In LA

Today I received one of those marketing emails from Amazon of the sort that I usually ignore, but this one was trumpeting the preorder availability of Jaws on Blu-ray (also includes DVD and some online streaming version that won’t play on my Apple TV). Exciting! At the risk of seeming super-commercial I’m going to talk about this¹.

For all the criticism and blame Jaws receives from cineastes² for ending the era of 70s studio auteur³ films, the film responds by just being unassailably great. There are some magical moments –a child imitating his dad’s serious poses is my favorite bit (and I was happy to see it referenced by J. J. Abrams in his Ted Talk as an influence ), followed closely by Robert Shaw’s monologue about the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. The Jaws theme is well known, but the rest of the score is also memorable –the jaunty ‘Out to Sea‘ comes to mind. The production was plagued with technical problems, which I hope the extras on the disc expound upon at length.

The chances of me buying this disc are pretty high.

It also seems the price has dropped on the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Blu-ray/DVD Combo. If I didn’t already own this, I’d buy it in an instant. This amazingly-risk-taking film is mostly fantastic, and where it falls short I credit it greatly for trying. A very fun film –artistically bold, fast-talking, with a screwball comedy feel. A great looking and sounding disc, and now at $7.99 it’s cheaper than going to the theater.

This concludes me posting sales-y stuff for today. But I do think both of these films are worthy of multiple viewings, especially by filmmakers.

1. and maybe include an affiliate link or two [↩]
2. Is that word a pejorative yet? [↩]
3. Can this word please become a pejorative? [↩]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2012 at 4:12 pm and is filed under Deals, Filmmaking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.