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The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review

The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« on: January 06, 2024, 06:51:09 PM »


Studio:  Universal                 
 Release Date: January 2, 2023
 Rating: R
 Film:  4/5
 
 Plot
 A curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit a handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of them—a damaged, brainy troublemaker (newcomer Dominic Sessa)—and with the school’s head cook, who just lost a son in the Vietnam war.  
 
 My Thoughts
 When I saw the trailer for this film, I thought it would be more of a comedy than anything else, so I was quite surprised when it turned out to be a heavy-hitting drama that deals with death, mental health, and the beginning of the end of the bedrock of a successful culture, education. Giamatti’s character is hilarious as the grumpy instructor who holds his students to a very high standard and doesn’t believe in extra credit or free passes to anyone who takes his class. You get the grade that you earn, end of story.

 
While watching the film, he reminded me of a couple of teachers I’ve had in my life in both high school and college that I really didn’t like at the time, but as I’ve grown older and think back upon those tough graders, I realize they did me a massive favor later in life. They held me, and everyone else in the class, to a very high standard because life isn’t easy to navigate and how you handle difficult struggles is what will make one successful in life. I owe those teachers a huge Thank You!
 
As Giamatti adjusts to the kids under his care, he becomes close with one of them and a father/son type bond starts to take place between the pair. Both learn something from the other and as the film goes on, you start to relate to each of their struggles. Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s character as the school cook provides some comedic relief with a few well-placed one liners, but she’s also the conscience of the film and to see how she faces her own struggles is both inspiring and heartbreaking knowing what she has gone through.
 
The film has an intentional 1970s look to fit the time period of the story and is authentic enough to use the old Universal logo when the film begins and plenty of grain in the photography even though the film was shot digitally. The soundtrack is heavily loaded to the front soundstage, but the late 60s early 70s music sounds great when called upon
 
 Video 4/5
 Audio 4.5/5 (DTS-HD MA 5.1)
 
 
 Special Features:

 
  • Alternate Ending
  • Five Deleted Scenes
  • The Cast of the Holdovers
  • Working with Alexander
  • Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhKLpJmHhIg&ab_channel=FocusFeatures

 Conclusion


The film was exactly what I expected going in, but I really enjoyed it despite the depressing subject matter. Each of the three main characters do a bang-up job in their roles and its easy to see why critics loved the film so much and how it was nominated for 8 Critics Choice Awards including Best Picture. Definitely check this one out.       
 
 
 Reference Review System:
 JVC DLA-RS3100 4K Ultra High-Definition Front Projector
 (Calibrated with Portrait Displays CalMAN color calibration software & C6-HDR Meter from Portrait Displays)
 Stewart Filmscreen - Firehawk 110” 2.35:1 Screen
 Trinnov Altitude 16 Audio/Video Processor
 ATI AT527NC Powering Bed Channels
 ATI AT524NC Powering Atmos Speakers
 Kaleidescape Strato + Server
 Panasonic DP-UB820 Ultra HD Blu-ray Player
 System Controller: URC MX-990
 M&K S-150 THX Ultra (R-C-L Speakers)
 M&K SS-150 x4 (Surround Speakers)
 Atlantic Technology IC6-OBA x 4 Overhead Speakers
 Dual Rythmik FV15HP2
 Mini DSP HD controlling all subwoofers
 Audioquest and Monoprice - Audio/Video/Speaker Cabling
PureAV PF60 Power Conditioner

Blu-ray Reviewer / Technical Writer
Sound & Vision Magazine

Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #1 on: January 06, 2024, 07:44:06 PM »
Thanks for the review, David.  The trailer for this one looked pretty good; I'll just have to keep in mind that it's not really the comedy that it appeared to be.
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Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #2 on: January 06, 2024, 11:02:05 PM »
We were going to see the Road to Perdition, but David, you changed our minds.

On Peacock we saw the Holdovers and completely enjoyed it.  The story, the actors were great and we liked that they took their time telling a story. I don’t see that often in movies today.  Also, these are the types of movies I am scared we are losing.  Thanks for the review!

David your revioews have helped me so much in picking the right movie for the right time.  And you have saved me time by reviewing movie I should not see!


« Last Edit: January 06, 2024, 11:10:40 PM by Barry »
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Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2024, 06:35:28 AM »
Agree on all counts. I watched it on Peacock a few nights ago, and enjoyed it for all the same reasons.

Great review.

Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #4 on: January 07, 2024, 11:52:56 AM »
We were going to see the Road to Perdition, but David, you changed our minds.

On Peacock we saw the Holdovers and completely enjoyed it.  The story, the actors were great and we liked that they took their time telling a story. I don’t see that often in movies today.  Also, these are the types of movies I am scared we are losing.  Thanks for the review!

