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For anyone that doesn't know yet, HAWAII will be coming on Bluray from Twilight Time in Januray (along with its sequel in February) probably with an isolated score too.
We don't know yet if it will be the roadshow version or the general release version.
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Well, why bother releasing HAWAII again on video, if it's not the roadshow version?
I refused to buy the previous DVD because it was the cut version.
Even TCM no longer shows the roadshow version, for some inexplicable reason, because they certainly used to.
I first saw HAWAII when it first came out, in the fall of 1966, and still have the hardbound souvenir program, which is available on E-Bay, for anyone interested. For all the spectacular vistas in it, the film is a remarkably intimate story, about the eventual redemption of a rigidly dogmatic man, who, supposedly acting on "good intentions," ends up destroying much of what he encounters in his life.
HAWAII is one of several films I saw in my adolescence that eventually led me to living there, and becoming more than acquainted with their lives and culture. A truly life-changing experience.
Elmer Bernstein's score is one of his best, and among my Top Ten favorites. I can practically recite it from playing it so many times. (When I lived there, I noticed that a number of local entertainments used cues from the score as part of their presentations.)
I'm sorry people want to criticize us FSM'er's who remember the roadshow presentations. I'm sad that this way of seeing films is virtually no longer possible for contemporary audiences. 2001 to me is inconceivable on a small screen. In the original Cinerama version, it had such depth and expanse to it, probably tame, compared to contemporary effects, but, in 1968, a revelation. (And, remember, 2001 also had an overture...) But it's almost impossible to see these films today in the manner in which they were originally meant to be seen. Talk about gone with the wind...
Seeing these films was not like just choosing something from Netflix. They were an event. You had to make an effort to go see them. There's nothing like that today. (Although there really should be. I mean, what's this with 3-hour films, and no intermission? That's something all the LOTR films, among many others, could have benefited from. Although, sadly, knowing contemporary audiences, a lot of people would probably leave at the intermission, not being aware of what it is, or that a second part is due to start in 15 minutes. That's how culture changes, very quickly, it seems.)
Seeing HAWAII helped change the path of my life, whatever the quality of the actual film. Movies are like that, and their music in particular. They resonate with places in our souls we never knew were there, and activate responses leading us into new directions.
So it was for me, and probably, in different ways, so it has been for all of you.
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Well, why bother releasing HAWAII again on video, if it's not the roadshow version?
update from TT's facebook:
"MGM/UA did not think to do a hi-def master of the roadshow version which has now all but disappeared from view. So our compromise is we have the shorter version in HD, and we will include the roadshow in standard def on the blu as a bonus."
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Well, why bother releasing HAWAII again on video, if it's not the roadshow version?
update from TT's facebook:
"MGM/UA did not think to do a hi-def master of the roadshow version which has now all but disappeared from view. So our compromise is we have the shorter version in HD, and we will include the roadshow in standard def on the blu as a bonus."
It's things like this that make me dislike MGM's restoration department more and more. Still, at least we know both versions of the film are on there, even though the roadshow version is only in SD.
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Posted: |
Oct 10, 2015 - 3:10 PM
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By: |
Regie
(Member)
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Wonder if the venomous attitudes toward Kael have more to do with envy of someone who had the sweeping erudition and cajones to defy malignment, and/or if some contributors here remain locked in roadshowitis, a recurring malady I occasionally have to fight off after I’ve “conducted” Bronsilav’s “Bounty” overture at home.
If some FSMers aren’t making insupportable claims over what Kael said or represented — the latest is Regie’s assertion that Kael “formalized” and “academicized” film criticism, a flat out contradiction of her style and expressed intent — they’re curiously attributing quotes to her. Just for the record, she never wrote, and to the best of my research never publicly said, that “Hawaii” was “anti-epic,” whatever the hell that means. Should matter to those in perma-mezzanine retreat what she actually wrote: “‘Hawaii’ is an epic in the tradition of best-seller adaptations like ‘Gone with the Wind.’”
William’s facetious enough to make something up that Kael wouldn’t say — “Ah, I see it’s a Hawaiian picture: it’ll give me a chance to knock the awful music cliche” — but lax enough to avoid her review’s opening shot: “The overture to ‘Hawaii’ prepares us to expect the worst: it’s the kind of all-purpose pastiche with excruciating claims to authenticity that sells (six hundred thousand albums of ‘Dr. Zhivago’ [sic] have already been sold) and inevitably gets nominated for an Academy Award.”
Initially hesitant, William condescended to reprint what Bernstein said to Thomas and it’s not too much different than what’s in the movie’s souvenir booklet: Elmer “had to cut through thick layers of ukulele-hula musical forms on which the present day tourist is fed in order to capture the true flavor of the music the missionaries might have heard on their arrival in the Islands in the early 1800’s. On numerous visits to the Islands and in conference with musicologists there and by listening to the sounds of ancient indigenous instruments he developed a musical score for the film which he believes to be in the true spirit of the time and place.”
Let’s not be fooled — the claim of “true spirit of the time and place” is deceiving. Bernstein admits to making things up “whole cloth” and then sheepishly uses the responses of contemporary Hawaiians who thought what they heard in the score “sounded Hawaiian.” How could they not hear the similarities? The sounds of romantic paradisiacal Hawaii have been shaped by more than 75 years of commercial inventions from American movie, television, hotel, tourist and music industries.
Roadshowers love the tingle flesh of the rousing, the melodic and the all-important hook, but we also have to face that even in subjectivity, there’s truthiness: There’s not a track in Bernstein’s score, including “Abner” which earns ironic Kaelesque hyperbole from PhiladelphiaSon, that is musical art. But what’s delivered as ersatz is enjoyable.
I've just read this. Pauline Kael did indeed contribute, as I've suggested, to the academicizing of film criticism. I didn't say she invented this and I have my piece of paper with "Master of Arts" written on it to validate my claim.
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Sad, but this makes the best of a bad situation. At least the roadshow version will be easier to up-rez from DVD/Blu-ray than it has been from the laserdisc.
Further update by TT says that this will be the same 4:3 letterboxed LD master.
No anamorphic.
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Yes, but which versionof Hawaii will get the music only track - the short hi def version or the bonus roadshow. If the short versionk, then we will STILL not have the complete score from this wonderful film.
i guess the iso score will be in the short HD version.
Not on the bonus.
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