Latest

October 2018

The Criterion Collection 114
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment

Picture Quality

Sound Quality

Extras

In any conversation about screwball film comedies, My Man Godfrey is sure to be mentioned. Released in 1936, at the height of the Great Depression, it derided the rich as frivolous and empty-headed, and boosted good opinions of the poor, while still being breezy and riotously funny. One wonders if any of the ennobled poor could afford to see it.

Read more …

December 2020

The Trinity Session, by Canada’s Cowboy Junkies, was recorded in November 1987 and released the following November. Upon its released and afterwards, it was praised for its musical excellence and technical proficiency. Produced and engineered by Peter J. Moore, the album was recorded with a single Calrec microphone and a modified Beta videotape player converted into a digital audio recorder. Part 2 focuses on how the microphone was placed in the church the album was recorded in, as well as how the band was arranged around it.

Read more …

October 2018

JBL’s recent speaker updates recall David and Goliath. Last month we had the tiny Clip 3; this month it’s the brawny Xtreme 2 -- a loud-playing, 5.3-pound behemoth ideal for tailgate and pool parties.

Read more …

October 2018

Wouldn’t you love to find a $205,000 pair of speakers that actually performed as expected? Not just some company that claims their drivers were pressed on the thighs of tow-headed Swedish virgins and connected with 25K gold wires terminated with eight-way binding posts of 99.999%-pure platinum. You know the advertising hype you see in the more obscure audio hangouts. But how about something real?

Read more …

October 2018

Capitol B002842202
Format: CD

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

“With Music from Big Pink,” wrote musicologist Greil Marcus in his landmark 1975 book, Mystery Train, “the Band presented a rough moral drama. It had none of the mythic clarity of, say, John Ford’s movies; it came through a modern haze, something like Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller, obscure in its plots, dialogue hard to catch, communicating with a blind humor and a cryptic intensity nothing in rock ’n’ roll has ever remotely touched.”

Read more …

September 2018

Is the Hero of Ernst Lubitsch’s Comedy Hellbound?

The Criterion Collection 291
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment

Picture Quality

Sound Quality

Extras

You’d think most people would try to avoid spending the afterlife in Hell, but Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche), after ruling out admittance to Heaven in his own mind, is afraid he won’t be accepted as a denizen of the lower depths. His Excellency the Devil (slyly played by Laird Cregar) asks him to recount his life on Earth, including the women Henry has known. And that’s the basic story of director Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait (1943): Henry Van Cleve’s birth, coming of age, and adult years. Scenes in Hell occur only at beginning and end, to frame a tale told as one long flashback.

Read more …

September 2018

Some companies like to come up with all-new models every year; others continue to refine and upgrade successful basic designs. JBL, one of the latter, released the original Clip Bluetooth speaker in 2015. In 2016 came the Clip 2, which added waterproofing, and now we have the Clip 3, with a sturdier build, longer playing time on a full battery charge, and a rainbow of colors to choose from. JBL has eliminated a feature that some buyers might miss, but at $59.95 USD, the Clip 3 is still a legitimate choice in a very small Bluetooth speaker.

Read more …

September 2018

When the Beatles entered Abbey Road Studios in October 1965 to record their sixth studio album, they had no other commitments to worry about -- no tours, no movies, no radio or television appearances. Over the next four weeks, the group would complete Rubber Soul, their second album to be recorded and released in 1965.

Read more …

September 2018

ECM 2583
Format: CD

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

Is music for the whole body or just your brain?

Depends on the day and your mood, I would argue.

Read more …

August 2018

A Blu-ray Gem from Criterion

The Criterion Collection 939
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment

Picture Quality

Sound Quality

Extras

Released in 1946 in the UK as A Matter of Life and Death and in the US as Stairway to Heaven, this postwar film is a unique jewel of cinema that operates on many different levels and succeeds on all of them. Its creators, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who together wrote, produced, and directed it, had been approached by Jack Beddington, head of the UK Ministry of Information’s film commission, to make a movie that would soothe the frayed feelings between the UK and the US at the end of World War II. This genius partnership came up with A Matter of Life and Death, which, below its surface of romantic comedy, explores more serious matters.

Read more …