Today, we are joined by Matthew of KBOO’s Gremlin Time to reach into the past and look again at The Rocketteer, based on the distinctive comic book, followed by a compare and contrast with the recent animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. But first, we offer a whirlwind look at the thriller, Blast of Silence.
NOTES FOR BLAST OF SILENCE
The holidays may be over, but Christmas is here again. That’s thanks to the Criterion upgrade of its release Blast of Silence.
Blast was made during a rare window of filmmaking. This was in the late 50s and early 60s when ebullient aspiring filmmakers made truly independent movies. Such films include something wild, murder by contract, a film beloved by Martin Scorsese, and the Greenwich Village story among others. All made with a slim budget that even Andy Warhol would too meager. Among this group is Allen Baron’s blast of silence, released in blank in 1960, and made by Barron on a shoestring that includes himself as writer, Director and star, with cinematography by the producer, using equipment left over by a Hollywood film crew in 1959 when Fidel Castro overthrew the Baptista government
Many of these truly independent films take crime as the subject matter, possibly because it’s easier to shoot crime films on smaller budgets, on real locations, and with a tighter focus on human foibles and conflict. Here, Frank Bono, played by Baron, is a hitman from Cleveland hired to revisit New York City, and take out somebody the mob needs eliminated. He arrives during the Christmas season, rendered immeasurably more bleak by his tasks, his memories of his past, and the paultry Christmas seasonal decorations scattered about. This is no die hard, or Eyz Wide Shut, Christmas movies that use the holiday as a convenient setting for character exploration and action, but the spirit or dispiriting nature of Christmas goes to the very core of the film’s project.
The criterion Blu-ray release is a duplicate of their earlier, regular, DVD, with all the same extras, etc., except that the picture is much better and has even been reframed to better capture the films composition of a cinematography.
- Enjoying CC number #428
- Blast comes in a new 4K digital restoration presented in two aspect ratios, 1.85:1 (widescreen) and 1.33:1 (full-screen), with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Extras include Requiem for a Killer: The Making of “Blast of Silence” and hour-long making of from 2008 that is a might longer than it needs to be, a gallery of on-set Polaroids,
- Compare and contrast hotos of locations from the film and then in 2008,
- A trailer
- English subtitles ,
- And an insert with an essay by Karl disciple Terrence Rafferty and a four page adaptation of the start of the film by artist Sean Phillips , who also did the striking cover
Among the oddities of the film is the casting of Larry Tucker as Big Ralph, mr. Tucker was a colleague of Paul Masuskri ski, and collaborate it with him on his first few films. The music was composed and conducted by
Meyer Kupferman, a neophyte.
So why are we recommending a low budget show with sometimes ragged transitions and imperfect audio recording, and is heavily reliant on the voice-over narration that was composed by Waldo Salt, and is read by Lionel stander, both red scare disputants?
Not only is it a good story, but the film takes the viewer into a lowly, maudit world rarely observed from the inside. One can see why Scorsese so likes this minor genre, and Blast must have been on his mind while making Mean Streets.
Despite the film’s occasional surface clumsiness, it is that rare thing, a work of sheer naturalism without theatricality. Neo-realism meets film noir.
- KBOO