I really need to watch for this on the streaming services: Monkeys, Go Home! A young American inherits an olive farm in France and decides to use four chimpanzees to harvest the fruit when he finds the price of the local labor to be too costly - with Maurice Chevalier, Dean Jones , and Yvette Mimieux.
Watched my new 4K physical media of The Fifth Element over the weekend. Awesome. There were only a few scenes where 1997 CGI didn't look all that great. But that's fine. LotR trilogy just shipped and I'm looking forward to that, but I might have to do my long-awaited Mad Max: Fury Road rewatch first. Blade Runner 2049 is next on my purchase list. Disappeared from streaming before I had a chance to watch it again, and I imagine it looks fantastic in 4K. Physical media movies, baby !
Peggy Sue Got Married. I recall renting this in the 80s cause I loved Kathleen Turner and was disappointed in it. After rewatching it 30 some odd years later my feelings haven't changed much, although I'm not as harsh in my judgement over Nicholas Cage's adenoidal performance as I was at the time. The fault of the movie rests more in Coppola's lap. On the surface it looks to be a female version of Back to the Future like if Lorraine went back in time - would she have married George McFly knowing what she knows now. The movie starts with Peggy Sue at her high school reunion, excited and irritated as she's on the cusp of divorcing her philandering husband, Charlie. She faints and wakes up in the fifties - still in her grown up body - and amused to find herself reliving her senior year. But bringing to the past her anger at the teenage Charlie who's baffled at her change in tone. She decides to have a fling with a brooding poet and befriends the local geek in order to see if he can send her back to her proper time. What makes the movie meandering is that there is no real thrust to the plot. We know she'll choose Charlie - she has to or her daughter won't be born. The movie also lacks inspiration - if she cannot change the outcome can she at least elicit enough change to create a butterfly effect? - a desire only considered in a scheme to steal an invention - pantyhose - if she remains trapped there but doesn't seem to consider changes in her behavior might elicit equal rewards - and nor does the movie. Regardless of her knowledge or behavior Charlie is destined to become the smarmy tv salesman who cheats, and her the cheezed-off wife. But somehow she changes the poets life? Even the pace flounders by not setting up the movie properly. Charlie is never shown at the beginning so when she's thrust into the past - all the tension Peggy Sue feels is lopsided. And a strong red blue yellow color scheme which I assumed was to tie everything together on some significant level - doesn't appear to have any importance except as a color scheme. And when she wakes up in the present with things unchanged (only her feelings) but assures us it wasn't a dream because the poet dedicated a book to her - somehow she was inspiring enough to change his life. It's not a bad movie but it's disappointing considering the talent involved. After watching this I sometimes wonder if Depp didn't copycat Cage's moves. The funny voices, the wackadoo performances. Everything Cage is condemned for Depp is held in high esteem for.
The Death of Stalin is a good movie. It could have been a little sharper at times, but Steve Buscemi as Kruschev? Shut up.
Ooooh! And there’s me thinking 4K offered a whole different viewing experience. I was imagining having to be wired up to all manner of contraptions.
Bigger question - is 4K the same kind of rip-off Blu Ray was/is? I have a few Blu Rays and I don’t notice much of a difference between them and regular DVD.
I think it's called 4k Utra-HD, something like that and requires a special player for it. I take it you have a smallish screen? On a good-sized flatscreen it's very noticable.
Maybe you need glasses? Or maybe you weren't watching a movie that benefits from HD. What it really improves the most is lots of detail. On some movies it doesn't seem to make much difference, but on some it's like night and day.
Hard to tell much of a difference between 720 and 1080p, but there's for sure a huge difference between standard and HD. HD to UHD is not quite as noticeable as standard to HD but it's definitely there. It's only when you get to 8K where it's like.. I think we've reached the capacity of the best human eyes here. Not necessary.
I thought of a factor that might affect this. Many blu-ray players up-res DVDs so they look a lot better than they have any right to. There's some kind of smoothing algorithm or something. So when you watch dvds through your blu-ray player, it might be improving the visual quality to near blu-ray level.
Some were a ripoff and others look fantastic. It depends on the master media. With the right master, Blu-ray is clearly superior. But sometimes it is a ripoff if the master isn't very good, as Blu-ray is only as good as the media put on it. I have Taxi Driver on Blu-ray and you can see the film grain. But that's as good as it can get.
Lately I've got ahold of several blu-rays where the image occasionally breaks apart into milticiolored pixels. It happens mostly when there's fast movement onscreen, especially if the camera is moving. It seems like the encoding just isn't fast enough to keep up, so the image breaks down. It's a digital artifact, not sure what it's called or what causes it. Good blu-rays don't do it though.
Oh I suppose one more thing worth mentioning on the subject is that high definition only works when the original movie or show was shot on FILM. We are fortunate that Star Trek: The Next Generation was shot on old school film. Many other shows were shot on video - standard definition, nothing to clean up. Trying to remaster video into HD would be enormously expensive and the results would not even be worth it.
I am noticing that some of my older DVD's (which say "enhanced for widescreen", anamorphic, etc.) look pretty bad on widescreen now that I finally have one.
