The DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter August 2023
The way of 3D
The least beloved of all the boxoffice champions, James Cameron’s original Avatar (May 10) succeeded in surpassing the previous champion, Cameron’s Titanic, by creating a moderately thoughtful, highly imaginative, and relentlessly energetic, Yessongs-album-cover-brought-to-life science-fiction adventure, and then presenting it in a technologically advanced 3D format, thereby creating something that rarely occurs, an entirely new motion picture theatrical experience. Although he took his sweet time about it, Cameron finally put together an equally imaginative sequel, the 2022 Avatar The Way of Water, which has been released as a four-platter Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + Digital Code by 20th Century Studios (UPC#786936899467, $40). This time, however, the 3D was no more advanced than it had been the last time out, and so while the sequel was a decent-sized hit, it did not break the championship bar set by its predecessor (although, thanks to inflation, it did surpass Titanic).
When villains from Earth return across the galaxy to the planet or moon or whatever it is to extract revenge for the whumping they received at the end of Avatar, the tall, bluish humanoid heroes from the pervious film relocate their family from their idyllic jungle home to hide among people living on an archipelago. The people of the archipelago communicate with the many sea creatures in the same way that the heroes had communicated with the sky and jungle creatures, and they learn how to live in their new environment as they overcome petty resentments and bond with their new hosts. And then the bad guys find them.
The film runs 193 minutes, and while it fits onto one Blu-ray platter, it has to be split in two for the 3D platters. The movie is a grand entertainment on the standard Blu-ray. While it does not explore the concepts of identity and consciousness as elaborately as the first film did—the heroes are partly human but share most of the traits that the planet’s indigenous human-like beings possess—it does build upon that movie’s basic concepts, and reinforces the sense of a greater physical and spiritual entity, of which all the ‘living’ beings on the planet are a component. The film revisits and then builds enthusiastically upon the designs of the first movie, both in the hardware that the human villains bring with them (among other things, facilitating a futuristic form of whaling), and the flora and fauna of the planet—notably, the many different sea creatures. The climactic battle is especially thrilling for the variety of situations and perils it is able to encompass utilizing all of these factors.
The 3D presentation does more than just add to the thrills. Carefully composed, the imaginative and cluttered environments are ideal for the 3D playback, but as the film goes along, it seems like it is what is now a typical 3D blockbuster feature, interchangeable with the 2D presentation except for a few key moments. Until the heroes dive underwater. Then, the 3D really comes into its own. There is a genuine ‘weight’ to the environment surrounding the characters underwater, as the entire image takes on a texture that is missing when the characters just have air around them, something that the 2D playback cannot replicate. And the 3D also adds to the drama at a very key moment. When one of the heroes dies, his entire body stiffens in lifelessness, an effect that can be observed in a palpable perspective with the 3D. In 2D, it’s just another movie death.
Along with Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang reprise variations of their roles from the initial film (Weaver actually plays an adolescent thanks to the complex computer imaging through which most of the actors are masked), while Kate Winslet and Edie Falco have been added to the cast, among others. Michelle Yeoh, David Thewlis, Wes Studi, CCH Pounder, Giovanni Ribisi, Oona Chaplin, Joely Richardson, Jack Champion and Cliff Curtis are also featured, and Cameron favorites Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Billy Zane, Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen are also in there, somewhere.
The film is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1. The transfer is, of course, impeccable on either playback. What can be said for the advantage of the standard 2D presentation, in addition to not having to swap out platters halfway through the film, is that without the ‘distraction’ of the 3D playback, a viewer can better appreciate the incredible detail that has gone into the special effects, particularly in the backgrounds and away from the center of the action. The 5.1-channel DTS sound has a sweeping dimensionality of its own and adds to the excitement of every sequence. It is elaborately designed, so that thumps, cries and other audio details are very specific in their location and purpose, adding to the essential, overwhelming wealth of sensory input that the entire film conveys. The Simon Franglen musical score is serviceable to the film’s emotions, but unmemorable. There is also an audio track that describes the action (“In the floating mountains, Spider leaps nimbly between the formations as he leads the Blue Team.”), an audio track that has been altered to protect younger ears from some grownup expressions, a Spanish audio track and optional English and Spanish subtitles.
