This is the DVD

 

Over the past year I’ve become a big fan of the original early-1950s version of Dragnet, so much so that at TV historian Stephen Bowie’s suggestion I went out and bought My Name’s Friday, Michael J. Hayde’s wonderful semi-bio of creator-star Jack Webb.

The show, at least a lot of it, is in the public domain and watchable episodes are hard to come by. But I recently took a chance on this Madacy release, and though the video/audio is generally sub-mediocre to poor, the set includes a lot of great episodes for a decent price, and there’s even a booklet with a lot of good information about the show.

I’ve got a lot more to say about some outstanding episodes I’ve seen so far, but that’ll have to wait, at least until tomorrow.

Planet of the Apes

One of the more interesting things about living in Japan is the different kind of wildlife we enjoy and sometimes endure. We don’t get skunks or squirrels here, but we do get other kinds of visitors pawing through our garbage cans. (Actually, we don’t have garbage cans outside either. Like most of the Japan, here in Kyoto everything goes under a tarp and a net come trash day.)

Anyway, I was working on a review for DVD Talk in my office, which is on the second floor of our house, when just outside the front window I hear a clump-clump-clump. I draw the curtains back and I’m face to face with a critter that looks just like this:

The thing was the size of a six-year-old child. Wanting to get a picture I slipped a banana just outside the window, then thought it might be better not to encourage the beast. Seems there’s a family of ten of them about, looking for a cozy place to settle, and since the area around my place has a small shrine and forested area, this seemed like the place. Alas, the neighbors also tell me these monkeys are smart enough to slide open screen doors and are likely to take a little stroll to your refrigerator, and so are planning to capture or otherwise scare ‘em off tomorrow. Too bad. They were here first.

More Entertainment!

About a month ago I noticed that Warner Home Video’s HD DVD-format discs of the That’s Entertainment! Trilogy  had been marked down to about $27.50 and snapped it up. We never got review copies over at DVD Talk, and I was reluctant to plunk down $65 (or whatever the original SRP was) for the set because I wasn’t sure what the quality was going to be. These were, after all, clip shows - the master negatives of the That’s Entertainment! movies were still going to be one step removed from new HD transfers done using the original black & white separations of Technicolor films, and so on, right?

 

As it turns out, I’m really glad I took the plunge. Basically all the clips look significantly better than DVD, but the real surprise is just how good some of the material appears, and the unexpected impact that’s had on my own perceptions about MGM’s musicals.

I’ve seen most of the major MGM musicals in 35mm at one time or another - Signin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon, On the Town, Meet Me in St. Louis. Although I’ve seen nitrate prints of some Technicolor films, I don’t think any of them were MGM musicals, and the prints varied from quite good to terrible.

But these HD DVDs were something else. I’ve seen Singin’ in the Rain in 35mm at least seven or eight times over the years, and yet the clips in That’s Entertainment!were sharper and with a perfection in the color registration/alignment I’d never seen before. I don’t know this to be true but I suspect if Warners had preexisting HD masters from the original separations they dropped them into this new release. Moreover, I have the sneaking feeling that the home video tech department may have used this HD and Blu-ray release as an excuse, maybe, to pull single reels of various A-list catalogue titles and remaster a reel of this, a reel of that, and drop those excerpts in as well.

Not all the clips look that good; it’s hit and miss. But, every once in a while, in scenes from things like La Fiesta de Santa Barbara, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Pirate, as well as a few ’scope titles like Seven Brides for Seven Brothersand the VistaVision High Society, I’d wager that’s what they did.   

