O Lucky Man!

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Buttery Jeb · #1 Post by **Buttery Jeb** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 2:54 pm

Movies Unlimited has this up for pre-order, with a street date of October 23rd. Two disc set; no specs yet.

-BJ

Gigi M. · #2 Post by **Gigi M.** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 3:24 pm

Excellent. I just thought of the film last night while I was watching Time after time. Thanks for posting.

tryavna · #3 Post by **tryavna** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 3:27 pm

Brilliant news!

Thanks to Malcolm McDowell for coaxing Warner to do this. Now we'll finally have all three of the "Travis Trilogy."

patrick · #4 Post by **patrick** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 4:09 pm

Wow, two discs is a bit unexpected, I was assuming they would just rush out a single disc with nothing but commentary to appease Malcolm McDowell.

Awesome Welles · #5 Post by **Awesome Welles** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 4:12 pm

patrick wrote:Wow, two discs is a bit unexpected, I was assuming they would just rush out a single disc with nothing but commentary to appease Malcolm McDowell.

I thought it would be vanilla. Perhaps this will contain Mike Kaplan's new documentary on Anderson which played at Cannes?

This is spectacular news, I can't wait.

Lino · #6 Post by **Lino** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 7:13 pm

patrick wrote:Wow, two discs is a bit unexpected, I was assuming they would just rush out a single disc with nothing but commentary to appease Malcolm McDowell.

Exactly. OLM is getting the kind of treatment I was expecting they'd give to Performance, which I'm still not forgiving them for going all out on the extras. Not even a commentary.

Person · #7 Post by **Person** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:13 pm

Hopefully, disc two will be Jan Harlan's, O Lucky Malcolm (2006).

Too much good DVD news this week! Scary!

DVD Empire listing

Video: Widescreen 1.78:1 Color (Anamorphic)
Audio: ENGLISH: Dolby Digital Mono [CC]
Subtitles: English, French

Studio: Warner Bros.
Production Year: 1973
Release Date: 10/23/2007

Length: 178 mins
Rating: NR
Number of Discs: 2
Item Code: 120031
UPC Code: 085391200314

IMDb lists the running time as 183 mintes - that's the original "X-rated" UK cut. The Cannes Premier ran 192 minutes. The 1995 Warner USA, NTSC VHS ran 173 minutes. The 1995 NTSC Laserdisc ran 178 minutes; the extra 5 minutes are of the "My Home Town" sequence. I don't know what the 183-minute version adds - or what was cut from the 192-minute Cannes cut. Malcolm will know.

A 30-minute behind-the-scenes was made during filming and was shown on U.S. TV before the film's release.

souvenir · #8 Post by **souvenir** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 11:33 pm

Surely it's not a coincidence that this is scheduled for release the exact same day as A Clockwork Orange. I'd love to see the terms of the agreement WB had with McDowell.

Person · #9 Post by **Person** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 12:51 am

Malcolm on Conan O'Brian in 1993: Part 1 - Part 2

jaredsap · #10 Post by **jaredsap** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 7:46 am

Lino wrote:
patrick wrote:Wow, two discs is a bit unexpected, I was assuming they would just rush out a single disc with nothing but commentary to appease Malcolm McDowell.
Exactly. OLM is getting the kind of treatment I was expecting they'd give to Performance, which I'm still not forgiving them for going all out on the extras. Not even a commentary.

PRINCE OF THE CITY's nearly three hour runtime was split across two discs, but the set contained no extras besides the trailer and a half-hour featurette. Given O LUCKY MAN!'s similarly epic length, there's no reason to assume that two discs means WHV has rolled out the red carpet.

Ashirg · #11 Post by **Ashirg** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 2:04 pm

#12 Post by **Jeff** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 3:39 pm

For the squinting impaired:

* Commentary by Malcolm McDowell, Alan Price, and screenwriter David Sharwin

* New Feature-Length Career Profile, O Lucky Malcolm!, Produced/Directed by Jan Harlan, Edited by Katia de Vidas

* Vintage Featurette: O Lucky Man! Innovations in Entertainment

* Theatrical Trailer

I'm sure it was a contractual thing to get the rights to the documentary, but how bizarre is it that Katia de Vidas, who apparently hasn't done much of anything but shoot and edit this doc gets credit on the features block? I'm sure people will say, "Oooh, edited by Katia de Vidas! That must be good."

dadaistnun · #13 Post by **dadaistnun** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 4:15 pm

A little Googling turns up this page which mentions a documentery made by De Vidas called Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition about that touring exhibition of props & such from the estate. Maybe it will turn up somewhere in the new Kubrick set.

patrick · #14 Post by **patrick** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 4:45 pm

Looks terrific, although I would have liked to have gotten the Anderson doc mentioned above as opposed to the McDowell one - although I'm interested to hear what McDowell has to say about some of the crap he's been in over the last 25 years.

