pictures of cheese. I hope the X-Box people don’t watch it and get ideas.
And finally Year One, it just looks funny, I was pleased to see Jack Black returning to some form with Tropic Thunder and I don’t have to hate on Michael Cera for holding out on an Arrested Development movie as I believe he is on board for such a mind numbingly awesome event. Besides it is directed by Spengler and we all love Spengler.
I think that about covers them all, please let me know if there is a movie I may have missed in all of the new blog excitement!
It’s been years if not decades that I last saw Gone With the Wind. We owned it on VHS, it was a big deal when it came out because the film is so long it had to be split up over two tapes and the box for it was therefore oversized and special. I watched it maybe once or twice back then as it was one of my Mother’s favourite films. I also remember it being a big deal when it was shown on television as well.
The thing was though that whilst I recognised the film for the important icon it was I really wasn’t interested and hence the twenty odd years since I last saw it.
Tracey on the other hand hated the film when she was young.
But since we both have apparently matured over the years, some more than others (^_~) we thought we might check it out again. The suggestion made easier when we found a Blu-ray copy for a reasonable price.
First thing that stuck out was that it isn’t in widescreen!!! The credits came up and there was no letterbox style screen, only an ugly box in the middle of the screen. Is this why it was cheap?!?!
Some quick Google research confirmed though that the film was not shot in widescreen format and that any widescreen versions had whole parts of the screen cropped out. Panic over. Happiness that they preserved the original format.
The sound is fantastic which is fortunate because the soundtrack is so epic that it is very nearly the definition of epic. Actually I’ve got to say that I didn’t find anything lacking in the sound department. The visuals every once and a while seemed to drop back to standard definition which in fairness is pretty okay in my book considering this is a 70 year old movie and I can’t imagine too many good prints floating around.
Because of the clarity you can make out some of the optical effects which again doesn’t detract from the film in any way, shape or form. Look out though when the carriages are making their way to Twelve Oaks at the start and you’ll see the overlay if that’s your idea of a good time.
What was awesome to see though is the King Kong set going up in flames and serving as the backdrop of Atlanta burning. It was a scene I wanted to see ever since I read about it a few years back. It’s an impressive shot and used to it’s full glory.
It’s the story and the characters that actually impressed me more than the transfer. The story is a lot more engaging than I remember it and I admire the Scarlett character a lot more this time round. Vivien Leigh delivers some amazing lines with such conviction and believability that even when she was being horrible you couldn’t help but still like her. I’m actually going to devote a whole post Rhett Butler because watching this again was a revelation of the impact Clark Gable’s performance on future characters, especially genre characters.
The Blu-ray copy also contains the overture music at the start of the film which plays before the credits, the only time I’ve ever encountered that before was Star Trek: The Motion Picture and that as only the remastered DVD version. The intermission music and title play (for quite a while – no need to stop the disc to make a quick cup of tea) and finally the exit music is attached at the end which I thought was a wonderful touch. It reminded me of the footage usually attached to the Universal monster movie Frankenstein where a guy comes out from behind the curtain and warns people with heart problems or nervous dispositions that they may wish to leave. It’s trying to capture some of that old Hollywood theatre.
So it’s not the usual kind of film that I review but I really enjoyed it and was completely taken in by the sweeping story.
Rating: 
