The DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter February 2023
Off we go, into the wild Blu yonder
Are demo sequences still a thing? In the Eighties, they rocked home video. If you wanted to show off your set up to your friends, or if you were an electronics store manager who wanted to excite a potential customer in a demonstration room, you would put on some well crafted and aurally detailed action scene from a hit movie. Our favorites were the forest chase scene from Return of the Jedi and the motorcycle chase from Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Others, however, swore by the dogfight training sequence in Top Gun, and perhaps, especially in stores that wanted to sell equipment to customers, the subliminal call of patriotism added to the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh punch of the scene. In the days since, however, such sequences have become less ubiquitous, and we are not entirely sure why. Like sound mixes in general, perhaps, there is more attention paid to film as a gestalt entertainment, served up in its totality and less arresting if a portion of that entertainment is somehow pruned and placed in an individual vase. We have a friend, a professional home theater designer no less, who uses numbers from Bollywood movies instead, but we won’t go there. Nevertheless, we can’t think of any recent movie that has had a sequence comparable to those from the early days of home video entertainment. All of the superhero movies since then have been blasting away, for sure, but not in small, removable segments. Maybe the subway battle in the second Spider-Man film? But even that was a long time ago. Certainly nothing in the Batman chases, or even the Iron Man battles. Maybe something in Transformers, but who wants to admit watching, let alone enthusing about, Transformers? And the later Star Wars movies? Again, some of them are terrific films, but they don’t have an individually removable scene that can stand on its own, showcase fantastic separation and directional effects, and basically make somebody who is watching it think that you own the most fantastic home video set up in the universe.
Until now. The 2022 sequel to Top Gun released on Blu-ray by Paramount, Top Gun Maverick (UPC#032429343338, $32), is a throwback to the Eighties, sure, but not just as a last ditch resurrection of Tom Cruise being a boyish hotshot. It also has the perfect demo sequence, which is basically an upgraded version of the demo sequence in the first Top Gun, with stronger, more precise sounds, better, more vivid images and a clearer vision of what needs to be accomplished, home video-wise. It is, again, a training montage, and this time it is set to The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled again, an appropriate tune since dogfight training is all about deceiving an aerial combatant. Now sure, if you didn’t grow up wearing you’re copy of The Who’s Who’s Next album down to its vinyl base, then maybe the sequence won’t be quite a captivating, but we are already wearing the BD platter down to it’s acrylic innards.
Oh, the rest of the film? Eh. Cruise’s character is called in to prepare a group of young pilots on a combat mission so similar to taking out the Death Star in Star Wars that nobody will be surprised when Han Solo, or a flimsy substitute, finally turns up at the last moment. The film runs 130 minutes, and the last 30 minutes (before 10 minutes of credits) of the actual mission is, Star Wars references aside, effectively and rousingly plotted, with enough twists to keep a viewer guessing, for a while. Building up to the final act, the practice sequences are good fun, as well, that is if you can get past just playing that initial one over and over and over again. But otherwise, the movie is a pale imitation of the original when it comes to both the male bonding and the female romance parts, giving lip service to those concepts and rolling out old horses (Val Kilmer has a small but key part, Anthony Edwards scores a privileged flashback) as a substitute for deeper or more expansive explorations. That the male bonding and the female romance in the first movie wasn’t all that great to begin with is probably why we were not as infatuated by the movie or even its demo sequences as others were, but that does not alter how vacuous the new attempts at emotional connections are. The performances are passable, with Miles Teller doing a decent job in the most critical role, as the son of Edwards’ character. John Hamm is fun as the shortsighted commander, and Jennifer Connelly is hiding the fact that Kelly McGillis opted out to give the film a fresh generational appeal. Technology may advance, but some things in Hollywood never change.
Anyway, back to the fun part, the demo sequence is so good that even Paramount’s DVD (UPC#032429343352, $26) looks and sounds terrific, at least if you have no other discs to compare it to. Not only is the picture on the BD sharper, however, but the sound has more distinctive detail and a heftier yet smoother punch. Unfortunately, the demo segment is not marked directly with the chapter encoding, so you have to scan a bit through talking (although the dialog is positively silken thanks to the audio quality) before getting to the good stuff. The aspect ratio of the letterboxed picture changes periodically, from 2.35:1 to 1.9:1. Both the BD and the DVD have an audio track that describes the action (“The jet nears the carrier. Maverick focuses. The jet hits hard, plowing into the net, sparks flying from the nose. Men with fire extinguishers douse the plane.”) and alternate French and Spanish audio tracks. The DVD has optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. The BD has an alternate Portuguese audio track, eleven subtitling options, including English, and 30 minutes of great production featurettes that show how much the cast was actually in the planes, flying around, along with a Lady Gaga music video and a Onerepublic music video.
A DVD you can’t refuse
An epic ten-part telefilm that is not only loads of fun, but should be required viewing for film schools, The Offer, has been released in a four-platter set by Paramount (UPC#191329234716, $26). Running a total of 540 minutes—not a moment of which is not a delight—the program dramatizes the making of the 1971 classic, The Godfather. Conceived by Michael Tolkin, the series is based upon a book by Godfather producer Albert Ruddy, and sure, it is self serving in that regard, but the story is so rich and so entertaining that you don’t mind if it is stretching the truth now and then to fit everything together. Miles Teller, who has to have absorbed lessons for his own career while going along, plays Ruddy. Quite cleverly, the story of mob boss Joe Colombo, played by Giovanni Ribisi, is also woven into the tale, adding genuine suspense and excitement to the narrative, with the film facing threats not only from the corporate owners of the production company, Paramount, but also from a groundswell movement spearheaded (as a cash generator) by Colombo to improve the image of Italian-Americans. Hence, as a work of art, in addition to its celebration of Italian-American culture, the show draws rich and witty parallels between the power struggles in the mob, the corporate power struggles in the boardroom, and the more immediate power struggles in the studio offices, how all of these relate to the power struggles in The Godfather story itself. The show also does the same for the familial bonds within each group—yes, even the corporate boardroom.
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