The Future of Home Video

Discuss North American DVDs and Blu-rays or other DVD and Blu-ray-related topics.
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jedgeco
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2004 11:28 am

Re: The Future of Home Video

#526 Post by jedgeco » Wed Aug 07, 2019 2:33 pm

"Unauthorized distribution," technically, is not an infringing activity under U.S. law. You can infringe the copyright holder's right "to display the copyrighted work publicly" by displaying it "at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered" or "to transmit[ing] it to the public."

"Transmitting" is probably where the person sending the stream could run afoul, but "the public" isn't defined statutorily. I could see arguments on both sides of whether participants in a small, non-public, non-commercial streaming collective are publicly transmitting; it's certainly not something that Congress was contemplating in 1976.

Either way, my comment wasn't really to go off-topic about law, ethics, or morality, but simply to observe that from a technological standpoint (and especially with the increased accessibility of cloud computing and storage), these sort of small networks are likely to have a place in the future of home video.

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: The Future of Home Video

#527 Post by knives » Wed Aug 07, 2019 4:01 pm

This is actually why that one guy is legally allowed to live stream regular tv in media areas where he has placed an antenna.

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RitrovataBlue
Joined: Tue Apr 30, 2019 4:02 pm

Re: The Future of Home Video

#528 Post by RitrovataBlue » Thu Aug 08, 2019 1:57 am

knives wrote:
Tue Aug 06, 2019 5:13 pm
RitrovataBlue wrote:
Tue Aug 06, 2019 1:30 pm
The article doesn’t mention MUBI, of course, since no one ever seems to mention MUBI. Yet, it’s still the best streaming source for the sorts of obscurities the article laments losing. Hell, it might just be the best streaming service in general. Where else can you see Virgil Vernier and Lav Diaz films?
Kanopy?
Kanopy has Season of the Devil and Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery? It has Sofia Antipolis? It has From the Clouds to the Resistance? If any streaming service actually has a library that doesn’t overlap with any other’s, it’s MUBI. That said, its 30 days and out time limits often frustrate the hell out of me, and the Roku app crashes all too often. But I’d pick it over the Criterion Channel if forced to choose. It’s the only other unambiguously legal streaming service left that seems to be curated by cinephiles.

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: The Future of Home Video

#529 Post by knives » Thu Aug 08, 2019 6:10 am

It might. I haven't checked. Still it has films from Thom Anderson, Lav Diaz, and many others who used to be such extreme rarities without a time limit that we shouldn't be unappreciative. There's also of course le cinema club for some truely obscure stuff.

ntnon
Joined: Tue Dec 03, 2013 7:04 am

Re: The Future of Home Video

#530 Post by ntnon » Thu Aug 22, 2019 12:14 pm

jedgeco wrote:
Wed Aug 07, 2019 12:59 pm
willoneill wrote:
Wed Aug 07, 2019 12:36 pm
Don't confuse legal and moral, folks.
..Cracking the encryption on a Blu-ray or DVD is, in the US, prohibited by the DMCA (although I believe there could be a Fair Use Doctrine defense for certain uses), but I'm not sure what rights would be implicated for the person watching the content, as streaming the video does not create a copy.
Rayon Vert wrote:
Wed Aug 07, 2019 1:23 pm
Wouldn't streaming fall under the category of "unauthorized distribution" (as opposed to "reproduction")?
I vaguelly remember when various legal arms were going after people downloading music from Napster... and I think there was a slight distinction made between doenload&deleting vs. downloading&keeping - essentially streaming vs. downloading.

But the distinction was, to my memory, more about which cases they tried to pursue; not simply which they considered more or less illegal.

Surely, technically, only the uploader is 'distributing'. But as the streamer is actively seeking something they may-or-may-not know is legal (and with ignorance usually being no defence), it could still be illegal.

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DeprongMori
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 1:59 am
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#531 Post by DeprongMori » Wed Sep 04, 2019 12:28 pm

Anyone been following what has been going on with Fandor since December, when they laid off their entire staff?

I subscribed during the sale when FilmStruck closed down, but really haven’t watched it since the December announcement. I was surprised to find today that it was still active. However, the streaming quality seems poor. In streaming my first film today, Escape to Burma (1955), I’m finding the video quality low-resolution and dupey, and it is being streamed in the wrong aspect ratio — 1.78 instead of 2.00.

What have others been experiencing? Has anyone heard any news since December?