The fourth platter contains a terrific 180 minutes of production featurettes, going over the many innovative technical accomplishments that led to the creation of the film’s realistic animation (it was shot entirely on soundstages and in tanks in New Zealand, and although the filmmakers went around the world first to grab examples of sea life in natural elements for reference, the artists were obviously inspired by the landscapes adjacent to their commute). The majority of the stars had to act with dots attached to their faces and small cameras attached in front, pointing at them. Indeed, one of the younger stars, Britain Dalton, would be a full blown teen heartthrob by now if he hadn’t had to appear throughout the film with a blue face, a blue body and a tail. For anyone who enjoyed the feature, the programs are highly entertaining, giving the viewer a feel for the people who collaborated on the project, the spirit and drive Cameron brought to everyone involved, and the incredible scope that the production represented. The only thing that is missing from the presentation is any mention whatsoever of 3D. Also featured on the platter are two trailers and an overly vague 5-minute music video from The Weeknd. Although the film itself picks up where it left off if playback on any of the first three platters is terminated, none of the programs on the fourth platter do so.
Except for instances where a change in ownership has facilitated an alteration in packaging, so far as we know, the first 3D film to be sublicensed and reissued in the modern 3D format is Martin Scorsese’s wonderful 2011 celebration of motion pictures, Hugo, which was initially released in 3D by Paramount (May 15) and has now been re-released in a two-platter 3D Blu-ray set by Paramount and Arrow Video (UPC#760137127253, $40). That said, there appears to be no difference in the quality of the 3D playback between the two releases. The colors are identical and the 3D effects have the same precise sharpness. The 7.1-channel DTS sound is also of equal strength and separational delights. What Arrow does have to offer, however, is a viable array of new special features.
While the film has many purposes, it was clearly created for the 3D format, and you can feel Scorsese, a lifelong 3D fan, chomping at the bit to play with the format’s potential from the very first frames. Like Cameron, he never relinquishes the format’s possibilities even as he recognizes the importance narrative and drama have over gimmicks. Set in the early Thirties in a Paris railway terminal, where the great but long forgotten inventor of fantasy cinema, Georges Méliès, runs a toyshop, the story is about a young boy who lives in the terminal’s attic and inevitably has a run-in with Méliès. With the input and assistance of others, their meeting eventually cures the heartbreaks that had be weighing heavily on both the old man and the boy. The film’s effects are not just constantly inventive and engaging, they underscore the conflicts and emotions of the movie—the terminal environment feels like an enormous clockwork—so that what can seem like a sweet movie geek concoction in 2D becomes, in 3D, a glorious celebration of what motion pictures have accomplished for the human soul.
The film runs 126 minutes and is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1. Both the 2D presentation and the 3D presentation appear on a single platter. There are optional English subtitles, and along with a trailer, the film has been provided with a terrific commentary track from Méliès biographer Jon Spira. He talks extensively about Méliès, of course, but he also talks about the artists contributing to the film and the quality of their work, Scorsese’s motivations for creating the film and his choices within it, and many other related topics, including 3D. “I think you really have to see it in 3D to really appreciate the fantastic work that the whole crew did on that. James Cameron actually told Scorsese apparently that Hugo was his favorite of all the [3D] films.”
The second platter holds the rewarding featurettes that had accompanied Paramount’s original Blu-ray release, running a total of 58 minutes, along with a brief collection of promotional materials in still frame and an eclectic collection of new featurettes, befitting the film’s own celebration of clutter and history.
The author of the (large) source novel/picture book, Brian Selznick, explains his thought process behind creating the tale in an excellent 55-minute interview. He also talks extensively about the film, contemplates the art of cinematic adaptation, and shares some nice anecdotes about his cameo part and his involvement with the shoot. He found that Scorsese had been so meticulous in copying his own original artwork that he felt like he had ‘accidentally’ storyboarded a Martin Scorsese film. “It’s a really, really faithful adaptation of a book. It’s perhaps the most faithful adaptation of a book I’ve ever seen.”
