婚庆行业行业竞争:用英文写两部电影的介绍，请快一点~~~~~~

The Sound of Music
(LaserDisc Review)

The sparkling THX Laser Disc letterboxed transfer of The Sound of Music has been reissued by FoxVideo without supplementary features as a Widescreen Laser Disc (0897285, $60), and in tandem, Fox has issued a new THX Pan & Scan Laser Disc (0897280, $60). We reviewed the THX letterboxed presentation, which replaced a hopelessly muddled non-THX letterboxed version, in Jan 95. The picture and sound on the new THX letterboxed release are identical to the earlier THX letterboxed release. The colors are fresh and the stereo surround sound is lovely. That stereo surround track, however, sounds hopelessly muted and banal when compared to the disc's new AC-3 audio track. Regular sound effects have a little more life and bass in them on the AC-3 track, but the music is a great deal more detailed, as if a more populated orchestra were playing the score. After you listen to it, you can't go back to the other track. The Pan & Scan disc also has AC-3, though the directional sound effects, such as the location of Julie Andrews' voice in the opening number, are somewhat disconcerting when her image is continually centered in the screen. The letterboxing has an aspect ratio of about 2.2:1. Those who watch the film's annual reprise on TV will be familiar with what cropping does to the movie. Some of the closeups are stronger, but the widescreen camera angles are so carefully composed that cropping throws off the movie's emotional rhythm. Thehues in the cropped picture also look a bit light, though that is more from the loss of its compositional balances than from a shortcoming in the color transfer. The 174 minute program is spread to four sides in CLV with the Intermission serving as the platter break. The chapter encoding is not detailed enough to suit our tastes, but is still reasonably extensive, and the jacket guide is fine. The discs are closed captioned with some paraphrasing. We refer readers to our earlier review for details on the dramatic content of the joyful, award-winning musical.
***
The 171 minute The Abyss Extended Version , which is the most legitimate and rewarding version of James Cameron's science-fiction spectacle, has been released by Fox Video as a CLV THX Laser Disc in both a Pan & Scan Extended Version (0896880, $60) and a Widescreen Extended Version (0896885, $60). We reviewed the THX CLV Special Edition release of the letterboxed version in Apr 93 and the THX CLV Special Edition Pan & Scan disc in May 93, both of which featured the 171 minute film and the same lengthy supplementary features. The movie is spread to four sides on the Extended Version discs, accompanied by a brief 'making of' featurette but nothing else. What has been added to the Extended Version discs is AC-3 sound, and it is quite impressive. Not only is there more surround and a stronger, sheerer bass, but even the front separations are more pronounced and more detailed. (A friend reported having trouble with dropouts on a couple copies of the letterboxed disc, but we didn't come across the problem.) The film's regular audio track has always seemed extremely impressive, but in comparison to the AC-3 track, it sounds wimpy. The picture quality, identical to the Special Edition , is quite nice, even as it is subjected to the many challenges inherent in underwater movies. The environment may be murky, but the image is sharp. As we explained in our May 93 review, both the letterboxed and the Pan & Scan renditions are approved by Cameron and both work, so you basically just have to pick one and go with it, perhaps favoring the letterboxing, which has an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1, if you have a large monitor and the Pan & Scan , which adds some picture information to the top and bottom of the image and removes some from the sides, if you have a smaller one. The discs are adequately closed captioned and chapter encoded. Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio star in the elaborate film, about an underwater mining crew who come into contact with aliens many fathoms beneath the surface. We refer readers to our earlier reviews for more details.

Tarnished Lady

Tarnished Lady (1931) is the first film for which Cukor earned solo directing credit. It already shows Cukor's key characters, quite fully developed. There is the virile, socially successful, well dressed businessman. There is the dreamy, not very forceful man in the arts, gentle and romantic, a man who is critical of the society around him. There is the heroine, eager to make something of herself. These three characters, and the romantic triangle they form, will appear in picture after Cukor picture, always with interesting variations. They show up even in films that Cukor adapted from literary sources. For example, in Gone With the Wind (1939), virile businessman Rhett Butler, dreamy, gentlemanly Ashley Wilkes and heroine on the make Scarlet O'Hara are Cukor's familiar trio. Ashley is not involved with the arts, and is not especially critical of society, but otherwise these are Cukor's standard characters. I have no idea how Cukor does this. Around 90 billion people have seen Gone With the Wind, and almost all are convinced that Cukor simply adapted the characters from the novel. Still, the personalities they so strongly convey on screen seem to come from inside Cukor, not from the pages of a book. Similarly, the characters in Tarnished Lady are richly developed.

Also typical of Cukor: the way the heroine marries the businessman for money. This is the first of numerous liaisons in which a young woman will sell herself to an older, successful man, who will look out for her and try to promote her career or interests. Cukor is unusually sympathetic to such relationships, sometimes suggesting they are good for people, not bad. Usually the man is worldly wise, and the woman is very naive. Here the heroine eventually decides that the man she has married for money is a better person than the boyfriend she rejected. This boyfriend is a wimp. Like the later Ashley, he seems entirely lacking in any sort of drive. Some later versions of this artist character will be much more dynamic, notably Jack Lemmon's filmmaker in It Should Happen to You (1954). Lemmon will get the girl, something that many of Cukor's earlier dreamy characters do not.

This sort of triangle drama was a well established screen genre, long before Cukor's debut in motion pictures in 1930. It is similar in its basic architecture to Jacques Feyder's The Kiss (1928), for example. Both have famous woman stars at their center: Greta Garbo and Tallulah Bankhead, respectively. Both mainly deal with these ladies' romantic encounters, which produce melodramatic triangles. Both involve both soap opera style suffering, and plenty of pleasant escapist wish fulfillment fantasy. Both have some Art Deco sets, although this is true of many Hollywood films of their era. Another film in something of the same mode: Clarence Brown's Possessed (1931). These films were probably considered "women's films" in their day. They still seem extremely absorbing: watching them I got caught up, fascinated by what was going to happen next. Cukor's film is especially rich in character revelation. Each scene brings some new facet of the characters and their personalities to light. The people in this movie are complex, and so are their reactions to the situations around them. Cukor is very clear in his exposition: we always know what the characters are feeling, and the storytelling is logical and well constructed. It is also full of surprises. Its careful construction reminds one of mystery stories, and their equally careful, logical and detailed plotting.

The title of this film is hard to understand: there is nothing especially tarnished about the heroine. The early 1930's were full of heroines who walked the Street of Sin, always to support a sick relative or husband. The title presumably led audiences to expect something of the sort. However, nothing of the kind takes place - our heroine is virtuous throughout the entire film. Our heroine does marry a rich man for his money, here to support her spendthrift mother and get her out of debt.

Cukor had a life long interest in other media. This film contains a shot showing info coming in over a stock ticker. We also see a shot of the New York City skyline, filled with skyscrapers, while the businessman discusses the office building he hopes to create. The fact that it is the businessman who is involved with other media is one way in which Cukor generates audience sympathy for him. It is always the man most responsive to new means of communication that has Cukor's sympathies.