Blu-ray Movies

December 2010

Guillermo del Toro’s Debut Film is a Blu-ray Gem

The Criterion Collection 551
Format: Blu-ray

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Mexican director Guillermo del Toro will be known to most readers from Pan’s Labyrinth and his two Hellboy movies. Cronos was his first feature film and in it one can catch glimpses of the fantastic visions that would permeate his later movies. Though largely ignored in America, this cinematic gem received generous accolades in Mexico.

Cronos is a unique vampire tale, a very new take on an old genre. It combines elements of horror with a fairytale-like telling, developing characters we can care about. The main one is Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi), a dapper and kindly elderly man who is the proprietor of an antique store. At the film’s beginning, we see him in the company of his wife (Margarita Isabel) and his shy granddaughter Aurora (Tamara Shanath), who speaks only one line in the whole film yet makes her warm presence and love for her grandfather known by gestures and facial expressions. Some find her irritating, I find her essential.

One day at work, Jesús finds a strange object hidden in the base of a newly delivered angelic statue. It is a small, golden device not unlike an insect’s body, with a real bug inside. When activated it projects pinchers like insect legs that puncture one’s body, exchanging blood. The result is that Jesús becomes younger and gains eternal life, but at the expense of becoming a vampire. He is approached by an American businessman, Angel de la Guardia (Ron Perlman), who wants to obtain the machine for his ailing 86-year-old uncle, De la Guardia (Claudio Brook), who’d rather be a vampire than dead. Angel pursues Jesús relentlessly until there is an inevitable stand-off.

That’s the cut-and-dried of it, but there’s a lot more in the subtext, which lets us share the misery of Jesús, who really didn’t want to become a vampire and always seems a bit befuddled and depressed by the results. The movie was filmed with rich colors, though red is reserved for blood and life and is often seen against blue surroundings, where it stands out. The movie has a look that draws the viewer in; even when eerie events are distasteful it is hard to keep from watching them. The Criterion transfer was supervised by del Toro and is both sumptuous and appealing. The audio track is a cleaned-up version of the original stereo and is rich and full as far as the almost overbearing music is concerned and excellent at capturing dialogue. The latter is in both Spanish and English with easy-to-read English subtitles for the former. For the Prologue, which tells the background story of the alchemist’s device, one is given a choice of languages.

Disc extras include commentaries by del Toro and producers Arthur H. Gorson and Bertha Navarro, as well as the director’s early (and bizarre) six-minute short, Geometria. The best extra, though, is the collection of script notes reproduced in the disc’s accompanying 42-page booklet where del Toro describes each character, including their biographical back stories.

Be sure to watch for: In chapter 11, Jesús is at a party and follows a guest having a visible nosebleed into the men’s room. A big spot of blood ends up on the tile floor and Jesús passionately licks it up. The color contrast and content make for an unforgettable scene.

. . . Rad Bennett
radb@soundstagenetwork.com

December 2010

"Fantasia" Takes Well to Blu-ray 

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment 105512
Format: Blu-ray, DVD

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Walt Disney’s visionary masterpiece seems fresher than most current animated films and it has been given a superlative transfer for its release on Blu-ray. Moreover, the four-disc set also generously contains Fantasia 2000 and Destino, Walt’s pre- and posthumous collaboration with Salvador Dali. DVD versions are also included if you have yet to take advantage of this holiday’s rock-bottom Blu-ray Disc player prices (an LG for $65 at Walmart) to upgrade your system.

Disney intended to make Fantasia an ongoing work by adding new numbers from time to time while deleting others. The project proved too labor-intensive, even though sketches had been made for Musicana, a Fantasia-like movie. Musicana is discussed in one of the supplements in this set. It and the other extras on the discs point out that all of the scrapped work done on Disney films is put in the archives where it might resurface and prove useful at a later date.  A prime example is Destino, a project that Disney and the world-famous artist Salvador Dali worked on for some time, then abandoned. The sketches and paintings already made for it were unearthed from the Disney vaults in the early 2000s, a director assigned and the short award-winning film was made. This set contains a fascinating hour-and-a-half documentary that very thoroughly documents the Disney-Dali connection and the way the film was made after they were both deceased.

