Hello!

Correspondent David S. Schow turns us toward an opinion article that meets with CineSavant’s full approval, mainly because it coincides neatly with my pre-formed personal bias!  Actually, Carly Foy’s article on the advantages of hard disc video over streaming, An argument for physical over digital media makes good sense. Foy sketches the usual reasons in her brief piece, and David pointed out one very real point made by the article — browsing through stacks of discs in a store or on a shelf is much more pleasant than an endless search for something to see on Netflix. The article is in ‘The Badger Herald’ of Madison Wisconsin. That paper is probably a modern media outlet, but I can’t help but mentally picture a man in bow tie and suspenders, rummaging around an old newspaper office.

Coming in February from Criterion is something special … Alan Pakula’s ultimate paranoid conspiracy film The Parallax View will be out from the flagship hard media disc company on February 9. The movie’s Corporate-Mabuse scheme to seize power no longer seems farfetched. The ice-cold visuals that once seemed so confining, now resemble the world we live in — nothing is what it seems, and even after you’ve imagined the worst, you’re still surprised at how evil things can become. Yes, it’s a feel-good movie for political defeatists!

The L.A. County Museum of art once showed Parallax in a film series devoted to widescreen movies. It seemed especially wide, with its graphics-oriented images that place Warren Beatty in an endless maze. And the show has one of the most impressive special montages ever put together … it’s meant to be a psych test for potential assassins, but now it looks like a political re-election TV commercial.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson