Twilight Time Discussion Thread

[tama]

Originally Posted by Sherlock_Jr

Modertaely, yeah. Unfortunately, because Olive is cheap, I can't enjoy High Noon, Body Snatchers or any other title they release. Which is unfortunate, when they have the ability like most other companies to offer simple subtitles. As well as 360 million people other in the world.

Sometimes most people (Like me) take things for granted such as hearing. Wouldn't know what it would be like to not be able to enjoy certain things in life (such as my favorite films).

That being said I can't complain I enjoy so far what Olive has put out. Well at least the titles I've bought.

[klauswhereareyou]

Criterion and Scream Factory are first tier, Twilight Time is second tier, mostly for the fact they almost always offer no new extras aside from an isolated score which is useless with most of their releases (anyone really hankering to fire up that isolated score for Sleepless in Seattle!! Or how about As Good as it Gets!!!) and their business model is the furthest thing from being consumer friendly but their transfers are usually really good. I guess Olive and Mill Creek are bottom tier since they almost always offer none.

[rock, stone]

Originally Posted by Sherlock_Jr

And as I clarified, they are the only company besides Criterion putting out major studio catalog releases that are of quality. That is profoundly true.

Could you remind me if it was Criterion or Twilight Time who released Citizen Kane?

Or All Quiet on the Western Front?
Or The Apartment?
Or Manhattan?
Or Lawrence of Arabia?
Or Barry Lyndon?
Or Apocalypse Now?
Or Magnolia?
Or Taxi Driver?
Or Blue Velvet?
Or The Grapes of Wrath?

Those are just some from the top of my head that must have been released by TT or CC, right? Or are you going to further clarify that Twilight Time is the only company besides Criterion putting out major studio catalog releases that are of quality which are released by either Criterion or Twilight Time.

And while I agree 100% that subs should be absolutely standard on all releases, I feel like I'm the only one who seems to have noticed that not all Twilight Time releases have subtitles.

[johndoyle123]

Originally Posted by rock, stone

Could you remind me if it was Criterion or Twilight Time who released Citizen Kane?

Or All Quiet on the Western Front?
Or The Apartment?
Or Manhattan?
Or Lawrence of Arabia?
Or Barry Lyndon?
Or Apocalypse Now?
Or Magnolia?
Or Taxi Driver?
Or Blue Velvet?
Or The Grapes of Wrath?

Those are just some from the top of my head that must have been released by TT or CC, right? Or are you going to further clarify that Twilight Time is the only company besides Criterion putting out major studio catalog releases that are of quality which are released by either Criterion or Twilight Time.

And while I agree 100% that subs should be absolutely standard on all releases, I feel like I'm the only one who seems to have noticed that not all Twilight Time releases have subtitles.

got to say i agree 100 percent !!

i own a lot of blu-rays and i assure you a good majority are of a high caliber

you seem to forget about eureka , arrow , bfi , second sight , park circus and many other great labels

[Seymour]

Originally Posted by jetthead

Well, as Dex Robinson's post pointed out, the lack of subtitles is part of Olive's business model.

Yeah, it's a part of a cheap and lazy business model.

But seriously, instead of shoveling out 5-10 blu-rays a month, why don't they slow down a bit? I know I don't mind waiting for quality releases. And if money is really the only issue, they could always raise the MSRP a few dollars. I know I don't mind spending more money for quality releases.

[baheidstu]

Originally Posted by Arkadin

need to get up to speed on TT's bds fast--here's your answer--
http://www.ebay.com/itm/141034326102

If I sell my entire blu-ray collection, I might be able to afford this!

[The Great Owl]

After revisiting Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo tonight via Blu-ray in the Masterpiece Collection, I'm compelled to take a look at Picnic.

Does anybody here have some thoughts to share about Picnic? (Aside from the glowing site review)
Is this particular title about to sell out or do I have some time?

[HyperRealist]

Originally Posted by Arkadin

need to get up to speed on TT's bds fast--here's your answer--
http://www.ebay.com/itm/141034326102

$45 a piece... pfft.

[Blu-Velvet]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

After revisiting Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo tonight via Blu-ray in the Masterpiece Collection, I'm compelled to take a look at Picnic.

Does anybody here have some thoughts to share about Picnic? (Aside from the glowing site review)
Is this particular title about to sell out or do I have some time?

I like it quite a bit. Beautiful widescreen color cinematography, fine performances, and an often-moving script. The stereo sound is also impressive. I saw an unusually strong high school theatre production about a year before I got the Blu-ray, and I'd say the film is a fine adaptation of the play while being a good film in its own right.

[Sherlock_Jr]

Originally Posted by rock, stone

And while I agree 100% that subs should be absolutely standard on all releases, I feel like I'm the only one who seems to have noticed that not all Twilight Time releases have subtitles.

This is true, but almost almost every title released in the last year or more HAS had them. Out of their catalog of 60 titles, maybe 10 or so don't have them. Which is a lot better than Olive. At least TT tries to make as many titles as they can accessible to everyone.

[oildude]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

Does anybody here have some thoughts to share about Picnic? (Aside from the glowing site review)

I like Picnic very much. It works for me on a number of levels, particularly because I have an appreciation for classic cinema and a personal connection to the settings in the film. The script was co-written by William Inge, who wrote the Broadway play on which the film is based. The dialogue is taken heavily from the play, so it has some of the exaggerated mannerisms of the stage. While Picnic seems a bit over the top in places, this is not the first film I have watched from the 1950s and older to take a dramatically expressive approach to dialogue, acting, and music placement. Gone With the Wind has its share of this too, as does Bigger Than Life.

Where Picnic pushes the envelope, in my opinion, is in its depiction of the smoldering sexuality beneath the surface of its prim and proper Bible Belt social structures. There were films made in the US during the 1950s that were just beginning to push the envelope, so to speak, toward a more realistic - or perhaps even an iconoclastic - experience of sexual relations. Picnic strikes me as belonging in that category.

For me, whose family roots are from the plains of north Texas, Picnic is a also real nostalgic treat, a Cinemascopic peek into the lost world of my grandparents and great aunts and uncles. Those houses shown in the film are exactly like the style my relatives lived in when I was a kid in the 1970s. Notice how small the homes are, even when they have two stories. The kitchens seem so claustrophobic, and two teenage girls share a bedroom!

Picnic is a Cinemascope showpiece. The director’s use of wide screen framing captures the great sweep of the prairie, and the endless blue sky that sits on top of everything - every roof, tree, grain silo, church steeple, and person. Even junky looking water towers become works of photographic art in the light of the over-arching sky, and Picnic gives the viewer a real sense of perspective where land almost seems to fall upward into a deep blue sea of cloud and sunshine. One of my favorite scenes is when William Holden and Cliff Robertson are standing on top of a grain silo, taking in the view of the horizon as if they are in the crow's nest of a tall-masted ship. Visually, the scene captures a sense of the loneliness of the open plains better than just about any movie I have seen with a similar setting. I was particularly impressed at how Cinemascope did justice to the freight trains that are such an everyday part of life in this part of the US, giving a mythic quality to their length and power as they rumble by that resonates right out of my childhood memories. All that extra static space placed around groups of people is what living on the Great Plains feels like. We understand that this is wide country, even when presented within the narrow confines of a town street or the cramped living room of a small 1950s house.

The colors are beautifully rendered on the blu-ray. The multi-colored Chinese paper lanterns during the night scenes at the picnic really stand out and make the film come alive. Overall, it is a spectacularly lovely film to look at, and if you can accept some of the “bigger” acting that occurs in a few scenes, along with dialogue that is written for the stage and often sounds like it, Picnic is a marvelous film. The film pays stylistic homage to People on Sunday in its picnic scenes of the local population enjoying themselves, and has some very fine acting that carries it through. Kim Novak is terrific, and I find it interesting that William Holden made this film after his role in The Bridges at Toko-Ri, one of my all-time favorite movies. He was quite an actor.

[rock, stone]

Originally Posted by Sherlock_Jr

This is true, but almost almost every title released in the last year or more HAS had them. Out of their catalog of 60 titles, maybe 10 or so don't have them. Which is a lot better than Olive. At least TT tries to make as many titles as they can accessible to everyone.

Wait, so is the issue that TT is one of two greatest labels of all tiiiiiiiiiime, or is it that it is better than Olive?

Those are totally different things and the crux of our disagreement.

[jetthead]

Originally Posted by rock, stone

Wait, so is the issue that TT is one of two greatest labels of all tiiiiiiiiiime, or is it that it is better than Olive?

Those are totally different things and the crux of our disagreement.

His issue seems to be that Olive Films doesn't put subtitles on their releases therefore they're shit.

[IndyMLVC]

Originally Posted by klauswhereareyou

Criterion and Scream Factory are first tier, Twilight Time is second tier, mostly for the fact they almost always offer no new extras aside from an isolated score which is useless with most of their releases (anyone really hankering to fire up that isolated score for Sleepless in Seattle!! Or how about As Good as it Gets!!!) and their business model is the furthest thing from being consumer friendly but their transfers are usually really good. I guess Olive and Mill Creek are bottom tier since they almost always offer none.

Actually, yes. It never got a score release. And SIS is the *only* title I've bought from them.

[Blu-Velvet]

Originally Posted by oildude

I like Picnic very much. It works for me on a number of levels, particularly because I have an appreciation for classic cinema and a personal connection to the settings in the film. The script was co-written by William Inge, who wrote the Broadway play on which the film is based. The dialogue is taken heavily from the play, so it has some of the exaggerated mannerisms of the stage. While Picnic seems a bit over the top in places, this is not the first film I have watched from the 1950s and older to take a dramatically expressive approach to dialogue, acting, and music placement. Gone With the Wind has its share of this too, as does Bigger Than Life.

[Show spoiler]Where Picnic pushes the envelope, in my opinion, is in its depiction of the smoldering sexuality boiling beneath the surface of its prim and proper Bible Belt social structures. There were films made in the US during the 1950s that were just beginning to push the envelope, so to speak, toward a more realistic - or perhaps even an iconoclastic - experience of sexual relations. Picnic strikes me as belonging in that category.

For me, whose family roots are from the plains of north Texas, Picnic is a also real nostalgic treat, a Cinemascopic peek into the lost world of my grandparents and great aunts and uncles. Those houses shown in the film are exactly like the style my relatives lived in when I was a kid in the 1970s. Notice how small the homes are, even when they have two stories. The kitchens seem so claustrophobic, and two teenage girls share a bedroom!

Picnic is a Cinemascope showpiece. The director’s use of wide screen framing captures the great sweep of the prairie, and the endless blue sky that sits on top of everything - every roof, tree, grain silo, church steeple, and person. Even junky looking water towers become works of photographic art in the light of the over-arching sky, and Picnic gives the viewer a real sense of perspective where land almost seems to fall upward into a deep blue sea of cloud and sunshine. One of my favorite scenes is when William Holden and Cliff Robertson are standing on top of a grain silo, taking in the view of the horizon as if they are in the crow's nest of a tall-masted ship. Visually, the scene captures a sense of the loneliness of the open plains better than just about any movie I have seen with a similar setting. I was particularly impressed at how Cinemascope did justice to the freight trains that are such an everyday part of life in this part of the US, giving a mythic quality to their length and power as they rumble by that resonates right out of my childhood memories. All that extra static space placed around groups of people is what living on the Great Plains feels like. We understand that this is wide country, even when presented within the narrow confines of a town street or the cramped living room of a small 1950s house.

The colors are beautifully rendered on the blu-ray. The multi-colored Chinese paper lanterns during the night scenes at the picnic really stand out and make the film come alive. Overall, it is a spectacularly lovely film to look at, and if you can accept some of the “bigger” acting that occurs in a few scenes, along with dialogue that is written for the stage and often sounds like it, Picnic is a marvelous film. The film pays stylistic homage to People on Sunday in its picnic scenes of the local population enjoying themselves, and has some very fine acting that carries it through. Kim Novak is terrific, and I find it interesting that William Holden made this film after his role in The Bridges at Toko-Ri, one of my all-time favorite movies. He was quite an actor.

Great review! Makes me want to watch PICNIC again soon! (And that classic montage of the picnic also calls to mind Pierre Etaix's satiric documentary LAND OF MILK AND HONEY that would come some 15 years later.) The acting does sometimes tend towards the theatrical, but having seen the stage production recently, and generally taking studio-era stylized performances for granted, it never bothered me. When I saw it decades ago on pan-and-scan TV it was not something I really noticed, but then most TV acting, especially sitcoms, is heavily over-the-top "theatrical" anyway, probably to give more impact on the small screen. With today's larger screens or projection setups it is more distracting.

