Why So Blu?

Original.

inri222

What he said.

inri222

You ain't the only one

http://www.culturazzi.org/cinema/le-...eorget-clousot

...No other film ending has been as much debated upon as the ending of The Wages of Fear. Clouzot, clearly making a statement against the Hollywood endings, did the unthinkable and totally shattered the perception about films of the audience then. Additionally, the ending sequence also raises questions about death, fate and their inevitability, that reach out to everyone irrespective of their age, situation or morality. Till date, the ending elicits mixed reactions, ranging from brilliant to silly....

wakwak007

I'm with you SolidSnake WOF ending is the only reason why I haven't bought the film.

Solid Snake

I get it. It's not a hard ending to get. But after every damn thing we saw... The film ends like that. It just doesn't fit in comparison to what it led up to.

Saying that... I love the film still. Great BD.

davidlynchfan

I loved the WoF ending. Clouzot went for the jugular and accomplished exactly that.

Neil M.

Actually the ending fits pretty well.



In some ways, Sorcerer's ending is not much different than WoF. It's just in the way that it happens.

Neil M.

I have two complaints about the digibook of this movie.

1. Putting a loose letter from William Friedkin in the front. If you hold the digibook from the spine, it falls right out. Would it have killed them to add a sleeve for it?

2. The back of the digibook is an ad for Friedkin's book. Would have preferred some cool artwork or even a standard back cover.

Eddie W

At least you can read #1 and throw it away. He did the same thing with The Exorcist digibook & I finally got tired of it falling out & tossed it. Why the hell can't this just be another page in the book?

Yeah, #2 sucks. I used to like the simplistic look of them when they would use cool cover art & a nice image on back with the credits. Makes me want to superglue the spec sheet back over the ad.

slop101

I tucked mine into the last couple pages and never had it fall out.

I just put double-sided tape onto the spec-sheet that it came with and put that over the ad on the back and it now looks like it did when it was shrink-wrapped.

HGN2001

I used a spare, standard keep-case for a Blu-ray, scanned the back spec-sheet to reduce it to size, found the cover online and sized it, added simple spine artwork, took the Friedkin letter and stuck it under the clips, and filed away the digibook on a shelf with books.



The spine is lightly too fat, but this was a first attempt at such an endeavor on my own.

Harry

Swahili

I'd only seen this once before, and that was on that piece of shit 4x3 DVD that Universal had put out years back.

Holy fucking hell. This movie was so tense in parts that it made me physically ill. I believed that at any second any of these actors could be fucking dead meat.

GreenVulture

I think it's less "going for the jugular" and more "dopey and heavy-handed," but to each their own. I remember being really stoked when I got WoF from Netflix many years ago and then being disappointed after watching it. Then I saw Sorcerer shortly after that and--even on a crappy fullscreen DVD--was finally given the bleak and tense white-knuckle thrill ride the reviews for WoF initially promised.

Can't wait to pick this up!...when it hits a reasonable price.

Dan

I watched WoF last night and thought it was great. I can understand the complaints about the ending, though. I'd have preferred the suggestion from Neil M. above.

Hopefully I'll be watching Sorcerer tonight!

hasslein

I know it is supposed to be Scheider on the cover but to me it looks more like Friedkin.

Solid Snake

I was thinking the same thing yesterday.

hasslein

Wish they would have used original art on digibook, the block font on cover & spine seems just lazy.

Finally watched this last night. The added sound effect at the end was so subtle, I don't understand why they did it.

Also, I have always thought Roy Scheider was a far more interesting actor than Steve McQueen ... watching McQueen is like watching paint dry... Glad he got the role.

Keeping my full screen dvd for trailer & original color reference.

Paul_SD

After all my grousing about the hyper-saturated colors, I do have to admit this was one gorgeous looking disc.
After seeing the original for the first time just about 8 months ago, and not having seen this for at least a couple decades, I have to say Friedkin's version played substantially better for me. Across the board, I enjoyed the choices he made in terms of story/character. And visually and aurally, is there really any comparison here?

