Great going, Ben!  I remember you mentioning your plans for the book a few years back, and now it is truly seeing the light of day.  It sounds like a fascinating book, too.  Glad you were able to make one small DS connection with KLS!

 

Was Frid the sole guest on a half hour episode of Dick Cavett?  If so, I would really like to see this!

Also, a broader question to anyone who might know - is any of Frid's work other than DS available on DVD?

I appreciate the information.

It's too bad these aren't more readily available, but what's really aggravating is the whole region coding business.  There are a number of films that are only available in England, haven't been released on DVD in the U.S. market; also, several made-for-TV U.S. productions have not been released on DVD here, but have been in England.  At least that gives our cousins from England the chance to see some productions they wouldn't otherwise be able to see.

I'm assuming from the specifications of the DVD player that Darren references that the way you know this is a region-free player is where it says that it plays PAL/NTSC formats.

Quote from: Vlad on August 21, 2005, 01:19:47 AM

You can't get any hammier than Lacy's portrayals of Trask.

Umm - have you seen Addison Powell as Dr. Lang? 

I did consider writing "you can't get much hammier" - thinking it was a tossup with a couple of other villainous characters on the show.  I'd forgotten about Dr. Lang, though - guess there were other roles on DS besides villains that were interpreted with, umm, great energy ...

PennyDreadful wrote:

some of the real-life preachers I've seen on TV are waaaay more over the top than Trask ever was!

Of course, I was thinking of "real" people when I made my comment ... 

Interesting that mention of Vincent Price should come up in a discussion of "hams" - no one was perhaps suggesting ... ?  

Price did a great job when he played things straight, IMO - as with "Witchfinder General."

Also, his one-man performance in "An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe" is fantastic - a must for anyone interested in Poe!

I'm afraid all these ratios are making my head swim.  I started a list a while back, and I have such numerical figures as:

1.33:1 (This, I know, refers to the box shaped TV screen format)
1.66:1 (Referred to as semi-letterbox - for the semi-illiterate?)
4.3 letterbox
16:9 anamorphic transfer
1.78 anamorphic (Jimbo's post above)

Strange that some of these numbers have a decimal point, some have a colon, and some have both a decimal point and a colon.  Hard to understand what it all means.  I won't ask anyone here to try to explain any of this,

Other interesting DVD terms I've come across:

dual-layer disc (possibly good)
single-layer dual-sided disc (maybe even better!)
aliasing (not sure if that's good or bad)
artifacts (bad!)
compression (bad!)

Also something on the package of some of my DVDs say something or other "will trigger a slight pause" but it doesn't say when this pause will occur, whether it's disruptive, or if it's a feature you really want to have on your DVD.

And it would take hours to try to sort out who owns rights to what where DS is concerned ... talk about confusing!

I've read customer reviews of several movies released on DVD where the top and bottom were deliberately chopped off in order to fool the consumer into thinking they were getting the film as it appeared widescreen in theaters - that is absolutely unbelievable.

My biggest gripe with a lot of my DVDs is the low sound quality (although it's a tie with those that can't be removed from the case without bending the DVD, although that situation seems to be improving).  Even with the volume control at the highest level for: Volume, Wave, SWSynth, and CD Audio, the dialogue on about 40 percent of my movie DVDs is frequently inaudible.  It's always the dialogue, too - other sounds, music, etc., are plenty loud.  This problem has not been the case with any DVD I have of any TV show (DS, Forever Night, and I forget what else).  Also, I never ran into this problem with any VHS tape of any movie!  I see this complaint about the low audio quality cropping up ever more frequently in customer reviews, but apparently the industry is oblivious to the problem.  I've read a number of customer reviews where they say they've had to turn on the closed-captioning and READ the dialogue.

"Presence of Mind" is a recent film that reinterprets Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw" (the basis for the movie "The Innocents" and also the governess/children/ghosts storylines on DS, as well as a Dan Curtis TV version).  The film apparently was never released theatrically in the U.S.; it is a Spanish production but is in English (not dubbed).  The cast includes Sadie Frost (British) and Lauren Bacall.  I had never heard of the film before picking up the DVD from the sale rack at Best Buy last December, but never got around to posting about it.  Having watched the movie recently for the third time, I wanted to draw DS board members' attention to it.

First, it's beautifully filmed.  The setting has been changed to an unidentified tropical island - a major reinterpretation, and although I prefer the English manor setting of the original, the location works well.  The hot, slow summer days shimmer with vivid color and heat.  Scenes are composed as artistically as any I've seen; some frames could be reproductions of old master paintings - Vermeer is one artist who comes to mind, whose color, tones, shading, and composition seem to be consciously replicated.  I haven't been able to figure out where the setting is supposed to be.  I'm assuming it was filmed on an island off the coast of Spain (probably in the Canaries).

Sadie Frost is somewhat tentative in the role as governess, although I've appreciated her performance more with repeated viewings.  Her baby-doll voice seems out of place at first, but then, maybe there were women in the Victorian era who had baby-doll voices, I don't know.  And there are aspects of the character where the voice may not be inappropriate.  The time period seems to be roughly the same as the original, and the costumes, especially Frost's as the governess, are gorgeous - far too expensive to realistically be the wardrobe of a governess, though.

This interpretation of the story is highly sexual, but not in an explicit way (other than one brief full-frontal nude scene of Frost, which is beautifully done).  Rather, it is psychosexual.  The mystery is a psychological one, even more so than in the earlier versions, because everyone's psychology, including the housekeeper's (Bacall's), is enigmatic.  There are references to sexual and physical abuse.  It was only on a second viewing that I realized the visual cues that were linking the governess to Miss Jessel, which was quite fascinating.

The visual imagery throughout is highly symbolic, something that has become more clear to me with second and third viewings.  Perhaps the most memorable of these scenes is where the governess explores the dark, nightmarish inner chamber of the master's quarters, which seems to symbolically represent her entering the darkness of her own mind.  The phallic and yonic symbolism of James' story is replicated.

There are no special effects.  This is a slow-paced film that builds to a devastating psychological climax.  It is a non-commercial film in the extreme - definitely not for run of the mill horror fans.

But for anyone interested in another interpretation of James' story, I highly recommend it.

-Vlad

Nancy and Miss Winthrop, you have sold me on both the Marie Wallace book and the Broadway DVD (though I may not be able to scrounge up the money for either one immediately).