To Live and Die in L.A.

[oh yeah]

Glad to hear these positive testimonials. I'm probably just too used to the muted MGM disc. Eager to check this one out, for sure.

[HJackson]

Only saw this once before on DVD so I have nothing to say on the authenticity, but I had a blast with this blu. Absolutely gorgeous presentation of one of the coolest films ever.

[PfR73]

Recently purchased this disc and it has one of the strangest Blu-Ray authoring situations I've come across.

I've gotten into the habit of scrutinizing the runtimes of extras for discs I'm upgrading from DVD to Blu-Ray, verifying that they are the same (within a reasonable variation). This is because I've come across multiple instances where Blu-Rays look like they have carried over the extras from the DVD, but they've been altered/cut either intentionally or unintentionally.

When I was going over the extras for this disc, the runtimes for almost everything carried over from the DVD (Counterfeit World, the deleted scene stuff, & alternate ending stuff) were very different from the DVD runtimes. It wasn't PAL speedup and there wasn't a clear consistency to the differences.

Normally when I find examples, I rip the extras from both the DVD & Blu-Ray onto my computer and play them side-by-side or disassemble their editing in Final Cut to try to determine exactly what the differences are.
However, when I ripped the extras from the Blu-Ray, the runtimes of the raw files all suddenly matched the DVD runtimes, without me doing any altering or conversions.

Eventually I discovered that when you're actually playing the disc, certain sections of the video files for the extras (some MGM logos, copyright information) are skipped over at the beginning & endings of the extras. But not only are they skipped over, an actual Blu-Ray player literally doesn't know those sections of the video files are there and only displays the runtime for the sections of the video file it's playing. It can't rewind past the "beginning" or fast-forward past the "end" to play those video sections, even though they're encoded on the disc in the video file.

Now I don't really mind not sitting through a bunch of extra MGM logos, but I've never seen any other disc encoded this way, and it was really perplexing me for quite a while as to why the same video tracks were showing 2 different runtimes depending on whether the disc was in a Blu-Ray player or ripped onto my computer.

[David M.]

That's not too strange. A few titles have master tape slates and color bars that get skipped over at the playlist level.

[MichaelB]

A reviewer inadvertently gave away that he'd ripped the disc of Indicator's The Pumpkin Eater in some way instead of watching it in a conventional setup after complaining that the selected-scene commentary was almost unlistenable because of its long patches of absolute silence. I was petrified that we'd cocked up the authoring in some way, so had to listen to the whole thing again myself - and when it turned out to be fine I contacted the editor to express my bemusement. He wouldn't admit what his reviewer had done (although I'm pretty certain I'm right), but the piece was swiftly corrected. (Which is why I'm not naming the reviewer or site, as it's one of the better ones.)

The problem was that the video file on the disc is the full-length feature - but when you select the commentary (and only then), the authoring is designed to skip the video from segment to segment, thus serving up a continuous piece running about an hour or so. However, if you don't play the disc in a conventional setup, the video file loses its embedded "instruction manual" and you get situations like this.

[TMDaines]

He could have just been playing it on a PC, and depending what player he used he may have experienced the disc like this. I dom’t see the menus of 90% of Blu-rays I watch, in fact I only do so when I open them in VLC to easily browse the extras.

[David M.]

PC players show menus and obey the Playlist in and out points too.

Reverse engineered/unlicensed ones on the other hand won't and will generally just play the individual clips. Those shouldn't really be relied on for review purposes...

[TMDaines]

Yeah, but all the licensed Blu-ray software on PC is utter garbage, such as PowerDVD. It beats the whole point of having an HTPC in the first place, which would usually be to turn off hard subtiles, use fansubs, use better upscaling software, modify the video stream in real-time to compensate for poorly authored discs, etc.

I use PotPlayer w/ MadVR and Kodi to watch Blu-rays, and they won't show most menus aside from simple ones in Kodi. VLC is used just for the menus to watch extras.

I couldn't ever go back to having a vanilla Blu-ray player.

[MichaelB]

The bottom line is that if you're reviewing something - i.e. adopting the position of an ordinary punter watching the disc under normal viewing conditions - it's madness to use a method that means that the disc might not play as its authors intended. At the very least, if something seems slightly odd about the presentation, the onus should be on the reviewer to investigate upfront instead of condemning the disc for "faults" that don't actually exist.

