DVDs: THEY'RE ARCHIVES

 Photo by Myke Simon on Unsplash

It ain't no secret that I collect a movie every now and then.  

Its amazing to me how quickly we've gone from VHS to streaming.  I was late to DVD, just like I was to CD.  In the late 90's, when every one was going to disc, I was still hanging on to my tapes.   I eventually made the jump.  I'm no tech-geek.  I was perfectly happy with the picture and sound quality of the DVD. Call me a dweeb, but I didn't see the huge quality jump everyone else was talking about when blu-ray came along. 

I really didn't. 

Now that 4K is here, (somehow that happened in concert with the death (or at least dying) of physical media), I actually can see the clarity difference, but it looks like it's almost too much.  I mean, a  movie isn't supposed to look like you're watching a super clear digital video.  The footage almost reminds me of HD soap operas. 

But that's what I saw as I watched Kick Ass on a 4k screen.  My first real take on it.  It looked like that hyper-real digital video.  Where was the grain?  The warmth?

Now most techlingers are gonna hassle me for that.  And they're entitled.  I've bitched in a previous piece on the growing tendency of boutiques to release classics on 4k only.  I don't have a 4k player.  They're pricy.  But here we are. I'll leave it at that, I don't need to revisit, but it does require mentioning. 

But people are acting like the DVD is as low in quality as they would complain about VHS when the DVD initially came out.  Please. Really?

Here's an additional gripe, as if I haven't already complained enough. 

They're dropping the supplementals. 

As the films are being upgraded, gaining in picture and audio quality as they make the skip up from blu to 4k, they're losing the bonus materials.  This hasn't escaped me.  Back when DVDs were banging on the door of the home viewing public, there would generally be supplemental material included, often to the degree of requiring a second (occasionally a third, Hot Fuzz, I'm talking to you!) disc.  Quite often, the distributors got so generous with the stuff that the sets would often be a necessary add to a film collection.  Just look at the bonus features on the basic 2 disc DVD releases of The Abyss, Network or All the President's Men.

This was the selling point!

To be fair, sometimes blus will do this.  Particularly in the case of a boutique release.  The local Pittsburgh PM magazine TV segments included on the blu-ray release of Just Desserts: The Making of Creepshow are things that will probably be lost to time outside of the producers vaults.  But this is becoming more and more rare.  

There are filmmakers that are adamant about including supplementals on their releases.  Guillermo Del Toro and Christopher Nolan are pretty forward about making it happen.  It's been obvious with the releases of Del Toro's Frankenstein and Nolan's Oppeheimer, that they give a damn about viewer experience.   Unfortunately, I don't think that will be the case going forward.. Streaming is a continued problem in this arena too.  Many times, original studio-level films produced by the likes of Netflix are not getting physical releases. 

Things can get lost to time.  There are examples of famous black and white era films lost due to their age and the lack of copies printed or restored, a la London After Midnight, Hollywood, and The Mountain Eagle.  The number of films being lost over the years from the silent era to the 50's is actually disturbing.  Take a look at this article from The Film Foundation. 

It's appalling.

 In the documentary Adjust Your Tracking, the point is made that many films that saw releases during the VHS era never made the jump to DVD.  This adds another layer to the growing ways that films can be lost.  Then there are films that only saw poor releases on DVD, and were never released again.  What happens to them?  

Are streaming services the savior?  What edition of the film are you seeing?  Is it the right frame rate? Is it color-timed properly?  Is it even the proper aspect ratio?

How long will it remain uploaded to that particular streaming service?

So, all of this has led me to believe that DVDs were an archive of sorts.  Generally a damn fine version of the film itself coupled with 2.0 or 5.1 Dolby sound.  Often a commentary by the filmmaker, stars or even film historians.  Current or archived making-of documentaries.  Interviews.  Trailers and radio spots. Very often, especially in the case of special series like New Line's Infinifilm, Fox's Five Star Series, and others, materials are included that bear some sort of historical connection to the film and it's era.  As they've made the jump to blu and 4k, these supplementals are generally not ported over, and rarely are new ones made, with the exception of disc companies like Criterion, Shout!, Arrow, Kino Lorber and others.  However, these boutiques seem dedicated to genre films from the past, narrowing the possibilities.

