Commentary Tracks - The Good, The Bad & The Unlistenable

[AndyDursin]

Kino's LADY FROM SHANGHAI has a really good commentary from Tim Lucas. The transfer though isn't quite as sharp as Powerhouse Indicator's UK release despite being from the same master.

[Eric Paddon]

I had "Groundstar Conspiracy" lying on my shelf for awhile from an earlier Kino sale binge. I got it only because having gone through "Banacek" a couple times I had no idea George Peppard and Christine Belford, who had sparred on that series had worked just before that. Watching the film, I got a reminder of how Peppard could come off as such a conceited jerk at times on "Banacek" only this time his character has not a single shred of redeeming charm whatsoever. I give the film a point for coming up with an out of left-field twist that I hadn't expected at the end (after I'd predictably tagged Cliff Potts as one of the baddies earlier on) but overall the film came off more like a Universal TV movie shot in Panavision.

Once again, I found myself shutting off a commentary track in midstream when one of the two participants decided to go current events and say that as they were recording this (Summer 2020) police forces "are being defunded, thank God." Goodbye after that. Before that the commentary was committing the sin of being boring because it's like a lot of Kino commentaries in that they spend FAR too much time yapping about the director and treating the director like an auteur and they say next to nothing about the production or the actors or the story or what we are seeing. I frankly find this "arthouse" approach boring as hell because let's be honest, Lamont Johnson is not the kind of director who merits this level of attention and I don't care what else his other projects were (the meandering about how he did a TV movie about the integration of the Arkansas schools in the 50s is why they then went off into that tangent about civil rights which led to that disgusting police defunding remark).

By contrast the commentary on the new Arrow release of "Black Sunday" is pretty good and held my attention (though it unfortunately ignored Williams score). It was superior to the commentary on the Imprint release in that the narrator here was familiar with the Harris novel and noted some key differences. He also noted Frankenheimer's cameo which the other commentary missed.

[AndyDursin]

Here's an unlistenable - the commentary on MUSIC BOX by "Cineaste" editor Gary Crowdus ends up devolving into a TrumpMAGAWhiteSupremacy sermon at the end. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

[Eric Paddon]

These are the kind of "commentaries" that deserved to be cancelled. Not the 45 ones for "Columbo" that we'll never hear!

[Eric Paddon]

And another commentary track gets the shutoff from me due to a political intrusion and this time sadly it came from someone whose work I've liked in previous efforts. Tim Lucas did a truly great commentary on "One Million Years B.C" that treated the film respectfully and without snark that I appreciated and he did a few other good ones too. But alas on the new commentary for the 4K version of "Barbarella" he started to go off into a tangent about the censorship of comic books in the late 40s in France and the 50s in America. I don't have any real problem with that. Except then he decided to liken that effort to the current attempts of the right to censor books blah-blah. As soon as I heard that, shut off, goodbye Tim nice to have known you. I don't indulge BS propaganda defenses of pornography for grade school kids funded by the taxpayer.