Batman: Assault on Arkham

cover

It is funny to me now, but when I watched and reviewed this movie I had no idea what the Suicide Squad was, nor hardly any of the characters who made up the Squad (including Deadshot and Killer Frost). Now of course the Suicide Squad has had a couple of major live-action movies made about them and are a household name. But then they were just comic book characters.

The movie is pretty good. DC had done a great job making all sorts of animated feature films, many of which are better than the live-action ones they’ve put on the big screen.

You can read my full review here.

Blues Traveler – Ventura, CA (05/23/92)

Blues Traveler
May 23rd, 1992
Ventura Theatre
Ventura, CA

Master:
Aiwa CM-30 Stereo Cardioid >Sony WM-D6C >Cass(m)
Front Row, Left; Balcony

Conversion:
Sony TC-D5M >HHb CDR 800 PRO Standalone >CD

Extraction:
CD >xACT 1.69 (cdparanoia) >AIFF >xACT 1.69 >FLAC
by Dave Mallick

Recorded, Transferred, FLAC Tags, & Front-Cover Artwork By Oldneumanntapr

Disc 1 [77:35.51]

Intro [03:07.48]
M//ulling It Over [07:10.70]
Optimistic Thought [04:00.49]
Out Of My Hands > [04:12.31]
Should I Stay Or Should I Go? [08:52.59]
All In The Groove [07:05.34]
Ivory Tusk/ [06:53.16]
American Way [06:36.14]
Trina Magna [08:15.40]
Gotta Get Mean > [04:24.42]
Gloria > [14:52.59]
Gotta Get Mean/ [02:03.39]

Disc 2 [65:48.43]

100 Years [06:11.11]
Manhattan Bridge [07:13.31]
Sweet Pain [10:46.30]
Sweet Talking Hip//pie [19:49.26]
Dropping Some NYC > [02:46.07]
As We Wonder [04:50.34]
NY Prophesie [07:06.14]
But Anyway (encore) [07:05.40]

Notes:

Brief skip forward in d1t02. Tape flip at 18:00 of d2t04.
Single slashes denote tape flips or stoppages where no music
is missing.

OldNeumanntapr Notes-
This was the first time that I had seen Blues Traveler. I didn’t know that they allowed recording. I guess I should have asked for a board patch but instead I ran up to the balcony to get a front row spot. The Nakamichi CM-300s probably would have sounded better but for some reason I chose to go with the little Aiwa stereo mic. It was a pretty good show and I still have the t-shirt! The recording is OK but would have sounded better with the CM-300s. I added it to etree because I noticed that this date wasn’t listed at all in the master list. Thanks to Dave Mallick for the help with the set list.

Persona (1966)

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I am not a great intellectual. I’m not even that smart. When I talk about movies I try to impart at least some sense of their themes and meaning, but I’m not very good at it.

I tend to connect to movies with my gut not my brain. I talk about them from an emotional standpoint not necessarily an intellectual one. I don’t know if that’s good, or bad, but that’s the way it is.

I love Ingmar Bergman’s films. He is, perhaps, one of the most intellectual filmmakers to have ever made a film. I do connect to them emotionally, but I have a difficult time understanding why. Persona is one of his most difficult films to understand, and yet I love it still.

I struggled with my review over it because I felt I needed to talk about it from an intellectual point of view, and yet I’m not sure I understood anything about what it means. You don’t have to. It stands on its own as a beautiful mystery.

Classic Drama Collection: Emma, The Woman In White, Jane Eyre, The Death of the Heart, The Lady’s Not For Burning

cover art

I rotate between being a physical media snob and a guy who wants to grab everything, no matter how cheap. There are a number of boutique Blu-ray labels (Criterion, Arrow, etc.) that put out these really nice discs. They restore the audio/video, load them with extras including making-of featurettes, audio commentaries, and more, and put them in attractive-looking boxes and include lovely little booklets to go with them.

They are awesome. They are also expensive. I love them, but I ain’t exactly rich.

Then there are companies who put out lots of cheap sets. They don’t do any type of restoration to the video, they come in cheap plastic, and they include very few extras. Often they’ll bundle multiple movies into a single set.

The snob in me prefers the fancy sets, but my budget often tells me to just buy the cheap stuff. It depends on the day on which part of me I listen to.

Truth be told I don’t care that much about audio/video presentation. I mean there are limits, I don’t like grainy images projected with poor lighting, etc. I want things to look as good as they can, but at the end of the day, I’m not upset if I’m watching something on the lower end of the spectrum instead of ultra-high-quality 4K productions.

I don’t love the way those mult-movie sets look on my shelf, but for the right price, I’ll get down with it.

