Guys like Jeff Sneider don’t understand the concept of owning Blurays, and to be honest half the time I question it myself, given the excellent quality of high-def streaming these days. But I’ve just ordered Kino Lorber’s 60th anniversary Bluray of William Wyler’s The Big Country, and for two good reasons: (1) It’s been newly … Read more
In his review of a new German Bluray of Henry King’s The Bravados, DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze (a) notes the presence of “darker visuals” than those on the 2005 DVD, and (b) allows that the Bluray may have “even more CinemaScope mumps” than the previous disc. Why the hell would any Bluray distributor issue … Read more
Over the last day or so I’ve been scratching my head over more bad information on the Great Innocents Mumps Mystery, but after calling and sifting around for a couple of hours an answer came along that seemed to finally make sense. I’m frankly getting sick of this story so I’m just going to cut … Read more
A little less than three months ago I wrote a short wish piece about Criterion’s forthcoming Bluray of Jack Clayton‘s The Innocents (’61), or more precisely about how sublime it would be if Criterion was to do to The Innocents what Disney did with its Bluray remastering of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, i.e., eliminate … Read more
Queer as I am for black-and-white Scope (2.39:1), I can’t see paying $30 for Twilight Time’s Our Man in Havana Bluray. I saw this agreeably droll Carol Reed film at the Aero two and half years ago, and as pleasant as it was it failed to lift me out of my seat. It was obviously … Read more
I need to correct previous reporting about the reason for the glorious absence of the CinemaScope mumps on Criterion’s Bluray of Jack Clayton‘s The Innocents (’61), which was released on 9.23.14. I finally bought (or more accurately store-traded for) this disc two days ago. It’s the best rendering of this horror classic mine eyes have ever … Read more
Last night I went to see Carol Reed and Graham Greene‘s Our Man in Havana (’59) at the Aero. A dryly amusing, mild-mannered timepiece. Intelligently written by Greene, pleasantly assembled. Handsomely shot in widescreen black-and-white (those old cobblestoned streets of Havana look wonderful under streetlights), although everyone is unfortunately affected with the CinemaScope mumps. It … Read more
For many years I’ve been lamenting the “CinemaScope mumps” distortion syndrome, or that face-broadening, weight-adding effect that resulted from the use of anamorphic CinemaScope lenses from ’53 through ’60. It would be heaven if someone could figure a way to horizontally compress these films so that the unnaturally widened effect would look right. Every mumped-up … Read more
For years I’ve been lamenting the “CinemaScope mumps” distortion syndrome — that face-broadening, weight-adding effect that resulted from the use of anamorphic CinemaScope lenses from ’53 through ’59 or ’60. It would be heaven if someone could figure a way to horizontally compress these films so that it would all look right. There’s a fundamental … Read more
In his review of a new British Bluray of Jack Clayton‘s The Innocents, DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze ignores a significant visual element. The 1961 film was clearly shot with older Fox CinemaScope lenses, and therefore suffered from the “CinemaScope mumps,” a syndrome that mostly manifested in CinemaScope films of the ’50s in which actor’s … Read more
In the mid ’50s, before CinemaScope lenses were perfected, everything and everyone looked horizontally distorted. The joke was that actors had the “CinemaScope mumps.” But on widescreen TVs today — in bars, people’s living rooms, electronic media showrooms — the distortion is easily double what the CinemaScope mumps syndrome delivered, and nobody blinks an eye. … Read more