In a 40-minute interview with cinematographer Robert Richardson, he speaks in great detail about how he works with Scorsese (who knows what he wants with each shot), the problems accompanying enhanced frame rates (we certainly don’t like looking in the mirror with our reading glasses on, and that is the same sort of effect that high-speed frame rates generate on actors’ faces), the color ‘temperature’ choices for the film and the specific challenges of shooting in 3D (how to judge which distances will work the best in a specific shot). “I found that 3D was immensely successful at showing the expression of an actor in a way which was completely different from doing it in 2D. There was a difference in 2D versus 3D. You can feel more of the human being in 3D, because you do have [a sense] of the whole body, of the whole face. It’s not as flat. It just takes on this depth, and that depth brings you closer. It would be very easy to overact in 3D.” He also says that the learning curve was so steep, he wished very much he could have gone back and shot half of the movie again.
A 10-minute piece that is designed for younger viewers uses the displays of a British film museum to go over the predecessors to film, such as shadow plays and zoetropes, while a 38-minute piece in French uses the displays of a museum in Paris dedicated to Méliès to present his biography and explain the importance of his accomplishments as the founder of many aspects of cinema and its grammar. There is an 8-minute look at Méliès’ later years, a very good 14-minute interview with composer Howard Shore about the various influences that guided his score, a potentially rewarding 18-minute appreciation of Scorsese’s artistry that unfortunately spends at least half of its running time on un-narrated clips from the film, and a much better 23-minute reflection on the film’s themes and dynamics, as well as its production history.
Readily appearing on many lists of the ‘Worst Movies of All Time,’ the cheaply but gamely staged 1953 Robot Monster celebrates its dimensional resurrection with a lovingly executed 70th Anniversary Restoration in 3D on a single-platter Blu-ray from 3-D Film Archive and Bayview Entertainment (UPC#012233538939, $35) in three formats—2D, Polarized 3D and red/blue shift 3D. For the latter, which can be watched on any monitor, a pair of red/blue glasses is included. Since the film is in black and white, the replication of its 3D effects in the red/blue format is essentially as good as the Polarized 3D version (which requires a special player and monitor, as it did for Avatar The Way of the Water and Hugo).
The film itself runs 62 minutes, but the presentation is expanded with a lengthy 1953 opening prologue short entitled Stardust in Your Eyes in 3D by standup comic (tolerable imitations and lame jokes), Slick Slaven, in front of an inert flat background, and an extended epilog montage of memorabilia stills (along with some sort of music video), to create a feature running time of 73 minutes. Shot in the dusty California outdoors at the broken down foundations of a building, the dry, undeveloped hillsides and the oft-used Los Angeles Bronson Caves, the film, after a further preamble, is about the last family on Earth, who are protecting themselves from an alien in a gorilla suit with a space helmet. Given the film’s dream logic, this all makes perfect sense, and given the limitations of the production—a half-dozen cast members, the least expensive props imaginable—the narrative conveys wisps of legitimate science-fiction thoughtfulness amid its reinforcement of Fifties social conformity. Directed by Phil Tucker, there are two child performers whose skills are limited, but the adult actors, including George Nader and Claudia Barrett, know what they are doing and give it their best shot, despite some memorably awkward dialog (“I cannot, yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do ‘must’ and ‘cannot’ meet?”).
But we are not here to debate what makes a movie ‘bad,’ particularly when that badness is of itself entertaining. No, we are here to assess the quality of the 3D effects, which are, by the standards of even the dumbest 3D movies, also ‘bad’—and yet there is something utterly enchanting about watching the film in the 3D format. One of the props the filmmakers did manage to spring for, or at least rent, was a bubble machine, and so there are flurries of bubbles floating both closer and farther away from your nose with a delightful profuseness. And then there are the characters, standing amid the scrub brush and occasional rocks. They are almost always presented with a distinct dimensionality, perspectively placed against the rocks and against one another. But that is it. There is nothing waved, tossed or flung at the camera, and nothing elaborately dimensional happens. Nevertheless, except for the flat stock inserts of lizards pretending to be dinosaurs, you are always aware of, and even pleased by, the 3D effects, and the film, already endearing for its let’s-put-on-a-show spirit, becomes even more charming.
The picture is presented in a squared full screen format and looks terrific, with no discernible wear or compromised cinematography. The monophonic sound has some slight background noise and, hang on to your hat if you are not steeped in Fifties film arcana, there is an amazing musical score by Elmer Bernstein. Not only is the music succinct and suitable to the tone of the film, but it seems almost as if it is clear enough and simple enough to serve as a primer on how to score a movie. There are optional English subtitles. Juvenile star Greg Moffett and restoration experts Mike Ballew, Eric Kurland and Lawrence Kaufman supply a commentary track over just the film itself. It is a fairly conversational talk, with some information shared, speculation over different aspects of the shoot, and a celebration of the film’s many quirks, but overall, its value is limited.