In a similar "theatrical" acting theme (as well as William Holden), I remember thinking that the movie NETWORK was way too over-the-top in its acting when I first saw it theatrically, but seeing it on TV several years later it seemed just right. The size of the screen can definitely make a difference. Watching the Blu-ray on a big screen now is less of a problem because I've seen so many other, older films in the meantime, and can more easily readjust to different acting styles.

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by oildude

I like Picnic very much. It works for me on a number of levels, particularly because I have an appreciation for classic cinema and a personal connection to the settings in the film. The script was co-written by William Inge, who wrote the Broadway play on which the film is based. The dialogue is taken heavily from the play, so it has some of the exaggerated mannerisms of the stage. While Picnic seems a bit over the top in places, this is not the first film I have watched from the 1950s and older to take a dramatically expressive approach to dialogue, acting, and music placement. Gone With the Wind has its share of this too, as does Bigger Than Life.

[Show spoiler]

Where Picnic pushes the envelope, in my opinion, is in its depiction of the smoldering sexuality boiling beneath the surface of its prim and proper Bible Belt social structures. There were films made in the US during the 1950s that were just beginning to push the envelope, so to speak, toward a more realistic - or perhaps even an iconoclastic - experience of sexual relations. Picnic strikes me as belonging in that category.

For me, whose family roots are from the plains of north Texas, Picnic is a also real nostalgic treat, a Cinemascopic peek into the lost world of my grandparents and great aunts and uncles. Those houses shown in the film are exactly like the style my relatives lived in when I was a kid in the 1970s. Notice how small the homes are, even when they have two stories. The kitchens seem so claustrophobic, and two teenage girls share a bedroom!

Picnic is a Cinemascope showpiece. The director’s use of wide screen framing captures the great sweep of the prairie, and the endless blue sky that sits on top of everything - every roof, tree, grain silo, church steeple, and person. Even junky looking water towers become works of photographic art in the light of the over-arching sky, and Picnic gives the viewer a real sense of perspective where land almost seems to fall upward into a deep blue sea of cloud and sunshine. One of my favorite scenes is when William Holden and Cliff Robertson are standing on top of a grain silo, taking in the view of the horizon as if they are in the crow's nest of a tall-masted ship. Visually, the scene captures a sense of the loneliness of the open plains better than just about any movie I have seen with a similar setting. I was particularly impressed at how Cinemascope did justice to the freight trains that are such an everyday part of life in this part of the US, giving a mythic quality to their length and power as they rumble by that resonates right out of my childhood memories. All that extra static space placed around groups of people is what living on the Great Plains feels like. We understand that this is wide country, even when presented within the narrow confines of a town street or the cramped living room of a small 1950s house.

The colors are beautifully rendered on the blu-ray. The multi-colored Chinese paper lanterns during the night scenes at the picnic really stand out and make the film come alive. Overall, it is a spectacularly lovely film to look at, and if you can accept some of the “bigger” acting that occurs in a few scenes, along with dialogue that is written for the stage and often sounds like it, Picnic is a marvelous film. The film pays stylistic homage to People on Sunday in its picnic scenes of the local population enjoying themselves, and has some very fine acting that carries it through. Kim Novak is terrific, and I find it interesting that William Holden made this film after his role in The Bridges at Toko-Ri, one of my all-time favorite movies. He was quite an actor.

Thanks for that excellent review. If this one stays available for another month or so, I might just grab it.

[Tom Monahan]

I have some magnets I'm looking to sell. Are they worth much? I have no idea what a fair asking price would be. I'm looking for a little extra cash to place another order.

Thanks,
Tom

[Arkadin]

someone a few pages back was looking for magnets to buy;
sounds like a match made in heaven.
as far as price--maybe 8 to $10 a piece.

[JoeDeM]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

Thanks for that excellent review. If this one stays available for another month or so, I might just grab it.

Though quite different from Picnic, Pal Joey, and Bell Book and Candle make nice companion pieces for Picnic, you can't have too much Kim Novak

[oildude]

If I had to rank my Twilight Time releases in order of favorites, Bell, Book, and Candle would be a strong contender for second place just behind Rapture. Kim Novak is bewitching, Jimmy Stewart is at the top of his game, and Jack Lemmon is a trip. Wonderful supporting cast of off-beat characters and an overall classic charm to it that is hard to beat. It gets lots of replay at my house.