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HinkyDinkyTruesmith
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:21 pm

Re: The Future of Home Video

#532 Post by HinkyDinkyTruesmith » Wed Sep 04, 2019 1:11 pm

DeprongMori wrote:
Wed Sep 04, 2019 12:28 pm
Anyone been following what has been going on with Fandor since December, when they laid off their entire staff?

I subscribed during the sale when FilmStruck closed down, but really haven’t watched it since the December announcement. I was surprised to find today that it was still active. However, the streaming quality seems poor. In streaming my first film today, Escape to Burma (1955), I’m finding the video quality low-resolution and dupey, and it is being streamed in the wrong aspect ratio — 1.78 instead of 2.00.

What have others been experiencing? Has anyone heard any news since December?
I had been subscribed, but changed credit cards mid-December. Fandor's account stuff no longer works––you can't sign up, you can't change things––so I couldn't re-sign-up. However, the Amazon channel for it still works, and I signed up through that. I don't think the video quality is being affected by their state of affairs––they've often only had low-grade transfers of many of their films. But a recent film like Ida is available in full-HD, and looks great.


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Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

Re: The Future of Home Video

#534 Post by Gregory » Fri Sep 20, 2019 1:10 am

That was great.

Based on that dramatization, "what happens when you watch DVD" is akin to the characters of Requiem for a Dream, and the superior audio-visual quality imprison you in a world of delusion and reckless desperation. Then, when the DVD is over, you are left as a hollow shell of your former self, and your entire block reduced to rubble.

What's the film shown at 0:47 with the UFO on Easter Island?

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cdnchris
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#535 Post by cdnchris » Fri Sep 20, 2019 1:12 am

Gregory wrote:
Fri Sep 20, 2019 1:10 am
What's the film shown at 0:47 with the UFO on Easter Island?
I'm pretty sure it's Mars Attacks!

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Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

Re: The Future of Home Video

#536 Post by Gregory » Fri Sep 20, 2019 1:19 am

You're right, thanks. Coincidentally, I recently placed a hold on that Blu-ray at my library to finally see it. That shot just looks so poorly chosen for an ad like that, considering what other special effects were available then to showcase, not to mention the film having been a box-office flop. (I'm completely looking forward to finally catching up with Mars Attacks!, though.)

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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#537 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Sep 20, 2019 1:26 pm

I feel so old now, as I remember being disappointed at first that my DVD did not come complete with stock footage sound effects of gunshots and whirring noises whenever a button was pressed on it!

To go a generation further back I still vividly remember this trailer for the first widescreen version of Fox films on VHS (NSFW) (mostly because I was first introduced to and then became caught up in a cycle of rewatching Alien constantly on that widescreen VHS for a couple of years, so always saw that trailer beforehand!), although it is still a bit cheesy to have the audio gimmick of the sound going from tinny mono for pan and scanned to stereo for widescreen! I suppose they were releasing them in Stereo too, so that was an extra selling point.

And Mars Attacks! is fantastic. I seem to recall the Easter Island bit is part of the montage that also includes the aliens manipulating which way the Washington Monument falls in order to squash a group of visiting Boy Scouts! The only film to suggest that Slim Whitman music has some sort of purpose!

Orlac
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#538 Post by Orlac » Sun Sep 22, 2019 12:07 pm

And by default, it's the best American film to feature Godzilla!

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Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

Re: The Future of Home Video

#539 Post by Gregory » Sun Sep 22, 2019 3:13 pm

Only if it beats Pee-wee's Big Adventure.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#540 Post by FrauBlucher » Mon Nov 18, 2019 9:17 pm

The Sydney Morning Herald...Why Film fans are dropping Netflix for physical media

Just a blip or is it a trend...
"I've seen a lot of people migrate to streaming services and then come back to us after exhausting those libraries," says Ben Kenny, who has run Sydney's Film Club video store in Darlinghurst for eight years.

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Rayon Vert
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#541 Post by Rayon Vert » Tue Nov 19, 2019 12:56 am

Nice to read, anyway.

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Aunt Peg
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:30 am

Re: The Future of Home Video

#542 Post by Aunt Peg » Tue Nov 19, 2019 3:57 am

FrauBlucher wrote:
Mon Nov 18, 2019 9:17 pm
The Sydney Morning Herald...Why Film fans are dropping Netflix for physical media

Just a blip or is it a trend...
"I've seen a lot of people migrate to streaming services and then come back to us after exhausting those libraries," says Ben Kenny, who has run Sydney's Film Club video store in Darlinghurst for eight years.
A blip.