As to Fantasia, the movie is presented in its original road-show length, which means that all of the introductions by music critic Deems Taylor have been reinstated. Well, sort of. Most of them had fallen into such a bad state that the audio engineers knew that many would have to be re-recorded. To avoid a mismatch in voices, they simply had the whole track recorded again. So while you may well see Deems Taylor in HD, you are going to hear Corey Burton sounding like him. Honestly, given the dilemma of missing material, I think the choice was a wise one and that most people would not even notice the substitution unless it was pointed out. Yet this issue has caused a lot of furor with purists. Perhaps even more of a tempest in a teapot is the exclusion of a black pickaninny centaurette in the Pastoral Symphony sequence. History has named her "Sunflower" and her scenes are mostly there, it’s just that they have been panned and scanned so she is not seen. This was a good choice to my mind, as the stereotypical images, seen in an enlightened age, are disturbing and not at all in the spirit of Mt. Olympus where the Disney version of Beethoven’s classic is set. If you don’t believe me search YouTube and watch the footage for yourself.

Those two nitpicks aside, the video transfer is stunning. Colors are vibrant and bold in sequences like The Nutcracker Suite and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, detail throughout is outstanding, perhaps best exemplified in the Night on Bald Mountain sequence where all the supernatural creatures take on new presence and concrete identity. The soundtrack has undergone extensive work and sounds much better than a 69-year-old effort should. The music was particularly impressive in the Rite of Spring section where the lower instruments growled with authority, and the timpani and bass drum strokes, if not subwoofer material, had solid impact.

Of course, good sound is not a problem at all with Fantasia 2000 where we have the Chicago Symphony Orchestra recorded in very high fidelity a mere nine years in the past. The sound in The Firebird chapter is especially awesome and there we hear a bass drum that really benefits from a good subwoofer. Overall Fantasia 2000 is not as inspired as the original, but it does have some good moments, notably a Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue inspired visually by the art of Al Hirschfeld, who was still alive when it came time to record the commentary track. There are commentary tracks all over the place on these four discs, but be sure to hear that one. Overall, there are many more extras than one might first notice. Disney loves to throw up an extras title and then display four or five subtitles when you click on it. Just keep following the arrows and branches and click when you see "more." It is irritating, though, that so many of the Fantasia extras take such a long time to load. I thought Blu-ray was grown-up enough now that these delays were a thing of the past, but apparently not.

Be sure to watch for: The Nutcracker Suite is fashioned with the boldest imaginable colors and the blues are particularly rich and deep. At the end, the vibrant oranges and yellows of fall give way to the icy-blue of winter and snowflakes swirl toward the camera. It’s a total color rush.

. . . Rad Bennett
radb@soundstagenetwork.com

November 2010

Seven Movies That Freed American Film 

The Criterion Collection 544-550
Format: Blu-ray

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Bert Schneider, Bob Rafelson, and Steve Blauner founded and headed the production company BBS (1968‒1972). The organization made only seven movies, four of which were masterpieces. As for the other three, one was an appealing, worthwhile curiosity, and two were interesting misfires featuring A-quality acting. Their movies were counterculture to the core, and the company shook up an outdated Hollywood system by producing films that addressed current issues and appealed to young audiences.

Bob Rafelson was the main director, and there’s a tremendous array of talent, including Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, Karen Black, Ben Johnson, Timothy Bottoms, and Bruce Dern. But when you watch all of these movies back to back, you’ll see Jack Nicholson emerge as the creative force, mainly as an actor but also as a director. In one of the interview extras, Nicholson says that at no time before or after BBS has he experienced such freedom of creation in making a film. In another extra, the great French film director François Truffaut correctly identifies the films as sexually liberating (there’s nudity in almost all of them, including full-frontal male nudity in Drive, He Said).

Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The King of Marvin Gardens and The Last Picture Show are the masterpieces. It’s easy for anyone to admire these productions in retrospect, especially the pitch-perfect Easy Rider and The Last Picture Show, but you had to have been there to really experience their initial impact. These films produced the same kind of shock wave that Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman created a decade earlier, but the BBS movies were quintessentially American. With the inception of these films, movies no longer had to have Technicolor rainbow happy endings -- they could be just like real life. Like European movies, they could be dark and leave you guessing, in doubt, or stunned by tragedy. I remember sitting in silence at the end of the first DC run of Easy Rider, unable to move, not really sure of what I’d just seen but knowing that its impact was something new that pointed the way to something lasting.

As for the others, Head, starring the Monkees, and apparently scripted daily by Rafelson and Nicholson, is funnier now than it was then. Distance lets you make more sense of the anti-war statements brought on by US involvement in Vietnam, and it lets you enjoy the music as a pleasant dose of nostalgia. It was the Monkees being the Beatles without the same Brit class but with a lot of American insight and humor. It also made Victor Mature literally larger than life. Drive, He Said , the one film Nicholson directed, is also anti-war. It contains some first-rate performances, but it tries to cover too much ground in too short a time. A Safe Place, directed by Henry Jaglom, is the least-successful film from BBS. It’s a meandering tale of a young woman who can’t tell reality from fantasy. That young woman is beautifully acted, however, by Tuesday Weld, and Orson Welles scores points with a curious role as something of a magician in the park.

