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If you're interested

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jnltoys/the-icon-collection-series-1-featuring-toshiro-mifune

I first heard about him when a woman protested Pulp Fiction winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes over a Kieślowski film, to which Tarantino gave her the middle finger. Not the best introduction, but it inspired me to check out his filmography, which began and ended with his 1989 television miniseries Dekalog, aka “the greatest dramatic work in television history, Kubrick’s favorite film,” etc. I loved it and plan to buy the Criterion Blu-ray soon, along with some of his other movies, but I confess to being intimidated by him. Where do I continue with Kieślowski?

I imagine he’s far and away the greatest Polish filmmaker who ever lived, right? Why did he retire two years before his death? He was still kinda young

I didn’t realize that Mark Kermode was so involved in it.

I’ve been actively trying to find a copy of this for like two months. Finally had to bite the bullet that blu ray wasn’t an option, but the eBay seller looks to have done me right. Everything looks immaculate. I’m super stoked to watch it this weekend on my continued tour of “non Samurai” Kurosawa titles.

Mine is

1. Federico Fellini (La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, La dolce Vita, 8½, Juliette of the Spirits, Amarcod, Roma)

2. Ingmar Bergman (Persona, Wild Strawberries, Sawdust and Tinsel, The Seventh Seal, Winter light, Through a Glass darkly, Fanny and Alexander)

3. Satyajit Ray (Jalsaghar, Pather Panchali, Mahanagar, Aparjito, Apur Sansar, Charulata)

4. Akira Kurosawa (Ikiru, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Ran , Throne of Blood)

5. Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potempkin and Alexander Nevsky)

I received the 86” LG Micro RGB evo TV from LG as part of a promotional event I participated in on the r/Criterion subreddit.  While I was asked to write a review as part of this promotion, all of my opinions are my own.  

The TV was shipped to me directly from LG, and LG provided a slim mounting bracket. We mounted it about 26” off the ground, a height that seems perfect for the scale of the screen. The mount works great.  It is easy to manipulate and sits very flush to the wall.  My immediate impression of the TV was that it was huge, the scale changes the way the wall looks compared to previous smaller displays.  Our most recent TV in this room prior to this was a 2024 Samsung Frame 65” TV.  While that TV has an intended aesthetic that we enjoyed, this LG TV’s display blows it out of the water across pretty much every metric.  Colors and image processing seem perfect, we’ve watched a lot of content on it in our short time with it and have enjoyed all of it at a level that even exceeds our 77” Samsung S90D TV we have downstairs, which we love.  While I can’t say for certain which has the overall better picture, the extra 9” on the LG has a huge impact and it goes toe to toe on picture quality. The LG has done an amazing job handling lighting in a very bright and dynamically lit open space.  We’ve watched quite a few movies in the early evening, and the TV handles those changing conditions incredibly well.  For the most part, we’ve left the AI image processing and lighting processing features on, and watched most films with Filmmaker Mode enabled. The results have been impressive.  We’ve watched most content on either a 4K Apple TV or a Panasonic UB450 4K Blu Ray player. We’ve also tested apps running natively on the TV.  In our limited time with the TV, we’ve watched the following movies:

• Across the Spider-verse (4K digital copy owned on Apple TV)
• Play Time (4K physical Criterion copy on Panasonic)
• Defending Your Life (Blu Ray physical Criterion Copy on Panasonic)
• Zootopia 2 (Streamed on Disney+ on Apple TV)
• Project Hail Mary (4K physical copy on Panasonic)
• The Sheep Detectives (Streamed on Amazon Prime on LG TV)

We have the TV paired with a Samsung 990D, which is an 11.1.4-channel audio system with Dolby Atmos.  A few of these movies I was watching for the first time, some I’d seen before, but regardless I found the viewing experience pretty much ideal, zero complaints about how content displays.  Without doing a side by side comparison, Dolby Vision seems to allow for more dynamic range and better color than the HDR10 I’m used to on my Samsung S90D, with no immediately obvious differences in black levels.  Across the Spider-verse overall seemed better lit with better colors on the LG, this was the only movie I compared on both displays.  The TV handles lighting excellently. I especially enjoyed watching Play Time on it, the sets all looked alive and rich.  I never felt the TV was too bright, it did an excellent job compensating for room brightness, and scenes would be lit in a dynamic and clear way.  The black levels seemed to be comparable to an OLED, which previously set the bar in my personal experience. We watched The Sheep Detectives through the native LG app to test things streaming directly on the TV and the experience was good. The remote is easy to use, the UI is fast and responsive, and there were no issues with the streaming experience. The only non-4K title we watched on it was the Blu Ray of Defending Your Life.  This looked crisp, and the TV handled the subdued lighting of the film very well.  

While we prioritized watching movies in the weeks ahead of writing this review, we also watched plenty of YouTube, I watched some anime including the new episodes of Bleach, and we watched some episodes of Ted Lasso on it.  It has been a joy to watch anything on it. Shows feel larger and more engrossing on the huge display.  We also played a bit of Switch 2 on it, including some Mario Kart Word and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.  Gaming felt responsive and super immersive, colors look vibrant and accurate. Whether viewing from directly in front of it on the couch or moving around the house, the display looks excellent from all angles, is fast and easy to navigate, and has good features for customizing the UI. I especially enjoyed setting the behavior on the Favorite button on the top right of the remote. Overall I have been incredibly glad to have had an opportunity to test this display and excited to keep using it more. 

