Star Wars! (Laserdisc/ DVD/ Blu-ray/ UHD Comparisons)

Why, it's ApRiL fOoL's DaY, everybody!  And how better to honor this day than to cover a film I never otherwise would... the least exotic film I could possibly think of: a Star Wars.  Except, I could never bring myself to tackle one of the prequels, so how about something slightly less irony poisoned?  I'm thinking George Lucas's original Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in 1981, but you all know I'm not a fan of revisionism, so we'll stick to its proper title) from 1977, a film which, honestly, I still get a kick out of and keep in my pretentious physical media collection.  The "Definitive" laserdisc edition, of course.

a very Special episode.

Why?  Look, I don't think anybody on Earth who could possibly give a fig about Star Wars needs me to explain how Lucas Lucas'd the original trilogy in 1997 by re-editing and tampering with his most famous films (though not just these) with goofy early CGI effects and awkward inserts.  All art is subjective, but it's as close to objective as any stance can be that he made them worse.  He dubbed them the "Special Editions," but he also made them the default version in practically every home video release.  The last, best release before this blasphemy were the special edition 1993 laserdiscs, in the hefty "Definitive Collection" boxed set.  So collectors like myself still grip them tightly while most modern fans who care enough to stick to the originals have been relegated to pirating.  Now, it is true that the original "non-special edition" versions were released on DVD in 2006, in a limited edition set that included both versions of all three films.  Ideally, all things being equal and readily available, that's the official release I'd actually recommend (as of this writing, there's one used copy for sale on Amazon for $170).  But the transfers were just non-anamorphic ports of the laserdisc masters, so I never felt it was worth double-dipping.  Let's take a look!

1) 1993 Fox LD, 2) 2004 Fox DVD, 3) 2011 Fox BD, 4) 2020 Fox UHD.

I've said this before, but it's been a while since I've done a laserdisc, so here's a quick reminder.  All the other discs are digital and can be ripped directly to one's computer for accuracy.  But laserdiscs are analog, so I have to import them through old school cables and are therefore a little less technically accurate (I'd say they appear less washed out on my television).  And of course UHD shots with HDR like these are standard def tone-mapped conversions of their HD originals, so bear that in mind when comparing these screenshots.

So, the framing and aspect ratio are essentially the same, but not perfectly.  The laserdisc is 2.33:1, the DVD is 2.34:1, the BD is precisely 2.35:1 and then the UHD is wider still at 2.39:1.  So we keep gaining extra, barely perceivable slivers.  Of course the boost in clarity is more significant, especially going from laserdisc to DVD, analog stipulation or no.  These being Star Wars products, you could predict that film grain is light even on the UHD.  But it is pretty much all there to be made out once you reach the HD editions, and the colors look both deepest and the most natural in 4k (plus a bit warmer), which is surely the least, or at least the most delicately, tinkered with master to date.  Oh, and for you frame-loving freaks out there, yes the laserdisc is in CAV.

The laserdisc features the audio in a nice bold, surround 4.1 track with optional English closed captioning.  The DVD translates that to 5.1 Dolby EX with optional English subtitles, plus a 2.0 track, with additional French and Spanish dubs.  The BD then kicks that up to a 6.1 DTS-HD track with optional English subs, plus French, Spanish and Portuguese dubs, an English descriptive track and a slew of foreign language subtitles, specifically: Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.  And finally, the UHD makes it an English Dolby Atmos mix with optional English subtitles, plus French, Japanese and Spanish dubs, an English descriptive track, and
scales down the foreign subs to just French, Japanese and Spanish.

Not that the Definitive laserdiscs were perfect, even for their day - check out this excellent documentation of every minute flaw in the whole set - but they did give us some very satisfying special features.  Chief among them were commentary tracks for each film.  In the case of Star Wars 1, this featured effects artist Ken Ralston, concept designer Ralph McQuarrie, Lucas, effects artist Dennis Muren and puppeteer/ voice artist Frank Oz, though even with the four of them, it's fairly sparse.  Each film also had a final chapter with video supplements.  So for the original, we got trailers, a gallery of concept art with explanatory voice-over by McQuarrie and an on-camera interview with George Lucas.  It also included a 16-page booklet and a big hardcover book, all packaged in an impressively solid, black case.