Person · #15 Post by **Person** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 10:13 pm

Just what I wished for! O, what lucky men we are!

Glass · #16 Post by **Glass** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 10:58 pm

What a horrible, horrible cover, though I appreciate the release to discover this McDowell-Anderson classic along with If...

tavernier · #17 Post by **tavernier** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 11:10 pm

Jeff wrote:
* New Feature-Length Career Profile, O Lucky Malcolm!, Produced/Directed by Jan Harlan, Edited by Katia de Vidas
I'm sure it was a contractual thing to get the rights to the documentary, but how bizarre is it that Katia de Vidas, who apparently hasn't done much of anything but shoot and edit this doc gets credit on the features block? I'm sure people will say, "Oooh, edited by Katia de Vidas! That must be good."

Perhaps she's a Harlan "protege."

Gropius · #18 Post by **Gropius** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 11:13 pm

Glass wrote:What a horrible, horrible cover

Why horrible? It's based on the original poster. What's there to dislike about McDowell's grin?

As for the film, I think O Lucky Man! is probably the best (certainly most innovative) British film of the 70s (not that there's a great deal of competition), although I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the musical interludes. I know they're supposed to be Brechtian, but that 'light rock' style has dated less well than the rest of it.

#19 Post by **zedz** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:26 am

Gropius wrote:As for the film, I think O Lucky Man! is probably the best (certainly most innovative) British film of the 70s (not that there's a great deal of competition)

I'm a big fan of O Lucky Man! too, and it's probably my favourite Anderson, but don't write off British filmmaking of the time. The Bill Douglas Trilogy is one of the great achievements in British film of any era, and this is also the period when Terence Davies and Alan Clarke arrived and Greenaway did his best work. It's just that the best and most innovative filmmaking was on the independent margins (Douglas, Davies, Greenaway, Overlord) or on television (Clarke, Leigh, Loach, Blue Remembered Hills).

#20 Post by **Jeff** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:45 am

Gropius wrote:
Glass wrote:What a horrible, horrible cover
Why horrible? It's based on the original poster. What's there to dislike about McDowell's grin?

Yes, that is based on the original one-sheet. I certainly don't think it's horrible, and even kind of like the charming goofiness, but I would have preferred the 70s vibe of this alternate art.

Gropius · #21 Post by **Gropius** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:06 am

zedz wrote:I'm a big fan of O Lucky Man! too, and it's probably my favourite Anderson, but don't write off British filmmaking of the time. The Bill Douglas Trilogy is one of the great achievements in British film of any era, and this is also the period when Terence Davies and Alan Clarke arrived and Greenaway did his best work. It's just that the best and most innovative filmmaking was on the independent margins (Douglas, Davies, Greenaway, Overlord) or on television (Clarke, Leigh, Loach, Blue Remembered Hills).

All good points, but I was thinking in terms of feature films. I recently saw the Douglas trilogy actually, and agree that considered as a trilogy, it is possibly a greater stylistic achievement than even O Lucky Man!, but none of its individual parts, apart from the last, are really feature length. Ditto Greenaway's medium-length shorts (which are still too long to be eligible for your List Project, by the way); Davies's 'arrival' consists of one short, which in my opinion seems amateurish next to the first part of Douglas's trilogy.

The question of length would be irrelevant (the 70s were clearly a great time for short film) if it weren't indicative of the lack of funding/resources which has dogged innovative British filmmaking for the last half a century.

ievenlostmycat · #22 Post by **ievenlostmycat** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 5:36 am

Gropius wrote:although I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the musical interludes. I know they're supposed to be Brechtian, but that 'light rock' style has dated less well than the rest of it.

I don't think I'd classify the Alan Price songs as "light rock". They are a good, not great, set of songs.

manicsounds · #23 Post by **manicsounds** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 4:38 am

O LUCKY MALCOLM! is also on the Clockwork Orange SE, isn't it?

#24 Post by **Jeff** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 5:12 am

manicsounds wrote:O LUCKY MALCOLM! is also on the Clockwork Orange SE, isn't it?

Yes. It is featured as a supplement on both films.

montgomery · #25 Post by **montgomery** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 8:38 pm

I am not a fan of the songs either, but "Poor People" has played in my head at least once a day for the past 15 years. It's an awful song too.

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