Although, to be fair, the editor did say that he should probably have run the issue by us first, as it sounded like a very serious mistake on either our part or the reviewer's, and I'm only thankful that it was the latter.

[tenia]

I would point that if you're using MadVR for what it seems to be designed (a scaler with tons of options), you're likely not to be reproducing what's on the disc 1:1 anyway.

On a similar note but different aspect of this subject, I stumbled on Wild Side's release of Climax, which supposedly contained 2 video clips and a short feature as extras. Except that I could only find 1 video clip + the short despite trying tons of possibilities with my remote. But when I had a look at the disc on my computer, I found the other clip there. I still have no idea how to access it and have indicated so on my review... since it turns out the retail release doesnt mention the 2nd clip anymore...
I need to ask Wild Side about it though, but since the clip isnt advertised anymore, I supposed it's not a big trouble.

[TMDaines]

I don't disagree with the above posts.

[domino harvey]

4K upgrade announced

[yoloswegmaster]

4K ULTRA HD LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
Original stereo audio and DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio option
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Audio commentary by director and co-writer William Friedkin
Taking a Chance, an archive interview with actor William Petersen
Doctor for a Day, an archive interview with actor Dwier Brown
Renaissance Woman in L.A., an archive interview with Debra Feuer
So In Phase: Scoring To Live and Die in L.A., an archive interview with composers Wang Chung
Wrong Way: The Stunts of To Live and Die in L.A., an archive interview with stunt co-ordinator Buddy Joe Hooker
Counterfeit World: The Making of To Live and Die in L.A., an archive featurette containing interviews with Friedkin, actors Petersen and Willem Dafoe, and others
Alternative ending
Deleted scene
Stills gallery
Trailers
Radio spot
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Eric Adrian Lee
Collectors' booklet featuring writing by Anne Billson and Ric Gentry

[Never Cursed]

I saw this by chance recently and found it to be shockingly bad and mean-spirited; I do not understand the cult following this film has at all. I'm not one to go full CinemaSins on a movie and dock "points" for flawed characters doing dumb things in an action movie, but the sheer number of times that William Petersen's character gets fooled by obvious set-ups or criminals doing the equivalent of saying "hey, look over there!" really grated. The film is a cesspit of negativity and decisions "bad" in both intent and execution, but to no particular end. (And both Friedkin and the meathead author of the source novel are at least equally culpable, as Friedkin takes credit for the loathsome opening sequence). I certainly don't buy the argument that the film is particularly anti-police. Petersen and Pankow may do asshole things (like keeping a woman in pseudo-sexual slavery?) and eventually circle the drain of a fatalistic noirish conclusion, but they also drive around LA looking awesome for two hours, and the movie's attitude is at worst equivocal towards their hijinks. Friedkin obviously wants to use the story as a vehicle to make an '80s French Connection (complete with giant car chase), but he appears to have forgotten that he made Popeye Doyle genuinely and identifiably despicable in that film, a real version of a cop that every American has encountered or seen before. If you scrub the grime off that guy, make him look like a guest star on Miami Vice, and position him against the operatic evil of a tortured artist, what are you actually saying about him that's different from any number of cop movies where "he's a loose cannon, but he gets results?"

The best thing by faaaaaaar in the movie is Dafoe's early counterfeiting montage. Dafoe doesn't even do anything particularly out of his usual range in the movie, but he walks away with it just by virtue of being himself.

[therewillbeblus]

I couldn't agree less! I think the film can be both fun as we ride with the cops, and also consistently anti-cop. Or, more appropriately, its interests lie in role-shifting and how rotten systems breed rotten changes in people. My thoughts from the director's thread:

To Live and Die in L.A., a film that starts out deceptively as your average 80s synth crime thriller, and gradually reveals itself as a vulnerable core of fatalistic worldview bleeding through its characters and their relationships to systems. It's the best Michael Mann film that Mann never made in the 80s, an insane devolution of identity as synonymous with personhood when contending with vacuous moral institutions and intangible emotional stressors best left suppressed without a blueprint. In the Mann thread, I mentioned that this is a deeply cynical look at how humanity erodes as people acclimate to roles, and contrary to Mann's approach, I think the nebulous link between 'self' and ideological or ethical ideals is deliberately abstract and elusive. Where Mann might be more transparent about the segregation, these connections are presented arrhythmically, as existentially-agonizing fragmentations or in horrific fluidity that defies a humanistic progression we can identify with, and this unpredictable anti-pattern of characterization and person-in-environment moral-usurping only intensifies the audacious complexity of the work. Plus it's just a blast.