Not all films being made these days get disc releases. Streaming's relationship with theatrical has caused this. It's quite disappointing.  It's not a film, but a true crime is being committed in the fact that Mike Flanagan's masterful limited series Midnight Mass isn't getting a physical.  Flanagan has griped about the depletion of home media himself, and perhaps that has something to do with him making the move to Amazon.  

Will that resolve anything?

Not all that long ago, folks were shouting "Cut the Cord!" while dropping their cable company and jumping on board the streaming train.  Just a handful of years later, everyone that creates original content to some extent has decided to create their own streaming service.  Therefore the access to their in-house creations will often be only released on that channel.  No one can afford every streaming service, so this whole movement is arguably narrowing the individual production's audience size due to that factor.  Quite often, I forgot a movie even came out, and end up not seeing it.  The zone is flooded and I can't keep up.  

Let alone be a historian. 

It's easy to lose things in a maelstrom.

THE SPECTRUM FILES: NIGHTWING/THE RANSOM

I remember this having a killer tie-in paperback novel that had outstanding artwork.  I got rid of the Martin Cruz Smith (Gorky Park) tome before reading it.  I have since reacquired it (an old beaten, second hand paperback), with different and not nearly as cool art.  But the graphics are actually commensurate with its original mass market release as opposed to the film tie-in cover which matched the movie's poster.

  

Anyhoo, Nightwing  aired on Spectrum a plethora of times, has Lots of Native Americans in it, but unfortunately, they didn’t bother to cast actual Native Americans in the two key Native American lead roles. They were given to Nick Mancuso and Steven Macht. Nothing against those guys, they're terrific actors, but they are not Indians.

British legend David Warner is an absolute blast here playing it straight as a scientific Van Helsing, even though this is a bunch of malarkey.

 Other faces abound that showed up in late 70s and early 80s films, including Kathryn Harrold.  It is actually a really good story marred by poor special effects. As far as the Indian mysticism and mythology goes, I don’t know how much of it is realistic in any way, but the film is definitely worth a watch.  

Nightwing was a product of its time; it could’ve been worse considering it was made in 1979.  It holds up much better than I expected it to upon a recent rediscovery.

There is an exceedingly chilling scene where the Mancuso character finds that all the priests from his tribe have died in a hut set underground.  It’s very creepy.  

Back in the Spectrum days, I often confused it with another flick running on the pay-tv channel called Maniac.  No, no, no. Not the infamous film directed by William Lustig with the gruesome Tom Savini effects.  I've still not gotten around to that one yet.  I might have some residual trauma from the big box VHS art threatening me from the shelves of Kenosha's 4-star video, that is responsible for that.  

This Maniac (also known as The Ransom and Assault in Paradise)  involved a psycho dressed in traditional Native American garb, running around a resort town  killing folks, asking for funds in order to be stopped.  Oliver Reed (great choice, there) is brought in to stop them.  It also starred Deborah Raffin, Stuart Whitman, and James Mitchum.  It seems to be quite lost to time, at this point.  Although it can be found on Tubi. 

Both films bring in levels of intrigue and the politics of wretched unfairness to the indigenous peoples to the scripts.  Though The Ransom leans more heavily into extremist violence, while Nightwing goes with mysticism and ancient rites.  

 

An interesting aside, the scores are compelling.  In Nightwing, Henry Mancini (The Pink Panther) blends suspense with compelling Native American themes.  Don Ellis does bring some similarities, but also feeds Starsky & Hutch styled action faire with waka-jawaka 70's guitar.  Sorry Mr. Ellis, Mancini wins the day.  Your film only came about 2 years before Mancini's, so era is no excuse.

Thanks to Spectrum, these films still exist firmly in my memory banks. 

VINYL DESTINATION: INNER SLEEVE

I discovered Inner Sleeve Records in 1987.  Just a couple of blocks away from the Wausau Center Mall, I preferred it to that latter establishment's Camelot Records and its candy-colored and neon environment with terrible in-store sound choices. 

Inner Sleeve was dark.  It was almost all vinyl.  The owner stood behind the counter and kept watch.  He didn't have a lot to say, but when he did, it made sense.  Despite the fact that Inner Sleeve carried everything, the store and its employees were dedicated to the off-the-beaten path musical choices.  They were alternative before alternative was a buzzword.  Their year end best of lists always contained bands like the Lime Spiders and Aztec Camera. You know, those 120 Minutes stalwarts. Bands whose waters I hadn't dipped my toes into at that point.  The Butthole Surfers' Hairway to Steven and Die Kreuzen's Century Days posters adorned the walls I walked past as I contemplated Fear's The Record on more than one day.  

I am quite sure I got some side eye for my purchase on the same payday of Iggy Pop's Pair records compilation of New Value, Soldier, & Party, along with Blackfoot's Strikes.  I've always been eclectic.

What Inner Sleeve had was the selection.  Holy Christ, looking back on it, I can't believe how much they had.  Despite Sleeve's anti-establishment environs, all genres were available, including best sellers. Guns n Roses, Poison, and Tracy Chapman adorned the same walls as The Pixies and Jane's Addiction.   It also had a pretty solid selection of used vinyl in the back right hand corner of the shop (Violent Femmes debut thanks, much)  Back catalog titles were in abundance so you were very rarely disappointed, or had to walk out empty handed if you went in there with a title in mind. 

The purchases I made there were in multitudes .  Music from all over the sound palette.  I still have my Replacements Tim that I bought there.  The same goes for Kenosha metalheads Screamer and their still coveted and cult classic debut, Target: Earth.  When Central Wisconsin hype machine Airkraft had their cover of Tommie James Midnight Confessions playing on midwest radio, I picked up the LP there.  I still have the receipt from that one.  I had to wait a few weeks for the out-of-print Let it Be from The Replacements, but I was able to get that one from Inner Sleeve. There were countless others.

I just hit the Sleeve last summer and acquired Bauhaus' compilation LP for Frani and the Deep Purple Burn CD I had been looking for, and damn, if he isn't hand- writing receipts the same damn way.  The prices remain lower than the average bear, and set so that including tax they come out to a round number.  It was that way in 1987, and remained in 2025.  

I don't think the owner remembered me last summer.  The shop's original location had apparently had a fire, and it has since moved closer to where the mall used to be, and is significantly smaller.  Stocked to the gills still, but nowhere near the room to move.  But the vibe is still there.  I talked to him briefly and mentioned that I still had receipts.  He wasn't shocked, and said that it happened all the time and folks drop by to show them to him. 

On the way out, he got my attention and said, "Hey. Since we have history, take one of these!" and handed me a poster celebrating the store's 50th anniversary coming up soon.   No surprise, the poster is a hell of a piece of art while still holding its reason for existence out to be admired. I may get a frame for it and find a place to hang it in the near future. 

It ain't quite what it used to be, (neither am I) but the Sleeve is still rocking, and Wausau's maven of music is still there piloting the plane.

And to quote Sam Elliot in The Big Lebowski, "I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that."

VINYL DESTINATION: DISNEY'S COUNTRY BEAR JAMBOREE

 I've had an upswell of core memories of late.   The 70's were rich in them, but sometimes I surprise even myself with what I have the ability to dredge up.  

We had one of those console hi-fi units in our living room back in the day.  Those things are an affordable collectible among retro technology enthusiasts even to this day.  You know the ones.  They doubled as a piece of furniture. Lengthy wood (or faux wood) units with a flat solid top. There was a lid you could pull up giving you access to a radio band and a turntable, and in the case of many, an 8-track tape player. 

These things are the best.  I just love 'em. 

The one we had in Somers, WI was pretty cool, and fairly loud.  My Ma used to listen to her Patsy Cline and Engelbert Humperdinck records on it.  It also blasted out the Old Man's Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash LPs.  Elvis Presley's Viva Las Vegas Via Satellite Live!.  Jim Nabors and Bing Crosby could be heard around the holidays.  One time, my sister Randee was trying to display the amazingness that was Queen's News of the World, but I was so terrified by that album cover that I couldn't process the genius. 

