Hello!

The unstoppable Michael McQuarrie has found a quality item that fans of Spaghetti westerns will want to see, if it isn’t already old news to one and all. This one-hour TV show from 2014 covers the ‘other’ Italo western franchises that the faithful swear by, Django, Sartana, Trinità and the Others…

This encoding is in French only; a friend jerry-rigged some English subs for me, by what process I don’t know; I’m told that many resourceful fans can do the same. The participants in the intereview docu inlcude Sergio Sollima, Ernesto Gastaldi, Terence Hill, and Bud Spencer. It’s a very slick production.

Plus, a really worthwhile read…  a key article for just about anybody trying to understand the evolution of film sound, and the history of studios preserving (or not preserving) the riches of their film vaults. It’s from Sight and Sound, 1988, and it’s written by Michael Arick, who I would later work for as an editor for quite a few years.

The article was written before studios had film restoration departments. If I remember the story correctly, Michael was hired by Warner Bros. to spearhead special preservation and restoration projects partly on the reputation of this one piece of writing. Michael made a big contribution to the restoration of the 1954 Judy Garland  A Star Is Born, and was instrumental in recovering elements that made possible the restoration/revision/multiple versions of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

The article makes mention of a list of Warners’ movies from the middle 1950s for which there was no surviving 4-track stereophonic audio. Later on, Michael Arick would find an ingenious way to recover many of those original 4-track recordings, just in time before they disintegrated, became unplayable. That’s why we can now hear perfect preserved stereo tracks for classics like Elia Kazan’s East of Eden. The recovered original 4-track stereo audio for Howard Hawks’ Land of the Pharaohs doubles its appeal.

The article hasn’t dated much at all. It is a clear and concise technical history, with the kind of side information that helps to connect the dots on what one already knows about movie audio. The article starts on page 43 and is titled

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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We got our Forbidden Planet review up as fast as we could, to join the varied coverage we expect from other reviewers. Today’s CineSavant Column is just two small items of lesser interest, but we will take what we can get. Advisor Gary Teetzel sent along this link to a ‘new’ trailer for the 1957 Toho epic Chikyu Boeigun, aka ‘Earth Defense Force’, released around the world as  The Mysterians.  We wondered if this trailer for the ‘2026 release’ would look different from our old DVD copies, which it does not.

It does look like the trailer was put through a program to enhance the color and buff away dirt, dings, scratches — but it’s still the same soft image. Back around 1990, I spent big money on a Japanese import laserdisc, the first video viewing available in Tohoscope. Toho’s discs didn’t normally have English subtitles, which made our viewings a little less coherent than they might have been.

Does anybody own one of Toho’s ‘new 4K remasters’ of The Mysterians?  I assume that they’re still English-language challenged. But is the scan/colorization/encoding really an improvement, with better color values?  Did they try to digitally remove the snowstorms of negative dirt, that we theorize were the result of early attempts to do opticals without ‘clean’ protocols?

And what’s up with the funky soundtrack on this transfer? I turned it down to silence.

This entry is even less substantial. Editor Steve Nielson was going through some old paperwork and found a receipt for a laserdisc rental. He’d routinely drive all the way from Santa Monica to Dave’s the Laser Place.

Dave’s the Laser Place was for years a busy shop frequented by industry types as well as celebs that bought discs by the dozen and ordered up thousands of dollars of high-end video and audio gear. But when DVD came in, the days of the laser format were numbered, and so was the store.

The unimpressive item is a credit slip for a free rental … all transactions were done on paper, and maybe Steve rented a disc that didn’t play. I wonder if Steve can still redeem it?   It’s only from 35 years or so ago.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

It was fun to learn that my favorite author the last few years, Leonardo Padura, has been awarded the prestigious Liber Award, as reported two days ago online. Padura’s most popular books follow the career of Havana detective Mario Conde, a professional who has gone through all the bad times in Cuba, solving crimes while seeing the souring of his country’s social dream. The books chart the changes as Cuba went into survival mode, starting in the early 1990s.

