Twilight Time Discussion Thread

[silverlakephil]

Looks it’s time to get Noir Film Inferno and Neo Noir At Close Range and if you don’t have Kiss of Death in your Noir collection you should be ashamed of yourself

[belcherman]

I'm in for Inferno and The Hospital.

[Page14]

At first glance, I'm looking at:

Baby Boom
Inferno
Night of the Generals
Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn

... and possibilities of At Close Range and The Hospital.

I think I already have the others.

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by Page14

At first glance, I'm looking at:

Baby Boom
Inferno
Night of the Generals
Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn

... and possibilities of At Close Range and The Hospital.

I think I already have the others.

I don’t know your tastes but I’d get Hospital for sure, definitely ahead of Baby Boom. It’s a really great movie, so funny and black as hell.

[Page14]

Originally Posted by RCRochester

I don’t know your tastes but I’d get Hospital for sure, definitely ahead of Baby Boom. It’s a really great movie, so funny and black as hell.

I like Diane Keaton, which is why I'll be picking that one up. Good to know about The Hospital. Thanks. I need to read up on it.

[MassiveMovieBuff]

I always recommend the excellent and criminally underrated At Close Range. If you're a fan of realistic crime thriller neo noirs this is top notch and a masterpiece IMHO. Also features Christopher Walken's best performance IMO as one of the top 5 most frightening villains in film history.

Kiss of Death, Hardcore and State of Grace are great buys as well but At Close Range gets my highest recommendation.

[Dailyan]

I'm on Twilight Time's main site and I'm not seeing "Cat Ballou" did it already sell out? I see it's still available on Screen Archives but I would rather get it on the main site due to using a coupon.

[Reddington]

Nothing for me in the sale, but I'd urge anyone yet to get a copy of The Train to do so. Such a good film. I missed the boat with the original TT release and went with the Arrow Region B. The TT Encore Edition for $15 is some of the best money one could spend on a BD.

[jmclick]

Excellent! I went to Screen Archives and picked up the following sales titles:

Hardcore (1979)
Inferno 2D/3D (1953)
Kiss of Death (1947)

Then added three regularly priced Twilight Time titles:

Blue Denim (1959)
Dragonwyck (1946)
Suddenly Last Summer (1959)

Which qualified me for a free autographed copy of:

The Incident (1967)

And as a cherry on top, I ordered a copy of the Original Soundtrack for Way of a Gaucho! I paid for my order via PayPal credit, which means I have six months to pay it off. I do enjoy a bargain!

[Aclea]

Night of the Generals is one of those films that doesn't quite work as well as it should but still has a lot going for it that's well worth a punt:



Much derided on its initial release despite reuniting the Lawrence of Arabia team of Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif (who share little screen time) and producer Sam Spiegel, Anatole Litvak's The Night of the Generals is a different kind of epic failure, and much more interesting than many a success of its day.

Clumsily ripped off by the Vietnam movie Saigon/Off Limits, it's big-budget WW2 murder-mystery that goes off in all directions and frequently completely forgets its nominal main character, Omar Sharif's wildly miscast Nazi military policeman on the trail of the German general who brutally killed a Polish prostitute. In truth his part is little more than a cameo: he never does any detecting, merely occasionally getting information and a nice dinner from Philippe Noiret's French detective while the plot flashes forward to 1967 or off on a tangent with the plot to assassinate Hitler. The fact that so much screen time is devoted to unlikely Lothario Tom Courtney chauffeuring psychotic General Peter O'Toole around Paris doesn't exactly help the whodunit element, especially with his tendency to come over all epileptic every time he sees Vincent Van Gogh's self-portrait in the 'degenerate art' section of the Louvre.

Sharif isn't the only curious casting: it appears that the Wehrmacht did their recruiting almost exclusively at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, with their ranks swelled by cockney character players and their general staff by the better spoken staples of the British film industry. Somehow it just doesn't seem right to see John Gregson playing a Nazi...