But, there was one record that ruled over all. Like the one ring.  The Precious.   It seems before I was born my parents had made a Florida trek and visited Busch Gardens and the legendary Disneyland while they were there.  On that little pilgrimage they picked up a vinyl copy of the tunes from the Disney Country Bears Jamboree stage show.  A collection of country western-based tunes performed by various famous Disney bears, it was truly entertaining.  This was when Disney was post-Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and pre-Beauty and the Beast/Pixar, so they were throwing Spaghetti at the wall, methinks. 

As a youthful little music enthusiast, I loved that record.  One track still sticks out to this day, and that was Blood on the Saddle, a Tex Ritter original performed by my favorite bear Big Al.  The whole thing can be enjoyed in the video below.  Just scrolling through the images in the clip brought back vivid memories of the photographs in the booklet contained within the album's gatefold.  The scroll also provided the nostalgia breeze I've become accustomed to while digging up those things that were once so familiar, but are now relegated to the back of the cerebrum while still surviving in my heart.

LATE TO THE PARTY: AARON SORKIN

Photo by David Everett Strickler on Unsplash

There's a couple movies that I've watched in recent years many, many times.  At least chunks of them, here and there, often enough that they combine to several full viewings. 

A Few Good Men & Moneyball. 

I've been aware of Aaron Sorkin's name, of course. Vaguely aware that he's a screenwriter of some renown, but his work goes back decades.  I kind of had him coupled with David Kelly for some reason. 

There is a reason that they go together that I was unaware of, however.

Cracklin' dialogue.

Another thing I was late to the party on is The West Wing.  Over the past couple of months, Frani and I have taken to watching the show.  Partially due to its word of mouth and historical episodic value, partly due to the current state of government.  The latter led to us wanting to see the oval office functioning like it probably should.  So we dug in. 

Damn.  The dialogue.  Coupled with the performances of Martin Sheen, Bradley Whitford, Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, John Spencer, and Rob Lowe, the shit comes to life.  So, I decided to look into teleplay artist Aaron Sorkin and was stunned by my lack of knowledge of a couple facts.  As much as I love A Few Good Men and Moneyball, I didn't even know who wrote the screenplays for them.  That's insane when you consider how many times Frani may have walked into our living room to those films dancing across the screen, or had them on as background noise, and asking "Are you watching that again? Why?"

I thought about it for a few seconds, and said something to the effect of "It's the dialogue, and coupled with these performers, these movies just pop for me, and always hit in a different way." 

Something like that.

Wow, it all made sense.  Something about Sorkin's dialogue just has an energy to it.  I love the West Wing for the same reason I love those two films.  It's kind of embarassing being the movie buff that I am, that I never really made the connection between these films and the writer.   Now when we finish our watch of Wing, there will be other things to dip the toes into, namely Rob Reiner's The American President, and a series that has come highly recommended by several close to me, The Newsroom.  

But eventually, I'll be bummed when it's all tapped out. 

But look how close I came to never knowing.....

LOOKING FOR LAUGHS: ORATORY RELAXATION

 I've written on here before about how stand-up comedy was a big part of my life in my youth.   It didn't just make me laugh though, it crawled inside my thought processes and often could bring me to a near state of relaxed meditation.  These folks weren't just funny as hell, but the way they could string words together was an art form. 

Some better than others, but nonetheless. 

During my Middle School years and into my senior year in High School, I was picking through the cut-out bins at Camelot Records at the Richland Mall in Waco, TX and the Wausau Center Mall in North Central Wisconsin for stand up albums.  I had accumulated the likes of Bill Cosby, Steven Wright, Howie Mandel, George Carlin, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin.  