David your revioews have helped me so much in picking the right movie for the right time.  And you have saved me time by reviewing movie I should not see!
Thanks Barry. Glad you enjoyed the film. 
Blu-ray Reviewer / Technical Writer
Sound & Vision Magazine

Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #5 on: January 07, 2024, 11:53:48 AM »
Agree on all counts. I watched it on Peacock a few nights ago, and enjoyed it for all the same reasons.

Great review.
Thank DLC...glad you enjoyed it!
Blu-ray Reviewer / Technical Writer
Sound & Vision Magazine

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Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2024, 09:24:30 PM »

  • NY Times Jan. 7, 2024
Paul Giamatti would just like to put it out there that maybe he doesn’t always have to play such a motormouth.
It might be nice, just to shake things up a bit, if he could portray someone more likely to express themselves nonverbally — a taciturn horse breeder with an anguished past, say, or a world-class safecracker with shrapnel-related vocal cord injuries.
“Please, don’t make me talk so much,” he said recently, in a low register, his hangdog eyes pleading with the universe.
Giamatti watchers may have a hard time imagining the actor tongue-tied. He is one of cinema’s great talkers, often cited for dazzling flights of oratory. Think of Miles’s profane rebuke of merlot in  (2004), or the founding father flogging the virtues of independence in  (2008) or the brash boxing manager Joe Gould in “” (2005). For Giamatti to yearn for fewer lines of dialogue might sound like a Formula 1 car pining for a bus route.
His latest role, as Paul Hunham in “The Holdovers” — a solitary and cantankerous New England boarding-school teacher saddled with babysitting duty over Christmas break — adds a number of memorable monologues to the actor’s oeuvre. But Giamatti also imbues the character with a deep well of melancholy and thinly disguised tenderness, traits that tend to reveal themselves in wordless, physical gestures: a crumpling of the chin, a narrowing of one eye.
“There are close-ups where you can see not only his transition from one thought to the next, but all of the little micro-thoughts that happen in between,” said Alexander Payne, the director of “The Holdovers,” who reteamed with Giamatti nearly 20 years after “Sideways.” “You could hire him to play the Hunchback of Notre Dame and he’d do a great job with it.”
The real Giamatti, as encountered last month during an interview in Beverly Hills, is soft-spoken, gentle-mannered and contemplative, with a habit of gazing off into the distance when he needs to collect a thought. If you didn’t keep up with “Billions,” Giamatti’s workhorse Showtime drama that ended in the fall after seven seasons, his hair is whiter than you might remember, as if Santa Claus had a brother with a humanities degree.
Giamatti is often mistakenly presumed to be similar to his characters, which is both a compliment and a nuisance. Payne is convinced that the actor didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for “Sideways” (his co-stars Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen were nominated in the supporting categories) because he made it look too easy. In real life, let it be known, Giamatti is not terribly interested in wine and knows little about it, much to the dismay of fans who approach him in restaurants.
Aside from a shared interest in the arcana of the Roman Empire, he has few things in common with his character in “The Holdovers” — an antiquities teacher and campus ogre with an impaired eye and a skin condition that makes him smell like fish.
Yet Giamatti found himself strangely invested in the role. Both of his parents were teachers (his father, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was the president of Yale and later the commissioner of Major League Baseball), and he graduated from a prep school similar to the one depicted in the movie. More so than for any role he can recall, he got lost in the character, allowing his own memories and experiences to color his performance.
After playing so many loquacious characters, Giamatti would love to take on a taciturn sort: “Please, don’t make me talk so much.”Credit...Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times
 
“It was more unconscious than normal, which was a little alarming because I almost felt at times like I wasn’t working hard enough, like I was being lazy,” Giamatti said. “Even when I watched it, it was weird. I kept looking on and thinking, Is that what I was doing?”
Giamatti was born and raised in Connecticut and attended Yale for both his undergraduate degree and masters of fine arts, in English literature and drama. Although he quickly dispensed with the idea of following his parents into academia, he has always been a voracious reader with a deep interest in science fiction, history, philosophy and mysticism. On “Chinwag,” Giamatti’s podcast, started earlier this year with Stephen Asma, a philosophy professor and author, the actor peppers friends and experts with questions about obscure historical figures and the paranormal: ghosts, U.F.O.s, Hollow Earth theory, ancient Egypt.
Asma befriended Giamatti during the pandemic (the actor emailed him, out of the blue, to compliment him on an online lecture he’d given about the science of imagination), and said they had spent two hours during their first conversation discussing the little-known 18th-century Swedish theologian Emanuel Swedenborg.
“Every wall of every room in his apartment has bookshelves filled with books, multiple levels deep,” Asma said. “He reads more than most English professors I know, but he wears it lightly.”
In both his life and his work, Giamatti has always been drawn to characters on the margins. He is the rare baseball fan more interested in the umpires than the players. (“You’re a hugely important part of the game, and yet you’re outside of it — what is that like?”)
 
