Oliver! on Blu + Podcasting News

April 10, 2014 | By
Oliver_poster

He wants some more, dammit!

Just uploaded is a review of Oliver! – probably one of the most solid musicals of the late sixties, directed with perfectionism by Carol Reed, a filmmaker better-known for his thrillers (The Third Man) than lighter material.

A few months ago I reviewed what seemed like a real oddity in his filmography, the Jesse Matthews screwball comedy / mish-mash Climbing High (1938), which is actually one of several frothy films Reed made before switching to war films, thrillers, espionage films, and dramas.

It’s fair to say Oliver! was Reed putting everything he had into what he recognized was an important film, perhaps feeling that this was his best effort at leaving his mark after a handful of big budget historical and political epics (The Running Man, The Agony and the Ecstasy) and a British film industry that wasn’t’ far from winding down as Hollywood was about to pull out, and with substantially less money to bankroll films, ignite a production crash.

Twilight Time’s Blu-ray offers the most extras among several Blu-ray editions released in Europe, and (for now) it’s the only BR release for North America. No doubt fans will be puzzled by Sony’s decision to abort their own prepped BR edition and stick with an ancient DVD release that’s also a flipper.

Moving on, coming shortly is a podcast interview with composer Ronen Landa (The Pact, Home), followed by a trio of podcasts that are prepped but had to wait until I redid the graphics for the opening and closing credits.

Whereas the audio-only versions on Libsyn just have a title card, podcasts archived on YouTube will feature animated intros, closing credits, and some graphic sections to highlight CD / MP3 releases, with some contextual links.

Put another way: I got sick of the old image and logo, and just like this site, I revamped the graphics so 2014’s slate of podcasts are a little richer. In the next Editor’s Blog I’ll have links to a cleaner HD version of the new credits on Vimeo, plus a short making-of blog at Big Head Amusements.

Expect the podcast to be live either late this evening or early Friday morning, so until then, here’s a set of frame grabs of the intro credits:

 

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Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

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Category: EDITOR'S BLOG

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