It Honestly is.

And then... there are those EUROX OP and ED songs... which are Transcendent Experiences all their own that MUST be heard in order to be Believed...

Last night the boy and I watched: Macross The movie : Perfect Edition (1984) [BEAL-448]

Even after having seen this thing 100+ times I still found the music to be extremely atmospheric and wonderful, it always is. The "summer of 84" was nostalgic even IN the summer of 84.

I made a note to remember to play Macross: Ai Oboete Imasuka (Do You Remember Love?) (1984) [PILA-7008] when possible from now on to save wear and tear on players.

watching Gamera: Super Monster and I just realized, this is the closest we've ever gotten to any OG Space Battleship Yamato in HD in the west at all and that's just sad.

Watching the old PBS series "I, CLAVDIVS" [ID7990PA].
The Robert Graves novels brought to life by Jack Pulman.

A bakers dozen of episodes circa 1976.
A young John Hurt, Brian Blessed, and Patrick Stewart with hair !
Sian Phillips as a wicked Olivia, wife of Augustus Caesar who poisoned generations of potential Emperors and Republicans !
John Hurt as Caligula Caesar stands out big time.

Derek Jacobi as Claudius was a lifetime affecting role.
Derek made a significant appearance in Ridley Scott's "Gladiator" as a Roman Senator pushing for a return to a Republic.

Check this major production out.
A well done PBS production and an excellent history lesson.

Cheers to the membership !
Safe holidays mates.

It’s a wig. Patrick Stewart went bald very early which he used to his advantage when trying out for parts. He would sometimes wear the wig and then take it off to surprise people that this guy in his 20s was actually bald and could play a larger age range more convincingly. With traveling stage productions with little budget this was a genuine practical advantage. If you are going to wear a wig anyway you can wear any kind of wig you want.

He was only 47 when Next Gen first aired, I’m a bit older than that now but I look 15+ years younger than he did in Farpoint. He’s the Grandpa Jones of sci-fi.

Zeta, thank you...
Had no idea that was a wig he was wearing as Serganius. Damn smart wig to be certain.
Now I have to tell my wifey " Look honey, its a wig, he went bald early in life ! ! ! "


Cheers to the membership !

I highly recommend his autobiography, Making It So. It’s terrific.

This was back in December but Watched the Wild Robot, GOOD MOVIE!!!

Decided to give CITY HUNTER (1987) a try.

Many of the incidental Women involved are about as Charming as can Be.

The Male Lead, however?!? ... Mokkuri. Yay. 'Nuff Said.

The Nurse in Eps. 20-something-or-other was as ♥Lovable♥ as it gets... so it hasn't been a TOTAL waste of time...

One day you’ll learn to not hate yourself for being a man. One day. Until then City Hunter is for someone else, obviously.

How do you feel about the Jackie Chan version? I love it. Naturally the hero is a lot more honorable in that one.

The LaserDisc Format... - much like the Anime Genre itself - has this Funny Way of attracting People with... Issues.

I Mean; CH really wasn't hardly the worst thing ever... i Guess i just have this a Chip on my Shoulder about "Teasing" is all.

my Father was the sort that was always "Teasing" me and my mom in often rather Crass ways throughout my Child/Teenhood in the 80's and 90's.

He was all-too-often Explicitly Crass in how he chose to discuss Women in General... this going all the way back about as far my childhood memories reach.

I Suppose i REALLY SHOULD Lighten the hell Up Already... all of these Decades on. Just Know; that there are REASONS why i so happen to feel the way that i do about a lot of things.

That Said; Finally... Getting to See this Masterpiece as it has been Meant to be Seen since 1984;

I had *two* a*****e dads. You have to move on though. Megazone 23, of all things, has a lesson about that.

The Japanese release of Castle of Cagliostro Blu-Ray from the Studio Ghibli library. Castle in Sky Aka Laputa. and The Cat Returns. All region A Japanese releases.

I also watched Bubblegum Crash Blu and then watched the OVA of the original Bubblegum crisis from the 3 disc Kickstarter. AnimEigo. The original OVA is way better and had a bigger budget and has better music and more of an epic scale and scope. On Laserdisc I never noticed the corners cut on the follow up 3 Ova series. AnimEigo did what they could with an upscale but the results is like polishing a turd if you can forgive the expression. Everything from the art design and the sound design is noticeably inferior.

That was pretty obvious at the time. BGC was a weird perfect storm of an OVA series but it collapsed. The magic would not be repeated.

I have been watching a lot of films recently. Usually I watch one film per day, sometimes 2. Letterboxd most certainly helps me keep track of it all.

Anyway I have come to realise that I somehow seem to be stuck in the past. I usually watch films made in the 20th century because honestly I haven't seen many great films that were made in this century. I did try to watch all of this year's Oscar nominees but I must admit I feel quite underwhelmed.

Anora, really ? Best film ? Are they joking ? And that actress got an oscar, too ? I mean she is OK but I thought there were some really boring scenes in that film. There was a scene where that stupid husband of hers just ran off and she was stuck with those Armenian/Russian gorillas in his mansion and this scene just dragged on and on and all she did was repeat herself and scream. And that wins you an oscar nowadays ? That's sad.