That’s a long-winded introduction to this set featuring five cinematic adaptations of British literature/drama. It is a nice, if rather bare-boned set. This is actually the kind of thing this sort of set is good for. On their own, I don’t know that I would purchase any of these movies. They are mostly made-for-TV type deals, with not incredible production volumes. But they are still good movies and bundled up like this makes it a good purchase.

Anyway, you can read my review of it here.

Little Orphan Annie, Volume Ten: The Junior Commandos by Harold Gray

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For a little while I was getting a bunch of these really amazing-looking hard-bound comics from The American Library of Comics for review. Half the time I had little interest in the comics themselves, but they books are so beautiful I wanted to own them, so I wrote reviews.

I can’t say I’ve ever been particularly interested in Little Orphan Annie, but judging from my review (written ten years ago) I rather enjoyed this one. Maybe I should give them another try.

Neumann AK-40’s (x/y) >LC3 >KM-100’s >Beyer MV100 >Sony TCD-D7

DAT >CD Transferred Via Tascam DA-P1 >S/PDIF Coax >HHb CDR 800 PRO.
CD Masters Transferred With xACT 2.24 >WAV >FLAC
FLAC >WAV >Audacity (De-Amplify Countless Close-Proximity Hand Claps, Reduce Crowd Noise Hoots & Hollers, Repair Two Minor Left-Channel Dropouts, Minor Edits, Fades) Fix SBEs >FLAC (Level 8) + Tags Via xACT 2.53

(Recorded, Transferred, Audacity Post, FLAC, Tags, + Front-Cover Artwork By OldNeumanntapr)

18th Row, Left

Disc I:

Old Coot From Tennessee
Bon Temps Roulet
Well Well Well
Catfood Sandwiches
Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies
Everywhere I Go
Down The Road Tonight
You And The Mona Lisa
Dimming Of The Day
Thing Called Love
Shotgun Down The Avalanche
Lost Soul
The Barricades Of Heaven
World in Motion

Disc II:

I Believe I Am in Love With You
Nick Of Time
Band Intros
The Facts About Jimmy
Sunny Came Home
A Night On The Town
Bright Baby Blues
Something To Talk About
Diamond In The Rough
I Can’t Make You Love Me
The Pretender
Just the Way It Is (Prelude)

Disc III:

Just The Way It Is
Love Sneaking Up On You
Running On Empty
Valley Road
Polaroids
[Medley]:
(Just My Imagination) >
(Too Busy Thinking ‘Bout My Baby) >
(Reunited)
Mercury Blues
Load Out/Stay
The End Of The Innocent

Encore:

Black Muddy River

Oldneumanntapr Notes-
This was a fun show. David Lindley & Wally Ingram played four songs to open the show, and it just rolled on from there. Instead of separate sets from each artist, they would all play together and swap lead vocals. The show ran about 3.5 hours! The Santa Barbara County Bowl is a very intimate place to see shows, as it’s small (3,000 capacity) and nestled in the hills of Santa Barbara. The security is really tight there, and it took three of us to bring in my recording equipment. The security staff at the bowl, from what I’ve been told, are all off-duty SB County Sheriffs deputies, and they DO have the authority to arrest people on the spot, as apposed to most venue security who will either confiscate your batteries and blanks, or kick you out of the venue if you are caught taping.

It was difficult to record, not only because of the ever-present security staff, but also because the show started durning daylight hours. I wanted to record David Lindley & Wally Ingram, as they opened the show, but it’s really hard to stealth record in broad daylight.

I had a problem at the time with my Beyer MV100 microphone preamp because of a loose XLR input jack, so I had two channel drop outs on this recording that I had to repair. I later had the jack re-soldered, which fixed the problem. While I was at it, I also went in and reduced the over enthusiastic crowd noise wherever I could. I think it made a big difference.

During one song someone seated near me was trying to get everyone to stand and I didn’t want to comply so there is a brief moment of talking from this guy that I couldn’t completely remove. ‘Don’t you want to stand up?’ NO.

I remember that one of my friend Dave’s friends, a lady that I think worked at KOTR FM in Cambria (Not Carol Jo, who talked all the way through my Miles Davis Cal Poly recording in 1990), sat next to me while Dave was up front in a closer row. She dropped my binoculars onto the concrete floor, which I could have done without, but I think they didn’t come away with any damage.

I think mine is one of the better recordings from this mini tour, with only the final show at the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Washington, that maybe a little better. That show was uploaded without any recording lineage, which is a pet peeve of mine, so I was unable to tell what gear was used to make the recording.

Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (2013)

friday

I’m on record as loving a good slasher movie. I grew up in the 1980s and slashers were all the rage. I didn’t actually watch any of them in theatres and rarely saw any in their unedited forms on VHS. Mostly, I watched them on late-night, basic cable television. Which was probably the best way for my pubescent self to have seen them. With some of the sex and violence edited out for TV, my hormone-addled mind filled in the blanks with things far more sexy and gruesome than any of the films could possibly have produced.

I actually remember later in life watching some of those films and being disappointed with how little I had missed.

Friday the 13th and its many, many sequels are not good movies. They aren’t even particularly interesting slash flicks. But there is something about them that has excited horror hounds, including myself for decades.

This documentary covers everything you’d ever want to know about the franchise. It interviews nearly everyone involved in any of the films (or the television series) and breaks them all down into the minutest of details. For seven hours it does this. That’s more Jason Vorhees than anyone can handle.

Except me, apparently. I watched the entire thing and wrote a review about it. You can read that review here.

Cardinal Richelieu (1935) & Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay! (1948)

dvd cover

It is a wonderful, wild time to be a physical media fan. Streaming services seem more and more to be pushing the new in favor of the old. They spend billions of dollars making new movies and television shows while ignoring the incredible, wonderful, often beloved films in their catalog.

But there are numerous niche Blu-ray labels putting out incredible-looking, and supplementally loaded old (and often obscure) films. I love it.

A few years back I reviewed a couple of these old and very obscure films that had just come to DVD. The historical drama Cardinal Richelieu (1935) and comedy Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948) (best known now for being Marilyn Monroe’s debut) are not particularly good films, but I’m glad that got a true physical release.

You can read my full review here.

The Deep End (2001)

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I love crime thrillers but I’m the first to admit they aren’t always realistic. Detectives make unbelievable leaps of logic to solve the crime, and seemingly normal people suddenly turn into superheroes when they or their families are threatened.

The Deep End is a film that puts a normal, average housewife (played by the always wonderful Tilda Swinton) and then puts her into an extraordinary situation. But she doesn’t instantly become an amazing crime fighter, she behaves like a normal person would. Dealing with blackmailers – coming up with the cash they are asking for – becomes just another task on his long list of “to-dos” for the day.

It is a very good movie and you can read my full review here.

Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt & Don Henley – Avila Beach, CA (10/13/96)

Capps For Congress
10/13/96
Avila Beach Resort
Avila Beach, CA

8th Row Center: Nyquist Omnis >Sony TCD-D7
DAT Master Transferred: Tascam DA-30 >HHb CDR 800 PRO Via Analog i/o,
CD Masters >FLAC (Level 8) Via xACT
FLAC Tags Via xACT 2.53

Recorded, Transferred, FLAC’d, Tagged, & Front-Cover Artwork By Oldneumanntapr

Jackson Browne

I’m Alive
Looking Into You
Your Bright Baby Blues
In the Shape Of A Heart
For Everyman
The Pretender
The Barricades Of Heaven
World in Motion (w/ Bonnie Raitt)

Bonnie Raitt

Country Road
Home
Love Me Like A Man*
Big Road*
Shadow Of A Doubt
Nick Of Time
Kokomo Medley@
My Opening Farewell@
Thing Called Love@

w/Tom Ball On Harmonica
@ w/Jackson Browne

Don Henley

Through Your Hands
Learn To Be Still
I Can’t Tell You Why**
Democracy
It’s Not Easy Being Green
Love Will Keep Us Alive**
The Boys Of Summer
Take It Easy***

Timothy B. Schmit Lead Vocal**
Jackson Browne Lead Vocal***

OldNeumanntapr Notes:

Capps For Congress benefit. The complete line-up was Tom Ball & Kenny Sultan, John Trudell & Bad Dog, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and Don Henley.

To provide a bit of political history for this show, in 1996 Walter Capps was running for the 22nd District of California and this show in Avila Beach was a campaign fundraiser. Capps was once again running against Andrea Seastrand (she won the previous election and was based in the adjacent Shell Beach, so this show had an appropriate setting). Capps won the seat in November, but he sadly passed away in October 1997. His seat was held by his widow, Lois Capps, ever since when she won a 1997 special election (although her district is now known as the 24th District due to redistricting). The seat is now held Salud Carbajal.

For the Jackson Browne set, “I”m Alive” cuts in as he is playing his guitar. For the Don Henley set, “Through Your Hands” fades in before the first verse begins. There is some mic noise (mostly between songs) and there is occasional audience noise (talking, screaming, clapping along).

This show took place at the same venue where the Avila Beach Blues Festival was held every year until recently. I had friends who were volunteering at this show and they brought my blanket in for me and placed it front and center, about 8th row. I couldn’t ask for a better spot!

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