In two recent Blu-ray releases Twilight Time showcase different romantic fantasies; in The World of Henry Orient the world is seen through the eyes of a pair of adolescent girls infatuated with a concert pianist, while in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Stanley Kramer attempts to make an interracial relationship acceptable by using the familiar forms of a sit-com defuse the social implications which at the time would be seen as threatening by many in the audience.
Recent binging on Twilight Time Blu-rays ranges from politics to comedy to science fiction, absurd studio productions and idiosyncratic independents; from the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions to the overthrowing of a future society of privileged immortals to underhanded contemporary business wars, from dinosaurs deep inside the Earth to the destruction of an alien race on the moon.
A decade after the end of World War Two, with Germany now an important ally against the Soviet bloc, popular culture was making an effort to rehabilitate the former enemy by showing “good Germans” in the movies. Twilight Time have recently released a couple of examples on Blu-ray: Edward Dmytryk’s The Young Lions (1958) and Anatole Litvak’s The Night of the Generals (1967).
The Offence and Equus, two play adaptations from the 1970s, now available in excellent Blu-ray editions, highlight Sidney Lumet’s strengths and weaknesses as a filmmaker.
Two recent Blu-ray releases highlight very different attitudes to the crime thriller in the ’70s: Robert Culp’s Hickey and Boggs and Douglas Hickox’s Brannigan.
We bring our whole personal history to every movie we see, even ones we’ve seen (many times) before; as we’re in a constant state of change, so the movies we watch seem to change with each viewing.
Recent Blu-rays from Twilight Time are as eclectic as ever. A couple of mainstream Hollywood classics; an oddball excursion into pulp by one of the great Hollywood directors; and a devastating animated fable by a Japanese-American filmmaker based on a very English graphic novel.
Despite perennial predictions of the demise of movies-on-disk, 2014 offered a rich and varied selection of new and old titles in often impressive editions from many different companies, though not necessarily from major distributors. The cream came from specialty labels like Criterion, the BFI, Arrow, Eureka/Masters of Cinema, Shout! Factory, Olive Films, Kino Lorber, Flicker Alley and Twilight Time.
Twilight Time continues to release an interesting assortment of titles, often now with excellent commentaries and impressive supplemental material.
Twilight Time has become one of the most notable boutique labels over the past couple of years; with each title limited to 3000 units, collectors feel a sense of urgency with every new release. Available only through the Screen Archives Entertainment website which specializes in movie soundtracks, Twilight Time’s initial focus was on the music, […]