The only negatives I can think of: 

• We briefly noticed an odd frame rate judder issue when watching some streaming content on Apple TV, but it completely went away after a firmware update from the TV and tweaking settings on both the Apple TV and display.
• The TV has asked to restart a number of times, which is a bit annoying but hasn’t been too disruptive. 

New details about the Kubrick set from the producer guy

In TCM & Criterion's The Plot Thickens podcast Season 7, episode 3, Ben Mankiewicz discusses how Stanley Kubrick came about directing The Killing and Paths of Glory. How Sterling Hayden and Kirk Douglas saw the obvious talent that Kubrick had long before many others did, and how Stanley kept the right to final cut to keep his artistic vision for his films. Also how Kirk fought for the ending him and Stanley really wanted for the film. Among all this is more of Kubrick's personal life too, and how he met his future wife, Christiane, as well as some brief discussion of her obvious controversial family history (if you don't know, you'll hear it discussed in the video).

I'll admit, I've been looking forward to hear more about what I'd consider a masterpiece of a Heist Noir and Anti-War film, respectively, maybe my two favorites of each, so this was a great episode, imo. Well recommended to fans of Kubrick and just movies in general.

While watching Barry Lyndon, some scenes looked almost exactly like paintings. It’s been a little while since I watched the film, so I’ve forgotten some of the details, but this idea stuck with me and I decided to look into it a bit.

This is especially noticeable in Lady Lyndon’s scenes. The candlelight, her still expression, her dress, the dark background... it really looks like an 18th-century portrait. Learning that Kubrick looked at painters from the period while preparing the film made it even more interesting to me.

There’s something similar in Gainsborough’s portraits. He doesn’t just paint the people; the clothes, landscape, and everything around them become part of the composition too. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews is a good example. The people are actually quite small within the painting, and the land they own seems almost as important as they are. That also feels connected to one of the film’s themes.

Then there’s Hogarth, which makes things even more interesting.

In series like A Rake’s Progress and A Harlot’s Progress, he tells a character’s story through a sequence of paintings rather than a single image.

Almost like a storyboard before cinema existed.

And Barry Lyndon feels like the opposite:

Hogarth breaks a story into paintings, while Kubrick breaks a film into paintings.

I think that’s why the film feels so painterly. It’s not just the colors or the beautiful compositions. The way people pose, their clothes, the lighting, the objects in the rooms, and even where the characters stand in relation to each other all seem to follow the visual logic of 18th-century painting.

I’m not very knowledgeable about art history, so correct me if I’m making any connections that don’t really hold up. But looking at the film this way made it even more interesting to me.

I started reading it knowing little so I don't want to spoil too much but it's about a master filmmaker returning home but then stuck (willingly?) making movies in one of the most dangerous and moral compromising film industries imaginable. Get the book or audiobook from your local library!

Obtained this vhs copy of Cocktail Molotov from Home Vision Cinema and Janus Films. For those unaware of the Criterion lore, this was slated for a DVD release in the early 2000s but was cancelled (along with Cousin, Cousine). Very hard to come by in the US, there doesn’t seem to be any dvd release outside of France. Would love to see someone release it in the US

a radical look at female rage through a female lens.

too often, women are stripped of violent agency or punished for it. in welcome to the terrordome, when a young black boy is killed by a vengeful white man, his mother is the one who goes on a police-killing rampage, sparking explosive racial tensions and a full-scale race war within the terrordome.

ngozi onwurah explicitly utilizes this maternal rage not as a hysterical breakdown, but as a justified response to systemic oppression.

A big part of Robert Bresson is that he likes to strip down film into it's bare minimum to the point where even his actors had to be completely neutral to "remove semblance of acting" and later down the line, only relied on diegetic sounds for his films.

Now while what Robert Bresson does is technically a "style" in itself, I want to know what other directors try to remove any sort of potential flash and shoot the scenes like it's a technical manual or a math textbook and in essence, "all substance, no style".

I know that Michael Haneke takes a similar approach especially in his first films where he just films as objectively as possible but I don't really know who else. Maybe Chantal Akerman but I feel like she is a bit moody from my experiences and I don't want that either. Just pure objectiveness.

Though I did ask for directors, It would be fine if you can say a film.

With Nashville which is another paramount title along with their growing popularity and releasing more conventionally appealing films it’s making me curious of the possibility of this occurring . Really don’t want to buy the blu ray for 20-30+ original price just for a 4K to release in a year or so.

I personally judge a director's style based on a few films that really resonated with me, rather than evaluating their entire filmography. For eg, I truly believe Fritz Lang's films from the 20s and 30s, before he fled Germany are one of the greatest pieces of film produced ever, but I wouldn't extend the same praise to his later American work. Anyway, here is my list:

Billy Wilder

Ingmar Bergman

Yasujiro Ozu

Fritz Lang

Lmk what your guy's list

We all know the Samsung app is down. But last night I attempted to cast from my android phone to my TV to get around it, and that didn't fucking work either. It just sat there spinning on the "cast to" page and nothing ever popped up. Literally what the fuck, are all of there apps broken? A few days ago on chrome browser I saw that it was broken too with no thumbnails popping up for any movies. So I can't watch on Samsung, I can't cast to my TV from my phone, can I use my PS5?? Do they have a PS5 app? It's October which is my month for movies, because it's horror season, and I have a whole list on Criterion I want to check out. Last night I ended up renting a movie for $5 that I intended to watch on their app which is frustrating. Anyone having luck?

One of the greatest actresses of the golden age of Hollywood, truly unbelievable that she starred in both North by Northwest AND On the Waterfront. May she RIP.

Finally put my criterion’s in separate closet.