Because of the different formats available on the platter, the menu can be a bit confusing. In 2D there are 38 minutes of various supplements, including a trailer for Robot Monster; wonderful 2D trailers for other 3D movies from the era; an alternate opening title card in which the film was called Robot from Mars; a 3-minute appreciation, or anti-appreciation, of the film by Joe Dante; a fascinating 4-minute look at the cinematic experimentation that was done during the film’s production, including a discarded day-for-night sequence (hence, the characters all appear to fall asleep in the afternoon) and shots in the film that are genuinely different depending upon which eye you close; and 13 minutes of wonderful reflections with 3D Archive’s Bob Furmanek, not only about rescuing Robot Monster, but also about tracking down Slaven. Additionally, there is a terrific 8-minute 2D clip of Bela Lugosi on the 1953 TV show, You Asked for It, doing his Dracula shtick and also plugging an upcoming 3D movie. The piece is accompanied as well by a succinct commentary from Lugosi biographer Gary Rhodes, who talks about Lugosi’s career as Dracula in an informative and engaging manner.
In 3D, there are 64 minutes of supplementary features that are not broken down any further on the menu, but include a 3D trailer for the film; a nice 18-minute interview with the elderly Moffett talking about his career as a child actor, his memories of making the film, and his experiences with its subsequent notoriety (although a lot of what he has to say is repeated in the commentary); a terrific 21-minute insightfully narrated montage of 3D snapshots from a variety of locations, times and sources; two black-and-white 3D shorts from 1953 featuring undulating women, Dance of the Blonde Slave’s Revenge running 4 minutes and the somewhat more dimensional Madonna and Her Bubbles running 5 minutes; a terrific 2-minute montage presentation of a Harvey Adventures in 3-D comic book that encourages you to freeze each page for extended viewing; a jokey 4-minute modern visit to the Bronson Canyon site; a jokey ‘interview’ with someone pretending to be the monster from the film that does including the only 3D glimpse you will ever get of the monster from Invaders from Mars (see page 7); and a brief, side-by-side before-and-after presentation of the film’s 3D restoration.
With many classic 3D features begging for restoration it is a challenge to justify the effort 3-D Film Archive put into restoring the 1972 softcore feature, Prison Girls, although the transfer is fairly impressive, all things considered. The Archive, MGM and Kino Lorber Incorporated have released the film as a single-platter KL Studio Classics 3D Blu-ray (UPC#73-8329262785, $30), in the dual format Polarized 3D and red/blue shift versions, as well as a 2D version. A pair of red/blue glasses is included.
Running 88 minutes, the film is about a half-dozen female inmates who are given weekend furloughs, and is therefore broken down into respective erotic vignettes with each actress. There is an overriding narrative, enabling a valid closing moral (undercut only because the actress is clearly reading from the script on the desk below the bottom of the image—like everything else, an awareness of it is enhanced by the 3D, in this case, the tilt of her head), but there is only so much that can be done in the sex scenes, and as much as the filmmakers attempt to provide variables, it gets stale fairly quickly.
What doesn’t get stale is the absolutely wonderful set dressing. Shot in Los Angeles, whether it is a fancy house in the hills or a derelict garage in midtown, the Seventies décor is exquisite. Sure, instead of working hard to recreate an era, the designers were just grabbing whatever was around and taking advantage of it, but now that accumulated effort becomes a glorious time capsule of bad taste at its finest. When you get tired of seeing naked bodies writher on the floor, for example, your 3D gaze turns to the portion of the shag carpet that is not being defiled, with every gold thread standing upright, as if the entire rug were excited by what was going on.
Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, the color transfer, as seen on the included 2D presentation, as well as the Polarized 3D presentation, is very good, with reasonably bright hues and accurate fleshtones. The cinematography is less consistent in its lighting and focus, and the film has a worn and battered look to it most of the time, but the clarity of the image is still advantageous. Despite the different types of breasts on display, it is not the naked bodies so much as simply the contours of a face and the round softness of a shoulder that benefit the most from the 3D playback. There are sporadic attempts to lunge objects at the camera—which also get beer spit on it in the one 3D moment that can actually make you duck—and while the objects placed in the foreground are not as creative or as large as they are in the more energetically composed 3D features, there is often a little doodad of some sort protruding at the bottom of the screen. Whether any of this will be enough to justify obtaining the feature will be up to the individual collector, although the sense that there is only a finite number of such programs available, and that the effects, regardless of their spiritual banality, can be so much fun that even leaning over to scrape the bottom of the barrel is a temptation that is difficult to resist.
The alternate red/blue process is fantastic on black-and-white 3D films, such as The Diamond Wizard (Dec 22) and Robot Monster, but color films have always been compromised by the technology, even theatrically. While the 3D effects are excellent—and you can watch them on any TV hooked up to a Blu-ray player—the film is presented in a virtual black and white, with no more than a vague, pale hint of the film’s strongest primary hues. Nevertheless, although the colors are missing, the 3D effects are just as much of a kick as they are on the Polarized version, since the image is still very sharp and effectively detailed.
Along with subtitles, there is a 2D trailer and a 5-minute extension of one of the erotic scenes, also in 2D, which, for all of the additional variety in positions that it provides, demonstrates how some of the other scenes could have stood a little judicious trimming. Every version of the film is accompanied by a commentary track from fans James G. Chandler and Ash Hamilton, who share a few tidbits about the cast members, drop snide remarks about the quality of the production (during a prison shower melee: “There seems to be an awful lot of water not draining, getting pretty deep there, so I kinda wonder if its, you know, ‘Let’s just fill it up and use it for the fight here.’” “In my experience, in prison showers, there’s not a lot of standing water.”), discuss Seventies aesthetics (“There seemed to be an attempt to mix a lot of art from different cultures into America at that time. See, we’re getting things sometimes that seem sometimes very African, Egyptian, but it was still Americanized.”) and the Darwinian shift in pornography that would happen later, during the Eighties (“Women here were much more organic, much more natural.” “Not so much silicone enhancement.” “It was not, you know, the Age of Augmentation.”). Nevertheless, the talk doesn’t really have much to offer.
A black-and-white film that was released by 3-D Archive and Kino as a 3D Blu-ray before they started doing the titles in dual 3D formats, the 1953 Paramount Korean War docudrama, Cease Fire (UPC#738329216429), is just available as a Polarized 3D program, albeit with an alternate 2D playback. Directed by Owen Crump with a prominent producer’s credit for Hal Wallis (the film’s title card reads, Hal B. Wallis’ Cease Fire), the film uses real soldiers for its cast as it tells the story of a platoon sent to secure a hill position on the eve of the cease fire, while cynical reporters waiting at the negotiation site find it hard to believe that a deal is actually going to be reached. Running 75 minutes, with an Intermission, some of the actual documentary footage is flat, but most of the film, including the staged combat scenes, is fully dimensional. Additionally, the film has a 3-channel stereo track, with directional dialog, great firefights and a fully orchestrated and dimensional Dimitri Tiomkin musical score. As for the visual effects, nothing really beats the opening moment when the camera looks down the barrel of an artillery gun (how did it ever duck in time?), but the 3D environment, while never going out of its way to prod a viewer, is consistently engaging, even when it is just the bodies of the men passing through the landscape. The plot is fairly simple and the cast is not asked to do much in the way of dramatics, but the personalities are developed to a certain extent and the basic suspense of the mission is enough to keep a viewer intrigued. Highly derogatory references are made toward the unseen Chinese enemy, but that is an accurate measure of the times, and the unit does have one African-American soldier, who is treated no differently than the others and has his fair share of dialog, such as it is.
The presentation is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1 and the film is accompanied by optional English subtitles. The film itself has an introduction by General Mark W. Clark in 3D, and there are two alternative introductions by Clark, in 3D, in the supplement, running a total of a bit over a minute. Also featured are two trailers (one in 2D promoting the film as a 3D release) and a minute-long radio ad accompanied by a still photo montage of memorabilia, and rather disappointingly, a menu option that only brings up a website address where the viewer can access an essay about the film.
Inside: Italian crime thrillers, Spaghetti westerns and more!
For a complete collection of more than 16,000 DVD and Blu-ray reviews, write to DVDLaser@rocketmail.com
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.