Well, dear readers, I must hurry along today – I’ve been threatening short notes for the last three days, but they’ve all ended up lengthy, but today I shall have to deliver on the threat. I have simply run out of time, therefore I must go to the market and get some more. I promise to make up for giving the notes short shrift today, but you can help by posting wonderful posts today, including all your excellent questions for Ask BK Day.
Just a brief rant before I go. Yesterday I got the brand spanking new DVD of Mr. Otto Preminger’s Exodus. I know it’s not a great film, but it’s rather a guilty pleasure of mine. I first saw it when it was playing its roadshow engagement in 70mm and 6-track stereo sound, at the Wilshire Theater here in Los Angeles. It was a very impressive film and I went back several times. I was thrilled when it came out on a letterboxed laserdisc over ten years ago, but I felt that that transfer was weak and not worthy of the film, and the stereo sound was barely passable. So, I was really looking forward to the DVD. Well, blow me over with a tubesteak if this isn’t the bottom of the barrel for MGM/UA. They can sink no lower than this sorry excuse for a DVD. The transfer? The same as the over ten-year-old laser, which looks ten years worse, given what they can do these days. It is filled with artifacts and bad color. It is letterboxed the same as the laser, that is, incorrectly at 2:35 (the scope ratio – this film was 70mm, which is closer to 2:20). It is, shockingly, not enhanced for widescreen tvs, which makes the transfer look even worse. The stereo sound is muffled and distorted and a joke. It’s a travesty of the highest order and everyone at MGM/UA should be made to flog themselves like Judge Turpin and they should all be bitch-slapped from here to eternity. The Russians are Coming has a nice enhanced transfer – so does Henry Orient. So do the beach party movies (hardly the apex of cinema art), so you’d just think that a major Academy Award-winning film would merit at least a fresh enhanced transfer, given that it stars Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint, along with a pretty wonderful supporting cast (including the film debut of lovely Jill Haworth, who would go on to create the role of Sally Bowles in the original Broadway production of Cabaret). In any case, damn them, damn them all to hell. I will not forgive them for this abomination.
Well, I hate to rant and run, but we really must all click on the Unseemly Button below or, in other words, let’s have an exodus to the next section.
Short notes, short notes, mamma’s little baby writes short notes, short notes, short notes now.
I had an unpleasant altercation with AFTRA, one of the actor unions yesterday. Because I made an appearance on this show I’m working on, they wanted to make me reup at a rather lofty amount of money, and I must say I became rather snotty with them, but they would not budge. Until, that is, I informed them that I’d given hundreds of AFTRA singers so much work over the last ten years that it wasn’t even funny – 130 albums worth. That finally had an effect, and we came to a reasonable resolution.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must get in my automobile and endure disgusting traffic on the 101 freeway which they should call the 101 busyway. I must work all the live-long day and then drag myself home where I will sit on my couch like so much fish eating food as prescribed by Eileen and Chet Atkins. Today’s topic of discussion: As you know, it’s Ask BK Day, so I’m looking forward to checking in to see what your excellent questions are. I will, of course, be answering them on Saturday. Now, post away, my pretties – questions, ephemera, tales of old and new, the story of The Randy Vicar and the Shoe Salesman – whatever your collective Hainsie/Kimlet hearts’ desire.