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The last Blu-ray you watched.


liebherr954

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On 10/9/2016 at 0:01 PM, MetropolisLakeOutfitters said:

 

I need to watch it again while I still have it rented I guess.  Half of my complaints may be due to me mowing in a dusty environment for 3 hours, plus 16:9 works best when there's not a lot of movement.  All the dark scenes really strained my eyes and the action scenes had quite a bit of movement at times, I was uncomfortable due to eye strain.  The close-ups of the animals were really neat though.  

Rentals suck. 

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I thought Tarzan was the low moveie for the last 6 months.  Well, a new low has been set with Independence Day-Resurgence.  Good visuals and not as drak as the original.  Other than that, dumb and boring.  The ULF/LFE in this film was utterly poor for a so called blockbuster movie.  Rent it but, don't shell out any ducky/buckies to purchase this movie.

Independence Day Resurgence [Blu-ray]

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Good thing I watched two movies yesterday.  Free State Of Jones- much better than Independence Day Resurgence.  This one get's near 4 stars because it taught some rare American History.  They could have did more with the main characters relationship.  The movie could have been a bit longer to fill in some gaps.   It appeared slightly watered down for public approval.

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  • 2 weeks later...

A Matter of Life and Death (aka, A Stairway to Heaven).  Imported from Germany on blu-ray to upgrade my English DVD print while awaiting a proper three-strip Technicolor restoration (Criterion, hopefully).  Released in 1946 and set at the close of WWII.  David Niven is the star but Roger Livesey blows me away every time.  Also a young Kim Hunter five years before Brando and "Streetcar" and an even younger Richard Attenborough (with one simple line).

 

I envy anyone seeing this film for the first time.  A Power & Pressburger classic.

 

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On 9/26/2016 at 7:37 PM, garyrc said:

I'll admit that this last score was not as good as some of his earlier ones.  Do you hate Wagner and Korngold too?  JW's style reminds me of them (not in Wagner's league, of course)..

I love the last tune, The Jedi Steps.  Beautiful, pondering, pensive and very relaxing.  My favorite Williams SW track in a long time.

 

 

 

In your honor and since you have enough good taste to mention Erich Korngold, I give you The Sea Hawk.  Can you "sing" the melody in the first 30 seconds of this wonderful overture?  It's tough!

 

 

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17 hours ago, wvu80 said:

 

17 hours ago, wvu80 said:

I love the last tune, The Jedi Steps.  Beautiful, pondering, pensive and very relaxing.  My favorite Williams SW track in a long time.

 

 

 

In your honor and since you have enough good taste to mention Erich Korngold, I give you The Sea Hawk.  Can you "sing" the melody in the first 30 seconds of this wonderful overture?  It's tough!

 

 

Thanks!  Your Sea Hawk is better than mine.

 

I also love Korngold's Kings Row.  The Jedi Steps is good.  Was it used in the movie when Luke was on screen?   If so, I was probably too busy looking at him to notice the music much, but then, that's one of the uses of movie music, to have an unconscious effect.   I was pleased that one of our guests said he could clearly see that Luke's eyes were wet when the friend saw The Force Awakens in our home theater, but could not in the commercial cinema in which he saw it..

 

Above and beyond a purely unconscious effect, I like "big" music ("foreground music") that seems to fuse with the moving image, making the result greater than sum of its parts.  We've had this in Star Wars, especially the first one, Raiders of he Lost Ark, most films for which Korngold wrote the score, and the 1956 version of Around the World in 80 Days, only in 70mm and 6 channel magnetic (because of the dynamics and SPL needed; the soundtrack album is a pale imitation, the 35mm mono optical is terrible, the VHS is almost as bad, and the DVD is getting closer.  I like it using Audyssey Reference to roll off the very top just a bit, with bass boost and a high enough SPL to make the 114 piece orchestra sound like a 114 piece orchestra.  All of the above pull out all the stops ... or maximize, at times, Berlyne's Cortical Arousal increasing variables,  Visually they would be Size (even though Korngold's were shown on the old standard 1.37:1 screen, those great ships, mansions, etc evoked the feeling of "size" much more than talking heads) Brightness, Complexity, Novelty and Surprise.   Sonically, they would be Loudness, Dynamics, Complexity (big orchestras with many" inner voices," as PWK said, and the complexity of 6 channel sound in all but the Korngolds), Novelty and Surprise,

 

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4 hours ago, garyrc said:

The Jedi Steps is good.  Was it used in the movie when Luke was on screen?

Yes.

 

After the Millennium  Falcon lands near the water at the end of the movie, Rey starts to ascend the steps to the Jedi Temple and this music accompanies her the entire climb.  It's very contemplative.  She finds Luke at the top and offers him his light saber but he doesn't take it...yet.  The music then goes into the Main Title theme for end credits.

 

For me, great movies always have great music, with rare exception.  That's what elevates good movies into great movies.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Captain America: Civil War.  Blu-Ray Format, rental.


Chris Nolan's recent Batman trilogy (or at least the first two movies) are the only comic book movies that I've ever thought were truly excellent cinema.  Too often there is little or no substance...the characters do their special moves, the bad guys get theirs, and that's the end.  

 

While the Captain America series has not reached this level of cinematic success, they all have been at the higher end of comic book movie cinema.  Chris Evans really owns the character, and by making the Captain character a deeply moral and courageous person, the writers give a version of Captain America that makes you feel proud that he wears the America label.  That's quite an achievement if you ask me.  

 

Following an X-men like strategy, this third in the series manages to try and tie together all the different superheroes.   Even though what seems like another dozen new characters are introduced, the movie manages to juggle them, and give us enough of each one to not consider any an after thought.  

 

The blu-ray offered 7.1 which sounded very good.  The special effects were terrific.  The airport scene which was, more or less, the Civil War (at least in the literal form), was a classic with the right mix of humor, giant special effects and a lot of reveals as to what the weaknesses were of each superhero.  

 

I don't know why this movie was 2-1/2 hours.  Like many of the Transformer movies, it was plenty good and would have been better being shorter.  There's no way kids prefer a movie this long either.  I can only venture a guess and say the budgets are massive, they shoot a million big scenes with special effects, and feel that cutting many of them would show what a waste of money it was and so....a 150 minute film.

 

2-1/2 stars for an ambitious effort, excellent acting, and for being way, way too long

From a home theater standpoint, it is not demo material, but definitely rental material.  

 

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