I tuned into
CNN's I
'm Chevy Chase and You're Not much hyped doc last night. Usually I don't get sucked into hype but I have a genuine interest in Chevy Chase going back to the first iteration of
SNL characters. I never realized what an over the top outrageous guy (some have used other terms) in real life he was/is. Hard to believe he's now 82 and looks every bit it. What was almost as interesting was watching interviews with seminal characters in his rise to fame and how they have aged along with him, like Goldie Hawn (still looking pretty good) and SNL producer Lorne Michaels
(who looks as aged as Chase) and how so many look a respectable "older person" as opposed to their hairy hippyish 70s versions. Regardless, on screen, there was always something uproariously funny and everyman about Chase's characters as per
European Vacation (Amy Heckerling, 1985),
Christmas Vacation (Jeremiah Chechik, 1898) or
Caddyshack (Harold Ramis, 1980). He's one of those comedians I'll never get tired of watching.
I'm not sure if I like hi-definition video. I have been watching
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) on an advanced/contemporary TV during my vacation stay (or "advanced" to me since I don't have TV at home) and the experience is somewhat jarring. I'm simply not comfortable with it. Sure the video is clearer -
much clearer - almost like being on the set of the film shoot with the camera crew all around me. There is Joan Crawford as Mildred Pierce (in Michael Curtiz's 1945
Mildred Pierce) walking out of a living room with her dead lover (Zachary Scott as Monte Beragon) sprawled on the floor - a little too close for comfort. Or Orson Welles as John Foster Kane (in Welles's 1941
Citizen Kane, photo above) marching into the city room of the
New York Inquirer about to turn the staid newspaper into an exuberant journalistic force to be reckoned with. Whoa, I'm loving the scene but a little distance please! Or Anthony Newley's Charlie Blake making clumsy romantic overtures to Sandy Dennis's Sara Deever in the original version of
Sweet November (Robert Ellis Miller, 1968). Don't get me wrong, it's astonishing that movies can be shown this clearly. Hi-definition technically refers to at least 480 vertical scan lines compared to standard definition or analogue viewing. It reminds me of video from some early-1960s television shows which also had a higher - or clearer - look to them and which to me are
too realistic. Interestingly, when we see movies on the big screen in theatres, despite digital projection, the result is still the same as it's always been, a kind of "distance" between viewer and action. Perhaps it's simply what I'm used to, but by being so absolutely intrusive, hi-def takes away a certain mystique.
