Change Your Image
ahothabeth
Reviews
Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns (2001)
A great intro in Jazz and its history
Don't bother with the U.K. version (12 hours) buy the USA version (19.5 hours) it contains more and can usually be found at lower cost.
Covers the birth of jazz, swing era, move to bebop, free modal very well, but there is only scant coverage of more modern moves in the field of jazz.
Mr Burns has argued that he is more of an historian than a critic and as such he can only really deal with the phases of jazz that are from the past. This line of reasoning is, I think, not un-reasonable.
A nice touch on the DVDs is that when a piece of music is playing then pressing the "info" button on the DVD or its handset, brings up a screen about the music being played, e.g. title of music, who wrote it, who is playing, when was it recorded, etc.
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
I always thought it was better.
My memory of this was that it was a classic, now it just seems a rather poor copy of Seven Samurai (or Shichinin no samurai if you prefer.)
For a simply example of the difference in the cinematic craft compare the way Britt, the Knife man, is introduced with his samurai equivalent. The time/suspense that Kurosawa draws in to the scene is just breath taking. This is an easy quality difference to pick, but the rest of Seven Samurai is so much better in just so many ways.
I do rather like the Magnificent Seven theme,but other wise I would leave the Magnificent Seven alone.
abdo
Kagemusha (1980)
The U.K. DVD release has lost 27 minutes of runtime - Only 152 minutes
Great, great film; but I will be returning my copy of the DVD because it has lost 27 minutes of footage. This is not the version that I have seen before with all the wonderful pace Kurosawa draws into the film.
The DVD is butchered and not worth watching, wait for the full version when ever that may be; but the wait will be worth it.
Runtime of the butchered version is 152 minutes Runtime of the full version is 179 minutes.
I hope this helps.
Under Milk Wood (1971)
This is "A Play for Voices"
Dylan Thomas sub-tilted Under Milk Wood with "A Play for Voices".
This is where this is best. With the words allowing the listener to develop some lovely images. The film as little if anything to the Argo or BBC recordings (or should I say soundscape?).
Buy either of the audio tapes or CD and enjoy.
The film is best left alone.
The World at War (1973)
Watch, lest we forget.
This is what we can do to each other. This is the sort that everbody should see at least once.
It does not glorify world. It shows that it is the everyday person who is killed, mained and debased by war. The person on the "other side" eats sleeps, laughs and cry just as we do.