I also saw A Real Pain. I was really excited to see this one as it takes place in Poland and the film's director has recently been granted Polish citizenship by President Duda which I thought was nice. Again I was disappointed. The acting was subpar, it didn't evoke any particular feelings inside me. I couldn't connect to the two cousins at all and the film contained some irritating factual errors. For instance the train's exteriors never matched the train's interiors. Those are two completely different trains but I guess many wouldn't notice it but this is something that I usually pay a lot of attention to.

The only film that I thought was somewhat pleasing was The Brutalist. At least it had a soul, I liked the ending but it was also really really long and should have been one hour shorter.

The Substance had a promising start but then the end was a bit too much but 2/3 of the film are OK.

Now some of the other films that I have watched recently for the first time and thought were excellent: Jésus de Montréal (fantastic!!!), Solaris (with George Clooney, I love it), Rollerball (better than expected, looks excellent for a film made 50 years ago), Thief (I love Michael Mann and this is the only film of his I hadn't seen up to that point and it was brilliant, too, excellent score, stellar performances, great story), Amistad (liked it a lot, there were some heartbreaking scenes, like one during which slaves were simply thrown off the ship as the slave ship was running low on provisions), The Horse Thief (fantastic Chinese film from the 80s about Tibetan culture, beautiful cinematography), Railroad Man (very very good Japanese film about an aging station master in Japan who will have to retire soon), Love Letter (very good Japanese romantic film), Black Robe (best film I know about Native Americans in North America), and many others...

There are also those films that have a special place in my heart and that I never get tired of watching and that I also saw most recently (again): The Bounty (fanastic score by Vangelis, amazing cinematography, Anthony Hopkins at his best here), Blade Runner (in 4K for the first time, amazing 4K disc and experience), Basquiat (I love this film, great cast), Mad Max 2 (best action film ever, perfect), The Year of Living Dangerously (very good film about 1960s Indonesia, again excellent performances, one oscar (best actress), Glory, Open Your Eyes - Abre los ojos, Bloodsport (best martial arts film, interesting views of colonial-era Hong Kong), Videodrome, Scanners (I love Cronenberg), etc.

There are three things that prevent me from watching most new movies.

1: The violence, which can be extreme and in virtually any film since PG films are rarely made for adults anymore.

2: Superhero/remake/genre crap.

3: The sound design, which seams to range from cliche to painful in virtually everything. Sounds of knives being sharpening used to emphasis other sounds. Endless bass waves that mean nothing. Amorphous pads that announce key moments in the film to sorta…pre-stress the viewer. Sound tracks that are just bland smears of strings and synths and not really an actual score or worse soundtracks that are just a mix tape.

So what I’m saying is that the newest movie I’ve seen was The Penguin Lessons. It was good. It was based on a book but barely.

The real sad part is when you watch an older s****y film and realize it was actually good compared to the garbage they pump out today.

Recently viewed letterbox version of original ROLLERBALL on LD.
Difficult to get tired of this circa 1975 Jewison epic.

Found a nice making of feature on YOUTUBE while on Holliday.
Fun stuff.
James Caan had not been the first choice to lead it appeared. Rumblings of Sylvester Stallone circulated during script writings. Reccomend the making of content. Director really laid it on the line. A big hit in Europe in hindsight.
Just posting here inclines me to view it again !

Since you guys posted about recent trash movies being the norm churned out as of late, was glad to share this was recently spun up (AGAIN) before my getaway to Ireland.

Hang tough people.
Cheers to the membership.
Keep 'em spinning !

Yes and apparently the remake with Jean Reno is total rubbish!

I watched Street Smart with Morgan Freeman today. It's not the best film of all times but Morgan Freeman got an oscar nomination for it and deservedly so and it's a film hardly anyone knows. It is one of those films with a mediocre story but with a terrific performance by one of the leading cast. This scene is unbelievable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTYE6lfWZzU

(Direct embedding didn't work for this video) That's real acting here! Plus it has a great unreleased score by Miles Davis. The cues are excellent.

Anyway what I have noticed is that the 2015 BluRay that I watched has mono audio even though the laserdisc was Dolby Surround and imdb.com says that it was filmed with Dolby Stereo sound.

It actually sounds perfectly fine despite being mono but I would have preferred the original sound mix, of course.

I don't understand it. This is also something that I have noticed with the Secret Admirer BluRay. It's mono but the film itself was released with stereo sound and the laserdisc is Dolby Surround, too.

This doesn't make any sense at all. Sometimes the laserdisc is the best option out there at least if you want to want to hear the original sound mix as it was shown in the cinemas.

Watched 'When A Stranger Calls Back' last night. I'm actually impressed how it looks on my 75" Toshiba. I have a Pioneer CLD-D503 using a JVC DR-MV150B DVD recorder as a passthrough for HDMI. Might give the Star Wars trilogy a watch tonight, but kinda want to wait until my CLD-870 player arrives.