Niagara Falls! Slooooowly I turn…

This week’s “Overlooked Films” contribution will be found in the post directly below you (1953’s Niagara); I had originally planned to have my essay for The O Canada Blogathon finished Sunday but I had a few things get in the way…and so I figured that if I completed it by Tuesday I could kill two blog features with one stone.  (I do not recommend you make a habit of this, by the way—it gets a little messy.)  Actually, I’m really killing three features with one stone—Niagara is the latest acquisition to the Rancho Yesteryear’s expanding Blu-ray library…which makes this a…

…yes, “Adventures in Blu-ray”—I’ve been meaning to return to this ever since I inaugurated the semi-regular feature back in February with And Then There Were None (1945).  I’ve been adding Blu-ray discs here and there, and a couple weeks ago I got one of those “Deal of the Day” e-mails from Amazon announcing that the Classic Marilyn Monroe Collection was on sale for (trumpet fanfare) $34.99.

This is too good a deal to pass up, says I; sure, there are some Marilyn movies that I’m not particularly a fan of (There’s No Business Like Show Business, River of No Return) but the set does contain Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Some Like it Hot (1959) and The Misfits (1961)—those movies alone would justify the cost of the collection.  With nine movies (the others are How to Marry a Millionaire, The Seven Year Itch and Bus Stop), it works out to about $3.89 per flick…no freaking way was I going to sit that one out.  And I made it so.

I had planned to supplement my Niagara piece with a screen capture of a beautiful rainbow near the falls in the movie but I learned to my disappointment that screen caps apparently don’t work with the Blu-ray/DVD writer I purchased for the computer back in December 2013.  (So that’s why the stills are all black-and-white even though the movie is in Technicolor.  I don’t feel so bad—the movie’s trailer is in black-and-white, too.)  I’m going to try and not be such a stranger with the “Adventures in Blu-ray” thing but I’m one of those people who’ll only shell out money for that format if it’s a movie I don’t have or to “upgrade” only those essential films already in my collection.  Tomorrow: another entry in TDOY’s “On the Grapevine” series.