Monday, March 19, 2007

Today's Political Musing

This morning, Presidential Press Secretary Tony Snow was asked about Alberto Gonzales and he said, "We hope he stays." Since all these guys serve at (to use the cliché) "the pleasure of the president," doesn't it come down to he stays if Bush wants him and he goes if Bush doesn't? Rarely does a presidential appointee depart over the objections of the Chief Exec and every single story ever written about Gonzales, incuding those written by his supporters, has stressed his unwavering loyalty to George W. Bush. So what is this nonsense about "hoping" he stays?

• Posted at 9:52 AM · LINK

Blast That Peter Pan!

The Disney DVD folks have issued a new, 2-disc version of Walt's animated Peter Pan. Here's an Amazon link to purchase it and here's why you might not want to. A number of animation websites (like this one) have erupted in discussion of the transfer which some say is not what it should be. I saw a bit of it in a store the other day and it looked wrong to me, but I (at first) figured the shop's TV was misadjusted or something. I mean, if ever there's a film restoration that you'd figure the issuers would get right, it's something like this, and it gets back to our oft-discussed topic. You know the one: How studios will put out a wonderful, complete, everything-a-collector-could-ask-for DVD of some movie...and then they convene a staff meeting to discuss how they can put out another version later on that the same people will feel they must also purchase.

One way, some have learned, is a better transfer. In fact, last time we discussed this, a friend in the business wrote to me and said the following about a movie (not Peter Pan) that his company was selling on DVD...

When we put [the movie] out, there was some talk of using the old transfer for the DVD. This was a transfer done some time ago, I think for when the film first came out on Beta. No, no, the boss said. We need a new, deluxe transfer. He was right. The studio spent a lot of money and had a beautiful transfer done. They restored many faded or damaged frames and it really looked superb. But when it came time to put the DVD out, they used the old transfer even thought the new one was all done and paid for. At first, I thought it was an incredible, horrible mistake. What lunkhead had used the wrong transfer? I found out later it was intentional. At the last minute, someone decided to save the good transfer for the next release in a few years. It was your old "let's make them buy it again" theory.

In other words, the image quality is supposed to get better and better from release to release, not the other way around. It's more than the right thing to do from the standpoint of honoring the work and respecting the consumer. It's just good marketing.

I'm not casting my lot completely with those who say the new version of Peter Pan is a bad transfer. Not yet, anyway. I've only seen about two minutes of it on someone else's set...but it was enough to send up a warning flag. The maddening part of this, of course, is that I'll probably buy the thing anyway, just for the special features. If the image quality is as bad as some say, I'll probably sit there watching the film, thinking to myself that in this version, the pirates win. I may lead an expedition to track down the guy who's responsible and make him admit he's a codfish.

• Posted at 9:44 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here's a great clip but it requires a little explanation. In the early days of talking pictures, the studios had a problem. It was pretty simple to sell silent films to foreign countries that didn't speak English. You just had to change the title cards. But when sound came in, the technology to dub movies into other languages was not there, and the producers didn't want to lose all that overseas revenue. The solution at some studios was, amazingly, to film some movies multiple times with multiple casts speaking multiple languages.

Our example today is of Laurel and Hardy, who did a number of these. They didn't do it with all their early talkies but they did it with some. They'd shoot the movie in English and then, using the same sets, they'd go back and do the film again in Spanish, German, Italian and/or French, depending on market conditions at the moment. A few of the same supporting actors could be used but for the most part, they'd bring in bilingual actors to take over the other roles. One interesting example is that Boris Karloff, who apparently spoke pretty decent French, was in the French version of their feature, Pardon Us. In it, he played a part that someone else played when the same film had been made in English.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were monolingual so they had to fake it. Obviously, pantomime scenes were no problem and it was sometimes possible to use what they'd filmed for the earlier version in the foreign version. But when it came time for dialogue, their lines were written out phonetically on blackboards just off-camera and a coach taught them how to pronounce words and where to put a certain emphasis or gesture. I've heard mixed things from people who understand these other languages as to how well Stan and Ollie came across. They did this for a while...until dubbing became practical.

Foreign versions of their pictures are of special interest to us Laurel and Hardy buffs for obvious reasons but also because many contain material that was never in the English editions. Some films ran longer overseas and in several cases when The Boys were making shorts for the American market, they'd be making patchwork features for foreign countries — several U.S. shorts stitched together via the addition of new scenes to connect the storylines. Our clip is from the Spanish film, Los Calaveras, which combined two shorts — Laughing Gravy and Be Big — into a feature. (There was also a French version of the same thing called Les Carottiers.)

So here's five minutes of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy speaking Spanish. And remember: This is not them being dubbed. This is them reading Spanish dialogue off a chalkboard...

• Posted at 1:00 AM · LINK

March 20, 2007 • Current • March 18, 2007