Shallow DVD movie review-the JBL-a/d/s sound

[SEAWOLF97]

.
since the title (at least ) is famous, I had some expectations for it ..

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048605/

boy, was I wrong ...boring, annoying and not very funny ... yeah it was 1955 and the censors gutted it, but ..YUK. Don't bother (IMHO)

A Billy Wilder stinker , looks like not all his were gems

[hsosdrum]

If you want Billy Wilder at his best, see "Ace In The Hole." One of Kirk Douglas's best as well.

[SEAWOLF97]

If you want Billy Wilder at his best, see "Ace In The Hole." One of Kirk Douglas's best as well.

thanx for the recommendation ...it has stayed under my radar, but just put a hold on it.

reviews:
Charles Tatum, a down-on-his-luck reporter, takes a job with a small New Mexico newspaper. The job is pretty boring until he finds a man trapped in an old Indian dwelling. He jumps at the chance to make a name for himself by taking over and prolonging the rescue effort, and feeding stories to major newspapers. He creates a national media sensation and milks it for all it is worth - until things go terribly wrong.Here we have a film that more people need to talk about. Billy Wilder's 'Ace in the Hole' is a fascinating dive into the hive-mind of media culture. The film centers around the arrogant and manipulative journalist Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) who visits a desolate mining town to find out that tragedy has struck when a man is trapped inside the caves. Chuck leaps at the opprotunity for a great story and transforms the problem into a huge media circus. Crowds of families in RVs and minivans gather to the town in support of the man's plight, focussing more on publicity than alieviating the catastrophe. The character of Chuck Tatum is a cold misanthrope, nothing about this film harkens back to soft sentimentality. It takes you into it's dark and leeching world of biased and exploitative journalism, and can't help but seve as a reminder of our own obsession with drama. -


Here we have a film that more people need to talk about. Billy Wilder's 'Ace in the Hole' is a fascinating dive into the hive-mind of media culture. The film centers around the arrogant and manipulative journalist Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) who visits a desolate mining town to find out that tragedy has struck when a man is trapped inside the caves. Chuck leaps at the opprotunity for a great story and transforms the problem into a huge media circus. Crowds of families in RVs and minivans gather to the town in support of the man's plight, focussing more on publicity than alieviating the catastrophe. The character of Chuck Tatum is a cold misanthrope, nothing about this film harkens back to soft sentimentality. It takes you into it's dark and leeching world of biased and exploitative journalism, and can't help but serve as a reminder of our own obsession with drama. -

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043338/

[SEAWOLF97]

well , recently I viewed the 2 Roger Moore 007 cartoons , TSWLM and TMWTGG. They really don't hold up well.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071807/...nm_flmg_act_45
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076752/?ref_=nm_knf_i1

then Wallander (season 1) ... BBC can be near SOTA when they want to , but I didn't find the stories very compelling. The photography makes southern Sweden seem rather bleak. Kenneth Branagh is sleepy the whole time and seems not to be interested in being the Chief Detective.

Tried THE QUEEN . http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436697/ couldn't handle more than abt 20 minutes of it. Tony Blair seemed fittingly shallow & obnoxious.

Finally found one worth watching . SKYFALL http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/?ref_=nv_sr_1 First class all the way. Gritty. Craig makes Moore look like a buffoon.

[SEAWOLF97]

. WOW, this was good. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036775/.

	Fred MacMurray	...	Walter Neff
	Barbara Stanwyck	...	Phyllis Dietrichson
	Edward G. Robinson	...	Barton Keyes

MacMurray & Stanwyck were excellent as detestable characters. Robinson, of all things, was the good guy. well filmed , the dialogue was Chandler-esque and I'm glad that subtitles were turned on.

One part that seemed funny, Neff goes to Barbara's house. A beautiful Spanish house on a hill and remarks “It was one of those California Spanish houses everyone was nuts about ten or fifteen years ago. This one must have cost somebody about thirty thousand bucks – that is if he ever finished paying for it.” Probably 2 million today ?

http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/s...ble-indemnity/

http://www.iamnotastalker.com/2011/1...demnity-house/

I'd give it 9.5 of 10.