The film is either too long or too short. As a mystery it needs to be tighter and more focused on the original investigation; as an epic exploration of Nazi opportunism, both during and after the war, it needs to be longer. As it stands, it does neither approach justice. But, sprawling and devoid of suspense that it is, the film still holds the interest, partially out of it's overly elaborate staging (there is one particularly impressive sequence of the razing of a Polish ghetto that highlights Henri Decae's use of color) and its over-reaching, misdirected ambition. And just when your attention is ready to stray it will throw in some interesting side-note or line of dialogue, such as Noiret's delicious response to Sharif's statement that one of their generals is a murderer: "Only one?" Sadly the raised question of morality being a simple question of scale - that while mass-murder is admirable in war, individual murder remains abhorrent - gets lost along the way.

The film had a rather spotty history on home video, with the barebones European DVD releases having no extras and dropping the playout music while the Asian bootleg versions had particularly poor quality. No such complaints with Twilight Time's limited edition (3000 copies) region-free Blu-ray release which features a stunning 2.35:1 widescreen restoration of the film that does justice to Decae's photography and respects his original colour scheme (not unsurprisingly dominated by field grey and an at times cold metallic look), including both the playout music and an isolated track for Maurice Jarre's score, the teaser and full trailers - both also remastered in their original ratio - and a booklet.

[Dailyan]

Originally Posted by Reddington

Nothing for me in the sale, but I'd urge anyone yet to get a copy of The Train to do so. Such a good film. I missed the boat with the original TT release and went with the Arrow Region B. The TT Encore Edition for $15 is some of the best money one could spend on a BD.

I can attest to that. Picked it up as a blind buy from the MGM blowout sale and well worth it. “The Train” got me hooked on John Frankenheimer.

[mja345]

Originally Posted by muchogris

Don't trust this distasteful message. Night of the generals is a masterpiece.

I gotta agree with Aclea. "Night of the Generals" is certainly not a bad film, and there are sections that I greatly enjoy, but if that's regarded as a masterpiece, then the term loses all meaning IMO.

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by mja345

I gotta agree with Aclea. "Night of the Generals" is certainly not a bad film, and there are sections that I greatly enjoy, but if that's regarded as a masterpiece, then the term loses all meaning IMO.

Yeah it’s definitely not a masterpiece but it is worth paying $15 for.

[Dailyan]

Went with from the sale:
At Close Range
Cat Ballou
The Hospital
Sense and Sensibility

Went with "The Hospital" based off of recommendations.

[StarDestroyer52]

Originally Posted by Reddington

Nothing for me in the sale, but I'd urge anyone yet to get a copy of The Train to do so. Such a good film. I missed the boat with the original TT release and went with the Arrow Region B. The TT Encore Edition for $15 is some of the best money one could spend on a BD.

I'll second that. I got it last MGM sale and it was some of the best $15 I spent.

[Sparrowmar]

Originally Posted by RCRochester

I don’t know your tastes but I’d get Hospital for sure, definitely ahead of Baby Boom. It’s a really great movie, so funny and black as hell.

Sold on Hospital

[CV19]

Originally Posted by Reddington

Nothing for me in the sale, but I'd urge anyone yet to get a copy of The Train to do so. Such a good film. I missed the boat with the original TT release and went with the Arrow Region B.

I also have the Arrow Academy release, but the film itself is terrific without a shadow of doubt. One of those films I can watch over and over without ever getting tired of it.

[thatguamguy]

I'm trying not to spend too much at this time, as I will be moving cross-country soon, but I couldn't resist "The Hospital". Upon checking my list, I realized that this is officially my 100th movie on Twilight Time blu (+1 DVD). It's actually the 99th disc, but I have the "Support Your" double feature. I wish I could say I was entirely caught up, but not quite.

[gates70]

Got

Dragonwyck (because I'm a big VP wh0re...gotta have 'em all)
The Hospital
Inferno
Kiss of Death
Tom Sawyer

[MortimerBrewstr]

No love for "Emperor of the North"?

I'm not asking because I have any attachment to the film; I've never actually seen it. It does, however, sound like something I would love.

Curious to hear any thoughts you guys might have... Not that it'll necessarily sway me if it's terrible. The synopsis sounds too good to ignore.