Unfortunately, the DVD drops all of that, and replaces it only with a new commentary, this time more lively, by Lucas, sound designer Ben Burtt, Murren and Carrie Fisher, though in both cases, they're not all sitting together but edited individually into the track.  Just a commentary is pretty light for such a mega-movie like this in the heyday of DVD, but if you bought it in a complete trilogy boxed set, you would've also gotten a fourth Bonus Material DVD, with a lot of additional material.  Primarily, it featured a massive two and a half hour retrospective documentary covering all three films.  Then there are three featurettes, roughly fifteen minutes each, focusing on smaller details (i.e. the history of the lightsaber).  There's a massive collection of trailers and TV spots, a couple galleries, an Easter Egg gag reel, and two promos for the prequels and a prequel-based video game.

The blu-ray keeps the DVD commentary and also brings back the laserdisc one.  It also came with three bonus discs if you bought a whole six-film set (the originals and prequels), one of which just relates to the prequels, but the other two is jam-packed with featurettes, interviews, the documentary (now split into three parts for each film), deleted scenes, and just about everything you could want.  The UHD includes both commentaries and most of the short stuff from the blu-ray bonus discs, but not the full-length documentary.  So hang onto your blu-ray sets even if you're updating.

the story of a boy, a girl and an X-Box.

Supposedly, Disney is restoring the original, non-special edition for a theatrical release in 2027, its fiftieth anniversary.  No word of a physical release yet, but they'd finally get me to double-dip if they did it.  I guess you could say I feel... a new hope.  😜

Zeder's Revenge!

Image originally released Zeder, a.k.a. Revenge Of the Dead, on DVD in fullscreen as part of their Euroshock Collection way back in 1999.  But in 2002, when 20th Century Fox(!) reissued it in Italy in widescreen with the superior Italian audio track and removable English subs, I was very happy to upgrade.  More recently, when Code Red announced this title, I was excited at the prospect of this film making its HD debut, but only if it was the uncut version (there have been a couple budget releases - this one and this one - from a label called Cydonia missing a decent chunk of footage) with the Italian audio and English subtitles.  Thankfully, they came through.

Update 8/20/24: It's Day 4 of Update week 2024, and here's one that's been conspicuously absent since its release in February: 88 Films' new and improved Zeder!  And that's not all.  This is an all-horror Update day, wherein I've also added three additional DVDs of Night Of the Living Dead and House On Haunted Hill apiece.  And since I've got plenty more updates to come.  This Update Week may unnaturally extend an extra couple of days.

The first thing you should know about Zeder is that the Revenge Of the Dead box art is very misleading.  If you're expecting anything Hell Of the Living Dead or Nightmare City, forget about it; zombies never crawl out of manhole covers or anything like that.  I mean, there are a couple cool scenes towards the end that you could maybe connect to the cover image at a stretch, but this is really more of a giallo with a supernatural twist than a traditional zombie film.  Gabriele Lavia is a young writer who buys a used typewriter and realizes the old ink ribbon reveals the last things the previous owner wrote with it.  This leads him into a strange conspiracy involving mysterious references to something called a "K Zone" and life after death.  Zeder is a smart, brooding film about secret messages, following clues, hidden passageways and a pool scene surely influenced by Val Lewton's Cat People, all written and directed by Pupi Avati (Story of Boys & Girls, The House With Laughing Windows).