Storyline In 1938, Walter Neff, an experienced salesman of the Pacific All Risk Insurance Co., meets the seductive wife of one of his clients, Phyllis Dietrichson, and they have an affair. Phyllis proposes to kill her husband to receive the proceeds of an accident insurance policy and Walter devises a scheme to receive twice the amount based on a double indemnity clause. When Mr. Dietrichson is found dead on a train-track, the police accept the determination of accidental death. However, the insurance analyst and Walter's best friend Barton Keyes does not buy the story and suspects that Phyllis has murdered her husband with the help of another man. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

[LowPhreak]

. WOW, this was good. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036775/.

Sounds interesting! Thanks for the heads-up.

[hsosdrum]

Double Indemnity is often considered to be the prototype of the film noir genre. Although ostensibly about the relationship between Neff (MacMurray) and Phyllis (Stanwyck), the emotional heart of the film is the relationship between Neff and Keyes (Robinson). Edward G. has most of the film's best lines of dialog.

I've seen it dozens of times and never tire of it. (Great writing stays fresh.)

[Ducatista47]

.
since the title (at least ) is famous, I had some expectations for it ..

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048605/

boy, was I wrong ...boring, annoying and not very funny ... yeah it was 1955 and the censors gutted it, but ..YUK. Don't bother (IMHO)

A Billy Wilder stinker , looks like not all his were gems

I still think of the 1950s, 60s and 70s Hollywood comedies as mostly very lame. Since I saw them then I can verify that while they are dated now, they were completely lame then too. It was the culture there. At the same time, Hollywood dramas were in a golden era. They seldom market mainline films like They Shoot Horses Don't They any more. In the 1940's both Hollywood comedies and dramas were often very well done. IMO the better British films in the 50s to 70s were much better than Hollywood's, dramas excepted. The Ealing comedies were side splitting if you knew anything about the culture there. Ah, the Brits.

The films of Peter Yates are highly recommended. Don't forget The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, Murphy's War, Breaking Away and The Dresser. He is known here for Bullitt. He was a Brit who tried Pro auto racing and team managing before becoming a filmmaker. Another director was Joseph Losey, born in the USA but went to the UK. He lived pretty hard. His biography is called A Revenge On Life. He was one of a handful who directed Julie Christie in a lead role.

On a roll, to actresses. Almost everything with Julie Christie is worth seeing. Even the not great films will have a great performance by her. She is amazing.

Many of the best actresses working today are independent film specialists. Sarah Polley, Chloe Sevigny, Lili Taylor and Emily Watson come to mind. The first two are gifted directors when they get the chance. They insisted on learning the craft when they first set foot on a shoot.

Daryl Hannah is an overlooked talent. She makes a lot of so-so films to fund her activism, but give her some control and he is great. in the improvised film Dancing At The Blue Iguana she portrays someone nothing like herself. Hannah is very intelligent in real life. Can't judge a book by its cover.

The young Irish actress Saorise Ronan has done mainstream films, she starred in Hanna, but she is aces in whatever indie film she graces. Every performance is worth the time. Talent wise I think she is another Jennifer Lawrence.

IMO the best mainstream talent in acting currently working is the Australian Cate Blanchett. I have never seen anyone better, with the possible exception of Robert Mitchum. Unlike Mitchum, she accepts only quality roles. Mitchum was a drinker and took films on the basis of how much time off they gave him. He was, despite that, Hollywood's best actor.

A good one who got away was Phoebe Cates. She had a few films and then married a famous actor and retired to raise a family. Like Jamie Smith-Jackson did. I don't blame them, but I miss their abilities onscreen. They were so young when they quit.