[Mr Sausage]

I saw this by chance recently and found it to be shockingly bad and mean-spirited; I do not understand the cult following this film has at all. I'm not one to go full CinemaSins on a movie and dock "points" for flawed characters doing dumb things in an action movie, but the sheer number of times that William Petersen's character gets fooled by obvious set-ups or criminals doing the equivalent of saying "hey, look over there!" really grated. The film is a cesspit of negativity and decisions "bad" in both intent and execution, but to no particular end. (And both Friedkin and the meathead author of the source novel are at least equally culpable, as Friedkin takes credit for the loathsome opening sequence). I certainly don't buy the argument that the film is particularly anti-police. Petersen and Pankow may do asshole things (like keeping a woman in pseudo-sexual slavery?) and eventually circle the drain of a fatalistic noirish conclusion, but they also drive around LA looking awesome for two hours, and the movie's attitude is at worst equivocal towards their hijinks. Friedkin obviously wants to use the story as a vehicle to make an '80s French Connection (complete with giant car chase), but he appears to have forgotten that he made Popeye Doyle genuinely and identifiably despicable in that film, a real version of a cop that every American has encountered or seen before. If you scrub the grime off that guy, make him look like a guest star on Miami Vice, and position him against the operatic evil of a tortured artist, what are you actually saying about him that's different from any number of cop movies where "he's a loose cannon, but he gets results?"

The best thing by faaaaaaar in the movie is Dafoe's early counterfeiting montage. Dafoe doesn't even do anything particularly out of his usual range in the movie, but he walks away with it just by virtue of being himself.

I also just rewatched the movie a couple days ago, and, yeah, it's still not very good. I don't mind that the movie is so mean spirited and ugly, I think that's novel in the post Dirty Harry era of cop action films, especially the 80s (and the thing is as much a Dirty Harry story of a cop on the edge pushing the limits of the justice system to do what's right as it is a Michael Mann riff). But the thing is so goddamn ridiculous and filled to the brim with the genre's hoariest cliches. The opening is right out of the goofiest Stallone film. We have both "I'm too old for this shit" and a cop dying two days before retirement. The plot is indifferently told and sometimes incoherent. Unlike The French Connection with its careful attention to the details of police work, things just kind of happen here, and there's little attention to motivation. When the movie needs something to happen, it'll just toss in a new element and keep going. John Turturro's whole subplot for instance. It takes up enough time in the first half that you think it'll be an important fulcrum, and yet the moment he escapes you forget all about him until he randomly shows up at the end for a brief conclusion (tho' the film declines to explain how Petersen tracks him down again). When the movie needs an undercover plot ala Miami Vice, well, Defoe's lawyer from a previous scene just shows up and offers to backstab his boss. There's a later bit of dialogue that suggests Defoe is in on it and knows they're cops from jump? And then a scene still later that suggests the girlfriend and lawyer were maybe double crossing Defoe somehow? I don't know, the plot's a mess, just sloppily told. Just in general Defoe's plot doesn't really gel with the rest of the movie, but runs alongside it uncomfortably in parallel. The movie also has such a poor grasp of its subject that it manages to convince you the entire L.A. counterfeiting racket is just one guy with a warehouse handing out cash to random black men in the hood. There's no sense of the larger web of connections and organization that would need to exist, both across the country and globally, for this kind of racket to work. The scope of the movie is very tiny. That one scene of Defoe counterfeiting money is an outlier, because this movie is otherwise uninterested in process or detail.

But there are strong things here. The whole subplot with the informant, the heist that turns out to be bad, the chase, the sweat-soaked desperation of that whole section--it's strong. I sometimes imagine a movie where that stuff isn't a subplot but the main plot, with the focus being on a pair of cops trying to deal with fallout of accidentally robbing their own.

