TV/Streaming
Home Entertainment Consumer Guide: August 24, 2017
A guide to the latest and greatest on Blu-ray and DVD, including three Criterion releases, The Wall, and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2.
A guide to the latest and greatest on Blu-ray and DVD, including three Criterion releases, The Wall, and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2.
Marie writes: I've been watching a lot of old movies lately, dissatisfied in general with the poverty of imagination currently on display at local cinemas. As anyone can blow something up with CGI - it takes no skill whatsoever and imo, is the default mode of every hack working in Hollywood these days. Whereas making a funny political satire in the United States about a Russian submarine running aground on a sandbank near a small island town off the coast of New England in 1966 during the height of the Cold War - and having local townsfolk help them escape in the end via a convoy of small boats, thereby protecting them from US Navy planes until they're safely out to sea? Now that's creative and in a wonderfully subversive way....
Marie writes: This week's Newsletter arrives a day early and lighter than usual, as come Tuesday morning, I'll be on a Ferry heading to Pender Island off the West Coast, where I've arranged to visit old friends for a few days and enjoy my first vacation in two years; albeit a brief one. No rest for the wicked. :-)
Marie writes: They call it "The Shard" and it's currently rising over London akin to Superman's Fortress of Solitude and dwarfing everything around it, especially St. Paul's in front. I assume those are pigeons flying over-head and not buzzards. Ie: not impressed, but that's me and why I'm glad I saw London before they started to totally ruin it.Known as the "London Bridge Tower" before they changed the name, when completed in 2012, it will be the tallest building in Europe and 45th highest in the world. It's already the second highest free-standing structure in the UK after the Emley Moor transmitting station. The Shard will stand 1,017 ft high and have 72 floors, plus another 15 radiator floors in the roof. It's been designed with an irregular triangular shape from base to top and will be covered entirely in glass. The tower was designed by Renzo Piano, the Italian architect best know for creating Paris's Pompidou Centre of modern art with Richard Rogers, and more recently the New York Times Tower. You can read an article about it at the Guardian. Here's the official website for The Shard. Photograph: Dan Kitwood.
Herewith, a belated salute, on the occasion of the sailing of the revamped "Poseidon," to the late, great Shelley Winters. At a party of movie geeks on a rainy Seattle night -- the evening of her death (January 14, 2006) -- I hoisted a scotch in her memory and toasted some of her greatest moments -- which, as it turned out, seemed to revolve around death and water. Not only was she a terrific actress (in comedy and drama), but she is responsible for some of the most memorable liquid exits in movie history. Consider:
It's finally happened. I went to interview a star, and she was eating caviar and drinking champagne. To be sure, Carol Lynley was wearing a kiddie sweater instead of a mink negligee, but what the hell. They probably don't even make mink negligees anymore.