Sometimes after my parents had gone to bed, I would grab my Panasonic Slim Line tape recorder and sit in front of the TV's speaker and record shit like Robert Townsend's Partners in Crime,  Joe Piscopo's Halloween Party, and any one of the Rodney Dangerfield's comedy specials that gave up-and-coming comedians a big audience before they broke.  These were my introductions to Sam Kinison, Robert Schimmel, Rita Rudner,  Andrew "Dice" Clay, Carol Liefer, Louie Anderson, and Bill Motherfuckin' Hicks. 

While living in Waco, I started the practice of lying down at bed time, in the dark, with the headphones of the Sanyo MGR60 pocket cassette deck my Dad had bought me as a gift firmly on my head.  The old man left the thing lying on my pillow to come home to after school one afternoon.  He had no idea what that little expenditure meant to me.  Particularly while living in Waco, with an even more accentuated amount of that solo self-introspection time. 

 I didn't even ask for the player.  He had just seen me fiddling around with that old standard Slim Line tape recorder my Mom bought me in 7th grade, with some cheap headphones in an attempt to listen to music privately.  It didn't work that great and he picked up on my failed attempts.  

But I digress.

I'd lay there, crawling towards sleep, with Bill Cosby's (or as W. Kamau Bell refers to him, "The artist formerly known as Bill Cosby" for obvious horrible reasons) To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With.   This album was an extended routine about two brothers lying next to each other in their apartment bedroom, whispering in argumentative fashion while fearing their old man coming in to beat their ass for failing to go to sleep.  

Now anyone who has a sibling or has had friends or cousins, et al, sleep over knows what this is like.  And the bit had a soothing sentiment to it.  

 

 I also lay there on other nights listening to Carlin.  Either Playin' With Your Head (the audio release of the HBO stand up special which I had recorded and repeatedly viewed) or Toledo Window Box.  Playin', particularly, was a tour de force of the man's domination of the English language.  His routines were so honed, so tight, there was nary a stumble of the tongue, much less an "uh.." to be found.  But the shit was so hilarious that you didn't realize you were in the presence of one of the world's all time greatest public speakers.  And that voice, that low, deep, yet slightly raspy tone could relax me even when talking about the funniest observations in existence.  It was only upon repeated listens that you realized that his speech was laser focused and error-free.

George could get me to shut it all down, focus on his genius, and fall asleep in a time where it was difficult.

 

 Billy Crystal's Marvelous! is another example of a comedy album that I could relax to.  Whether he was talking about libido in his youth, his flatulent grandfather, actors Yul Brynner or Edward G. Robinson, or doing impressions of his favorite boxers, an aged jazz musician, or his own character, Fernando, I loved it all.  The broad spectrum of places where humor could come from in his imagination was awe-inspiring and often touching.  There was a ton of fucking heart on this record, and it also made me unwind, and I recommend this semi-forgotten audio take of a video-recorded special as well.

Looking for Laughs, I guess in some cases, found me peace.

THOSE QUIET MOMENTS: ASPARAGUS HUNTING

Photo by Art Rachen on Unsplash

Late Spring, Somers, Wisconsin revisited. 

This goes back something like 50 years. 

Dad and I went asparagus hunting.  Yes, it is what it sounds like.  

We'd drive out to a rural train track area, tall conifers on either side, slight slopes rising from the tall grass to the tracks on the East and West sides of the iron thoroughfares.  

The asparagus grew close to the metal.  Dad and I walked along, Bob's frame leaning down with his pocket knife in his right hand grasping the stalk with his left.   He'd push the blade through the thick gree veggie with his thumb until it sliced the stalk, and then drop it into a paper bag.  I'd run along beside him, my hero, grabbing the tracks to feel for vibrations, (I feared the train much more than the old man did, after all he made his living loading cars on them for American Motors) and collecting shotgun shells that he allowed me to pocket.

I often found the glass electrical insulators from power lines laying around too.  With his cockeyed grin and a mop tousle with his free hand, he allowed me to keep those too. 

I can't stand the stuff now, but I loved asparagus back then.  We'd drive back home where mom would substitute it for the chipped beef in the gravy for the Wisconsin staple, "Shit on a shingle".  Or creamed substance on toast. 

God, I loved that stuff.   And I miss and love my Dad. 

This is what core memories are all about, brothers and sisters. 

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