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And I think the technique on display was a bit less effective in Bang the Drum Slowly. It felt like a concession, at times it felt a little bit lazy, whereas in No Time for Sergeants it felt like someone was making necessity into a strength and an advantage. I thought Newman was very good, but the subject matter was a bit treacly. looking at the wikipedia description of the feature film, it seems like they stripped everything good out of this story in order to expand it.

A Wind from the South was interesting, the whole thing was a bit chewy, like a half formed Hemingway short lacking the characteristic crisp, gut-punching punctuation; the film never seemed to come together. That is to say, the whole thing feels half formed.

I've just started in on the set.

Requiem for a Heavyweight is pretty powerful. Keenan Wynn as the manager and Jack Palance as the boxer really bring a lot to their roles.

I'll speak up for Bang the Drum Slowly. It's a little too obvious and stagey, and yet I synced up with the rhythm and got involved in the story. I was even anticipating the next Newman direct monologue after a while. I thought it all pulled together nicely. I liked the way players were riding the somewhat moody star, and how Bruce's situation pulled together the fractured clubhouse. I also liked how Newman was the sophisticated one, until he gets in a room with the executives, and then he gets outfoxed and reduced to being a dupe, a city boy from country, essentially taking on the role Bruce has with him.

A Wind from the South, otoh, seemed rather artificial and overwritten. And I was distracted much of the time because Donald Woods looked a good deal like George HW Bush (Bush 41). There's a decent payoff at the end, but it's pretty labored to get there.

Patterns didn't do that much for me. It was fairly well done, but the 50's dramatization of businessman ethics seems rather quaint. And the stakes just seemed rather small to me. I guess that's partly the point, the human element and a person's life within a cut-throat organizational world. Meh.

Haven't gotten to the rest yet.
Want to get to the Mickey Rooney tonight in tribute.

I liked what The Comedian was trying to do more than the execution. Mickey Rooney was just far too shrill, as though he wanted to make damn sure no one was going to confuse the role he was playing with his real self with. Maybe I should give it more credit for trying to depict a bipolar individual, with narcissistic manipulative tendencies, but the title character was just too much of an overwhelming jerk. And then we get Patterns-type subplots about white collar workers dealing with their conscience. A little more nuance and less workplace angst would have been preferable. The parts with Mel Torme as the abused/put-upon brother was the most interesting aspect. And I did like the giant wall poster of Rooney in character making a silly face, with the door in the bottom center.

Requiem for a Heavyweight was excellent with particularly great performances and script. The direction was up there with Patterns and was just impressive throughout.

The Comedian was pretty shockingly brilliant, Rooney gave the best performance of his career, perhaps the only good performance I've ever seen him give, and the brazen and cliche self-loathing take on television & hollywood is an always welcome trope to revisit. The step up in direction when we get Frankenheimer on these final two films is something quite incredible.

Days of Wine and Roses is much better than the film version for the primary reason that both characters begin as drunks in this version. If I recall correctly, the film version has Jack Lemmon teaching the girl to love the taste of alcohol by ordering her a brandy alexander, and that always made me feel like the whole film was a little bit grotesque, particularly as he recovers and she doesn't. This film feels so much more rooted in the Al-Anon realities and less a three-hankie weepie.

Out of Print

I bet they are just dropping the digipack and will reprint the release in those new 3 disc Scanovo cases.

ianungstad wrote:Out of Print

I bet they are just dropping the digipack and will reprint the release in those new 3 disc Scanovo cases.

The three-disc DVD case has been around for a while, though. A BD upgrade is more likely, though this doesn't confirm it of course.

Why would a forthcoming BD release make the DVD edition go out of print? Criterion no longer does dual-format, so the DVD edition wouldn't be affected.

This could mean the rights to some of the content has been lost.

How would a BD even be possible? Aren't all of these kinescoped?

Some amazing conjecture in this thread. Clearly this is indicative of a Zatoichi-esque box encompassing this and twenty-three more discs of TV programming

WHERE'S BOTTLE ROCKET

<n/r>

Has anyone contacted Criterion regarding the OoP news?

Looks like this is being reissued on August 26th. Almost certainly just a packaging change, as speculated above.

This is a few years old but still worth mentioning: The first 1,000 people to buy this Ernie Kovacs set direct from Shout Factory get an exclusive bonus disc of his contribution to the United States Steel Hour. I recently did so and the bonus disc was still available. And the episode itself is a hoot!