Before I get to the latest soundtrack reviews, this past Black Friday La-La Land Records revealed their year-end limited releases, and it's a pretty alluring quartet: Michael Kamen's Die Hard (2CDs), Ennio Morricone's Fat Man & Little Boy (2CDs), Danny Elfman's Scrooged, and Jerry Goldsmith's Tora Tora Tora.
Of the 4 releases, Die Hard should sell out really, really soon, since the prior Varese release came out in 2002 - that's 9 years one of the best action scores ever written has been off the market, which has undoubtedly spawned high eBay sales, and bootlegs.
The Hitchhiker – The (In)Complete Collection
Over the past year, Alliance has re-issued parts of their TV catalogue on DVD in budget-priced lines, but a major headache for fans of eighties CanCon TV includes some very elemental questions:
What’s in the damned set?
Is it in stereo?
What are the specific episodes?
The reason these questions are frustrating are really quite elemental: Alliance rarely sends out review screeners of their catalogue material, and more crucial, the packaging is often bereft of any substantive details.
What’s in the damned set?
Is it in stereo?
What are the specific episodes?
The reason these questions are frustrating are really quite elemental: Alliance rarely sends out review screeners of their catalogue material, and more crucial, the packaging is often bereft of any substantive details.
Festivals-a-Go-Go: Nov. 24 – Dec.1, 2011
"It STILL swings!"
Before we get to this week's tally of festivals, series, etc., it seems Hot Docs have set Wed. Dec. 7 as the official opening of the Bloor Cinema. As recounted back in September at Torontoist, the Bloor was in the midst of a major interior / exterior overhaul, and had just added KinoSmith founder Robin Smith as Hot Doc's chief programmer.
Samuel Bronston, Part I
---CHARLTON HESTON thinks: 'How the blazes do I get away from this drunken bitch?'
--- AVA GARDNER aspires: 'If I run RIGHT NOW, neither Nick nor Sam will see me escape this mess!'
--- DAVID NIVEN fantasizes facetiously : 'There must be some way to feed Yordan a slice of broken glass pizza for making me sound like Heston.'
The career of Samuel Bronston may be short and tragic, and while many might not recognize the name, the handful of titles that bore his imprimateur represent the top historical epics ever made: King of Kings (1961), El Cid (1961), 55 Days at Peking (1963), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), and Circus World (1964).
Yes, Kings is bizarre, El Cid has a cadaver saving Spain, Peking killed its director’s career, Roman Empire killed the Bronston empire, and Circus World tests the mettle of audiences who found Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show On Earth (1952) an interminable melodramatic bore, but these are epics in the fullest sense of visual scope, physical production values of extreme nature, a cast of the best actors around, and thousands of extras on the payroll.
This past Sunday, as part of the TIFF Bell Lightbox’s series Hollywood Classics: The Cinema is Nicholas Ray, a print of Peking was screened to a small but generally appreciative audience. Most seemed to know what they were in for; a few took extra w.c. breaks, and a handful seemed to walk out, perhaps thinking Peking was supposed to be an epic drama about the origins of soylent green.
Festivals-a-Go-Go!
"It swings!"
There never seems to be a shortage of film festivals, series, retrospectives, and assorted cineastical things happening in Toronto, so here’s a quick tally of the current / imminent events of things to see (and in my case, write about).
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