Review: Play Misty for Me
09-16-01 | 04:29 PM
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From: Olympia, WA
Play Misty for Me
I picked up a copy of PLAY MISTY FOR ME at Best Buy Friday Night. It's a very good looking 16x9 anamorphic transfer that appears to be remastered. Bruce Surtees' cinematography of the California coast looks great, the colors are vibrant yet realistic, though some of the night scenes are a little grainy.
Laurent Bouzereau, whose documentaries are becoming the standard for solid well made documentaries (Hitchcock, De Palma, etc.), has provided us with a fifty minute documentary with lots of new interview footage with Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills, one of the screenwriters, Dean Riesener, and one of the producers, whose name presently escapes me.
The Producer and Eastwood also talk about the Monterey Jazz/Pop festival verite scene and the Sea side/"First time ever I your face" montage, and why they were included in the film. Those two scenes always took me out of the film, and I thought they should have been excised, though Eastwood makes some good points on why he left them in, and I now find myself agreeing with him that they are necessary for the film to work, though maybe some judicious editing could have tightened those scenes.
There is also a humorous Eastwood anecdote about Don Siegel's and John Cassavetes' comments after a sneak preview of PMFM. And speaking of Siegel, Bouzereau directs a seven minute short about the relationship between Siegel and Eastwood, and the similarities between the characters portrayed by Eastwood in the Beguiled and PMFM.
The only downsides might be that it would have been nice if Universal would have included a new surround audio mix to go with the original mono mix, and I think the seven minute documentary should have been edited into the fifty minute documentary, but these are both small small quibbles.
If you like Eastwood's directorial debut, I highly highly recommend you pick up this disc. There's a very good solid transfer, and some nice extras to boot.
cheers, Tony Block
Spoiler:
Laurent Bouzereau, whose documentaries are becoming the standard for solid well made documentaries (Hitchcock, De Palma, etc.), has provided us with a fifty minute documentary with lots of new interview footage with Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills, one of the screenwriters, Dean Riesener, and one of the producers, whose name presently escapes me.
The Producer and Eastwood also talk about the Monterey Jazz/Pop festival verite scene and the Sea side/"First time ever I your face" montage, and why they were included in the film. Those two scenes always took me out of the film, and I thought they should have been excised, though Eastwood makes some good points on why he left them in, and I now find myself agreeing with him that they are necessary for the film to work, though maybe some judicious editing could have tightened those scenes.
There is also a humorous Eastwood anecdote about Don Siegel's and John Cassavetes' comments after a sneak preview of PMFM. And speaking of Siegel, Bouzereau directs a seven minute short about the relationship between Siegel and Eastwood, and the similarities between the characters portrayed by Eastwood in the Beguiled and PMFM.
The only downsides might be that it would have been nice if Universal would have included a new surround audio mix to go with the original mono mix, and I think the seven minute documentary should have been edited into the fifty minute documentary, but these are both small small quibbles.
If you like Eastwood's directorial debut, I highly highly recommend you pick up this disc. There's a very good solid transfer, and some nice extras to boot.
cheers, Tony Block