I think this is the last remaining DVD store left in Sydney (happy to be corrected). Its tiny and as can be seen for the photo almost everything is stacked like books in a library. Only the latest releases are displayed in the 'front cover' display option and the shop has precious few Blu Rays (probably because they simply don't rent). A lot of the titles are imported ones and I suspect that titles that no longer rent get sold off as there are always ex-rental titles for sale.

When my local DVD rental store closed two years ago I started going to this one in Darlinghurst but it was such a drag because I had to find two free days. One to go there and then watch the films and the second to return them.

I ended up purchasing a Fetch Box 12 months ago which has virtually everything I want to see that's new on DVD and a number of titles that haven't even been released. Cost wise it works out pretty much the same because I don't have to pay the public transport costs to go to and from Darlinghurst.

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HJackson
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 7:27 pm

Re: The Future of Home Video

#543 Post by HJackson » Tue Nov 19, 2019 6:39 am

Netflix, at least in the UK, is absolutely crap for movies. The only reason I keep a subscription is because there’s usually some original content I’m meaning to see, or looking forward to at some point, and I’m too lazy to cancel and save my money until the I can be bothered to watch whatever it is.

Prime Video is much better, not just for movies but for older TV shows too, and seems to be going more for the “comprehensive” approach with add-on channels like MGM and Universal Studio Classics giving more options on top of an already generous offering. These things aren’t anywhere near comprehensive at this point but they do consistently add titles of a vintage that aren’t usually common for these services, and BFI and Mubi run add-on channels with foreign and art house titles too. I believe Arrow is on there, but I could be mistaken.

Cassavettes isn’t the kind of filmmaker who populates these channels on the “commercial viability” account put forward by the sceptics, but I can watch through most of his filmography on Prime with a BFI subscription for much less money than it would cost me to gather the blu rays.

Re MGM and Universal, I wonder what the financial arrangement between these studios and Amazon is - one of the main concerns about streaming is that it narrows the choice for virgin cinephiles by only offering up what is commercially viable, but if the studios are partners in this and can make money by offering up ever more of their libraries to subscribers, I don’t see why this issue cannot be overcome with time.

Certainly the days when people flood to movie stores because a huge franchise like Star Wars isn’t streaming anywhere are going to come to an end - the store owner says it was “overlooked” but he’s being very optimistic if he thinks things like that won’t be filled in over the coming years, with fewer opportunities arising for him to profit from gaps in the streaming market.

The biggest downside at the moment is the AV quality from some of these third parties. The BFI streaming option of High and Low was the old SD transfer from their DVD and Mubi Rohmer titles I looked at were SD too. Obviously I care enough about movies to seek out markedly better editions of films I want to see, but many won’t care a lick.

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tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: The Future of Home Video

#544 Post by tenia » Tue Nov 19, 2019 8:08 am

In France, we get the worst of both worlds : because of how the content is rolled out chronogically, no movie younger than 3 years can be on Netflix.
But of course, that's on top of everything Netflix doesn't have, both because they don't bother or can't get it because it's licenced by indies here.

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DeprongMori
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 1:59 am
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#545 Post by DeprongMori » Fri Nov 22, 2019 3:57 pm

HinkyDinkyTruesmith wrote:
Wed Sep 04, 2019 1:11 pm
DeprongMori wrote:
Wed Sep 04, 2019 12:28 pm
Anyone been following what has been going on with Fandor since December, when they laid off their entire staff?

I subscribed during the sale when FilmStruck closed down, but really haven’t watched it since the December announcement. I was surprised to find today that it was still active. However, the streaming quality seems poor. In streaming my first film today, Escape to Burma (1955), I’m finding the video quality low-resolution and dupey, and it is being streamed in the wrong aspect ratio — 1.78 instead of 2.00.

What have others been experiencing? Has anyone heard any news since December?
I had been subscribed, but changed credit cards mid-December. Fandor's account stuff no longer works––you can't sign up, you can't change things––so I couldn't re-sign-up. However, the Amazon channel for it still works, and I signed up through that. I don't think the video quality is being affected by their state of affairs––they've often only had low-grade transfers of many of their films. But a recent film like Ida is available in full-HD, and looks great.
I have received an email that my year subscription to Fandor has expired and it “helpfully” provides a link to an “update your credit card” page that is a convincing-looking secure web page under their domain name, but I am suspicious at this point of any web page not accessed directly from my logged in Fandor account, since they have been operating on fumes for a year now, and their phone is disconnected.

Anyone have any further news? I may try to re-add the service through Amazon instead to be on the safe side.

