Innehållsförteckning för August/September 2021 från Sound & Vision

Ultimate A/V AS I SIT DOWN TO write this editorial, summer has just fully kicked in and, after more than a year stuck at home, I’m striving to get outside and do outdoor stuff as much as possible. But by the time you’re reading this, September will be approaching, and my attention will be fixed on the CEDIA Expo tradeshow, a showcase for home theater, automation, and multiple other developments in connected home technology that’s scheduled to take place from September 1-3 in Indianapolis, Indiana. CEDIA Expo 2021 is being pitched by the event’s organizers as a “reunion,” and with the 2020 show having been cancelled for obvious reasons, that label will certainly apply. As I walk the show floor, I’m sure it will take time to adjust to the…

Quincy Jones has always been a maverick. The multi-hyphenate octogenarian producer/musician/conductor/director has been tireless in his decades-long quest to widen the listening base for multicultural music into as many ears and souls as he can possibly reach across the globe, genre biases be damned. At age 88, Jones continues to follow a mantra best encapsulated in a slightly modified song title from his late pop protégé Michael Jackson: don’t stop ’til you get enough listeners. And now, with his burgeoning streaming service Qwest TV making continual A/V inroads, Jones is one step closer to mass enlightenment. Qwest TV is the logical brand extension of a pair of Jones’ other well-entrenched media conglomerates, Qwest Records and Qwest Broadcasting. Launched in 2017, Qwest TV’s goal is to be known as the “home…

GEORGE HARRISON HAD A stockpile—fantastic compositions overlooked by his bandmates over the years, along with some written more recently following The Beatles’ official breakup. The band’s final album release, Let It Be, came on May 8, 1970. But by that time, George had already put the ball in motion to begin recording his first true solo album later that month: All Things Must Pass, a triple-album set released in November that year. The album featured 17 new songs, along with a bonus disc of jams recorded mostly during the sessions, Apple Jam. ATMP's 50th anniversary is now being feted with a suite of new special editions, which include a brand-new remix from the original multitrack tapes by Grammy-winning engineer Paul Hicks and executive-produced by George’s son, Dhani Harrison. The special…

By the late 1970s, Hollywood was ready for a new action hero, and George Lucas was eager to oblige. Collaborating with some of the brightest talents in the business, he concocted Indiana Jones, a globe-trotting archaeologist who was tough as nails, rough around the edges, capable, resourceful, yet also quite fallible. As they say, “Women wanted him, men wanted to be him,” and his treasure-hunting escapades immediately redefined what popcorn cinema was all about. One poster for his debut, 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, proclaimed, “The return of the great adventure,” and it was true. For folks who couldn’t get on board with the science fiction and fantasy of Lucas’ Star Wars saga, Indy was a relatable, two-fisted lug everyone could embrace, and so they did, across three sequels…

THE MESSIAH HERE is Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), preaching and gathering disciples to join him in his efforts to help feed and free the people. Judas is Bill O’Neal, the follower who’s secretly working for the oppressive force—the Chicago PD and the FBI circa 1968, who see the BPP as more of a threat than the Russians or the Chinese. Although the story is told from the perspective of the unsophisticated petty car thief O’Neal (facing a six-and-a-half-year sentence unless he goes undercover for the feds) the heart of the film is charismatic leader Hampton, AKA Chairman Fred. He’s a brilliant, highly educated, and eloquent orator able to fire up audiences with his powerful expression of ideas. But he also wins…

CALLING BOB MARLEY the king of reggae is a bit like saying Jamaica is a nice place to visit for fun in the sun. It’s truly a shame Marley passed away from melanoma at age 36 in 1981 before he could get a full whiff of just how far-reaching the music he helped pioneer has rolled in the ensuing years, but Island Records founder and unyieldingly ardent Marley advocate Chris Blackwell and his forward-thinking label compatriots had the clear foresight to compile 14 of the man’s top grooves and singles for inclusion on May 1984’s Legend: The Best of Bob Marley & The Wailers LP. Their passion for uplifting Marley’s vision was quite prescient, seeing how Legend has since become one of the best-selling releases of all time (25 million…

The luxury video business is hard. Don’t believe me? Consider companies like Pioneer, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Runco, Escient, and ReQuest. And those are just a few brands that have either exited that market or no longer exist. One company that has consistently delivered the highest-quality home theater experience since its inception 20 years ago is Kaleidescape. From day one, the movie server pioneer pushed the technology envelope via its “Kaleidescape experience.” Nearly every photo you’ll see of a luxury home theater system will feature Kaleidescape’s iconic grid-like cover art display. If you experience a high-end A/V manufacturer’s theater demo at a tradeshow, the source driving the system is likely to be a Kaleidescape. I have a unique relationship with the company having covered it from almost the start. I’ve had…

TODAY’S PROJECTION SCREEN SCENE is far more complex and competitive than it was even a short 10 years ago, with numerous companies now offering a wide range of screen types at various shapes, sizes, and prices. Narrowing the options requires research, together with careful consideration of your specific needs and viewing environment. How tightly can room lighting be controlled? How big does the image need to be? What is the preferred aspect ratio? Should the screen’s frame be fixed or retractable? Finally, how do today’s high dynamic range (HDR) requirements—unknown a decade ago—figure into the choice? Four key screen characteristics should be at the top of your shopping list: size, shape (aspect ratio), material, and gain. A qualified custom installation professional can easily select the right screen for your situation…