Off, or perhaps back on topic, I saw Interstellar last night at the IMAX. Very impressive ideas and execution, and the scientific accuracy was appreciated. An epic yet intimate essay on the idea of home. An exception to quality being an independent film near monopoly today. My first take is that it is probably a really good film, but leave any expectations at home. There is way more to think about here than any particular genre of film would be expected to deliver. If one attends expecting the latest Sci-Fi space opera they will be missing ninety percent of it. Another way of saying that stupid people will give it a lot of bad reviews. No fighting with aliens, no sex and no car chases. The only film I have seen where the setting is equally split between two galaxies. Boggles the mind. Everyone was good, but Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck were standouts as usual. The score was an impressive and appropriate Hans Zimmer effort. In the IMAX I admit earplugs would have been nice a couple of times, because of volume. The dynamic range was stupendous. I think I'll order a pair of Etymotic's ETY Plugs. Cheap, attenuation with accurate frequency response. I use their in ears for portable listening and they are very, very good.

[LowPhreak]

I agree with you about Cate Blanchett, one of my all-time favorites. I thought she was great in Charlotte Gray, LotR/The Hobbit, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, I'm not There, and others.

On Robert Mitchum, too. I recall an interview I heard with him, in which they asked him how he got into acting. He said (in general, I don't remember exactly) that he had terrible insomnia when he lived in Seattle (or the Northwest, don't recall). He'd gone to a doctor about it and they determined it might have been caused by the job he had at the time, a factory position that he hated and dreaded to get up every day for work. The doctor asked him what he really wanted to do, and Mitchum said acting. The doctor said perhaps if he was doing what he liked, he might sleep better. So he decided to move to LA and seek his fortune, which helped cure the insomnia.

[Ducatista47]

Cate has done a lot of indie films. Last year I trolled the net for used DVDs of her back catalog. I bought Oscar And Lucinda, Bandits, The Gift, The Shipping News, Heaven, Coffee And Cigarettes, Little Fish, Babel, Notes On A Scandal, I'm Not There and The Curious case Of Benjamin Button. I already had Lord Of The Rings, The Aviator, The Good German, both Elizabeth films,and Robin Hood. I have since bagged Veronica Guerin, Charlotte Gray, Indiana Jones (etc), The Talented Mr Ripley and Hanna. I saw The Life Aquatic and don't care to own it. Don't have/haven't seen Blue Jasmine or The Hobbit movies yet, waiting for disc prices to drop for the Woody Allen film and for all the Hobbit films to be completed and issued in Blu-ray. You might say I am following her career.

Most of her little know indies are really well made films and are a really good watch. To comment on some that were not widely seen in the States: Her small part in The Shipping News depicts one of the least likable characters in the history of cinema, Petal. The only reason why her young daughter wasn't killed with her is because she had SOLD her. Not a big spoiler, watch it anyway. Heaven is a completely unusual film. Remember the helicopter. Little Fish is a priceless, small scale drama with a terrific Hugo Weaving performance as a bonus. Oscar And Lucinda is a brave not quite little film that delivers on every level. Notes On A Scandal is a compact British drama with great acting by all concerned, including Judi Dench.

I'm Not There was something else, wasn't it? One of the best films I ever saw. What a structure. Cate was unbelievably good, even for her. How could anyone else have realized that part any better? She is known in the industry as a chameleon, and is sometimes resented for it by critics and some actors. She is the best. And she has even more range than Meryl Streep.

The biography of Robert Mitchum is called Baby, I Don't Care and is very informative. He was a genius with limited formal schooling. As a young teen he had hit the rails as a hobo. He would be handed a script with all the overnight rewrites when he came to a set. He would glance quickly at it, hand it back and say "I got it, " I think it was, and he knew everyone's parts from the glance. He could talk with great intelligence and depth about nearly anything, like Charlie Parker could. Everyone who knew him said he was the smartest person they ever met.

He could also fight like nobody's business. Robert Ryan was known in Hollywood as the toughest hombre in town in a fight, but Mitchum was tougher.

[LowPhreak]

Very good, Duc! I'll make note of those titles. Some I don't know if I've seen yet or not. And might look up that bio of Mitchum. Now that you mention it, I seem to recall that part about him bumming around for awhile, which makes the rest of his story all the more amazing and I'd say, legendary.