Oh, and the Wang Chung score is terrible. Why does this grim, nihilistic movie about guys riding on the knife edge have such an upbeat score? Friedkin should've got Tangerine Dream again.

[Mr Sausage]

I think the film can be both fun as we ride with the cops, and also consistently anti-cop.

I'm with Never Cursed: I don't think the film is anti-cop. I'd say it's ambivalent. At times it makes the police look like adrenaline junky cowboys who see violence and exploitation as simply means to an end, at others makes them look cool and competent, with just enough guts to be true heroes. Frankly I think The French Connection is much the same. Never Cursed overstates Popeye's ugliness. He's a racist and a mean son of a bitch, but also a relentless pursuer of genuinely bad people, a cop who builds his case through careful, lawful police work, and in the end an action hero. It's similarly ambivalent about the police, but on a less exaggerated scale.

[DimitriL]

Unlike The French Connection with its careful attention to the details of police work, things just kind of happen here, and there's little attention to motivation. When the movie needs something to happen, it'll just toss in a new element and keep going. John Turturro's whole subplot for instance. It takes up enough time in the first half that you think it'll be an important fulcrum, and yet the moment he escapes you forget all about him until he randomly shows up at the end for a brief conclusion (tho' the film declines to explain how Petersen tracks him down again).

Chance says he tracked him down by finding his actress girlfriend in the SAG directory.

[Mr Sausage]

Sure. But we don't see any of that, we have no idea he's even still looking, and anyway why did it take so long? That scene just happens suddenly, Chance gives a halfhearted explanation, and then it's done. It just ties up a loose end that never had any bearing on the main plot anyway.

[Never Cursed]

Frankly I think The French Connection is much the same. Never Cursed overstates Popeye's ugliness. He's a racist and a mean son of a bitch, but also a relentless pursuer of genuinely bad people, a cop who builds his case through careful, lawful police work, and in the end an action hero. It's similarly ambivalent about the police, but on a less exaggerated scale.

Not sure how one squares "careful, lawful police work" with Hackman's extreme recklessness during the car chase sequence, which ends with him shooting a (even more reckless and murderous) criminal in the back as he's running away from Hackman. That is a jarring moment and one that reflects the dishonor of a someone shooting someone else in the back as depicted in innumerable westerns that preceded The French Connection. Popeye doing that, even in the extreme duress of that particular situation, means something particular when depicted in a Hollywood film of the early 1970s. Or, indeed, Hackman

Spoiler

mistakenly killing a federal agent

during the final shootout, which neutralizes whatever heroics he might have pulled off. This is my point: even though Hackman is pursuing bad guys who do very bad things, he's so violent and unconcerned with collateral damage that he ends up causing more harm in the pursuit, something that both the audience and other characters in the film are acutely aware of. The French Connection, as you point out, is a more grounded film, which means when it pulls out those flourishes they stick with you (see also: the ending and how it treats Popeye). To Live and Die in L.A. is all flourish.

[Mr Sausage]

Frankly I think The French Connection is much the same. Never Cursed overstates Popeye's ugliness. He's a racist and a mean son of a bitch, but also a relentless pursuer of genuinely bad people, a cop who builds his case through careful, lawful police work, and in the end an action hero. It's similarly ambivalent about the police, but on a less exaggerated scale.

Not sure how one squares "careful, lawful police work" with Hackman's extreme recklessness during the car chase sequence, which ends with him shooting a (even more reckless and murderous) criminal in the back as he's running away from Hackman. Or, indeed, Hackman

Spoiler

mistakenly killing a federal agent

during the final shootout, which neutralizes whatever heroics he might have pulled off. This is my point: even though Hackman is pursuing bad guys who do very bad things, he's so violent and unconcerned with collateral damage that he ends up causing more harm in the pursuit, something that both the audience and other characters in the film are acutely aware of. The French Connection, as you point out, is a more grounded film, which means when it pulls out those flourishes they stick with you (see also: the ending and how it treats Popeye). To Live and Die in L.A. is all flourish.