UNIVERSAL STUDIOS needn’t have advertised on Nobody’s disc cover that it sprang from the mind of Derek Kolstad, writer of John Wick, since it’s at its core the same movie. And that’s not such a bad thing, since the erstwhile-enforcer-makes-a-violent-comeback formula is a winning one. This time the story lives or dies on the substantial charm of star Bob Odenkirk, who for the most part keeps his renowned comedic chops under wraps, instead allowing the humor to grow from the incongruity of suburban schlemiel Hutch’s explosive and deadly skills. An unfortunate break-in shatters Hutch’s humdrum routine, igniting the dormant badassery of his former life, with events quickly escalating and running him afoul of some very nasty folks. They push him, he pushes back: We’ve seen this all before, just not…

THIS SUBTLE, slow-burning, but ultimately moving film tells the tale of a struggling Korean immigrant couple raising two children in Reagan-era America. They try to live out the man’s dream of owning a farm and raising Korean crops, settling on an isolated piece of land with a trailer home in Arkansas—because it has the “best dirt in America.” Initially, the tone is decidedly downbeat, with the unhappy, quarrelsome family facing an uncertain future in a strange, isolated place. But then wacky grandma comes to live with them. (Yuh-Jung Youn won best supporting actress Oscar for her performance, and Minari was also nominated for five more Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor, Director, Screenplay, and Music.) Armed with chili peppers, herbs, and plants (including minari), plus worldly wisdom from the old…

IT’S THE END of the world and Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) doesn’t feel fine. He’s unhinged and uneasy. He’s been sleepwalking, waking up in the middle of golf courses, and experiencing waking daydreams. A jet engine has fallen from the sky and crashed into his bedroom and a giant rabbit named Frank is telling him the world will end soon unless he stops it. But how? This bizarre psychological sci-fi thriller from writer/director Richard Kelly (Southland Tales) is set in an ’80s Virginia that could stand in for any affluent suburb of the era with its perfectly trimmed lawns, bullying teens, and too-busy-to-care parents. Donnie Darko suffered from hitting theaters at the worst possible time—right after 9/11 when the country was looking for something less dark and brooding and more…

AFTER ALMOST a year-and-a-half in lockdown, I was honored to be the first member of the press to experience the KEF Music Lounge Theater. In late May, I visited the company’s U.S. headquarters in Marlboro, NJ and received a warm—and long overdue—Jersey welcome from KEF VP David Kroll and marketing director Stephanie Scola. Work on the theater was largely finished in February 2020 just weeks before the country went into lockdown so the magnificent space with its 9.10.6 Dolby Atmos speaker layout and 160-inch screen sat largely dormant for more than a year. As restrictions eased in the spring of this year, KEF was finally able to put the last piece of the puzzle in place when the theater received official THX Certification. The christening, as it turns out, couldn’t…

MOVIES CAN REVEAL a world mainstream audiences might not have been aware of, and in doing so they go beyond mere entertaining to offering actual enlightenment. Such is the case with Nomadland. Winner of 2020 Oscars for Best Picture, Director, and Actress, the film depicts a culture of folks with little in the way of material possessions—really just a vehicle and a few incidentals—who relish their freedom and mobility as they roam this great land. Who are they, and what led them to this lifestyle? As fictional Fern, Frances McDormand guides us through countless truthful moments (culled from Jessica Bruder’s fact-packed source material), combining an innate playful charm with a heavy heart due to personal loss. Fern is the thread that holds this patchwork narrative together and makes the journey…

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’S play Pygmalion premiered in London back in 1913. Loosely based on an ancient Greek myth, its plot involves a linguistics professor, Henry Higgins, teaching a bedraggled flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to speak proper English—not only well enough to pass her off as a duchess at an embassy ball, but to “get her a job as a lady’s maid or a shop assistant, which requires better English!” But it’s the 1964 Oscar-winning film, My Fair Lady, that’s most familiar to today’s audiences. Based on the wildly successful 1956 Broadway musical, the movie follows Shaw’s razor-sharp dialogue almost word-for-word, though Shaw’s original play lacked the “happy” (or at least ambiguous) ending of both the stage musical and film. The songs by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe range from…

AS ACCLAIMED AS Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 magnum opus Déjà vu is, it somewhat helplessly plays perpetual second fiddle to the sea change garnered by the stacked-harmonic convergences in evidence on 1969’s Crosby, Stills & Nash, which preceded it by 10 months. Granted, CSN was a breath of fresh vocal-arrangement air and instinctual instrumental accompaniment, but Déjà vu fostered the initial intersection of the volatile four-way street of headstrong artistic personalities with the addition of Neil Young into the fold. Déjà vu purported to prove the maxim “the sum is greater than its parts”—but in the quite specific case of CSNY, the corollary is the individual parts remain A-level creators on their own. Current artistic and personal estrangements may preclude this fantastic four from ever recording and/or performing…