Category: Other Stuff

The Colours of North by Northwest

Colours, and the moods they evoke, play an important role in Hitchcock’s films.
With that in mind, I got ImageMagick to figure out the average colour of each of the 1000 frames for “North by Northwest” — you can see the results here.
To put the average colours into context, here they are annotated with a selection of scenes…
nbnwcolours1
Getting the average colour of a given image got me wondering if it might be possible to do the same with the book cover scans on the OPAC. You could then virtually arrange and group books by their cover colours, in the same way that Huddersfield Public Library physically did last year:

(image courtesy of Iman’s photostream)

1000 Frames of Hitchcock – Spellbound (1945)

Slightly inspired by Douglas Gordon’s “24 Hour Psycho” video installation, here’s the first part of “1000 Frames of Hitchcock”:
Spellbound (1945)
…be warned, it’s a bandwidth hungry page!
The 1000 frames are fairly equally spaced and each represents a section of film lasting roughly 6 seconds.
Seeing as the next Dynix User Group Conference will be held in Barcelona, here’s a segment containing one of the Salvador Dali “Dream Sequences”:
1000frames1
And, just to really tax your bandwidth and overload your computer, here’s a page that tries to show all 1000 frames in just 1 minute:
Hitchcock in 60 seconds – Spellbound (1945)
…the page might take a little while to load!

Lego Hitchcock

I love Lego mosaics, so I thought this was really cool…
legohitchcock
It’s by Nathan Sawaya — http://www.brickartist.com/alfred_hitchcock.html
There’s some really funky large sculptures on his site, including candy canes, a lego dress, and Han Solo in carbonite!
In terms of coolness, it’s up there with the CubeSolver and the 4 foot Lego Homer.
Those of you who aren’t easily offended might also want to check out The Brick Testament (also available in traditional book format).

Guide to Hitchcock on DVD – part 2

Following on from the first part of the guide, here’s the low down on the rest of Hitchcock’s films from the 1920s.
In the US, virtually of the DVD releases of the following films have been lower quality budget “public domain” discs.  Whilst these are a cheap way of getting hold of the films, you’ll probably be disappointed with the video quality.
4) The Ring (1927)
By far the best transfer to date is in the French Les Premières Oeuvres 1927/1929, volume 1 box set from Studio Canal.  For anyone considering this box set, it’s worth noting that the French subtitles (although generated by the DVD player) cannot be easily disabled during playback.
In 2007, there’ll be new DVDs released in the UK (by Optimum Releasing) and in the US (by Lionsgate Home Entertainment) — these should have transfers on par with the French box set.
5) Downhill (1927)
Currently unavailable in the US, “Downhill” has seen a number of good DVD releases (see this page to compare the transfer quality).
If I had to suggest one, then I’d recommend you purchase the German The Early Years box set from Concorde.  Although 3 years old, the set still contains some of the best transfers available.
Completists might want to note that none of the DVD releases of “Downhill” use the original green tinting for the sea-sickness scenes.
6) Champagne (1928)
For many years, “Champagne” was only available on low quality bootlegs — however, 2005 saw two releases on DVD.  Once again, it’s the French release which is the best.
7) Easy Virtue (1928)
“Easy Virtue” has seen numerous DVD releases, but all seem to be taken from the same low quality video source.  According to this 1937 newspaper articles, the British Film Institute may have a good quality print in their archives so there is still hope that we might see a decent quality release in the future.
8) The Farmer’s Wife (1928)
Once again, it’s that French box set from Studio Canal which contains the best transfer.
In 2007, we should see a new DVD in the UK from Optimum Releasing using the same high quality transfer.
9) The Manxman (1929)
In a repeat of the information for “The Ring”, the French box set contains the best transfer currently available, and 2007 releases from Optimum Releasing (UK) and Lionsgate Home Entertainment (USA) should have similar high quality transfers.
10) Blackmail (1929)
Although “Blackmail” is available in a box set from Studio Canal, I’d recommend the German release on the Arthaus label.
The German DVD contains both the “talkie” version of the film and also the the original silent version.  Although very similar, there are interesting differences between the two versions and some might even prefer the more natural performances in the silent version.
The French and German DVDs also contain the amusing “sound test“, shot to check how Anny Ondra‘s voice would sound on film.  Hitchcock takes the opportunity to embarrass Ondra with some good old English innuendo!
Summary
To date, the best releases of Hitchcock’s earliest films have been in France and Germany, but 2007 should see similar quality releases of some of the 1920 films in both the USA and the UK.  Fans in the UK should note that “Orbit Media” are planning to release a clutch of early Hitchcock films on DVD in early 2007, but these will be low quality “public domain” transfers — definitely a case of buyer beware!

