I just got Universal’s Blu-ray/DVD bundle of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, one of my favorite movies of recent years, and I had big plans to blog about director Tomas Alfredson’s visual obscurement of key characters, and what that means in terms of the movie’s attitude toward identity … and I would have, except every screengrab I tried to take from the included DVD looks like this:
I’d like to thank Universal, purveyor of Blu-rays larded with useless interactive features, unnecessary screensavers that launch when the disc is paused and won’t wake up until you page back to the main menu, a ticker that keeps me apprised of all the high quality Universal features I will never buy, digital copies that refuse to download, and, now, copy protection that won’t even permit STILL IMAGES of the film in progress.
I think my essay idea was valid, but until I find a workaround, no dice. Of course, I probably wouldn’t have said anything that David Bordwell hasn’t already said better. He got screenshots.
