Somebody Stole My Bandwidth!
by Michael B. Druxman on 06/21/14
June 24, 2014
Early last week, I received a message from my primary server that, because of exceedingly high traffic on my websites (e.g. Best Bets on DVD) that they would no longer be accessible to me or the public for the rest of the month, but that they would be back up in July.
This made no sense, because I've had these pages for over a decade and, whereas I'm pleased with the traffic I get, the totals don't even come close to the 4000+ visits per day the server said I was getting for about a week.
After several hours on the phone with three different techs, we discovered that some "thief" was linking to a photo on a page that I'd pretty much abandoned years ago and that visits to his site were being charged to my bandwidth totals. [Please don't ask me to explain "bandwidth," because I can't.]
In any event, I had one of the techs remove the offending photo, so by the first of the month [fingers crossed], things should be back to normal.
In the meantime, you're not going to be able to access Best Bets on DVD, so until we're back up, I'm going to post those reviews in this blog.
You'll find the first one below: The Criterion Collection's new release of director Peter Weir's PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK.
You have a creative week.
Michael
PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK
Australian director Peter Weir made his first major impression with both film critics and the public with Picnic at Hanging Rock, a strange, haunting underplayed horror story. There are no monsters...no ghosts...simply a frightening, sexually suggestive, yarn that remains in a viewer’s consciousness long after the picture has ended.
On Valentine’s Day in 1901, three young schoolgirls and their teacher disappear without a trace while on an excursion to Hanging Rock, a peculiar geological outcropping.
What happened to them? We never find out.
Eerie, moody, the 1975 release is based on a novel by Joan Lindsay and stars Rachel Roberts as the school’s headmistress, Helen Morse as a teacher and features Jacki Weaver as a maid at the school. Russell Boyd’s color cinematography is stunning.
The new 3-disc set (1 Blu-ray/2 DVD) from The Criterion Collection contains a remastered high-definition digital film transfer, supervised by Weir with a 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray. Extras include an extended interview with Weir, a new featurette on the making of the film, featuring interviews from 2003 with executive producer Patricia Lovell, producers Hal McElroy and Jim McElroy and several cast members. There is also a new Introduction by film scholar David Thomson, a vintage on-set documentary that includes interviews with Weir, actress Rachel Roberts and source novel author Joan Lindsay. Additionally, the set includes Homesdale (1971), an award-winning black comedy by Weir.
Printed matter in this impressive set consists of a booklet containing essays on the film and Weir by Megan Abbott and Marek Haltof, plus a new paperback edition of Joan Lindsay’s original novel, which was previously out of print in the United States.