And this is why fans cared so much about getting the original Italian audio with this film.  Yes, like almost all Italian films, it's all dubbed either way; but in Zeder's case, the Italian's a much better performed, naturalistic track.  And that wouldn't be so important for your typical Italian zombie film that's just out to dazzle you with eye candy and gut munching gore.  Heck, sometimes the bad dubbing can even add to the experience of the wilder cases; but here I think it really spoils it.  Here you've got great locations with atmospheric lighting and people that need to involve you in their struggles, not sound like cartoon characters.

All that said, I really appreciate Code Red releasing it with the Revenge Of the Dead artwork.  It's an iconic VHS cover from its day, and I have... fond? memories of renting it and falling asleep to it several times when I was too young to appreciate its craft.  And I like that Code Red's motif is to hold to those old American video days with their covers.  I mean, come on, if they're already released L'ossessa as The Eerie Midnight Horror Show, they've gotta go with "Revenge Of the Dead!"

1) 2002 IT Fox DVD; 2) 2017 US Code Red BD; 3) 2024 UK 88 BD.

The first two discs look pretty similar, apart from the added clarity of Code Red's HD.  It still looks a little soft, which I imagine goes back to the film itself, but it definitely sharpens up the DVD and nicely clarifies all the edges.  The framing tightens in just a smidgen from about 1.82:1 to 1.78.  Despite being anamorphic, Fox's disc has a bit of window-boxing around all four sides that I'm glad the blu dispenses with.  Guys, let's never bring back TV overscan, okay?  Anyway, Code Red's packaging also specifically points out its new, exclusive color correction, and it looks quite good.  But again, it's pretty similar to Fox's DVD, just a bit more subdued, which is appropriate.  Compare the skin-tones in the comparison below to better see where they've improved things.

But things have improved a second time with 88's disc, which is is taken from a fresh 2k scan of the original camera negative.  Colors are more natural and the contrast especially is more subdued.  Grain that was smoothed over is now present, albeit still a little light in some areas, fine detail and edges are sharper.  It feels like another step forward, equal to how the Code Red advanced on the DVD.  In fact, flipping between screenshots from all three, I'd even say it's greater.

1) 2002 IT Fox DVD; 2) 2017 US Code Red BD; 3) 2024 UK 88 BD.

Now, to be clear, all three discs do offer that inferior English dub in addition to the Italian track, if you want it.  It's nice to have as a curiosity piece if nothing else.  And yes, all three releases have English subtitles.  But not everybody's entirely happy with Code Red's subs, so let's get into that.

There are a couple issues going on.  One is just the look.  Slightly outlined white vs. yellow with black bars behind them.  The first are less distracting, but the second are easier to read, which as a glasses wearer, I appreciate.  Second there are some translation differences, but I don't understand Italian well enough (or at all) to argue which are more accurate.  Code Red's subs match the English dub more closely and are likely what we foreign film fans like to call "dubtitles," while 88's are traditional subtitles, as they specifically translate the Italian track.  And third, I think the most controversially, is the fact that the Code Red subs are captions for the hearing impaired, which means besides transcribing the dialogue, they also include sound effects like "[door opens]."  It isn't too distracting once you get used to it, though.  There isn't a "[tap] [tap] [tap]" for every footstep or anything; it's just the key sounds.  So I get why some people are a little underwhelmed, and I agree the 88, or even Fox, subtitles are preferable - I'm glad 88 has finally given us the better option in HD.

Moving on to the special features, the Fox DVD did actually have a few.  Not a lot, but some pretty cool stuff.  Unfortunately, though, none of it had English language options.  So there's a well-edited 15 minute featurette including interviews with Avati, Lavia, producer Antonio Avati and composer Riz Ortolani, plus trailers for Zeder and House With Laughing Windows.  They're just not English friendly.  It's always killed me that that featurette wasn't subtitled.

