Home Viewing Highlights of the week

Until the End of the World (DVD)
1991. dir. Wim Wenders. star. Sam Neill, William Hurt, Max von Sydow, Jeanne Moreau
4h40min

Not a typo; this film is indeed, in the director's cut version, 4 hours and 40 minutes long. And there's probably a good film in there, but I'm sure it could have been cut down (although technically it has, for North America, but that version is apparently incoherent).
UtEotW is about a woman in a mildly dystopian future Europe, who, while escaping France, runs into a man who has been travelling to all corners of the world documenting images for a project of his father's. The woman chases the man all the way to the Australian Outback, where she discovers the project is a way to help blind people see again using computers. They soon discover that the device can be modified to allow people to watch their own dreams after they wake up, and the woman soon becomes addicted to the device.

There is a lot more going on, but that covers the jist of it. If you're willing to put the time in, it can be a rewarding film experience, but I feel that given teh premise, this could have been a popular hit had Wenders found a way to make it a normal length. Note that this director's cut version is only available from Germany and Italy, so you'll need a region-free DVD player to watch it (and you'll have to find it on ebay or amazon.de).


They Were Expendable (DVD)
1945. dir. John Ford. star. John Wayne, Robert Mongomery
2h15min

I had this in a JohnFord/John Wayne box set and had never watched it, but I'm glad I put it in this weekend. I was expecting the usual jingoistic John Wayne war film, and although it has those elements, it has one of Wayne's best performances (one where he doesn't always seem like "John Wayne"), and more importantly, some of the best air-to-sea battle scenes ever shot, even to this day. the reason is that those scenes were made while John Ford was still a Captain in the US Navy, and they are in fact real battles scenes, with real Navy PT boats fighting real Japanese Zeroes. Very cool stuff. Check it out sometime.


From Russia With Love (Sean Connery)
Live and Let Die (Roger Moore)
Casino Royale (Daniel Craig)
All Blu-Ray

In anticipation on Quantum of Solace, I watched these three Bond movies, three of my favorites, all on Blu-Ray. They all look fantastic, and are good samples to show why Blu-Ray is a good investment if you're really into films.

Also note that I caught a James Bond edition of Mythbusters, and they declared that, even though they couldn't quite pull it off themselves, the speedboat jump over the police car from Live and Let Die is in fact plausible. So there you have it.

Go get a Blu-Ray player, and go get some Bond. If you buy them at Future Shop, they come in nifty metal cases.