Innehållsförteckning för October/November 2024 från Sound & Vision

Dubious achievements are flooding the consumer electronics and broad-cast industries. In our second annual Trasher Awards, we single out the most noteworthy companies and products. So, in the spirit of informative condemnation, our 2024 Trashers go to: ❱ WCBS TV for abruptly cutting in with the local news amid “Piano Man” during a live Billy Joel concert from Madison Square Garden. Fans who had been dancing in front of their couches were flabbergasted, dejected and outraged. Why couldn’t CBS have cut off The Masters that had run over earlier in the evening so that Joel could’ve started on time? (The network humbly reran the concert in its entirety the following week.) ❱ TV coverage of the April 8 North American total eclipse in which producers lit up their correspondents with…

As with many communities across the USA, the Tampa Bay area has implemented ATSC 3.0 broadcasting, which has been in service for over a year. Well, of sorts… There are no 4K signals yet; however, the participating channels (all major networks plus PBS) are broadcast over the air in 1080p and uncompressed to the extent the signal is scarcely manipulated from the control room on out through the transmitter. FOX and ABC, normally 720p via cable, streaming, and satellite, with CBS and NBC, stoically 1080i, are broadcast at 1080p, with the NBC signal in one “form” of HDR10. I say form because HDR10 live content is theoretically done using Hybrid Log-Gamma generated at the camera based on luminosity differences that vary between how a camera captures an image and how…

THE LATEST (and final?) Studio Ghibli anime feature from Hayao Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron, is a coming-of-age fantasy following a boy named Mahito whose mother dies, and his father then marries his mother’s sister. After the family moves to the countryside in the early days of World War II, Mahito encounters a strange talking heron that leads him into a tower where the world of the living and the dead intermingle. Along the way, he learns about himself, comes to terms with the death of his mother, and begins to reevaluate his relationship with his stepmother. Miyazaki infuses The Boy and the Heron with all the fantastical oddities he is known for, in the form of strange creatures and emotional journeys that bring about strong character development. The protagonist…

THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI tells the story of seaman Michael O’Hara, hired to work on a yacht belonging to the disabled husband of femme fatale Elsa Bannister. O’Hara is an innocent man drawn into a dangerous web of intrigue and murder that will leave him holding the smoking gun that could place him behind bars, or worse, headed to the gas chamber. Based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King, the movie was written and directed by co-star Orson Welles. It’s the very epitome of film noir and speaks to the genre on every level. Everything--from the seeming damsel in distress, murder plot, to the rough-and-tumble guy duped by the allure of a woman, now trying to piece the truth together--makes it entertaining to watch.…

ARROW VIDEO brings together Clash of the Titans (2010) and Wrath of the Titans (2012) in this limited edition collection, loosely retelling the mythology of the demigod Perseus (Sam Worthington), son of Zeus (Liam Neeson). Clash introduces Perseus, who must lead a mission to defeat Hades (Ralph Fiennes), god of the underworld, and battle the Kraken. In Wrath, Perseus is still at odds with Zeus ten years later, and must now team up with Andromeda (Rosamund Pike), Poseidon’s demigod son Agenor (Toby Kebbell) and fallen god Hephaestus (Bill Nighy) to rescue his father from Hades’ clutches. Wrath falls into the trap of many sequels by making everything bigger, but bigger isn’t always better. These films released at the height of the post-Avatar 3D craze and marketed as 3D fodder, with…

This will be the final print issue of Sound & Vision, which, sadly, also means this will be the end of this column. For 21 years I’ve had the privilege of sharing some advice and anecdotes in this space, and for this last column, I thought I’d take a look back on some of the highlights over the years and get a bit personal. And the best place to start is at the beginning… It is with no hyperbole that I say that home theater changed my life. I was working as a golf professional at a private club in Northern California when I first experienced a surround sound system in a home. One friend’s dad bought a JBL audio system called Music + Movies which included a basic…

Was it the carbonara? I wolfed down that big bowl of “coal miner’s spaghetti” but did the pork seem just slightly off? In any case, something sure made me drowsy, and now it feels like I slept forever. Did I pull a Rip Van Winkle and awaken years later? Or am I still asleep and this is all just a dream? Either way, here I am with the reincarnated Sound & Vision magazine in my hands. It’s the October/November issue. October/November 2124, that is. Wow! The future! But some things haven’t changed. For starters, fierce debates still rage in the audio/video community. Remember vacuum tubes versus solid state? VHS versus Betamax? CRT versus LCD? The analog versus digital brouhaha? Well, now we have a new squabble on our hands -…