Code Red doesn't have any of that stuff, but instead come with their own special features package.  First and foremost is a terrific, half-hour interview with Pupi Avati, which you can watch either subtitled or dubbed (the latter created presumably because the subtitles on this extra, for some reason, are super tiny).  There's also a brief, but all new interview with Gabriel Lavia, and a fun Revenge Of the Dead teaser trailer which tries so hard to mislead you into thinking it's a different type of flick that it doesn't even show you any footage from the film.  The blu also includes reversible artwork, which is fitting, as you can go with a Revenge Of the Dead cover or a Zeder cover, though I'm not a big fan of their newly commissioned Zeder art (I never like these comic book-style covers the cult labels insist on going with these days), as well as a slipcover with the new Zeder art.

And 88 doesn't have the Fox or the Code Red extras, but that doesn't stop it from having the best features package of them all.  First of all, it has two audio commentaries, both by experts, which are fine but not great.  One's by Kim Newman & Sean Hogan and the other's by Barry Forshaw and Eugenio Ercolani (the later of whom has done several of 88's Italian titles now).  Both are on the casual side, but not bad if that's the sort of thing you're after.  Much more crucially, then, we come to the interviews.  There's no need to be disappointed they don't have Code Red's Avati and Lavia interviews, because they've conducted new ones with both.  The Lavia one is longer, so they get to go more in depth, and the Avati subtitles are far more legible.  Then they also have exclusive interviews with actor Steno Tonelli (this one's quite interesting) and Pupi's brother and professional collaborator, Antonio Avati.  They've also got the trailer and their own Revenge Of the Dead reversible artwork; and the first pressing also came with a double-sided poster, slipcase and 40-page booklet.

So hey, the Code Red was nice for its time.  It looked good, was uncut with all the important language options and some some great extras... which for the first time ever, we could understand.  But 88 has definitely raised it up further to contemporary standards.  Better picture, better subtitles and considerably more special features.  And Zeder is a really cool movie that deserves it, so long as you're prepared for something subtle and calmly paced without a lot of gore or zombie action.

Import Week, Day 4: Back To Spain for The Sea Inside

You may recall, about two years ago, I got interested in sussing out all those Spanish blu-rays... which were grey market, which were BDRs or upconverts?  Well, there's still a lot of really enticing exclusives down there, so for the next two Days of Import Week, I thought I'd swing back around there, this time for The Sea Inside, an impressive Academy Award winning film (it won Best Foreign Film and was also nominated for Best Makeup) that still remains DVD-only here in the states.

The Sea Inside is the fourth film by Alejandro Amenabar, the at least once highly acclaimed writer and director of indie cinema darlings Thesis, Open Your Eyes and The Others.  I'll be honest, admired a lot of the style and originality he brought to his work, but I also found the writing to be a little shaky.  Fortunately, The Sea Inside is based on the true story, and writings, of Ramon Sampedro (played by Javier Bardem).  So while Amenabar still wrote the screenplay, and quite well, there was a lot already established, making this a safer venture than an original work.

Sampedro, if you're not familiar, became a quadriplegic early in life, and spent decades fighting with the Spanish government for his right to die.  We see a little bit of his early life and how he fell into his situation through flashbacks, but by and large this film just examines the end of his life for him and his loved ones, particularly the ethical and moral issues his struggle raises.  It's definitely kind of a tear jerker (no scientist rushes in during the third act with a miracle cure), being both a very humanistic, empathetic experience, and also at times a rather cold, logically argued one.  Highly emotional but unsentimental.

The Sea Inside came out as a new release special edition DVD from New Line in 2005.  It was reissued by Warner Bros for their Archives collection in 2017, where they really missed their shot to put this out on BD.  Fortunately, the same mistake wasn't made overseas.  There are Japanese and German blus, but since this isn't an English-language film, there's no original English language audio track for them to preserve.  And naturally they just subtitled it into their own languages.  Only the 2015 20th Century Fox blu from Spain bothers to include English subtitles (sold separately, or as part of their 5-film Alejandro Amenabar boxed set).  Fortunately, it's a legit, properly pressed disc.

2005 US New Line DVD top; 2015 Fox BD bottom.

The color timing and everything looks the same, so we're probably looking at the same master, although you will notice the aspect ratio has changed.  We've gone from 2.40:1 to 2.35:1, which basically is just the BD slightly lifting the mattes to reveal a bit more along the top and bottom.  I do believe 2.40 is actually the correct AR, but the difference between 2.35 and 2.40 is even less than the common 1.85 to 1.78 switcharoo the major studios like to pull, so it's fine.  It's just a sliver extra picture.  The mids are also a shade brighter now on the blu.  The important thing is this is a 100% legit jump to HD, with the much sharper, clearer image picture one expects when jump to blu-ray.

New Line's DVD has the original Spanish audio in both 2.0 and 5.1, with both English and Spanish subtitles.  The BD has exactly the same options, except both audio tracks are in lossless LPCM.

One great thing about the DVD is how full it is of terrific extras.  It starts us off with a first rate audio commentary by Amenabar (in Spanish, but subtitled into English), but that's not even the highlight.  The crown jewel is the feature length 'making of' documentary that details every stage of production, from at home with the director and producer pre-production, on location and in the studio, to composing and editing in post.  There are also a handful of deleted scenes, several galleries of storyboards, photos, etc, and the theatrical trailer (and a couple bonus trailers).

The blu-ray has all of the same extras as the DVD, but unfortunately, none of their English subtitles.  The movie is English-friendly, but the special features aren't.  Language doesn't enter into it for the storyboards or stills galleries, but for everything else, you still need to hang onto your DVD copy if you want them translated.

So it's another one of those "build your own special edition" situations where you have to get the BD for the ideal movie presentation and the DVD for the extras.  Warners really blew it making their Archives release DVD-only.  But it's a relief to know that the opportunity to build such an edition exists, because yes, the blu-ray is all good.  You just have to import.

Arrow Delivers the Definitive Lords Of Chaos

Oh yeah, I've been waiting for this one to arrive!  I almost broke down and copped the US edition that came out earlier this year, but that and the German blu are barebones.  Only Arrow has created a proper special edition, just released this summer, of Jonas Akerlund's Black Metal true crime dramatization Lords Of Chaos.  And yes it's one of their UK only titles (since MVD have licensed it for the US) and it's labeled Region B, but the disc doesn't seem to actually be region locked at all.  ...By the way, this post has inspired me to add a new True Crime category to the site index.

Update 8/14/19 - 12/15/22: I went back and got my hands on the US Fox DVD of this film.  If that feels a little underwhelming, I've also updated my Stalker and Satyricon pages with their respective Criterion DVDs.  I don't suppose three minor updates add up to one substantial one?

Lords Of Chaos is great, but before I get into it, hopefully I can just quickly try to head off anymore people being mislead.  I'm seeing this film get categorized fairly regularly as a horror film... The opening line of its wikipedia entry is, "Lords of Chaos is a 2018 horror-thriller film," Amazon lists it as "Horror, Suspense," etc etc.  There are a couple of gruesome moments, but I think the marketing is leading people to expect a film like some kind of cross between Jackals and Deathgasm, which this definitely is not.  It's decidedly better than either of those flicks, but it didn't even particularly strike me as being horror adjacent.  It's much more in line with movies like My Friend Dahmer, Star 80, I, Tonya or Party Monster: dramas, with a touch of humor, based on real life homicides.  You know, it's not like those movies would've been better adapted as horror films, but sending people in with the wrong expectations can do more harm than good, leaving people walking out of movies like Army of Darkness scoffing, "that movie wasn't even scary!"  Yeah, gore hounds will probably be enthused about a couple of moments (and one in particular), but what really hits with this movie is how it zeroes in on the human truth of the real people depicted.