I’m deep into reading Padura’s historical novels, about present day investigations into the past. One is a ‘Conde’ book, in which Mario digs into the last days of Ernest Hemingway living in Cuba, that may have involved a murder. The best-known of his historical books is his masterpiece The Man Who Loved Dogs, about the Spaniards and Russians who assassinated Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940.

I’ve only found a few film productions based on Padura’s works. He wrote the screenplay for 2014’s Return to Ithaca (Retour à Ithaque), a lively drama that transpires over one night on a Havana rooftop … the only private place that old friends can gather to talk the truth, and feel somewhat secure from political repercussions. I’ve only found European Region 2 DVDs of Return to Ithaca.

The more conventional  Four Seasons in Havana (Cuatro estaciones en La Habana) is a four-feature miniseries adapting the Conde books known as ‘The Havana Quartet.’ It’s a really fine production.

The problem is that Four Seasons in Havana is now difficult to find. It made its debut on Netflix but has been gone for six years. On streaming platforms, content can be made available or be erased from existence by whim. There are no domestic disc releases. I’ve only found one DVD set, produced in Holland and available only in Europe. It’s a very good encoding of the four features on two discs, but to most American fans it’s useless: it’s only in Spanish Language, and the only subtitles are Dutch. Not only that, the thick Cuban accents can be daunting to non-Cuban Spanish speakers. Oh, it’s a Region 2 DVD as well, so an all-region player is a must. If your Spanish skills is good, I reccomend it. It was filmed in Havana and the acting and directing are excellent.

I’m glad that Leonardo Padura won this award. His film work really ought to be available here, and make him better known. People that like Michael Connelly (me) will love him.

And because people ask, this last entry is just a list, of discs on hand to review, and the ‘wish list’ of what’s expected.

Already in hand at CineSavant Central are these … some are partly written:

Spike of Bensonhurst  4K   (Fun City Editions)
Sergeant Rutledge (The Warner Archive Collection)
French Dressing (Powerhouse Indicator)
The Saragossa Manuscript  4K   (Radiance Films)
The First Deadly Sin (Vinegar Syndrome)
Cruel Story of Youth  4K   (The Criterion Collection)
The Island (KL Studio Classics)
The Wings of Eagles (The Warner Archive Collection)
Hell’s Highway, the True Story of Highway Safety Films (Kino Cult)
The Human Comedy (The Warner Archive Collection)
Hud  4K   (The Criterion Collection)
Project Hail Mary  4K   (MGM/Alliance)
Coup de Torchon  4K   (The Criterion Collection)

Expected soon or hoped for in the next couple of months:

Forbidden Planet  4K   (Arrow Films)
Danza Macabra 5 (Severin Films)
The First Films of Samuel Fuller (Eclipse 5)
Out of the Past  4K   (The Warner Archive Collection)
Ryan’s Daughter  4K   (The Warner Archive Collection)
Fantastique: The Dreams and Nightmares of French Cinema (Radiance)
Skyscraper Souls (The Warner Archive Collection)
Planet of the Vampires  4K   (Radiance)
The Shout  4K   (The Criterion Collection)
The Lost Patrol (The Warner Archive Collection)
The Silence of the Lambs  4K   (The Criterion Collection)
Frankenstein (The Criterion Collection)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (The Criterion Collection)
The Right Stuff  4K   (The Criterion Collection)
Shoot the Piano Player  4K   (The Criterion Collection)
(Horror of) Dracula  4K   (Hammer)

Plus these three, just confirmed.

Operation Kid Brother (OK Connery) (Explosive Media)
Machine Gun Kelly (Explosive Media)
The Giant of Marathon (Explosive Media)

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

I couldn’t resist this … maybe I should go looking for the CD. In keeping with a Paris theme this coming month, we found a pretty glorious re-recording session video for the patriotic Maurice Jarre song Paris en còlere. The melody is the theme for liberation in the film  Is Paris Burning?

The equally glorious vocal is by Melinda Million:

And there’s an older recording by  Mireille Mathieu,  too.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson