The DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter November 2023
Perfect pink
Greta Gerwig’s gloriously giddy 2023 dialectic entertainment, Barbie, is rendered all the more divine by its presentation from Warner Bros. and SDS Studio Distribution Services as a 4K UltraHD Blu-ray (UPC#883929801794, $50), which replicates every shade and variation of the film’s many different pinks with absolute perfection. The film’s surreal world of dolls come to life is an ideal plaything for the vivid realness of the 4K format. Although there are a number of characters named ‘Barbie’ in the film, Margot Robbie is the central character, the ‘Classic Barbie,’ who mysteriously begins to feel ennui and discovers a small patch of cellulite on her thigh. Panic time. Her character ventures, as characters in imaginative, Candide-land films can do, into the somewhat real Los Angeles, with ‘Ken,’ played by Ryan Gosling, in tow. In the heroine’s world, the Barbies rule and the Kens are just accouterments, like dresses, shoes and cars. In the real world, well, we all know how the real world operates. Gosling’s character is impressed, and makes his way back to the doll world to infect it with ideas of a new social order. Oh dear. In addition to being an utter visual delight, the film is laugh-alicious. Robbie has to play the ‘straight man’ role, but still manages to infuse great humor into her reactions and responses. As the less restricted supportive attachment, Gosling is the goose that lays golden eggs of comedy again and again.
The film runs 114 minutes, and frankly, its final act downshifts a little bit after all of the crazy, stimulating ideas and humor that has come before it. Will Ferrell, playing the CEO of ‘Mattel,’ disappears from the movie for a stretch, suggesting that Gerwig does not have a tight handle on every plot strand she is weaving. After bonding with genuine humans represented by America Ferrara and Ariana Greenblatt, Robbie’s character has to go through a reconciliation with what she represents in order to reclaim her toy world. Rhea Perlman is brought in to play a sagely character that can advise her about existence, and the conversation does go on a bit. The 4K format is so crisp and resplendent, however, that impatience is stayed as the movie ignores or works its way out of the constructs it has placed to upset the happiness of its characters, delivering an ending that will go over the heads of children, feel like a ‘meh’ punchline to others, and will be a stamp of comedic brilliance for those who appreciate Gerwig’s accomplishment. She has taken medicinal concepts about the roles and treatment of women, the function of toys and their reinforcement of stereotypes, the striving everyone feels for independence of thought and style, and the near oppressive strata that remains an integral part of gender definition, and has made it all go down with a spoonful of sugar, in pink.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2:1. The Dolby Atmos sound is crisp and energetic (and the bass isn’t bad, either). There is an audio track that describes the action in American (“Barbie steps out of her heels, and her feet go flat. She tumbles to the ground. Spinning, she gazes down at her unpointed toes. Tall Ken looks her way from a lifeguard tower through pink binoculars.”), a track that describes the action in British with less detail (“Barbie steps out of her stilettos and her feet remain raised at the heel. Her feet now flat on the sand she falls over, and looks at them. Lifeguard Tall Ken looks at her through binoculars.”), alternate French, Spanish and Italian audio tracks, optional English, French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish subtitles, and 45 minutes of enjoyable promotional featurettes that go into how the film’s different design components came together and how much the cast, which includes Kate McKinnon in a significant surprise role, enjoyed themselves.
Haunting 4K
You need only have seen the 2001 haunted house story, The Others, once and you will never EVER forget its primary conceit, but if that stays your hand for watching it again (or multiple times thereafter), then be advised that the film, directed by Alejandro Amenábar, has a great deal more to offer than just one clever plot twist, especially now that it has been released as a beautiful 4K Blu-ray by Janus Films, StudioCanal and The Criterion Collection (UPC#715515288019, $50). Nicole Kidman stars as a war widow living in a large mansion on the island of Jersey with her two children immediately after World War II, the movie opening with the arrival of three servants who respond to an advertisement to aid with the upkeep of the otherwise deserted house. At night, however, the children start hearing noises and seeing things. The film’s atmosphere is exquisite, from the quiet hallways to the endless outdoor fog, and in 4K on top of a beautiful transfer, every shot is transfixing, especially since things sometimes happen in corners you aren’t looking at directly. The Dolby Atmos sound is delicately defined and equally fleeting with errant noises. Running 104 minutes, the film is spooky as all get out, but also offers a highly satisfying psychological exploration behind its frights. It could be interpreted that a haunted house is a head turned inside out, but using Kidman’s ice queen reserve, the film creates an unnerving dynamic between the grace and polish of luxury and the horror of self-awareness. It is only when you immediately go back to watch the movie a second time after it finishes that you realize how important Kidman’s scream in the very first moments of the film is to what follows. In 4K, however, you may just want to keep on watching the film over and over again.
Criterion has included a standard Blu-ray platter along with the 4K platter, and the standard Blu-ray has also been issued as a single platter release (UPC#715515288118, $40). Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, the standard BD looks great, of course, but the 4K is a little bit sharper and more intricately colored, and the sound has a slightly crisper definition, enough not just to make the film more unnerving, but more elegant, as well. The cinematography’s heavy grain at times adds to the atmosphere and is fully justified by the narrative. One of the other appealing aspects to the presentation on 4K is the absolute silence that is sometimes achieved between the noises. The sound is so clean it is eerie. We reviewed a Dimension Home Video DVD in May 02. The picture was fine and the sound was wonderful, but even the standard BD adds to the detail, stability and strength of the presentation. Both platters have optional English subtitles and a commentary in Spanish by Amenábar, with optional English subtitles for it, as well. He explains his thought process behind the choices he made, shares the challenges he faced to elicit the performances he was looking for, explains the story while emphasizing that it remains a ‘film about questions, not answers,’ and describes the technical tools he used to achieve the film’s masterful atmosphere. “Taking into account that horror movies nowadays overuse surround sound and the sound jumps all over the place, we keep the sound on the screen. First, to enhance that classic feel we wanted the film to have, and second, because the film is in many ways a throwback. More than a film of screams, it’s film of whispers. You’ll notice that the sound actually starts behind your back, a sort of whispering, so that the viewer, if they’re engaged with the scene, suddenly feels like there’s someone whispering behind them. But then they realize it’s just the scene in the film. That positioning of the viewer is very important to me. I need the viewer to identify visually and acoustically with the characters in the film. I think it is the most effective way to convey that suspense.”
The standard Blu-ray has a multitude of additional features. Along with a trailer, longer and somewhat altered Spanish language versions of the supplements that appeared on the DVD are featured, including a 29-minute promotional featurette, a 7-minute segment on the visual effects, and 5 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage. Also featured are 8 minutes of wisely deleted scenes that are still worthwhile for understanding what Amenábar wanted to emphasize, 3 minutes of interesting audition footage for the child actors, a 3-minute piece on staging the antique photographs seen in the film, a 2-minute segment on the wonderful set and costume designs, a 6-minute segment on recording Amenábar’s music for the film, an excellent 36-minute interview with Amenábar about the film’s meanings and thematic underpinnings and a great 51-minute retrospective documentary that includes some nice interviews with the film’s participants, including an extensive talk with Kidman.
The days the music lived
Luis Valdez’s elative 1987 depiction of the brief rock and roll stardom of Ritchie Valens, La Bamba, has been released on a spellbinding Blu-ray by Columbia Pictures and The Criterion Collection (UPC#715515287319, $40). Lou Diamond Phillips broke into film by starring as Valens in the Columbia production, which is at once a nostalgic, contemplative look at Hispanic life in Southern California in the late Fifties, a compelling drama about a troubled brother who feels both resentful of and drawn to his more talented younger sibling (the story that serves as the spine of the film), and a dizzyingly joyful celebration of American rock music in its youth. It is in many ways a perfect movie.
In addition to the original recordings and the deft covers—many of Valens’ hits are executed by Los Lobos—Carlos Santana supplies an evocative background score that is especially haunting because of the crisp directional detail delivered by the Blu-ray’s DTS audio track. With Philips’ dreamy grin making every close-up a gemstone moment, Valdez’s experienced skill at guiding audiences through an entertainment blends the 108-minute film’s various components together with an exquisite precision that is then accentuated by the crisp, gorgeous picture and clear, detailed audio on the BD. Esai Morales, Rosanna DeSoto, Danielle von Zerneck, Elizabeth Peña and Joe Pantoliano co-star, with Brian Setzer playing Eddie Cochran.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1. We reviewed the Columbia DVD in Jun 99, and several special features have been carried over, including two terrific commentary tracks with many members of the cast and the crew (including co-producer Taylor Hackford), a trailer and a tear-inducing 20-minute retrospective documentary that includes not only the filmmakers but Valens’ family. Additionally, Criterion has included 20 minutes of impressive audition tapes featuring Phillips, Morales, Peña and DeSoto, and two excellent interviews with Valdez, running a total of 70 minutes (one conducted by Robert Rodriguez), that go over his entire career, including his stage work (he started by working closely as sort of a promotional arm for Cesar Chavez and eventually turned his group’s street performances into a legitimate theater troupe—by and large his outstanding career is still largely ignored outside of Hispanic-American cultural hubs), and dissect all of his films.
Wyler home invasions
William Wyler’s outstanding suburban hostage thriller, the 1955 Paramount production, The Desperate Hours, has been released on a gorgeous Blu-ray by Paramount and Arrow Video (UPC#760137135784, $40). Fredric March is the father of a typical middle class family and Humphrey Bogart is the frantic prison escapee who needs to buy time before he can get the money he needs to go wherever it is he’s planning on going. Dewey Martin and Robert Middleton are his two companions, while Martha Scott plays the wife of March’s character, Richard Eyer is their young son, and Mary Murphy is their decade-older daughter. The performances are all terrific and Wyler’s masterful staging hides the strained logic of the situation with a compelling pace. As great as March and Bogart are, however, they are even better when they are in the same shot. They are two enormously different characters, with different backgrounds, different temperaments and different goals. The thought that they might actually be two similarly lauded and successful movie stars never crosses your mind, at least not much. What really makes the Blu-ray exciting, however, is that the black-and-white feature was shot in Paramount’s VistaVision, and letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, the image is both spotless and immediate. The clarity of the picture makes the presentation indiscernible from a theatrical screening, and makes those two-shots of March and Bogart all the more gripping. This is the kind of experience you live for when you invest in home video.
Gig Young, Arthur Kennedy, Ray Collins and Whit Bissell co-star. Running 112 minutes, the film explores both the fragility and inner strength of the American middle class, and is less valued than some of Wyler’s other features because the suspense genre is less valued, but its artistry is impeccable and despite the now antique Fifties setting, its entertainment is timeless. The monophonic sound is clear. There are optional English subtitles, a trailer, a nice collection of English and Spanish lobby cards in still frame, a real good 39-minute overview of the film’s history and artistry, a very fine 15-minute deconstruction of the film and particularly Bogart’s performance, and a 12-minute audio interview with Wyler’s daughter, Catherine Wyler, sharing her recollections about the film and the players.
Film historian Daniel Kremer provides a passable commentary track, going over the backgrounds of the stars, Wyler and Paramount, and looking at what was happening with them specifically in the Fifties. He also goes over the background of the story itself, talks about the remakes and explains why Wyler’s expertise was particularly suited toward a film with this sort of enclosed dynamics.
A home invasion story of a different sort, Wyler’s outstanding 1942 MGM Oscar winner, Mrs. Miniver, is available on Blu-ray from Warner Home Video (UPC#883929264032, $20). Greer Garson is a British housewife whose family life is upended by the onset of World War II. Walter Pidgeon plays her husband, Richard Ney is her eldest son and Teresa Wright is the son’s girlfriend. May Whitty, Reginald Owen, Henry Travers and Henry Wilcoxon are also featured. Although the film builds to a strong emotional finale, much of it is subtle, examining the day-to-day life in what is apparently a London suburb, and then altering or outright tearing apart what had been previously established when the interruptions of war begin. Garson is word perfect in the role, so much so that she manages to make the normalcy of her character a glowing beacon of steadfastness, pragmatism and love. As he does in Desperate Hours, Wyler’s staging of every scene has a compelling weight to its observation of the characters and their thoughts—again, as with Garson, turning the ordinary into beautiful perfection, like the rose that gives the film its title.
Indeed, one should probably watch Mrs. Miniver first and then watch Desperate Hours second. The full screen black-and-white picture is in excellent condition, with the same riveting crispness and finely detailed contrasts that Desperate Hours has, so that the advancement to the VistaVision image on Desperate Hours will have an even greater impact as that film transitions a viewer to a world and attitude that have been permanently altered by the horrors of war. The monophonic sound is clear and nearly noiseless. There are alternate French, Spanish, Italian and German audio tracks and optional English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Korea subtitles. Along with a trailer, there is a minute-long black-and-white newsreel clip of Garson receiving her acting Oscar; a 10-minute MGM Tex Avery color cartoon from 1942, Blitz Wolf, spoofing the Axis powers as the wolf and presenting the Three Little Pigs as the Allies, with racist stereotypes and Avery’s surreal imagination abounding; a nice 22-minute black-and-white MGM Crime Does Not Pay short from 1942, For the Common Defense, featuring Van Johnson as an American agent working with Latin American governments to prevent local gangsters from helping Japanese infiltrators (the short has both atmosphere and action); and a very interesting 1942 MGM black-and-white short running 19 minutes, Mr. Blabbermouth!, that belittles characters who are pessimistic about America’s chances in the war (which is specifically identified as, “World War II,” although it was still just getting underway so far as the United States was concerned).
Transfixing Bears
A wonderful, multi-layered Iranian film with striking cinematography, No Bears, has been released as a Janus Contemporaries Blu-ray by Sideshow, Janus Films and The Criterion Channel (UPC#715515288613, $30). The director, Jafar Panahi, also stars in the 2022 production, playing a variation of himself, spending time in a small town near the Turkish border as he attempts to direct a film being shot in Turkey over the Internet—that is when he has enough bars to communicate with his crew. Then there is the film he is shooting, and a drama involving the lead actors, those two stories—which are both about obtaining phony passports to emigrate—intertwining to the point where one cannot tell which narrative is which. Finally, there is lots of drama in the small town, as a young woman wants to run away with a young boy and not his older cousin, to whom she has been promised since birth. Unwittingly, Panahi’s character steps into the middle of that contretemps, just as his assistant director is desperately trying to persuade him to sneak across the border and leave Iran, something he is reluctant to do. There is both great humor and deep tragedy in what unfolds. Running 107 minutes, the film juxtaposes metropolitan sensibilities with traditional values while presenting memorable characters caught up in a myriad of fascinating and compelling narratives, amid transfixing images.
The images come from a number of sources (is this the first film to use an automobile’s backup camera for narrative advancement?), but there is a thrilling immediacy that seems to place the viewer right next to Panahi as he observes the world around him. The nighttime photography is amazing, and it comes across a little uncertainly on the image transfer, but otherwise the BD’s picture looks fantastic, with crisp, vivid and detailed hues. The 5.1-channel DTS sound has a satisfying surround presence that seems to capture every noise made in the town. Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, the film is in Farsi, Turkish and Azari with optional English subtitles. Unfortunately, the film does not start up where it left off if playback is terminated. Along with a trailer, there is a 2-minute audio recording by Panahi—who was in jail at the time—that played at a festival where the film won an award, and a good 18-minute piece on Iran’s ‘poetic realism’ cinema, how Panahi fits into the mix, the subversive nature of the films he has made and a dissection of the film at hand.
Here comes Mr. Jordan again
Robert Morley is Mr. Jordan, Anthony Franciosa is the fighter pulled into the afterlife prematurely by Wally Cox’s squeamish spirit and Joey Bishop is the fighter’s befuddled trainer trying to make sense of everything when Franciosa’s character, transported into a millionaire’s body, summons him and wants to train for the championship in a marvelous 1961 black-and-white CBS Dupont Show of the Month broadcast, Heaven Can Wait, which has been resurrected by Liberation Hall (UPC#089353403423, $15). Diana Van der Vlis plays the girl that Franciosa’ character(s) falls in love with, but even though she doesn’t have the star presence that the others do, and really doesn’t have the charisma, either, the story is so sweet and so focused on the hero’s love for her that the show works just fine with her as the heroine (although we salivate at the thought of what Elizabeth Montgomery might have done in the part, considering her father had the original Franciosa role in the 1941 adaptation of the story). Frank McHugh and Elizabeth Ashley are also featured. Shot on soundstages in a mix of video and film (both made by Dupont, we are assured), there are primitive special effects that are nevertheless all that is needed to convey the narrative. Morley and Cox can just stand there and be funny as all get out, and Bishop works his butt off to deliver his comedy, while Franciosa shoulders the brunt of the narrative and its momentum effectively. It is a charming and humorous fantasy supporting the concepts of fate and true love, and its retrieval from the archives of forgotten television events is a welcome achievement.
Due to its age and source, the full screen picture is best viewed on a smaller screen. The image is soft and has occasional blips, but to some extent its antiquity helps sell the budgetary and technological limitations of the production. On the other hand, the image is so clear at times that you can see sweat dripping off of Franciosa’s chin. The monophonic sound has a basic level of noise, but is workable, and there is no captioning. The show runs 86 minutes with the original Dupont commercials included (Dupont explaining how they are helping civilization with their great improvements to products, and also how they take really good care of their workers), but can also accessed without the commercials for a 76-minute running time, if you really can’t wait for Heaven to conclude.
Inside—The Meg, great westerns, France during the Occupation, Flying Boats and much more…
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