Criterion has, as usual, tried to find authentic sources in transferring these movies to Blu-ray and DVD. Cinematographer László Kovács supervised the transfer of Five Easy Pieces, Easy Rider, and The King of Marvin Gardens. Director Peter Bogdanovich supervised the transfer of The Last Picture Show, and Jack Nicholson was involved with the presentation of Drive, He Said. They all look splendid, much better than you might expect of movies around 40 years old. The sound is mostly uncompressed monaural, though there’s an optional stereo mix for Head, and a lot of work has been done to make them sound quite good. All of the people involved in bringing these movies to Blu-ray are thoroughly credited by Criterion, which also went to great lengths to obtain and produce excellent and relevant period and contemporary extras.

Seldom have so few accomplished so much on a limited budget. Easy Rider is said to have been made for $350,000, no doubt less than one episode of Sons of Anarchy costs today. Thanks to the vision and talent involved, BBS has left a strong legacy of American originals, and Criterion has made it possible to see them like new, in their entire gritty splendor.

Be sure to watch for: Though there’s a lot to see here, I’m still a sucker for the scenes of Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider, cruising through the majestic scenery of America on their Harleys. They look better than ever on Blu-ray.

. . . Rad Bennett
radb@soundstagenetwork.com

November 2010

Animation Makes the Ghosts Believable in This Motion-Capture Version of Dickens' Famous Story 

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment 105882
Format: Blu-ray, DVD

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God knows, counting spinoffs and updating, that there are enough versions of Dickens' famous tale to keep a viewer busy for more than a day or two, but this motion-capture animated version is a welcome addition because it’s the best at presenting the ghosts. After all, the first edition of the book carries this complete title -- A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Various film versions have done well by this or that ghost, but this version does well by them all, and it lets them dominate the story while executing stunts that would be difficult for most stuntmen.

Once again, director Robert Zemeckis chose the motion-capture animated process, which he also used for 2004’s The Polar Express. The process is still far from perfect, though it’s getting better with time. In case you don’t know, mocap uses headpieces with four cameras to photograph each actor’s facial expressions, and they’re then filled in and adorned with computerized hair, skin, and costumes. The picture on this Blu-ray release was so clean and crisp that one could see both the advantages and disadvantages of the motion-capture process. Adult faces, especially men with hair on their face (of one sort or another), look convincing, but young faces look odd and slightly “off.” The technique hasn’t yet mastered skin, especially the not-yet-weathered skin of youth.

Jim Carrey stars in several roles (a number of the cast members play more than one part), and I was particularly impressed with his vocal talent. Scrooge doesn’t sound at all like Jim Carrey; he sounds like, well, Scrooge. Bob Hoskins is a natural as Old Fezziwig, and Gary Oldman, one of our most versatile actors, excels as Bob Cratchit, Jacob Marley, and Tiny Tim! The characters exist in a Victorian England that looks disarmingly splendid, with the aerial views of London being most impressive. The sharpness of the Blu-ray picture helps in their appearance, and the picture, in addition to being quite detailed, also has rich color, solid blacks, and excellent contrast.

The soundtrack is quite lively and immersive, utilizing all of the channels most of the time. There’s good boom and heft in the LFE channel, and excellent transparency and focus in the front three channels. The extras, however, are a mixed bag. Deleted scenes are presented in unfinished versions, and the production featurette is simply too “cute” to digest. The best extra is a picture-in-picture feature that lets you see the actual live motion-capture as it’s carried out by the actors and then compare it directly to the finished animation.

All in all, this Robert Zemeckis‒helmed version of the Dickens story can hold its own alongside distinguished versions of the past. It makes a very good holiday feature for home-theater viewing, and it contains a DVD version in addition to the Blu-ray. It’s also available in a 3D four-pack featuring the movie in Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD, and digital copy.

Be sure to watch for: After a literally dark prologue with Scrooge at Marley’s coffin, the scene shifts to seven years later and the camera soars over and through the streets of London in shots that give an impressive illusion of depth, even without 3D.

. . . Rad Bennett
radb@soundstagenetwork.com

November 2010

Seven Evil Exes Can’t Stop This Unlikely Hero

Universal 61112438
Format: Blu-ray, DVD

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Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a great little movie that somehow got buried with other summer films. Most of them deserved the internment but not Scott. Based on the Oni Press graphic novels of Bryan Lee O’Malley and directed by Edgar Wright, this energetic movie provides A-plus entertainment from the first frame to the last.

