Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-12-28 (Saturday)

On 12/29/2024 8:24 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
 

Beastmaster (4K disc) 1982 sword and sorcery movie written and directed
by Don Coscarelli.  Marc Singer stars as a man who can talk to animals.
Rip Torn stars as the villain who murders the king and takes over the
kingdom.  Singer is the young prince/hero who has to rescue the princess
and save the kingdom.  Mostly background noise with the commentary track.

 This is not terrible, and the tv series was not terrible. If they tried
a little harder, it could have been much better entertainment.
 

I remember when I was a kid this movie was really good, and really scary.  Not so much now.  From the commentary it sounded like the director was having constant battles with the producers.  They also had issues with what was written in the script compared to what was actually possible with the animals they had on set.  He also mentioned everyone was very excited when they managed to get Tanya Roberts a playboy centerfold because they thought it would help promote the movie, but then the magazine issue came out a couple of months after the movie's release so it didn't help.

Ladyhawke (blu-ray) 1985 sword and sorcery (or close enough!) movie
directed by Richard Donner starring Rutger Hauer as a hero who must save
a damsel in distress (Michelle Pfeiffer) who has been cursed to turn
into a Hawk each sunrise.

 Shrek? Is Hauer doing a ridiculous Scots accent?
 

This took me a second to get.

The problem however is he has also been
cursed to turn into a wolf each sunset.  This is a movie I watched all
the time when I was a kid.  Then it disappeared from TV rotation and I
didn't watch it again until almost 10 years ago when I bought the
blu-ray.  When I last watched it, I did not enjoy the movie at all.  Not
only did I not like the story, but the picture quality was unwatchable.
It looked like a bad DVD.  I was shocked when I was checking out the
blu-ray reviews ahead of putting the disc in and the review said it had
good picture quality.  And sure enough, the picture quality was fine.
The movie's plot still wasn't so good, but at least it was watchable and
I was able to squeeze a little more enjoyment out of actually being able
to make out what was happening on screen.  There must have been
something off with my equipment last viewing.

 You lifted the curse? It turns into a bad movie at sunset?

I'm not at all sure what the problem was then.  But I was using completely different equipment 10 years ago.