What's to square? The attempt on his life and his subsequent response is not a part of the police work he does when building the case. He and Grosso are careful, methodical, and lawful in collecting evidence and building their case. There is a lot of patient, skillful police work in the movie. But there is also the shadow of human rights violations. When Popeye has to punch the undercover to preserve that cover, it suggests how common that kind of abuse was. And, yes, there's a reckless, freewheeling energy to Popeye that, when properly channeled, produces fine police work, but when allowed to spill over, eg. the car chase or the final warehouse pursuit, produces a dangerous tunnel vision. This is the ambivalence in the movie. I think Friedkin pursues that kind of ambivalence throughout his movies, some more successfully than others (Cruising is the most pointed and least successful example of Friedkin's ambivalence towards police work).

I think The French Connection has a more complicated portrait of its main character and the police than maybe you're suggesting. But I think we agree completely on To Live and Die in L.A. not even coming close to its nuances.

[ballmouse]

If Chance has been portrayed as a hero, he's just one of another in a long line of antiheroes that pop culture has mythologized into heroes (see those early gangster films of the 30s to numerous cowboy roles in westerns to James Bond to any number of reckless cops in the 70s, etc.).

I don't think anyone who can separate someone's actions and decision making with charisma and screen presence is supposed to see Chance as a model cop or human being.

The film is by no means 'high cinema'. But it does a decent job of blending action and some artsy sensibility into a sort of 'revisionist police procedural' where, unlike a typical rouge cop film (like Dirty Harry), the protagonist seems to move the investigation forward by pure stupid chance rather than skilled police work and the alleged villain appears to be less of a criminal than the police investigating him.

Maybe to some extent Chance is a hero because for the audience, it's a chance to live vicariously through a character who acts purely on emotion, instinct, and a devil-may-care attitude rather than methodical procedure. But I (and maybe Friedkin as well) assumed any such notion would be extinguished by the end of the film.

[swo17]

Oh, and the Wang Chung score is terrible. Why does this grim, nihilistic movie about guys riding on the knife edge have such an upbeat score? Friedkin should've got Tangerine Dream again.

Funny, I didn't like this movie initially but was prompted to give it another chance after the theme burrowed into my head from watching Everybody's in LA. I liked the movie a lot more the second time, and largely because of the score!

[beamish14]

Oh, and the Wang Chung score is terrible. Why does this grim, nihilistic movie about guys riding on the knife edge have such an upbeat score? Friedkin should've got Tangerine Dream again.

Funny, I didn't like this movie initially but was prompted to give it another chance after the theme burrowed into my head from watching Everybody's in LA. I liked the movie a lot more the second time, and largely because of the score!

Yes, it’s a wonderful score. The theme song (the video of which was directed by Friedkin and he appears in it) and the cue playing over the forged currency creation montage are excellent

[therewillbeblus]

If Chance has been portrayed as a hero, he's just one of another in a long line of antiheroes that pop culture has mythologized into heroes (see those early gangster films of the 30s to numerous cowboy roles in westerns to James Bond to any number of reckless cops in the 70s, etc.).

I don't think anyone who can separate someone's actions and decision making with charisma and screen presence is supposed to see Chance as a model cop or human being.

The film is by no means 'high cinema'. But it does a decent job of blending action and some artsy sensibility into a sort of 'revisionist police procedural' where, unlike a typical rouge cop film (like Dirty Harry), the protagonist seems to move the investigation forward by pure stupid chance rather than skilled police work and the alleged villain appears to be less of a criminal than the police investigating him.

Maybe to some extent Chance is a hero because for the audience, it's a chance to live vicariously through a character who acts purely on emotion, instinct, and a devil-may-care attitude rather than methodical procedure. But I (and maybe Friedkin as well) assumed any such notion would be extinguished by the end of the film.

I agree with most of this, and yes, I think if by the end of the film you don't view this as anti=cop, we're just seeing different movies. Hackman's accidental kill at the end of The French Connection is in service of both obsessive, personal stakes and justice. It's complicated. What's nuanced about the ending of To Live and Die in L.A. is in how a "good" cop can turn bad and so easily slip into, not just 'a' role, but the exact same role as his predecessor, based on his work experience leading to desensitization. The systems at play will continue to churn out these figures because the systems are on fire, and there are no structural supports to produce a path forward for this cop to rehabilitate or disengage from the system, despite him having such traumatic experiences. It's much more dismal, and bathetic in a different way than The French Connection.