Solid Snake

What do you mean?

Doctorossi

That's pretty much the definition of "Can wait to pick this up".

TheDude

Saw Friedkin's Sorcerer on last year's Blu.....Wow. What a truly beautiful & sublime movie.

First of all, this print is gorgeous...it's definitely like seeing the film for the first time. Superb PQ & color...the green forest scenery was especially vivid; even the scenes during the downpour (as the trucks were driving over the rickety bridge) were quite clear. Those who were responsible for cleaning this picture up for this Blu print deserve a medal. This is definitely one of my all-time favorite Blu's of a '70's film, and is right up there with the Taxi Driver Blu...

The soundtrack by Tangerine Dream was astounding...I like their music in anything, but it especially worked here.

Re: the inevitable comparison to Wages of Fear, I did see that film and, to be honest, it doesn't hold a candle to the brilliance of Sorcerer. I feel Friedkin's film was much more intense & well done. Though, granted, I'm biased towards '70's films anyway since it's probably my favorite decade for cinema:

I thought it was great to see This exposition was missing from the WOF;

Also, the ending scenes were incredible:

-Great scenery

The final

I was also very impressed by the small HC booklet that came with the film (an excerpt from Friedkin's memoir); great insight on the making of the movie, and it was especially interesting to hear Friedkin's inspiration for the title of the film. Prior to reading this, I had no idea why a movie about a group of desperate men transporting dynamite across a jungle would be titled Sorcerer....

Didn't mind that there were no extras on this Blu; the print & film were so stellar that I honestly didn't care...

The only other time I had seen Sorcerer was the old pan & scan DVD from years ago; that print was horrible, and looked like a bad VHS rip...In any case, the PQ was so bad on that print that I actually couldn't make out most of the action, and therefore the movie didn't make a lot of sense to me...

I wonder why this film didn't do better in the theater? Possibly because, as Friedkin himself says in the book, it came out around the same time the original SW film hit theaters, and nothing much could compete with SW at that time...

Paul_SD

All the time I was watching it again, I couldn't help but think of how unfair it was in terms of the bad rap it's gotten all these years- as if the Clouzot original is SO perfect as to be sacrosanct.
I can fully understand how in it's era and even well past that, that the film would have been unique and in certain respects, profound.
But by the time Friedkin went to work on his, post Viet-nam, the idea of corporate exploitation of workers, or the injustices visited upon the third world backwaters by US or multi-national businesses, was far from new.
I see a lot of reviewers take Friedkin to task for down playing that aspect of the material- as if he had to keep beating that same drum for the film to have substance. Without that, critics like DVD Savant argue, the film is just an empty exercise in prettily shot, thriller sequences.
I don't agree.

I'm not a big fan of Friekdin's. Every thing I've heard about the guy makes him seem like a huge ass to me. And I really only like three of his films. But two of those films I find hugely underrated (this and Brink's Job). And for all his faults, I don't view him as nearly as self indulgent and profligate as someone like Chimino. He may have went radically over-budget with this, but it wasn't in the service of excess. The suspension bridge sequence required an expensive re-shoot, but the eventual effort works in the film and it's pretty damn essential in terms of pace and form of the film as a whole.

And as far as the choices he makes with story and characters, TheDude already hit a lot of the points I would have made. By embellishing the drivers backgrounds, and giving them this exposition (all of which I found well done for it's, by necessity, short-hand nature), he is substantially differentiating his take from Clouzot's and that in itself makes this a valid effort worthy of viewing on it's own merits.
Then, when you add up those other merits- stunning location work, gorgeous cinematography, exceptional editing, committed performances, all set to a soundtrack that was utterly unique at the time and since has only seemed more contemporary...it's a pretty sound achievement to me.

It was a huge pleasure to watch this again last night and so extremely satisfying to see it presented well- finally.

Solid Snake

Wow. France is getting a nice collector's set by La Rabbia/Wildside on December 2nd...




I'd love something like that for us here.

TomOpus

Oui oui!

JumpCutz

Yeah, I'm going to have to get that.