Posts Tagged ‘The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3’

Tony Scott: A Flickchart Retrospective

23, Aug 2012
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Movie fans were saddened by the passing of director Tony Scott in an apparent suicide on Sunday, August 19th. Though never achieving the acclaim of his Oscar-nominated brother Ridley – in either a critical (Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) or cultural (Alien, Blade Runner) sense – Tony Scott was nonetheless a filmmaker of genuine talent.

Scott was never as interested as his elder sibling in crafting films made to stand the test of time. Instead, he was far more concerned with living in the cinematic moment, in bringing us moments of exhilaration, escape, and just a good ol’ time at the multiplex. And along the way, he created for himself a distinct visual style that has been aped by many other action directors, yet never quite duplicated.

Here, we simply wish to honor the memory of Tony Scott, and revisit his body of work in true Flickchart fashion: by examining a selection of Mr. Scott’s films two at a time, head-to-head.

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Resisting the Blu-ray

24, Mar 2011
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I am a movie lover, but I keep telling myself I don’t need Blu-ray to prove it.

What’s the big selling point? As my wife reminds me, I don’t have a high-def TV, so picture and sound quality aren’t my biggest concerns. There’s the argument of durability; so far, I haven’t had much problem with my DVDs, and I own so many that I haven’t come close to wearing any out.

Special features? Well, I used to be a junkie for those. I own the four-disc Extended Editions of all three of Peter Jackson‘s Lord of the Rings films. Each of those extended movies is three-and-a-half to four hours long, and I watched them multiple times. Each of the three sets has documentaries clocking in at longer than the films. I watched all of those. I watched two of the four available commentaries on all three films. Are you totaling those hours up? I’m trying not to.

Obviously, this was all before I had kids…

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