One of the more interesting effects watching these immensely entertaining tribute films again is that, for the big socko numbers involving super-elaborate (and often abstract) sets and dozens of costumed dancers, in high-def I found myself developing a new appreciation for the films’ art directors, set decorators, and those thousands of nameless extras. Right now I’m finishing off a set of Fox-produced Carmen Miranda musicals in standard DVD, and there’s a real difference. As impressive as, say, Busby Berkeley’s sets for The Gang’s All Here are, standard DVD really can only hint at what high-def makes plain for the home theater audience: the immensity of these colossal sets, the extraordinary choreography of not just the dancers but also the cameramen and grips and construction guys to make it all work for the cameras. If you’ve been reluctant to sample the trilogy on high-def because you think the clips won’t look good, fear not. This is a great set, and a preview I hope of how even standard frame movies from the ’30s, ’40s and early ’50s can be just as visually stunning as recent CGI-driven high-concept blockbusters.  

I mentioned Fox earlier – watching MGM’s trilogy reminded me of Fox’s own little knock-off, a weekly series that aired back in the late-’70s. Remember it?

Get Smart – Bring Back the 62-minute Movie!

I haven’t seen the new Get Smart movie yet (maybe I’m still smarting from The Nude Bomb back in ‘80) but I was surprised to see that the film has a running time of 110 minutes. 110 minutes? For a comedy based on a 30-minute sitcom?

Granted, probably seven or eight of those minutes consist of those all-important credits – me, I always stick around to find out who drove the honeywagon, but still.

When I look at my own list of all-time favorite comedies, most run closer to half that running time. Consider these gems:

It’s a Gift (1932) – 73 minutes

Sons of the Desert (1933) – 68 minutes

Sherlock, Jr. (1924) – 44 minutes

Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein (1948) – 83 minutes

Crazy House (1943) – 80 minutes

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) – 98 minutes

The Naked Gun (1988) – 85 minutes

Duck Soup (1933) – 68 minutes

The Bellboy (1960) – 72 minutes

Of course, this is not to say short = better; two favorite comedies, Billy Wilder’s Avanti! and Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World run well over two hours. Generally though, it’s pretty hard to sustain laughs for much more than 75 minutes in a feature comedy, and the old pros knew when to stop milking the laughs.

 

The DNR Debate

A DVD Talk review I did for new Blu-ray disc of The Longest Day has been accessed a lot recently by an interesting website called AV Science Forum. The gist of the debate there concerns one aspect of the high-def mastering process called digital noise reduction, or DNR.

Basically, DNR as I understand it has two functions: to make video compression easier and to eliminate film grain. The folks over at AV Science Forum are pretty much up in arms over The Longest Day, saying that the DNR work has made the image look singularly unnatural - almost like a painting, or a cartoon, or a computer-generated image.

Although I was generally knocked out by the quality of the image, I can also see their point. It raises two issues, one having to do with the widespread ignorance of consumers, DVD reviewers and, for that matter, home video department personnel about what reasonably can be expected of older catalog titles in a high-def world. The second issue concerns the basic dichotomy between film buffs and videophiles: Video is Video and Film is Film, and never the twain shall meet.

Basically I’m coming from a different perspective than probably just about everyone over at AV Science Forum, and probably a lot of the people posting over at the similar Home Theater Forum. My perspective is as that of a film historian who knows a thing or two about film: I’ve shot film (in 8- and 16mm), I’ve projected film, and know a fair amount about film production and cinematographic technologies and their histories, and having worked at MGM’s Technical Services Department for several years, know about film and sound elements, and have a pretty good general sense about the work that goes into tracking down original elements and preparing them for remastering.

In the case of The Longest Day, I’ve also had the opportunity to see the film in 35mm within the last 10 years or so, plus I have seen a lot of other black and white CinemaScope movies in 35mm from the same general period, late-1950s to mid-’60s, so when I look at something like the Blu-ray presentation it’s with a pretty good frame of reference.

Ultimately though, it’s what looks good to the naked eye. I can look at, say, an HD DVD of The Searchers and remark, “This looks outstanding!” with some authority because I’ve seen that film probably at least 20 times over the years, multiple times in 35mm, 16mm, laserdisc, VHS and probably even CED format, and also know the advantages and some of the problems in trying to remaster a film shot in the VistaVision format, as that was. Conversely, having seen Spartacus in 70mm on Detroit’s Fox Theater’s 90-foot-wide screen, I can vouch that Universal’s HD DVD of that looks like crap!