“There are close-ups where you can see not only his transition from one thought to the next, but all of the little micro-thoughts that happen in between,” said Alexander Payne, director of “The Holdovers.”Credit...Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times
 
Even in supporting roles — a coldblooded slave trader in “12 Years a Slave,” a duplicitous music manager in “Straight Outta Compton” — his presence turns up the volume of humanity onscreen.
When he is preparing for a part, Giamatti reads and rereads the script numerous times (he is not generally a fan of improvisation), making inferences about how the character might present in three dimensions. He often looks for ways to transform himself physically, a task for which his regular-joe facade has proved handy.
“You can dress me as a short-order cook, or as a butler, or as the president of the United States in the 18th century, and I kind of look like I should wear the clothes,” he said.

For “The Holdovers,” in which his character gradually forms a bond with a bright but troubled student (the newcomer Dominic Sessa) and the head of the school’s cafeteria (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), Giamatti grew a handlebar mustache and wore a toggle jacket inspired by a similar one of his father’s.
But the person he most found himself channeling, the man he sees when he watches the film now, is a biology teacher from his own prep school, Choate Rosemary Hall: a sarcastic, “pasty, comb-over man” who seemed lonely and smelled like an ashtray and a martini.
As a student, Giamatti didn’t think much about the man, and the two almost never exchanged words. But one day, late in the school year, after a test on which he had performed uncharacteristically poorly, the teacher stopped by Giamatti’s desk.
“He handed me back the test and said, ‘You usually do really good on these, what happened?’” Giamatti recalled. “I was like 15 and just shrugged: ‘I don’t know, man.’ But the guy stayed there and he looked me in the eye and asked, ‘Is everything OK?’”
Giamatti, feeling awkward, said that it was, and they never discussed it again. But the fact that the teacher — someone he had effectively considered a stranger, or worse — not only knew him well enough to suspect something was wrong, but cared enough to ask, has always stayed with him.
“It took me by surprise,” Giamatti said. “He actually gave a [expletive] about us.”
 


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Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #7 on: January 08, 2024, 09:53:09 PM »
My son-in-law worked the PR on the home video release of this film and got to do an online press junket with Giamatti and he said he was one of the best celebrities he ever got to deal with. Very down to earth and friendly to everyone on the team and anyone he dealt with. 
Blu-ray Reviewer / Technical Writer
Sound & Vision Magazine

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Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #8 on: January 09, 2024, 06:55:18 AM »
Welp looks like I have another to grab :) thanks for the review. Side note. Yes he plays the same type of roles. But pig vomit is a great actor imho
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Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #9 on: January 25, 2024, 09:38:27 PM »
Great film. And great acting. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks for the review!
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Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #10 on: February 18, 2024, 12:43:02 PM »
Just watched this last night with my wife and some friends. My wife was in fact a "holdover" at college on the East coast one Xmas. I don't think this film is depressing at all. In fact it's quite funny at times. It's quite touching at times. Very good film. I like the way it was shot in 1.66:1, had 3 track audio, and opening credits that made it look like it came out in 1971 when the story occurred. 
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Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #11 on: February 18, 2024, 02:28:23 PM »
Just watched this last night with my wife and some friends. My wife was in fact a "holdover" at college on the East coast one Xmas. I don't think this film is depressing at all. In fact it's quite funny at times. It's quite touching at times. Very good film. I like the way it was shot in 1.66:1, had 3 track audio, and opening credits that made it look like it came out in 1971 when the story occurred.
I thought the subject matter was depressing (regarding the protagonist's father and how he's being treated by his mother/step-father), but didn't think the film was depressing, in and of itself. Glad you enjoyed it Craig. 
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Sound & Vision Magazine

Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #12 on: February 18, 2024, 04:06:11 PM »
My wife and I enjoyed this one as well.

But watching it has made me realize that I've officially hit old age.  At some point I would have identified with the students but that's now switched over to the teacher's role.  

I wonder how many of these types of teachers are still part of today's education system.  Even in my school days it was less than half.
My Room:  26’-1” X 17’-4” X 10’
Equipment:  Monolith HTP-1 feeding X7 and X9 amps, JVC RS3100, Elite Screens 135"", JBL Studio 590 for L, C, R, W, R, 580s for sides and four SCS8 for tops, JTR Captivator 1400 x 4, Panny DP-UB420K, Toshiba HD-A35. Nvidia Shield, Sonos Connect, MX-780 remote

See Youthman's actual tour of my room here: https://youtu.be/PHEaG2xKVhg

Re: The Holdovers (Blu-ray) review
« Reply #13 on: February 19, 2024, 10:03:11 PM »
My wife and I enjoyed this one as well.

But watching it has made me realize that I've officially hit old age.  At some point I would have identified with the students but that's now switched over to the teacher's role. 

I wonder how many of these types of teachers are still part of today's education system.  Even in my school days it was less than half.
No more than 10%. Both my kids were very good students and went to top universities (UCLA and Cal Poly SLO) and the teachers they considered great and challenging were maybe 2 or 3 throughout their high school years. Pretty sad state of affairs. 
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