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Roscoe
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:40 pm
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#546 Post by Roscoe » Fri Nov 22, 2019 4:09 pm

I'm still able to stream FANDOR through my Amazon Prime. Looks good.

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FrauBlucher
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2013 8:28 pm
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#547 Post by FrauBlucher » Tue Dec 31, 2019 6:05 pm

This from Glenn Erickson. Thought it was interesting enough to post...
Happy New Year —

I’m skipping a ‘best of’ list this year, only because my lists of favorites were becoming relevant only to me. It was an impossible list to compile anyway, because the literal explosion of desirable titles made it impossible to rank the favorites — I counted over a hundred worthy favorites among just the genre releases. I’ve discriminated by quality (what looks the best) and by rarity (what I never thought this would look this good) and got nowhere. These days, even the most minor releases routinely sport excellent transfers.

The explosion I talk about comes from a handful of non-studio disc companies. We’re by now well aware that the big studios release few older library/vault titles, and prefer to license them to small Blu-ray companies. Shout! Factory, Powerhouse Indicator, Kino, Arrow and a few others have joined Criterion in soaking us with the riches of studio libraries, giving us beautiful HD masters of genre titles that the studios can’t be bothered with. Twilight Time has ceased activity, and Olive Films has also hit the pause button, but we don’t know yet if both are out for the count. Yet 2019 has seen an avalanche of genre favorites, most beautifully remastered. Scream Factory has all but cleaned out the Universal vault of horror and sci-fi films, and other companies have pretty much covered most of the desirable Hammer films, at least the ones not tied up by Warners. Kino Lorber’s deal with Studio Canal has opened a floodgate to a potentially endless stream of exotic / forgotten foreign products. Many of which were seldom screened here, at least not in complete editions, in their original languages.

For the last twenty years we’ve been reading editorials claiming that DVDs and Blu-rays are on the way out, nearing extinction. This is the first year in which mainstream voices are finally echoing what we’ve been whining/preaching/arguing about for years: hard-media home video is the only guarantee of access to one’s favorite movies. Even if you’ve bought a digital version, anything in the cloud can be revoked at any time. Those old DVD collections may suddenly become valuable again, if studios remove their libraries from circulation, except for streaming services under their control. Remember, they OWN the films as intellectual property. Nobody can force them to make individual titles available.

How many streaming services do you subscribe to, in addition to all the new subscriptions one must maintain to do things like run a home computer? Studios that are pushing streaming in a big way seem to be aligning their distribution model to ‘disrupt’ theatrical distribution. With Disney acquiring 20th-Fox, repertory theaters have been told they won’t be supplied with Fox product, and the foreign disc companies I know have been told that Fox product will no longer be licensed to them.

Nobody knows the future of theatrical distribution for new pictures, but learning about older movies now seems even more of a splinter activity for cinephiles, film students and TCM fans. Cultural Consensus moviegoing, where many of us see the same things, only happens with a few exceptional mega-hits. The ‘average’ folk I know don’t have time to become cinema fans. If they have leisure money they’re into other new pursuits. You could pretty much guarantee that somebody in the 1990s had access to a VHS player, and until 2015 or so most homes I visited could play a DVD. But just because my personal friends have a Blu-ray hooked up, doesn’t mean that most people do. When I say that I have a set that will play 3-D, it’s often assumed that I’m rich (hahahaha) or ‘one of those people’ with a central obsession better avoided in conversation.

But folk that frequent places like CineSavant of course tend to be fellow confirmed movie addicts, many with professional contacts or actually working in the biz in one way or another. That’s where you’ll find serious collectors. Not many consumers buy discs all the time, but I hear from plenty of people who somehow purchase MANY. I think the generation of college students that went crazy for DVDs around 1998 matured out of the habit, as they got deeper into their adult responsibilities… in other words, they became normal consumers, mostly buying Disney discs when their kids demanded them. And plenty of college-age disc fans got out of the habit after a couple of apartment moves, when they realized how bulky discs can be. After not being able to accumulate anything in the first half of my life, I think I’ve kept EVERYTHING from the second half. I still haven’t figured out a reasonable storage/library system for my discs, that’s for sure. I’d ask my sane friends how they got the courage & willpower to divest themselves of so many possessions / collections… but I know I won’t change.

Will people still continue to care about old movies, outside of a small group branded as elitists? It’s scary when Martin Scorsese ventures an opinion that clashes with popular taste, and all of a sudden finds himself being harassed like a target of a political slur on Twitter. I’ve been through the 2019 releases I wanted to see and found several really fine pictures, but only a couple that I know I’ll want to see again. But right now there must be 500 old pictures that I’m ready to screen at a moment’s notice — I love showing guests things they haven’t seen.