So this is the story of Norwegian Black Metal band Mayhem, which famously underwent, and caused, some serious trauma during its reign including the suicide of one their lead singers, a series of church burnings and two murders.  Akerlund is a former black metal musician himself, and while this film is technically based on the 1998 Lords Of Chaos book, he explains in the extras about how he licensed it mainly for the names and rights to the basic thrust, but really wrote the script based on his own research and point of view.  The only other criticism I seeing being regularly laid into this film is that it's inaccurate; but while there's the usual condensing required to turn a complicated, years-long story that involved a ton of people into a single, two hour feature - and yes, like HBO's Chernobyl, it was shot in English with non-native actors (including Rory Culkin as Euronymous) - it struck me how far out of his way Akerlund went to be faithful.

I watched the documentary Until the Light Takes Us in anticipation of this film, and lots of moments and lines of dialogue were clearly lifted right out of it.  And the film is constantly using real locations, supporting characters playing themselves, the authentic music and carefully recreated images.  Yes, it seems like Sky Ferreira's role was composited just so this film could pass the Bechdel Test (hey, also like Chernobyl!), and obviously in cases like this where the only information we have is based on conflicting and biased testimony, some guesses have to be made.  And it's not like a film needs to be doggedly accurate to be great, anyway.  Have you seen what Tarantino's been doing lately?  So, it's all academic.  But I still want to say that this film, which describes itself on-screen as being "based on truth, lies and what actually happened" is far more authentic and accurate than I was lead to believe.

2019 US Fox DVD top; 2019 UK Arrow BD bottom.

Arrow presents Lords Of Chaos slightly matted to its proper aspect ratio of 1.85:1.  Fox doesn't fare quite as well, with a windowboxed and slightly squeezed 1.81:1.  This is a modern, digital film, so there's not a lot of scanning or color correction to go through and potentially get right or wrong.  Arrow's own About the Transfer booklet entry simply reads, "[t]he master was prepared in High Definition by Gunpowder and Sky and delivered to Arrow Films."  And in most other aspects, the two discs look fairly identical, apart from the natural boost in clarity on the blu's part for being in HD.  And Arrow's got the best compression in the industry these days, so it's a very safe bet.

Especially since it seems like the US release from MVD is not such a safe bet, with its lossy and mislabeled audio tracks.  According to DVDTalk, "The packaging and menu offer a Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound track but we don't get that, we get two identical 2.0 mixes. Obviously, a lossless option would have been preferable here and a surround option certainly would have opened things up a bit. We didn't get that."  Whoops!  Well, actually, the Fox DVD got it right, with both the 5.1 and 2.0 mixes.  But being DVD, they're both lossy.  It also includes English and French subtitles.  And of course Arrow gets it right, delivering both the 2.0 and 5.1 mixes in lossless DTS-HD.  So that's a noteworthy win for Arrow, who also include optional English SDH subtitles.

But of course it's not their only win.  The Fox DVD and German blu only include the trailer, the US blu has the trailer and eleven teasers, and the Arrow has two trailers and all eleven teasers... so it already wins just with the trailers.  But, as I said, Arrow's the only special edition on the market, so now watch it completely stomp out the competition.

Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore provides an intro to the film, which is actually rather lengthy, as he talks addresses different opinions on the film and even reads from the afterword he wrote for another book on Mayhen called The Death Archives.  There's just over ten minutes of deleted scenes and outtakes and a 22+ minute with Akerlund himself, which is the center piece of these features.  They also talk to Arion Csihar, who plays his father Attila in the film, and sings one of Mayhem's songs, journalist Jason Arnopp, who wrote the famous Kerrang cover story on Mayhem and who also plays himself in the film, Sam Coleman who plays Metalion and special effects artist Daniel Martin, who has some fun anecdotes and props from the most violent scenes.  There's also a stills gallery, a 22-page booklet with notes by Jonathan Selzer, one of Arrow's standard cards (this one's for Edgar Wright's A Fistful of Fingers) and reversible artwork.

So there's no question about which edition of the film to get.  And if you're on the fence about the film itself, ah man, it's so good.  A fascinating story, great performances all around, and you don't have to any kind of black metal aficionado to appreciate it.