A Scene From Parts Unknown Presented Without Comments
A Scene From Parts Unknown Presented Without Comment
February 1943: Air Force
It’s a war movie!
I’ve seen some spy stuff during this blog series, but very few out-and-out war movies. And it’s by Howard Hawks, so it looks like the shots are gorgeous…
Except that the transfer I have i ridiculous. There’s digital artefacts all over the place. Not just banding and exaggerated grains, but also a harsh mp3 audio track.
It basically looks like they mastered it off of a VCD disc downloaded from a 1998 torrent site.
Very not pleasant.
Anyway, this won the Oscar for Best Film Editing, which is, I guess, a way for people to say “this movie wasn’t very good, but we appreciate the effort”.
Because this is an odd movie. We follow a crew flying around the Pacific for hours. So lots of tight shots inside a plane, and then composited above documentary footage of locations.
Ah… it had a difficult production. I guess that explains the weirdnesses.
But I don’t know whether my general dissatisfaction with this movie is due to the bad DVD or whether the movie is just kind of boring. It’s 95% character development.
Air Force. Howard Hawks. 1943.
Popular movies in February 1943 according to IMDB:
| Poster | Votes | Rating | Movie |
|---|---|---|---|
 | 2340 | 7.1 | Air Force |
 | 491 | 7.1 | Kid Dynamite |
 | 241 | 6.9 | Claudia |
 | 246 | 6.7 | Reveille with Beverly |
 | 265 | 6.1 | The Youngest Profession |
 | 3090 | 5.5 | The Outlaw |
 | 949 | 4.6 | Dead Men Walk |
This blog post is part of the Decade series.
January 1943: The Hard Way
Opening with an attempted suicide, that’s not what you expect when imdb says that this is a romantiv musical. The scenes of industrial grime in a factory town are stunning.
imdb is on acid, of course. This is a movie about struggling out of property and the hard-nosed grift needed. Ida Lupino is brilliant as the schemer and Joan Leslie is perfect as the ingenue.
But… the last half, when we get The Moral, just isn’t very exciting. “Oh, yeah, being relentlessly ruthless might perhaps not be healthy. Got it.”
Basically: The first half hour is great, and then it’s off into very clichéd territory. I love melodrama, but this goes all kitch.
The Hard Way. Vincent Sherman. 1943.
Popular movies in January 1943 according to IMDB:
| Poster | Votes | Rating | Movie |
|---|---|---|---|
 | 47154 | 8.0 | Shadow of a Doubt |
 | 291 | 7.6 | The Adventures of Smilin’ Jack |
 | 431 | 7.3 | Forever and a Day |
 | 810 | 7.2 | The Hard Way |
 | 554 | 7.0 | No Time for Love |
 | 1740 | 7.0 | Tarzan Triumphs |
 | 627 | 6.7 | Immortal Sergeant |
 | 379 | 6.6 | The Crystal Ball |
 | 672 | 6.4 | Hitler’s Children |
This blog post is part of the Decade series.
A Cover Of A Comics Magazine Presented Without Comment
Download Codes
I mostly buy music on physical format because… I don’t know. I’m old? Right. So included in the latest batch was the new single from 80s phenomenon Soft Cell:
And as is often the case these days, there’s a download code included so that people presumably can avoid actually listening to the vinyl:
Now, I usually ignore these download codes, because my experience with them is pretty negative: You usually get a badly-organised zip file with some crappily encoded mp3s, and no cover artwork or anything, so it’s just a lot less work for me to just sample the vinyl, really, since I’ve got that pipeline set up nicely.
And besides, mp3 eww dude!
(The exception here is the excellent Bandcamp site, which gives you perfectly-organised zip files of high quality FLAC files, including nice cover artwork. Virtually all the music I’ve bought online is from Bandcamp.)
But this download code said “download the free digital album”, and I though “uhm, there’s an album? The vinyl is just two songs but perhaps there’s an album included somehow?” I mean, it’s unlikely, but it’s possible. Things are weird in music these days.
So I go to The Sound of Vinyl, and there’s this page:
So I tried clicking on the “enter this code field”… but that turns out to just be a picture.
But there’s that big red button! Let’s try clicking it!
…
So to get the “free” “digital” “album”, I have to do a social media hookup thing? Or give them my email?
Yeah right.
But?
Argh.
So the scam here is to gather contact information, I guess? Well, fuck you then, The Sound of Vinyl.
Feel free to use the secret code if you want to. I guess it’s first come first served?
It’s not a very good single.