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Godot
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#548 Post by Godot » Tue Dec 31, 2019 7:07 pm

FrauBlucher wrote:
Tue Dec 31, 2019 6:05 pm
This from Glenn Erickson. Thought it was interesting enough to post...
...But right now there must be 500 old pictures that I’m ready to screen at a moment’s notice — I love showing guests things they haven’t seen.
Danke, Frau, for posting that.
God bless DVD/CineSavant, he's contributed to the life support of physical media. I certainly have bought most of my discs this past year after reading his reviews (and those in our forum). If not for the temptations of reviews and posts, and the decision to explore region-free a few years ago, my savings account would be much healthier.

And to the point of Glenn's last sentence, that is among my primary pleasures in owning physical media - I have extended family visiting now, and it's nice to have them pick through options each night for viewing (especially helpful when trying to form consensus on what we'll watch). I try to select movies no one has seen (difficult with 10 of us, but it can be done). Two nights ago it was the wonderful Optimum Region-B blu-ray of Went the Day Well?, last night it was the better-than-expected War Arrow (the bodice-ripper image of Jeff Chandler kissing Maureen O'Hara on the DVD cover intrigued us). We keep a shelf of "not-seen" titles to pick from, across a variety of genres, plus my in-laws' favorites (John Wayne, courtroom dramas, Westerns, mysteries).

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colinr0380
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#549 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Dec 31, 2019 9:01 pm

I have to ask Godot, but how did they react to Thora Hird gunning down Nazis in Went The Day Well?

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Godot
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#550 Post by Godot » Wed Jan 01, 2020 3:38 pm

They were all shocked, and I loved the canted angles and shadows in that scene ... but that comes so late in the film, after so many other images of surprisingly realistic violence. I think the film establishes the indiscriminate brutality of the invaders effectively in the church, where earlier we see
SpoilerShow
the vicar murdered and the children's lives threatened in retribution for the policeman's attempted escape,
and even I jumped when we see the four returning home-guard soldiers ambushed, including
SpoilerShow
being shot in the face and bayoneted.
But the scene that had our room most surprised was Mrs. Collins' (the Miss Marple-like community store owner and phone maven) genial discussion with the solder in her kitchen, the way the actress (Muriel George, had to look her up, I don't remember seeing her in anything before) plays the scene, with sly come-ons, toothy smiles, and yet with her jaw set and eyes narrowed, so when
SpoilerShow
she peppers the soldier's eyes, and Cavalcanti shows her heft the axe in her right hand as she lurches forward, then bringing it down on him with both hands, trembling as she recovers her senses ... and that action seems to be over in less than 5 seconds,
nearly everyone in the room exclaimed something, from "Oh my God" to "Wow" to "Wait, what just happened?"

So by the end scene you referenced, when Nora asks for the pistol and then slowly descends the stairs to confront Wilsford, my kids were talking back to the screen in encouragement and guessing what would happen. I've trained my kids not to talk during movies, but this one really got under everyone's skin, so it was a big hit in that way. Thank God for subtitles, we were a bit confused by all the names and accents (especially the poacher and young George in the woods) and titles and relationships in the dialog, but the visuals and editing and acting tell the story effectively nonetheless.

Afterward, I found the Graham Green short story for my father-in-law ("The Lieutenant Died Last", in Complete Short Stories ... an interesting source, it's from the poacher's POV) and the BFI Film Classics monograph by Penelope Houston for my kids to read. Those aren't "Future of Home Video" necessarily, but are in a similar vein wherein I enjoy having books at the ready to explore topics, rather than using the interwebs to look something up. We even walked to the library to take out more Graham Greene books.

And last night we watched Ford's 3 Godfathers, which was an interesting comparison to the more pedestrian War Arrow, to see how Ford imbued such poetry and atmosphere in his visuals, and subtlety in revealing information, mixed with (to my kids' modern ears) awkward discriminatory language ("Don't talk Mex around the kid!") and bold emotion (the birth scene and Harry Carey Jr.'s angelic appearance, the miraculous Bible-predicted mule in the grotto /cave). And it was great to see Ford use more Jane Darwell (Ma Joad, as an earthy man-eater!) and Mildred Natwick (the widow Tillane from Quiet Man, as Mother Mary!). I picked this film because of the holiday metaphor, but we enjoyed its oddness within the Western / John Wayne genre even more.

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