On a different thread here, I've said I'm not much of a HT guy (just 2-chan for everything), but if this keeps up you all might start turning me into some kind of film buff! Hey, audio is expensive and time-consuming enough! Actually, I haven't owned a TV for a couple of years now. I've grown to despise most American TV, and what video I do watch now is on my PC since I have a decent GPU, or a rare theater outing, (there's so much dross not worth even a matinee ticket anymore). I may get a 32"-40" TV though and a BR/uni player just for a few decent movies and one of my favorite media forms - concert/music videos.

Tangents aside, I really don't get what the criticism of Cate B. is about from some in Hollywood and her peers. If one just took I'm Not There as an example, well if she's a chameleon then she's probably one of the very few who could have portrayed Dylan, since he's a chameleon in spades. I've seen him live several times since the 70's and every show, every number...and often his demeanor...was arranged differently than the last time I'd seen him, or what was on the studio or other recorded live versions. I don't think I've ever heard the same Tombstone Blues or It's Alright, Ma twice. And with Zimmy you know he's as real as it gets - in his mercurial way. Cate did a great job on his character.

I think Peter Jackson damned well knew who to cast as Galadriel (and speaking of Hugo Weaving...Elrond) in LotR.

Bollocks to the critics and less-talented!

[Ducatista47]

I'm into strictly two channel, have a TV but no cable or antenna. Discs and Netflix streaming are it for me. Sometimes I'll watch Netflix on a tablet with headphones. With the TV, I use headphones there too unless I have company. Then I have JBL 4333s for that.

I've done surround but for me it adds nothing of any value to the experience. It's like 3D, a sad gimmick for lousy films that can't be made any better by tricks anyway. Useless for true film lovers. YMMV and all that, but it sounds like we are on the same page.

[LowPhreak]

Agreed, and to me it never made sense that the sound is so much "larger" with a surround rig than the pictures you're watching, even if you have a big screen. I get enough ambience with a couple of decent horns in front of me. Haha!

[SEAWOLF97]

On a different thread here, I've said I'm not much of a HT guy (just 2-chan for everything), but if this keeps up you all might start turning me into some kind of film buff! Hey, audio is expensive and time-consuming enough! Actually, I haven't owned a TV for a couple of years now. I've grown to despise most American TV

My family room (14x24) got converted to the master bedroom many years back. It got tighter & tighter with the addition of my 2 desks (+2 computers) and the wif's desk.
So the room does double duty mainly for the 2 channel (primarily TT & MD) and only secondary for the HT. I've done this by using thin-ish towers (a/d/s L-1290's) for mains and they are shared by both systems.
Adding HT only entailed adding a center + 2 rear speakers, an AVR, DVD player and switchbox. Totaled under $100 (was all used)

I do NO HT streaming. MY local library has nearly 15,000 DVD's in English and many, many in tieng viet (for the better half). A favorite bike ride is to the used video game store. They have a big selection of movies in the dollar section.

I TOTALLY agree that American broadcast TV is $hit. I'd say 90% of what I do view is on PBS or Discovery. Sports don't hold any interest (except Oregon Ducks football) and even staying on PBS, it's mostly "Nova" type shows or UK imports.

Mitchum ? He's been very good in one where he played a Navy Officer, but there was some Western with John Wayne where he left me unimpressed. I never thought of him as having great range, only that he was playing himself in different situations. Maybe that's what makes a great actor ?

I think you are correct, Clark, that the 40's/50's had breakthrough drama films, but the comedy of those times was lame (UK the exception on that) ... maybe some of the blame goes to the Movie Review boards.

actors ? Through the BMW "The Hire" clips I got to know Clive Owen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Owen

damn, he is good and not afraid to do small films ie: Green Fingers , Croupier.
I thought that he would have made a great 007, but am impressed with Daniel Craig. Maybe when DC gives up ?

[LowPhreak]

I should be so lucky here in Redneck Central (near Nashville, TN) to have that many DVD titles at the local "lah-berry". (I'm from upstate NY, got here due to health reasons but don't ask.) The local branches have 50-100 or less, many being forgettable. You can request something if it's in their system, but who knows when/if it'll show up. Meh.

A Studio 520C might be nice for bringing up dialog in the mix when the engineer has pushed it down too far. Rear channels in this room would be impossible to set up well without a good DSP/delay to compensate for the asymmetry.