This DVD has the oddest aspect ratio problems I’ve ever encountered. It came up as something approaching 1.2:1, but it’s really a 1.37:1 film. (And it claimed that it was 1.5:1!) So to get it to stretch out to something that approaches normality, I had to tell mpv to play it as 16:9! It turns out that this DVD has been mastered with black borders at the sides! The borders are in the video file! I mean, I’ve seen that with black borders top/bottom (quite usual, “letterboxing”), but I’ve never seen a DVD with burned-in window boxing fit for a 16:9 TV. That’s just absurd. So they just waste a lot of horizontal data area for blackness.

Very strange — and it’s a brand new DVD, so perhaps they’ve fired everybody that knew how to master DVDs?

Movies used to have lighting.

Wow, that’s a young baby.

Ah right.

This is quite an intriguing movie. I really didn’t expect this to go where it did — and I guess a few years later, a movie like this would be pretty difficult to make?

That said, I wasn’t as gripped by this movie as it wanted me to be.

Dodsworth. William Wyler. 1936. ⚄

This short was included on the Torrid Zone DVD.

That’s an impressively high-ceilinged office, man.

It’s kinda odd — I mean, it’s basically a 40s music video, but there’s “drama” parts where the characters deliver their lines in a rhythmic speaking kind of voice. It’s a bit interesting.

It’s super corny! (complimentary)

Ozzie Nelson and His Orchestra. Roy Mack. 1940. ⚂

I’ve been following this Twitter account over the past few months. She posts about movies all the time, and it’s mostly older movies, with an emphasis on deep cut screwball comedies and the like, so that’s like catnip to me.

So I’ve been buying movies, but haven’t watched any of them yet — this is the first, and it better be good!

I think he likes her!

This is indeed pretty amusing, and the plot is very original — James Cagney works for United Fruit and keeps the banana plantation running, being all hyper competent and everything. But on the other hand, it’s not totally unsympathetic towards the revolutionaries either? And the guy who runs United Fruit is a total asshole, so…

But it’s a pretty odd movie.

Ann Sheridan is fantastic as the hard nosed quick witted card shark.

I like the movie — it’s satisfyingly weird — and there’s some really good jokes in there. But there could have been more jokes? More hi-jinx?

Torrid Zone. William Keighley. 1940. ⚃