Hello!

The Cinesavant reviews at Trailers from Hell have an entire new look.

The new formatting of CineSavant reviews is proceeding nicely. We’ll see if the automatic formatting will fix most of the strange things happening to older reviews. I’m far too old to go in manually and fidget with 4,000 separate files. But Trailers From Hell’s website engineers have already accomplished their share of miracles, so we’ll wait and see.

The reviews now have a format choice that toggles from dark to light, via a command on the upper right of the screen. The black background looks great but mine will be the lighter choice. The darker format reminds me more of a blog, and I think of CineSavant as more of an ongoing source of articles, a full website. In the isolation of writing for the web, ya gotta double down on the delusions that feel the best.

I hope you can navigate okay … please write in with comments …

So … upcoming discs!

We’re already getting antsy for some of the Halloween-themed discs promised this month, a thought that motivated this quick list of discs I call Mailbox Watchers. It’s neither comprehensive nor particularly well organized, just a stack of titles that come to mind when we ask, ‘what are we most waiting for here?’

We’re naturally most keen for the 2 Warner Archive Collection releases of Terence Fisher’s Horror of Dracula in 4K. In addition to the monster box, the WAC is offering  a more practical, more economical set. It’s a genuine event in the fan world of classic Hammer: every horror freak in the world wants to know exactly what is meant by ‘the original uncut pre-censorship’ version we’re supposedly getting in prime condition. We intend to review both sets, splitting that chore with Charlie Largent. Now all we need are discs to review, thankyouverymuch.

The stack that follows is more than a laundry list; I’ve skipped some high profile titles (a musical, etc.) that I can’t see myself watching again. Looking at the logs between here and late November, here’s what stuck out:

The Warner Archive Collection has some super surprises: David Lean’s  Ryan’s Daughter in 4K, hopefully remastered from 65mm. George Pal’s  Tom Thumb is a fantasy that I’ve somehow never managed to see straight through. Sidney Lumet’s all-star military prison picture  The Hill will hopefully have English subtitles, enabling me to undestand what’s going on when prisoners are screaming in various accents. We’re also happy with the WAC’s firm commitment to  Blu-ray 3-D, with both  Phantom of the Rue Morgue and  The Charge at Feather River.  Thanks, George!

We’re just now getting into Deaf Crocodile’s fine disc of Aleksandr Ptushko’s  Scarlet Sails, a Russian adventure movie said to be one of the director’s best.

While Radiance Films continues its flow of prime Japanese and European thrillers, we are primed for its immediate Halloween titles, Mario Bava’s  Planet of the Vampires 4K (perhaps a reissue), Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s chilling  Who Can Kill a Child 4K, and a much-anticipated horror box, enticingly titled  Fantastique: Dreams and Nightmares of French Cinema.

Criterion has our full attention with a deluxe 4K disc of Netflix’s presentation of Guillermo Del Toro’s  Frankenstein. The only other direct-horror
title we see is Sergei Parajanov’s weird Ukranian fable  Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors 4K. But we’re also primed to receive several other desirables. A new ‘Eclipse’ box offers Samuel Fuller’s early features for Lippert Films,  I Shot Jesse James, The Baron of Arizona, and The Steel Helmet. A bit later we get François Truffaut’s  Shoot the Piano Player 4K, and Philip Kaufman’s  The Right Stuff 4K. I will have to invite Todd S. over for that one.

KL Studio Classics has a potential deal-maker coming in November, a monster box of Four Sergio Leone Masterworks westerns, all in 4K:  A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, and as a surprise  Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s a guaranteed all-nighter.

And there’s one more title that popped up that feels fun to mention. Paramount is once again giving us Frank Capra’s Christmas picture  It’s a Wonderful Life in an 80th Anniversary deluxe 4K gift set. There must be a million more movie newbies out there needing an introduction to the tale of Harry Bailey. Not to get on the Xmas bandwagon too hastily, but I think it’s a good film to introduce kids to what we used to be proud of as core American values … you know, honesty, integrity, a sense of neighborly fair play.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson