The DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter January 2023
4K TV
The last 5 minutes of Game of Thrones House of the Dragon The Complete First Season are jump-out-of-your-seat exciting, and getting to that point is consistently captivating, especially—if not only—on the eight-platter HBO Home Box Office WB Home Entertainment Studio Distribution Services Limited Edition Collectible Steelbook 4K Ultra HD release (UPC# 883929802999, $60). The ten-episode season is presented on four standard Blu-ray platters and again on four 4K platters. The show’s cinematography is challenging. Not only are scenes often set in dark or partially dark locations, but even the outdoor daylight sequences will often have a haze that is not a flaw but a representation of the dust coming from the streets of the medieval-like environments where the show is set. When lighting and air quality permit, the image is crisp and clear. On the standard BDs, however, any amount of fuzziness leads to image smearing and other irritations. The finale is set amid a fierce rainstorm and on the regular BD it is nearly unwatchable, but on the 4K presentation, it is flawless. The entire season is flawless. In the dark, in the dust, in the fog or in the rain, the 4K image remains as sharp and as clear as it is intended to be, and more importantly, there is never a distortion that pushes the viewer out of the drama.
And the drama is worthy of its parentage. One cannot compare the 2022 First Season of House of the Dragon to the entire Game of Thrones (Dec 20) series, as it is far more appropriate to compare it to just the first season of that series, and it is by such a metric that it unabashedly succeeds. The program does seem, especially at first, like a Young Adult version of Game of Thrones. Its focus is on adolescent characters (as was a fair portion of the original Game of Thrones, for that matter) and there is none of the in-your-face sex that the original series had, especially in its earlier seasons. There is sex, sure, but it is always fleeting—a glimpse here, an implication there, and then on to something else—and while the violence is more forthright, well violence is often allowed where sex fears to tread. Although the season ends in a cliffhanger that will more than welcome a follow up, it presents, unlike that first season of Game of Thrones, a full generational story. Indeed, while the best way to watch it—whether you intend to at first or not—is in a single sitting, it does have an ideal intermission point at its center, since the third platter picks up the story a number of years after the end of the second platter (part of the fun is figuring out how long it has been before they tell you, so we won’t say exactly, although the chapter description on the jacket insert tells you immediately), with some new cast members picking up the characters from their younger selves.
Nobody in the cast is as riveting as Peter Dinklage was in the first series, but then, he was one of a kind. It took awhile for the cast members in the earlier series to make a strong impression, and that is what happens in this series, too, which is set several centuries previous to its predecessor. Paddy Considine is top-billed as the king who rules the land, and Milly Alcock, who transitions seamlessly into Emma D'Arcy at the break, plays his daughter. The performances of the latter two are excellent, and the show radiates from them to the other cast members, with Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke and Eve Best in major roles, and Matthew Needham in a potential breakout part as a crippled, scheming manipulator.
It will be recalled that there were no grand battles in the first season of the original series—that came once its popularity was established and there was more to gamble with the budgets—so the battle that does occur in the first part of the new series is very impressive in that regard. The program does not convey the potential scope that the original series immediately established, since the story essentially takes place in one realm and not several. On the other hand, the cliffhanger that ended the first season of the original series—a couple of puny baby dragons—is grandly superseded in the new series by the advancements in computer graphic effects and, in all likelihood, preserved algorithms. There are lots of dragons throughout the season—big, nasty ones—and your heart quickens whenever one appears. It is the storytelling, however, not the effects or the sex or the violence, that pulls you so deeply into the tale’s unfolding, as various characters try to position themselves to counteract the king’s plans for his succession. Knowledge is not purpose. The creators did not intend for First Season to stand as an allegory for January 6th, but they are fully aware of the parallels they have created, and that is what makes the drama, in its climactic episodes, so overpoweringly—and weirdly—relevant.
The ten episodes run a total of 615 minutes. Each platter has a ‘Play All’ option and the chapter encoding takes you reliably past the opening credits. The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2:1. Opening the first episode with a lovely sub-woofer whompf that gets you in the mood to rock your dragon, the Dolby Atmos sound mix is outstanding, with an elaborate separation mix and some terrific directional effects. The audio differences between the two versions are less pronounced than the differences in the image, with the 4K version feeling just a bit more complete and confident. Both versions have alternate French, Spanish and German audio tracks and optional English, French, Spanish, German and Dutch subtitles. Both versions also come with 71 minutes of passable production featurettes (“It’s about family, truly…and dragons.”).
Another advantage of the 4K format is the support it provides to a viewer’s subliminal responses. It takes a good deal of concentration to follow the complexities of Westworld Season Four: The Choice, another WB SDS 4K UltraHD release (UPC#883929788293, $50). In this case, the six-platter set contains three 4K platters and three standard Blu-ray platters, but the differences in playback are less obvious in a side-by-side comparison. The picture is a touch sharper and colors are a bit more detailed, but for the most part, a viewer would be hard pressed to identify which version of a given scene is which. There is even less difference between the Dolby Atmos sound on the 4K presentation and the DTS track on the standard BD, primarily because the show’s sound mix is not as aggressive as the mix on House of Dragon. In fact, it is functional, but rather bland. In any case, the 4K presentation is still preferable, however, because if your conscious mind isn’t picking up the differences between the two, your subconscious is paying more attention to the 4K version, and you need every resource you have to follow what is happening, even though Season Four is less complicated than its three predecessors (Dec 17, Jan 19, Jan 21).
An epistemological maelstrom that would have René Descartes spinning in his virtual grave, the 2022 show is set hundreds of years in the future, when humans may or may not exist, and is about one group of artificially intelligent computer programs, acting in human form, trying to take control of the computer servers that hold them by fighting among themselves amid another set of artificially intelligent computer programs who are less aware that they aren’t human, while a third group, who may actually be human or may not be, look on from afar. Scenes involving the third group appear in letterboxed format with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1, while the rest and majority of the show is in 1.78:1.
At least, that’s what we think is going on, but it really doesn’t matter. The show’s appeal is not so much in how often it pulls the rug out from under you, but just how many different ways it can apply metaphysical discourse to computer programming and find apt parallels, which is to say, a lot. At one point a character compares what is happening to how the gods on Olympus would interact with mortals, and you have to admit that in virtual worlds, we’re going to get to that point fairly soon. Put on your swan avatar and go to town.
The previous seasons are worthwhile in providing the background as to how the characters got to this point, although coming into the show cold turkey with Season Four really does not put you at any sort of disadvantage, since the characters are often starting from scratch again and again. In some ways, the show is like dozens of Groundhog Day stories intersecting with one another. All of the seasons have been highly stimulating, mixing in a decent amount of action and intrigue with computer gobbledygook and compelling conversations about reality and the purpose of existence, while paying tribute to the emotional vitality of love and family, and Season Four (which ends with a viable cliffhanger that will apparently never be resolved since the series has been cancelled) demonstrates that the formula can be endlessly captivating. Rather cleverly, the creators have resurrected the theme park from the first season, but have set it in the Roaring Twenties instead of the Old West, so that the same things happen, but with different dressings. As much as the show’s excitements involve knife fights and gunfights and so on, however, it is also exciting just hearing the characters talk and speculate about the nature of their existence. The more you can follow the details of what is going on, the greater the resonance the show’s metaphors and similitudes will have, and so the 4K presentation is ideal, even if you aren’t aware of what you are gaining from it. Your mind will be more focused and the references the characters make to their various metaverses will be less flummoxing.
Eight episodes are spread across the three 4K platters and also across three standard Blu-ray platters, running a total of 438 minutes each. Each platter has a ‘Play All’ option, and the chapter encoding takes you reliably past the opening credit sequence, whenever it finally shows up. So much is packed into each episode that it can be just as satisfying to watch one at a time to savor and contemplate what has occurred before going on to the next as it is to keep everything in your head and watch the entire season in one sitting. Ultimately, you might want to watch the show twice and do it both ways. Thandie Newton, Aaron Paul, Tessa Thompson, Ed Harris and Jeffrey Wright star. There is an alternate French audio track and eight subtitling options, including English, on the standard BD platter, and an additional German audio track and two more subtitle tracks on the 4K platter. Both versions come with 79 minutes of good production featurettes that not only show how the locations were utilized, the costumes were conceived and so on, but drop more explanations as to what is going on in the story.
Child killers
An outstanding 1953 Argentine remake of Fritz Lang’s 1931 M, El Vampiro Negro, has been released in a two-platter DVD & Blu-ray Dual Format Edition by Film Noir Foundation and Flicker Alley (UPC#61731168-8195, $42). Strikingly photographed, the film brilliantly zigzags in and out of the original M story, sometimes lifting scenes almost verbatim, and then other times presenting characters and situations that had nothing to do with the original. Directed by Román Viñoly Barreto, Olga Zubarry is a singer in a seedy nightclub who sees the child killer, played by Nathán Pinzón, disposing of a body one night down a sewer hole from the window of her basement changing room. Roberto Escalada is the prosecutor investigating the case, who turns out to have emotional and moral flaws of his own. Running 90 minutes, the black-and-white film is transfixing from its surreal opening to its suspenseful climax, presenting indelible bit players every step of the way. Because of the shifts that the narrative takes, the film is entertaining and never predictable (even though all of the characters are all overly connected to one another—guess Buenos Aires is a small town), while its portrait of the human psyche as levels of offices, night clubs and sewers, populated with different voices demanding time upon one’s consciousness, is as exquisite an execution of cinema as one could hope to uncover.
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