Laser discs, DVDs, BluRays, et al.
It was supposed to mean so much for home entertainment. Add in streaming and suddenly all must be right and true in the world.
Only it's not.
Many films -- good and great -- have not been issued as streams or BluRays or in any format. in the last five years.
Some did make it to VHS so you do have a shot at getting someone to do a transfer of the videotape to the
1) In The Spirit
2) Nasty Habits
3) Robert Altman's H.E.A.L.T.H.
4) Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie.
5) Robert Altman's Come Back To The Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
Those are only five films in need of a genuine release.
Genuine?
Amazon did offer streaming of In The Spirit (if you were smart, you purchased it then because it's not available now). The Elaine May and Marlo Thomas comedy classic was a theatrical film. The stream Amazon offered was a stream edited for basic cable TV -- swear words removed.
A remastered version of the five films above would be wonderful but we'd settle just for the theatrical versions.
If you don't know the five, you're being cheated.
Sandy Dennis is in two of the films.
In the Watergate satire (Nasty Habits) set in a convent, Sandy Dennis gives a gloriously loopy performance whereas she gives a more layered performance in the Robert Altman tragicom which finds her as a desperate character who has passed her child off as the son of James Dean.
Altman uses mirrors to expand a single set, to play with time frames and to create a sense of haunting. Come Back To The Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is an acting marvel (Sandy, Cher, Karen Black, Kathy Bates, etc.) but it's also a film that bends and alters the constraints of narrative.
