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Ted (Blu-Ray)
by carlz2001uk
For my husband's Secret Santa this year he was quite pleased when he was bought the newly released Ted DVD as opposed to the usual joke novelty item he seems to receive. I was pleasantly surprised and we settled down to watch it last night with me knowing a little about it and my husband knowing nothing.
Firstly, I need to ... point out that this is absolutely not suitable nor will it ever be suitable for children, despite the cute looking teddy on the front cover. I dread to think how many 5 year olds will have an unsuspecting grandparent buy them this DVD for Christmas. It's not often I myself will read the blurb on the back of a DVD for children, nor really check the rating as if a cute looking teddy is on the front cover then surely its suitable for kids right? To put it bluntly, no! The film starts relatively harmless enough with a nice sounding man pleasantly narrating the story of a young boy named John who has trouble befriending children in the neighbourhood. The narration stops and John politely asks the local kids if he can join in and play (who are currently beating a boy because he is Jewish.... yes that's right!) and all innocence is lost when the main bully (who can be no older than 9) turns around and tells him to eff off (and he doesn't put it so politely!). So from this point on my husband is in fits of laughter while I'm still slightly confused! Kids of the 80's will like the opening scenes of the films which brought back childhood memories for me when they were opening presents at Christmas and they were items like Cabbage Patch Dolls and Nintendo consoles.
The introduction of the film is spent introducing lonely John who wishes that his new teddy bear (Ted) could 'really' talk, and as it is Christmas Night and magic is in the air, his wish promptly comes to life. A short amount of time is spent showing us how Ted shoots to fame across the globe but he never forgets his best pal John. Fast forward 20 years and Ted (and John) are not quite as innocent as when they first became inseparable....
I can honestly say this film is completely unique and I haven't ever seen a film like it before. It can certainly be called unique in that respect. I was originally drawn to the film as I'm a bit of a (secret) fan of Mark Wahlberg, and as the main actor he features heavily throughout the film as John. All grown up John has a fairly decent job as the next in line for the Manager of a car rental shop. He cannot however, be relied upon in any shape or form, and with best buddy Ted in tow they generally laze about, take (a lot of) drugs, watch 80s TV and films (Flash Gordon features heavily in the film!) and drive girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis) slowly up the bend.
There are some cringey moments in the film. Most definitely meant to shock, but for me, perhaps going a little too far. One comment from Wahlberg about the high school shooting at Virginia Tech was probably regrettable to the makers, after last week's devastating incident at Sandy Hook School. Even if last week's incident didn't occur I still think it's never appropriate to joke about something like this (even if the joke was aimed at the shooter). Another low point of the film for me was when one of Teds 'dates' decides to take a poo on the rug. I just didn't think this was funny? There was also lots of 'fat kid' kind of jokes which don't really do it for me.
The story of the film was okay, it's not going to win any Oscars but the general 'who will he chose' premise came into the film, as well as a bizarre kidnapping. It's one of those films where if you start to break it down you wonder where on earth the concept came from! Several cameo's in the film were amusing and Ryan Reynolds makes an unexpected appearance as a gay guy. He doesn't speak but it was still quite nice to see him! Ted Danson plays himself (making fun at the size of Woody Harrelson's penis, yikes!), and Flash Gordon also features. Giovanni Ribisi (Phoebe's strange brother from Friends) plays a very funny part, even if he is slightly creepy in the film.
The acting is good, and I have to say that Mark Wahlberg plays some excellent scenes in this film. A fight scene with Ted springs to mind and I was laughing uncontrollably at what he must have looked like while filming the scenes with a CGI'd Ted who obviously wasn't there when filming!
Other things that spring to mind are the strange elevator music which seems to be played throughout the film. The CGI of Ted is amazing and really believable that this little Teddy bear is actually real!
All in all, I would recommend you watch this film, even if it's purely to make your own opinion of it. It's not like anything you will have seen and you will laugh at (some) aspects of it.
The blu ray aspect I guess is okay but only if you really love the film. My husband sat and watched most of the extras but for me the film was enough. The extended cut is a bonus but I didn't see the original at the cinema so I don't know which we're the extra 6 minutes.
Extras include:
The Making Of: A Guy, A Girl And A Teddy Bear; Doing It Live; A MacFarlane Set
Alternate Takes
Teddy Bear Scuffle
Deleted Scenes: John Longs For Friend; Kid Smashes Pot; Pooped In My Hand; Doubles In The Bathroom; Someplace Classy; Sleeping With Rex; Donny Stalks Ted; Round Table Discussion; New, Grown-Up John Bennett; Dryer Ride; Making Smiles At You; John Talks To Everyone; Rex Asks Lori Out; You Smiled; This Is Theresa
Gag Reel
Theatrical Feature
Commentary with Director/Co-Writer Seth MacFarlane, Co-Writer Alec Sulkin and Star Mark Wahlberg
Rude, crude and full of sexual inuendo's, careful who you watch this with!
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All Quiet on the Western Front (Blu-ray)
by hogsflesh
This Universal Blu-ray is about £10 on amazon at present.
This is one of the earliest Hollywood films of the sound era that has remained popular (or at least, people have still heard of it. That's quite an achievement for a film that isn't a comedy, a horror movie or a gangster flick). It won Best Picture at the third ever ... Oscar ceremony and is that rarest of things: a Hollywood message film that doesn't drown under its own earnestness.