MY FIRST foray into calibrating displays came about 20 years ago when I purchased a Hitachi RPTV (remember those?) and discovered various online forums that talked about getting the most out of your display through calibration. In those days, the controls needed to perform a full calibration required one to enter the factory service menu, which at that time intimidated me enough to hire a professional calibrator to do the job. Unfortunately, there weren’t many options in my area, and the gentleman I hired turned out to be a poor choice. I had to guide him on how to access the service menu, and I quickly realized I knew more about my display than he did. Although the picture was improved, I expected a professional to be more knowledgeable about…

THE BIKERIDERS is a period drama inspired by the book of the same name by Danny Lyon. It captures a rebellious time in America, focusing on a newly formed Midwestern motorcycle club, the Vandals, which begins to evolve from a friendly gathering of local buddies into a dangerous underworld of violence. The story is told from the perspective of Kathy, a strong-willed young woman who falls inextricably for Benny, the newest member of the club, after a chance meeting in a local bar. As the plot unfolds, we learn more about the club from the time of its inception in the mid-‘60s through to 1973. The timeline transitions in an interesting fashion as her retelling of the events peels back the layers of the club’s beginnings, first as a simple…

WATCHING WRITER/DIRECTOR/COMPOSER Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (Lola rennt), we can’t help but feel the energy that drives its titular heroine (Franka Potente). Her boyfriend, low-level hood Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), has lost a bag full of mob money and they only have 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 deutsche marks, or he’s toast. At a mere hour-and-a-third, the movie certainly doesn’t overstay its welcome, showing us three different outcomes without ever feeling redundant, we soon wonder: “What’s going to be different this time?” Unlike the alternate versions of events posited in Rashomon, a timeless statement on memory and perception, Lola is a profound exploration of fate and the power we hold over our own destinies… and it’s so damned entertaining. The story is propelled by the beat of the music,…

I’ve long contended that 1982’s The Road Warrior is one of the greatest action masterpieces of all time, and that its precursor, 1980’s Mad Max, is the better “movie,” telling a more well-rounded story with a protagonist ending up quite differently from where he began. And not since that original film have we seen such a nuanced origin drama as we’re given in the fifth installment in the series, Furiosa. Although not an innovative landmark like the movie that directly inspired it, 2015’s Fury Road, it doesn’t aspire to be. Rather, this is a prequel that reveals how Furiosa (then Charlize Theron, now Anya Taylor-Joy) came to be a no-nonsense, tough-as-nails Imperator. Taken as a child from her happy life in the Green Place of Many Mothers, which occupies a…

KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is an extension of the most recent Planet of the Apes film trilogy, set several generations in the future following Caesar’s reign. Apes are living harmoniously as the dominant species while humankind survives by hiding in the shadows. The story follows Noa, a young ape that goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he’s been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike. After seven years since the last film was released, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this new story but was hopeful. I enjoyed it, feeling as though it reached back to the roots of the original 1968 film. The storyline favors a tonally complex narrative that…

USING GRADUAL immersion in striking imagery and startling visual and audio juxtapositions, The First Omen, like such skin crawling art films as Dario Argento’s Suspiria and Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, achieves creepiness using traditional cinematic language of camera-work, lighting, editing, sound, powerful performances and virtually no CGI. It creates its atmosphere like a tale told around a campfire, so eerie that you can even forget its hairbrained premise. This run-in to The Omen (even including a photograph of Gregory Peck) is set in an Roman nunnery housing a maternity clinic and orphanage where all sorts of dark goings on gradually reveal themselves to an American novice-nun preparing for final vows. Captured by cine-matographer Aaron Morton in sumptuous 35mm film images, a digital 4K transfer was created for cinematic release from…

MANY WELL-RECEIVED films have explored the horrific subject matter of The Holocaust, and yet with The Zone of Interest, director/screen-writer Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin) has gone someplace new and uniquely impactful. In a stark contrast that stands at the heart of the drama, Rudolf Höss is the patriarch of a loving family and also the all-business commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Part of the German occupation in Poland, 1943, husband and wife approach their lives with utter complacency, unaffected by the atrocities taking place just a few yards away yet annoyed when a Jewish servant is perceived as disrespectful. Glazer favors long, unhurried, objective shots, further suggesting the sense of detachment. Even the title here is a polite euphemism for the site of the extermination camp, used by…

EARLY IN their career, Stone Temple Pilots were often compared to Pearl Jam, mostly because of the occasional guttural tone deployed by vocalist Scott Weiland that reminded people of Eddie Vedder. That said, STP and PJ were clearly different animals born and bred during the early ’90s alternative-cum-grunge movement, with PJ hewing to their Hendrixian-activist vibes and STP doubling down on unfurling surrealist lyricism atop a crunchy nest of Aerosmith-heavy guitars. Core, STP’s September 1992 debut, laid the foundation for a hard-rockin rollercoaster ride steeped in the three G’s—garage, glam, and groove. “Creating our own sound with a sense of space—that’s always the mission when you’re making an album,” Weiland told me in February 2015, less than a year before he sadly passed away that December. “The intent is to…