Sometimes it seems hardcore videophiles don’t have these frames of reference, only the immediate, most-high-end aspects of current home video technology. Forget having a background in film; many of these guys don’t remember when all big screen TVs delivered pictures that looked like they were being projected by big Christmas lights through an algae-filled aquarium. Their cup may be half-empty, but mine’s more than half-full. Looking at the latest slate of Fox and MGM-owned war epics, I’m continually amazed how closely one can recreate the 35mm theatrical experience (as opposed to watching “a video”) in the comfort of one’s own home.

That said, in selling high-def to a hesitant public I do think the studios are pushing DNR too hard, as if movies aren’t supposed to have grain. Of course they are – that’s what film is! In the case The Longest Day, I really think at least part of the problem has to do with the way it was shot; even in 35mm it always had a harsh, strong-contrast look and maybe the DNR work exaggerates this even more.

But as more and more new movies use CGI effects as a crutch – and count me among the few who strongly dislikes almost all CGI visual effects - I am concerned that my favorite pre-1980 movies will start looking like Peter Jackson’s King Kong.  Perhaps an ominous sign of this are stories I’m hearing from old colleagues at MGM about the work being done to the classic James Bond titles. It was probably two years ago now that one former colleague told me about seeing the Lowry’d (I think it was them) work on Dr. No and From Russia with Love- two titles due out on Blu-ray this fall – and he was saying way back then the elimination of grain also made the film and the faces look unnatural. An ominous sign of things to come?

 

The Toho Studios Story – Index Corrections

Got this today from Stephen Ryan at Scarecrow Press:

The errata sheet has been added to the remaining copies of your book and there is a link for the index posted on the web site page of your book.  Future printings of your book will contain your index in place of the old one.

So, if you have the book already, you can go here to download the corrected index.

In the meantime, here are two Toho-related music clips you might enjoy.

First, here’s Yuzo Kayama, star of Toho’s Wakadaisho film series (and Sanjuro and Red Beard) still rockin’ at 70, singing a medly of his most famous hits. I saw him in concert in Los Angeles around 2003 and while his voice isn’t quite what it once was, as you can see here, he’s still got it.

Around the same time Kayama’s “Young Guy” movies were hitting their stride, Mie Nakao, Mari Sono, and Yukari Ito were starring in some of Toho’s most charming musical comedies. Here they are reunited in the 1980s singing “Lipstick on Your Collar.”

 

Video Clips of the Day

Here’s an excerpt from The Singing, Tireless Town (歌う不夜城), a January 1957 release starring Chiemi Eri and Izumi Yukimura, and featuring Akira Takarada, Akira Kubo, and Tatsuyoshi Ebara. The film was directed by Harumi Mizuho with music by Hachiro Matsui. The title on YouTube translates as “Izumi and Chiemi’s Duet.” Enjoy:

Next, here’s the original trailer for The Masterless 47 (サラリーマン忠臣蔵, or “Salaryman Chushingura”), billed as “Toho’s 100th Salaryman Movie.”  Basically what Toho did was graft their very popular “Shacho” comedies starring Hisaya Morishige with the familiar Chushingura story, all as an excuse to do a big all-star New Year’s holiday release, in Perspecta Stereophonic Sound no less. (Part 1 was released on December 25, 1960, with Part 2 following in late February 1961.

Billed in the trailer, in order, are: Hisaya Morishige, Keiju Kobayashi, Ryo Ikebe, Toshiro Mifune (yes, the), Daisuke Kato, Reiko Dan & Yosuke Natsuki, Akira Takarada & Yoko Tsukasa, Michiyo Aratama, Eijiro Tono (in the Kira part), Mitsuko Kusabue, Ichiro Arishima & Tatsuya Mihashi, Sonomi Nakajima, and Kingoro Yanagiya. Most of these same actors would turn up in Hiroshi Inagaki’s non-comic Chushingura less than two years later.