It's a Word War One film, with a strong anti-war message. It was controversial at the time because it is told from the point of view of the Germans, and it was felt in some quarters that humanising the still-recent enemy was somehow a bad thing. Ironically, the novel it was based on, and the film itself, were banned in Nazi Germany a few years later for being critical of the Wehrmacht. You can't win.
At the outbreak of war, a class full of idealistic German teens are persuaded to enlist by their patriotic teacher. We follow them through basic training, and then as they are sent to the front. There, inevitably, most of them are killed pretty quickly. The film focuses on Paul Baumer, one of the boys, and the various things that happen to him during the course of the war.
An awful lot of the clichés of war films start here. Young recruits being blooded; the harsh training regime; the old, wise, initially gruff but actually lovable fatherly soldier; the chaotic first battle scene and much, much more. This wasn't the first Hollywood film to be generally anti-war - a silent film, The Big Parade, got there first - but this is the first one (I think) not to have any kind of love story tacked on. Hollywood had typically used the war as a backdrop for love stories, as in films like Wings or The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There aren't many women in All Quiet.
It's remarkably modern in some ways. The battle scenes - the first one especially - are confusing and chaotic and violent. There's a myth that early sound films were unsatisfactory affairs in which cameras couldn't move and all artistry had been sucked out - I think this idea is largely due to the films Sunset Boulevard and Singin' in the Rain, both from the 1950s (i.e. far enough away to be able to make claims like that, confident that most people would have forgotten the reality). The battle scenes in All Quiet are exciting, with mobile camerawork that Spielberg would envy. A few scenes use sped up film in a way that looks a bit daft. This happens in quite a few early sound films (Fritz Lang was still doing it as late as The Testament of Dr Mabuse two years later) - evidently some scenes were shot silent with sound dubbed on later. But these are only a few moments in an otherwise very modern-looking film.
As was often the case in early sound film, there's no incidental music at all. This is probably preferable to modern war films, which often ladle on orchestral music, often over slow motion sequences, but the silence does sometimes sound a bit eerie.
Very modern - ahead of its time, really - is the film's attitude. This was made before the introduction of the Hollywood Production Code, which ruthlessly removed any hint of impropriety from movies. Consequently, it gets away with things that would have been unthinkable even three years later. There are brief flashes of male nudity, when some of the characters go for a swim. The fight scenes are violent - we see a pair of severed hands dangling from barbed wire. The trenches are teeming with vermin - we see the soldiers beating rats to death (happily no real rats seem to have been harmed). One of the raw recruits soils himself during the first artillery barrage (something I don't think you'd even find in many modern war films). And perhaps most surprising, some of the soldiers, including the hero, use food to buy sex from some local women.
It has its fair share of clunky dialogue. There's one scene where everyone sits around and bemoans the fact that wars are incomprehensible to people like them, and that it's government and big business who benefit. Which is true, of course, but doesn't have to be spelled out in quite such a clumsy way. There's a bit too much of that kind of stuff. It's unnecessary, as what happens in the film shows how rotten war is for the people fighting it. The film is great when it *shows* us war is bad. When it *tells* us war is bad it stumbles, and feels its age. The little lectures might be in the novel, it's been many years since I read it so I can't remember. If they are, though, they should have been edited out of the film. It's more effective when Paul goes back home on leave and finds that civilians have a completely unrealistic idea of what war is about.
The performances are good, although no one in the film is famous. The hero, played by Lew Ayres, is perfectly decent, and looks a bit like Jude Law. The most impressive performance is from Louis Wolheim as the grizzled soldier Kat. John Wray is also good as the loathsome Himmelstoss, the training sergeant. I guess Paul is meant to be more of an everyman figure than a compelling protagonist, and flashy performances would have been inappropriate.
The Blu-ray looks pretty stunning given the film's age age. It's had extensive work done to patch up the print (there are still scratches occasionally, but remarkably few). There's some visible digital jiggery pokery - faces occasionally have a weird sheen to them. But overall it looks fantastic - the level of detail is terrific, and while it looks like they've smoothed away a bit too much in places, all in all this is immensely watchable and hugely enhances the film when compared to other versions that have been available. That's all you really want from a Blu-ray. Universal are maddeningly inconsistent in their Blu-rays, sometimes putting in a lot of effort (the recent Universal Horror boxset), other times trying to fob us off with any old crap (the David Lynch boxset). Happily, this is one of their better efforts.
The extras are an odd bunch. There's not really very much that's specific to the film - apart, that is, from the silent version of the movie. It's basically the exact same film, but without synchronised sound, and with some intertitles in place of spoken dialogue. The performances are clearly pitched for a sound version, so it doesn't feel like a silent film, just a sound film with the sound turned down. The battle sequences still look just as good, but without the sound effects they do lose a lot of their impact. It's in standard definition, so makes a good comparison piece for the restored movie, just to see how much better it looks now.
Apart from that, there's a trailer and a short piece about restoring Universal's classic movies. Another seven-minute feature about Universal's Oscar winning movies feels pretty desperate. All Quiet was an unusually prestigious picture from a studio more used to cheap and cheerful horror movies, and Universal haven't made much noise on the Oscar front. There really aren't many Oscar winners to celebrate, and when clips from The Nutty Professor and The Grinch start to show up, you know barrels are being scraped.
The cover image annoys me slightly. There's a famous moment involving a butterfly in the film, so they've stuck a butterfly on Paul's helmet on the front cover. This is rather crass and feels a bit cheap.
If it's not as heavy on the extras as some releases, this is still a good enough version of a classic, rather neglected film. It looks great now, and is definitely worth getting hold of.
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