Category Archives: iTunes

Fight Club Compared: Blu-rays vs iTunes HD vs D-VHS vs DVD vs Laserdisc

Caustic, nihilistic and controversial, Fight Club successfully adapted Chuck Palahniuk’s transgressive fiction novel, it’s a credit to screenwriter Jim Uhl’s excellent adaptation that the voice of the original novel is heard so clearly, and at the same time the film proved to be an enormous success. Though much credit is also due to the excellent sound and editing: so much in this film depends on hitting exactly the right tone.

Based on a reader suggestion, I decided to take a look at the various home video versions of Fight Club that are available.

Continue reading

The whole crew on the bridge. Moscow Cassiopea (1974)

“Moscow: Cassiopea” (1974) and “Teens in the Universe” (1975)

Moscow: Cassiopea (Москва́ — Кассиопе́я) and Teens in the Universe (О́троки во Вселе́нной) are a duology of mid-1970s Soviet science-fiction comedy films, directed by Richard Viktorov (Ричард Викторов), and written by Isai Kuzentsov (Исай Кузнецов) and Avernir Zak (Авенир Григорьевич Зак). Originally intended to be a single film, a glut of footage enabled producers to split it into two eighty minute features.

The films are enduringly popular in the former Soviet Union, and were unavailable in any digital format until a 2007 DVD release, in 2016 both films were added to iTunes in high-definition, so I thought I’d take a look.

Continue reading

Dead Reckoning 1947 - title

Dead Reckoning (1947) iTunes HD Review

Bogart has a 007 moment at the Casino in Dead Reckoning

Bogart has a 007 moment at the Casino in Dead Reckoning

Dead Reckoning is a brutal, bitter, 1947, post-war film-noir thriller starring Humphrey Bogart. The story is very much in the Mickey Spillane mold, and was crafted by no less than five writers, which results in the narrative arc being ‘like Morse code’. Given the resumes of some of those involved the picture is somehow less than the sum of it’s parts, still, it’s unavailable on Blu-ray so I thought I’d have look at the iTunes HD version.

Continue reading