 

Salaryman Free-for-All

One of the reasons I wrote The Toho Studios Story was to, hopefully, help generate some interest for Toho’s movies beyond the jidai-geki/chanbara and kaiju eiga/sci-fi-fantasy titles the studio is usually associated with.

Toho’s bread-and-butter movie genre for many years was the salaryman comedy, movies about the white collar workplace where Japanese men (and a lot of women) were spending practically their entire waking hours. This is the original Japanese trailer for one of the biggest of all salaryman comedies, Las Vegas Free-for-All (1967), filmed on location in Hawaii, Los Angeles, and in and around Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s a really fun movie – I used to own the Japanese laserdisc and now have the DVD, neither English-subtitled, alas. The film stars the Crazy Cats and features Peggy Neal from The X from Outer Space (also 1967).  

Billed in the trailer, in order, are: Hitoshi Ueki, Hajime Hana, Kei Tani, Hiroshi Inuzuka, Mari Sono, Senri Sakurai, Shin Yasuda and Eitaro Ishibashi, Makoto Fujita, The Peanuts, (the) Johnnys, The Drifters, The Blue Comets, Mie Hama, and Yuzo Kayama. Enjoy.

Online and Print Reviewers

Want to review The Toho Studios Story? I can’t guarantee you’ll get a review copy, but if you’re an online or print movie/book reviewer, you might try Angela Morales at Scarecrow’s Publicity Department. Her email address is amorales@rowman.com.

 

Toho Studios Story Update

First, the good news: I’ve seen The Toho Studios Story and have spent several days pouring through it all. For the most part, I’m quite pleased at the way it turned out. As a filmography/reference, I think it’ll be an extremely useful tool for scholarly researchers and for more general film fans, those who simply like Japanese movies. There’s a ton of information there that’s never been published in English before; included are hundreds, maybe close to a thousand movies not even listed on the IMDb, and there are interesting nuggets of information on every page.

That said, part of the purpose of this blog is to alert those who’ve already bought it or are thinking of doing so to a particular problem I’ve only recently discovered but which now in the process of being corrected by Scarecrow, the book’s publisher.

The book includes three indexes: one a list of Japanese Titles, one a list of English Titles, and finally a Personnel Index. The Japanese Title Index was prepared by Scarecrow’s indexing staff, while I prepared both the Personnel Index and the English Title Index.

For reasons yet to be determined, the English Title Index I prepared was for some reason not used. Instead, and unbeknownst to me, it was completely jettisoned (except for my introduction, which now contradicts what follows it) and replaced it with one they prepared themselves. I never saw this index of theirs until copies of the book arrived at my home in Kyoto last week.

The problem is this: My index was a carefully compiled list of all English titles, including alternate, television, and home video ones assigned to each film either by Toho or its North American distributor. Scarecrow’s indexers, on the other hand, opted to include only the direct translations of the original Japanese title. Titles actually in use were ignored.

What that means is, for example, Seven Samurai is listed because the original Japanese title, Shichinin no samurai, directly translates as “Seven Samurai.” On the other hand, you won’t find Kurosawa’s High and Low under that title because the translation of the original Japanese, Tengoku to jigoku, is “Heaven and Hell,” not High and Low. Godzilla Raids Again isn’t listed, except as Godzilla’s Counterattack. And so on.  The problem, of course, is that a Japanese title can often by translated myriad ways.  Is it Harp of Burma or The Burmese Harp? Take your pick.

Senior Arts & Literature Editor Stephen Ryan informed me today that “We will be issuing an errata sheet to be included with all unsold copies of the book. This errata will direct readers to our web site where the index you created will be posted as a pdf file that customers can print out. It will probably take two to three weeks for the errata sheet to be typeset and printed….For future printings of the book, we will replace the existing English title index with the version you provided.” 

He adds that he’s going to let me know when it becomes available, which I’ll in turn pass along to you.