Something to watch tonight: The Edge

I’m going to be a bit cheeky today but I hope the ori­gin­al author won’t mind. Today marks the 16th anniversary of the first Some Came Running Blu-ray disc Consumer Guide by crit­ic Glenn Kenny. Some of you may have noticed that the archive is now housed here as the ori­gin­al host (Typepad) shut down last year. Glenn man­aged to cov­er a lot more ground in the years since than I have man­aged – espe­cially when it comes to the clas­sics – and he con­tin­ues to pro­duce posts at the new home of Some Came Running. From that first entry on 8 June 2010, I have chosen a film that con­nects back to Homicide last week via David Mamet and also has a homegrown con­nec­tion through the dir­ect­or, Lee Tamahori: The Edge (Fox): Not remembered as any kind of mas­ter­piece, and noted more these days as the source of a scab­rously funny story about Alec Baldwin and his beard than for any­thing else, this men-who-hate-each-other-but-are-nonetheless-forced-to-face-the-elements-together thrill­er, scrip­ted by David Mamet and dir­ec­ted by Lee Tamahori before he threw in the tow­el and turned semi-hack, is well worth redis­cov­er­ing, and this superb disc is the best avail­able way to do so. It offers an excel­lent image—fantastically sharp, with very accur­ate col­or. The video com­pres­sion is bet­ter than com­pet­ent: look at the gas lamp flares in cost­ar Anthony Hopkins’ face as he explores an Alaskan cab­in in the dark before stum­bling into his own sur­prise party: they have the solid­ity and real­ity you’re look­ing for. True, in some of the aer­i­el scenes objects do pop against the back­ground in that fake‑3‑D way you some­times get with over­pro­cessing, but it doesn’t hap­pen all that much and the effect isn’t as dis­or­i­ent­ing as it is in the legendar­ily prob­lem­at­ic Blu-ray of Patton. Pretty skimpy in the extras depart­ment, though, I must say: there are none.— A- Also fea­tured in Glenn’s first Blu-ray con­sumer guide (which covered a couple of months of releases): Cameron’s Avatar, a Hong Kong release of the 2006 film The Banquet, Battleship Potemkin, Criterion’s col­lec­tion By Brakhage, Carlito’s Way, Murnau’s silent mas­ter­piece City Girl, Franco Nero as Django, an A+ res­tor­a­tion of Dr. Zhivago, 1984 sci-fi Dreamscape, Lynch’s Dune, Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, David Caruso in Jade, Who doc­u­ment­ary The Kids Are Alright, Lang’s M (#36 in the S&S Greatest films of all time), Minority Report, Out of Africa, Ang Lee’s west­ern Ride with the Devil, Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes, Shutter Island, the Criterion edi­tion of Ford’s Stagecoach, Assayas’ “sub­lime” Summer Hours, late-period Coppola Tetro, Vampyres, Walkabout, and Benicio Del Toro tak­ing on The Wolfman. None of the images in Glenn’s ori­gin­al posts made it over from Typepad but the words are the thing, aren’t they? Where to watch The Edge Physical media: It’s not entirely clear wheth­er the Blu-ray that Glenn writes about here was ever released in Aotearoa. There are quite a few cop­ies lis­ted on eBay. But there’s always stream­ing, right? Aotearoa, Australia, Canada, Ireland & UK: Streaming on Disney+ India: Digital rental USA: Digital rental Further reading On the sub­ject of Tamahori’s The Edge, I reviewed Alec Baldwin’s auto­bi­o­graphy Nevertheless back in 2017 and he had a bit to say on the subject; Baldwin is sur­pris­ingly inar­tic­u­late about the art and pro­cess of act­ing. He’s stronger when he’s being gen­er­ous about tal­en­ted co-workers but he can occa­sion­ally be dis­missive too. In the chapter about work­ing on Mamet’s The Edge, NZ dir­ect­or Lee Tamahori’s second Hollywood pic­ture after the suc­cess of Once Were Warriors, Baldwin is scorn­ful of Tamahori’s cut­ting of Mamet’s dia­logue – “He does go on a bit” – when that dia­logue was one of the reas­ons he signed on for the role in the first place. The oth­er reas­on he chose to go to the Canadian wil­der­ness was to work with Anthony Hopkins, an exper­i­ence he is a lyr­ic­al fan­boy about.