Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

PHOTO 1: Correct order to view these films PHOTO 2: Jesse Stone and Reggie drinking scotch and listening to Brahms PHOTO 3: Johannes Brahms in 1893, age 60, when he composed the Jesse Stone theme music PHOTO 4: Good Boy Nine Jesse Stone films were broadcast between 2005 and 2015. Sony totally messed up the broadcast order. To make sense of the series (and make sure that characters don’t return from the dead), watch the films in this order: 1. Night Passage 2. Stone Cold (broadcast first, but it’s the second film in the series) 3. Death in Paradise 4. Sea Change * 5. Thin Ice 6. No Remorse * 7. Innocents Lost * 8. Benefit of the Doubt * 9. Lost in Paradise * * Brahms (see next paragraph) BRAHMS MYSTERY SOLVED: In film 4 (‘Sea Change’), an eccentric neighbor notices that Jesse Stone looks troubled. She walks up to him with one word of advice: “Brahms”. Jesse takes her advice and buys an LP of Brahms piano music at a used record store. The Brahms composition he listens to is never identified, even though Jesse plays the record in movies 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9. -- It is Brahms’ Intermezzo in A major, Opus 118, No.2 Not only is Brahms not identified in the TV credits, but his music is conspicuously absent from the CD soundtrack: Jesse Stone - The Ultimate Collection (Jeff Beal) [2 CD For more about Brahms, and a link to an exceptional performance, see Comment Two (sort by “Oldest’) following this review. CLOSED CAPTIONS VERSUS SUBTITLES Films 1-6 have closed captions. Films 7-9 have English SDH subtitles. Closed Captioning was developed fifty years ago for analog television. Closed Captioning is activated by pressing the closed captioning (or CC) button on your TELEVISION’S remote control. Problem: Closed Captioning is not compatible with HDMI cable, the preferred modern method of connecting your DVD or Blu-Ray player to the television. To see closed captioning, you need the old RCA red-white-yellow three cable method (also called composite cable). SDH Subtitles are one of the menu options for films 7-9, or they can be activated by pressing the subtitle button on your DVD or BLU-RAY PLAYER’S remote control while the disc is playing. SDH Subtitles work with any cable, up-to-date or obsolete. I wanted to post comparative photos of HDMI and RCA cable, but Amazon vetoed it. If you don’t know what they look like, do a Google image search. NEXT FILM? “I plan to work on writing another Jesse Stone. We have a deal for a tenth. They are hard. The big thing for me is it is such a thrill to have the creative control we have in the television scenario because that usually doesn’t happen. I just want to be true to the character. I think there is still plenty of room for him to grow and change. I don’t want to rip off the franchise. I am not going to do it for a payday, so I have been thinking about it. It is hard to concentrate on both. Twenty-two episodes of Blue Bloods is pretty compelling, but that is one of my plans for the hiatus.” -- Tom Selleck in Parade Magazine (5-5-17) If we ever get a tenth Jesse Stone film (and a new ten film package), let’s hope Sony issues the films in the correct order, with English SDH subtitles for all ten, plus proper credit given to Brahms. Maybe even put everything on blu-ray. The Sony set has 16:9 widescreen picture + 5.1 Dolby Digital sound + a mix of closed captions and subtitles, packaged in a 5-DVD box, which is the same thickness as a standard DVD case. PHOTO 1: Correct order to view these films PHOTO 2: Jesse Stone and Reggie drinking scotch and listening to Brahms PHOTO 3: Johannes Brahms in 1893, age 60, when he composed the Jesse Stone theme music PHOTO 4: Good Boy