Blog Tag: 5 Things You Didn’t Want To Know About Dave Pattern

Eeeeek — I’ve been tagged by Brian Kelly, so here’s 5 things you didn’t want to know about me (with lots of links)…
1) For the last 8 months I’ve been raising a farm of mealworms to feed the birds in our garden, and there are several thousand of them wriggling around boxes in our spare bedroom as I type this.  Occasionally some of the mealworm beetles escape (I’ve yet to find out how they’re doing this) and you’ll spot them making a painfully slow bid for freedom across the floor… presumably with the insect equivalent of the theme to “The Great Escape” going through their tiny heads.  The garden birds love eating the mealworms, and it’s incredibly cheap to raise them.
2) I spent Christmas 1994 touring Bangladesh, playing bass guitar in a bhangra band.  Over the course of about 7 weeks, we played around a dozen shows (starting in Dhaka and working our way up to Sylhet).  Lizards, cockroaches, and spiders with bodies the size of your fist were de rigeur in the majority of hotel rooms we stayed in.  We were even filmed playing for a TV show, although someone forgot to bring the backing tape to the studio (we had planned to mime), so we had to feed vocals, guitars and keyboards through one tiny practice amp… it probably sounded like a slightly tuneful 5 minute long fart.  Plus I came out of the make-up room with a face the colour of a ripe orange.
3) Prior to all that, I was the bass player in a band called “The Headmen” during the early 1990s.  We were signed to a local label (Positive Records) and released a demo tape (“The Happy Shoebox”), a single (“Kissed to Pieces”) which got quite a bit of Radio 1 airplay, and a 12″ EP (“Reach the Sky”) — the demo tape was supposed to named “The Magic Shoebox”, which was the name of a shoe shop opposite the “4th Wave Records” shop in Huddersfield.  Most of our studio recordings were engineered by Steve Whitfield, although all of the master tapes were lost when the recording studio was destroyed by a fire.  The highlight (for me at least) was getting to play support for “The Wedding Present“.  If anyone asks nicely, I might even try and convert some of the recordings to MP3 😉
headmen1
(from http://www.vinyluk.com/search_result.php?vartist=headmen…)
4) When I was a young spotty lad, I used to do computer game reviews on Pennine Radio‘s “Chips” programme (as in “computer chips”) — I vaguely remember reviewing “Tir Na Nog“, “Atic Atac“, and “Skool Daze“.  I also got to review an early model of the ZX Spectrum+ and “yes”, the keys did fall off when you turned it upside down 😉
5) I can’t stand touching cotton wool, and the mere thought of any cotton wool touching my teeth sends shivers down my spine.  Fingernails scraping down a blackboard I’m fine with… but not cotton wool!

I think most of the bloggers I know have already been tagged, but here’s who I’m planning to do…
1) my partner Bryony
2) my good friend Iman Moradi
3) the one and only Ben Ostrowsky

Guide to Hitchcock on DVD – part 1

Welcome to the first part of my guide to Hitchcock on DVD!
Introduction
I’ve been running the Hitchcock DVD Site for over 3 years and, in that time, I’ve built up a collection of nearly 200 Hitchcock DVDs.  Over the course of the coming weeks and months, I’m going to try and cover Hitchcock’s entire career and, at the same time, discuss which are the best DVDs to buy.
To build up the best collection of Hitchcock on DVD, you need to have a region free DVD player.  You also need to be able to view both PAL and NTSC format DVDs — this requires either a DVD player that can convert from one to the other, or a television set that can display both.  To get the best of Hitchcock on DVD, you’ll be buying DVDs from around the world!
I’m going to split Hitchcock’s career up into decades, so the first article will cover the 1920s and that last will cover his final films from the 1970s.  Out of the 53 major films Hitchcock directed, 50 are now officially available on DVD.
A quick side note — for the film year, I’m using the IMDB entry.
Continue reading “Guide to Hitchcock on DVD – part 1”