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Her name is spelled two different ways on her own official website, she can't be too picky.

yashin19 wrote:I'm not really worried about a 4K transfer for this edition, more that in this day and age, preservation of a film like Nashville should be top of mind for the studio. I can understand a 2K negative transfer back in the early days of BD, but with 4K on the horizon for serious consumers, and is Nashville a film for serious consumers, so you'd think Paramount would put two and two together here.

well the transfer was probably done in the early days of bluray. and has been sitting on a shelf since then.

2k, 4k...this will still be a good excuse to finally ditch the 2000 DVD.

I also second Paramount/Criterion procrastinating on not getting Karen Black involved before her unfortunate passing.

It's too bad they couldn't have snagged an interview with Jerry Weintraub. Dude's got stories for days. The HBO doc touches on how he became involved with producing this, but it'd be nice to hear a more in-depth account from his perspective.

I have to admit I haven't seen this (it shows my age, but when I think Altman I think The Player and Short Cuts more than his other stuff), so I might just rent it and see if it's worth the purchase.

It is worth the purchase. It's basically the only film of his I'm aware of to get unanimous praise.

knives wrote:It is worth the purchase. It's basically the only film of his I'm aware of to get unanimous praise.

I'd say The Player nudges ahead on that score, but there's not much in it.

I thought McCabe and Mrs. Miller was the critical favorite? In any case, yes most 70's Altman are very interesting.

I'm not talking critical, but unanimous in which case McCabe and Mrs. Miller is not.

I think you're underestimating the coterie of critics who have a complete loathing of Altman ("and all he stands for" - yes, it's that kind of loathing!), and his fresco films like Nashville, which allegedly betray a complete and utter contempt for all of humanity, are front and centre of what's 'wrong' about him. Personally, I think they have failed to actually watch the film properly, but that doesn't stop them bellowing long and loud whenever anybody has the temerity to disagree within their earshot.

Yes, this is why I was surprised by the claim about Nashville. I've been tracking Altman films for a long time, and the only one I can think of that really did open to more or less unanimous praise was The Player. I suspect that film struck so many chords, not least the fact that it amounted to a celluloid petition to Hollywood to make more adventurous films, that it outweighed any vestigial anti-Altman feeling.

The praise only feels unanimous because somehow domino and zedz both love it.

swo17 wrote:The praise only feels unanimous because somehow domino and zedz both love it.

That does help to explain this latest news

To Sleep With Anger Sweeps New AFI Lists In All Categories
"We weren't sure how to classify it," say organizers, "So we put it in all of 'em."

I think it's safe to say that if you've seen and enjoyed an Altman film, Nashville's a pretty sure bet. Altman's got enough variable wavelengths that even fans occasionally find they don't connect with one of his "classics" (MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye). But Nashville is probably Altman's North by Northwest, where all but total naysayers are going to like something in it, even if it might not be their favorite Altman film.

Someone here did mention not liking Nashville, maybe in the 70s thread, but I agree, I can't conceive of how anyone could. The North by Northwest comparison is a good one

I actually am not that crazy about either Nashville or NxNW, though admittedly the former is long overdue for a rewatch from me.

Do you post at HTF?

As Joe Lugoff.

My problem with Nashville is that I just plain didn't like much of the music -- which I did not feel rose to the level of even mediocre _real_ country music. This sort of makes the film hard for me to take, despite its many virtues.

Michael Kerpan wrote:My problem with Nashville is that I just plain didn't like much of the music -- which I did not feel rose to the level of even mediocre _real_ country music. This sort of makes the film hard for me to take, despite its many virtues.

Counterpoint.

Not liking country music (at all) is exactly the reason I still haven't seen this movie, despite even taking out the VHS from the library many years ago. I'll at least rent the DVD, tho', and give it a shot.

Considering it's a Scope pic, it's a good thing you didn't watch the VHS!

The music is not supposed to be good. Altman was on record (on the Paramount commentary?) as saying that most of the music in town isn't good, so why should the film have used only top-shelf tunes if it is trying to represent the place? Even so, the music (some of which was written by the actors themselves) sounds better to my ears than most of the product coming out of Music City.

A very good edition of Slant Magazine's The Conversations, addressing the music in Nashville quite a bit.

When I watched Altman's film on ballet, The Company, I had a very adverse reaction, mostly because the experience of ballet life in the movie seemed so inauthentic. Having been very involved in that world, I could pick apart every detail of The Company that seemed untrue to my experience, and it made the movie wretched for me.

I don't have the same reaction to Nashville, though I have certainly heard of many people in the country music scene who feel as if the film doesn't get it even slightly right. It's something that nags at me a lot, because Nashville is a movie I treasure--the kind of picture that grows and reveals new meanings upon each viewing.

I definitely feel, though, that The Company is wretched for reasons beyond its inauthentic glimpse of a subculture, and Nashville seems great to me for so many reasons beyond the country music and even the social scene in the picture. The sour feeling of America at the bicentennial seems to me a larger, stronger undercurrent of the film than any of the flatter surface elements of the plot or even the dramatic texture of the picture.

zedz wrote:

Michael Kerpan wrote:My problem with Nashville is that I just plain didn't like much of the music -- which I did not feel rose to the level of even mediocre _real_ country music. This sort of makes the film hard for me to take, despite its many virtues.

Counterpoint.

Didn't like MUCH of the music. Didn't say it was all terrible.

scotty 2 -- It is precisely Altmans's blatant disrespect for the music that I found alienating.

feihong -- your reaction to The Company is pretty much the way I feel about Nashville.

I don't know, the only music in the film I find actively bad is Henry Gibson's pandering, sentimental claptrap, and it's not as if the real Nashville was devoid of that kind of thing. The rest seems to me to run the gamut from functional ('Bluebird', 'Rolling Stone') through good / very good ('Memphis', Carradine's tracks - though they seem more folk than country to me) to excellent ('My Idaho Home') to sublime ('Dues'). The film really covers a huge range in terms of style and quality, and given the 'actors writing their own songs' principle (which almost all but Gibson followed, suggesting that those songs really were intended to sound the way they do) Altman really lucked out with the soundtrack.