Here's Lookin' at You in Blu-Ray, Kid
Pen Name | 05/10/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"One of the greatest American movies of all time, with a beautifully restored print, an interesting commentary track by Roger Ebert, some "deleted scenes" and other little extras -- all worth having in the highest quality possible. And when the successor to Blu-Ray comes around (and you KNOW it's coming), you should buy this movie in that format as well, so that it never goes away, even as time goes by."
A Triumph of the Hollywood Studio System
Zarathustra | Sacramento, CA USA | 05/24/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The Hollywood studio system has been much maligned. Stanley Kubrick moved to England to evade it and Robert Altman totally ignored it. But as Roger Ebert points out in his excellent commentary, Casablanca shows what that system could accomplish. Warner Brothers was cranking out a new film every week in 1941. Casablanca was filmed on a Hollywood back lot, but the presence of so many Europeans in Hollywood fleeing the Nazis who appear in Casablanca makes the film look like it was filmed in North Africa.
Michael Curtiz was the director of the film, but Ebert points out that the producer Hal B. Wallis was responsible for the final product. Script revisions came out daily. Ingrid Bergman was unable to shoot new scenes because her hair had been cut for her next Warner Brothers film.
Somehow Wallis and his team came up with a masterpiece."