What are you watching?

[BULUPTAX]

I watched Hard Boiled from John Woo in 35mm at the cinema last night. I'd seen it before and it's a phenomenal movie but there was a live jazz band playing during the movie. Their job was to "embelish" the movies score with improv jazz but it honestly ruined the experience. It's such a shame because it's a great movie and I love love LOVE seeing movies on film.

Hopefully I can catch it again some day without the score.

I saw Blade Runner with a live performance of the OST alongside it once and that was done seamlessly but yeah this sounds like a really strange choice to go with. 

4K release for this (and other John Woo movies) is on the horizon, feels like I've been waiting an age for it. I hope Shout do a good job with it, haven't watched too many of their transfers yet but I know a lot of people were hoping anyone else got the rights to the Golden Princess catalogue, but it seemed like it just wasn't ever going to happen so let's hope they do these movies justice.

I wouldn't have minded if it was a live score session but I guess since they couldn't mute just the score on the film print that "embellishing" was all they could come up with. But why did they even need to have a live band at all? Is screening the movie on an original film print not special enough already?

I heard something about his older HK movies not being available on Blu Ray for so long was due to them being tied up in some complex rights issues. it'd be really cool to see more of his stuff so I'm just happy if they get released at all. It beats torrenting old DVD rips imo


Anyway I saw Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning today. It was pretty dope but there were some pretty large gaps between action scenes, more so than Dead Reckoning. All in all, a pretty good send off to the series, assuming they don't cave and make more some day.

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