Having directed Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Wright is no stranger to fantasy that is an exaggerated extension of reality. His writing smacks of cracked sensibility. And what makes his movies work is that he completely inhabits the off-center world he’s created. In Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, events happen that would seem odd if they happened in your life, but they are not at all strange in Scott’s world. The characters accept, so we accept, too.

Scott (Michael Cera) is a slacker, a 22-year-old that is "between jobs." He plays bass in a garage band called Sex Bob-Omb (a reference to the opponents in the Mario Brothers games), lives in a single room apartment with a gay roommate (Kieran Culkin), and has a 17-year-old Chinese girlfriend named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). Then he spots Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and falls head over heels for her. She focuses his life, and there’s only one small catch. To date Ramona, Scott must fight and defeat her seven evil exes.

The style of the movie is pure comic book. When the phone rings, you see R-R-R-I-I-I-I-N-G sprawled in letters across the screen, not to mention "POW, WHUMP," and other one-syllable exclamations during fight scenes. When characters appear for the first time, pop-ups identify them. Since Scott must defeat seven exes there are fantastic, stylized fight scenes. When each ex is dispatched, he or she transforms into showers of coins. All of the amazing post-production art is fully integrated into the movie in such a way that you feel it was always there in the original shooting.

Since there’s a band, there are other, competing bands, and lots of musical performances. The DTS-HD Master Audio tracks handle these with ease. The music rocks loud at times with subwoofer bass, but it's not overbearing. This is a surprisingly dialogue-heavy film, where characters often speak in asides or under their breath, and the skillful mix allows one to hear every word. The picture explodes with spots of color and has plenty of detail in bright and dark scenes, but I remember the colors popping even more seeing the film in a theater.

Extras are plentiful and interesting, including four commentaries and a really useful visual trivia track that lets one in on the in-jokes and references. One of the commentaries features Wright and O’Malley and it proves very instructive to have a director and source-material author discussing the changes that needed to be made in carrying the story from the printed page to film.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is funny, appealing, exciting, intelligent, heroic, passionate, and even, at times, heart warming. It has been brought to Blu-ray with care and imagination and deserves a wider audience than the theatrical release garnered. Don’t deny yourself its many pleasures. If you don’t have Blu-ray yet, there’s a second disc in this set that contains a DVD copy of the movie as well as a digital copy.

Be sure to watch for: At the beginning of chapter 12, we find the characters in a room that has walls plastered in Rock Band poster art. Since it involves the third evil ex, there are a lot of "3s" scattered throughout. The detail is very good. How many 3s can you count?

. . . Rad Bennett
radb@soundstagenetwork.com

November 2010

A Totally Satisfying Final Act to a Memorable Trilogy

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment 102391
Format: Blu-ray, DVD

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Before Toy Story 3 was released, this past summer’s movies were looking like a series of misfires. But Toy Story 3 turned out to be a huge success and broke that pattern, scoring with critics and audiences alike. The Toy Story franchise now exists as a trilogy of uniform-quality films, where it’s impossible to add one or two to your collection; you simply have to purchase all three. 

Admit it or not, we’ve all had favorite toys that were incredibly real to us. We played with them daily, putting them into scenarios we’d concoct from bits and pieces of culture that we were learning as we grew up. We trusted them with our deepest and darkest four-year-old secrets and elevated them to buddy or pal status. With me it was an old brown teddy bear that I loved so much I literally wore it out.

Pixar examines that child-toy relationship in this movie in a very palatable way, simply by showing us. Andy, the owner of all the toys in the first two parts of the story, has grown up and is going to college. He no longer plays with his toys, though he has a great fondness for them, especially the cowboy-sheriff Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) and plastic spaceman Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen). The toys end up getting donated to Sunnyside Daycare Center, where they get commandeered by Lotso (Ned Beatty), a very disgruntled and evil strawberry-scented teddy bear. Woody still believes that he and his pals belong to and with Andy, though the other toys think Andy has abandoned them. The answers to these issues make for a three-hanky ending that will move even the hardest heart.

Toy Story 3 arrives on home video in a four-disc combo pack consisting of two Blu-rays, a DVD, and a digital-copy disc. The video and audio transfers are beyond reproach. I’ve given five-star ratings to Pixar’s picture and sound, and they deserve it. I’ll go so far as to say that if you haven’t seen a Pixar film in Blu-ray on your home-theater system, you don’t know how good your equipment can be.

Textures are particularly good on this release. Items like the smoke from a locomotive or Lotso’s plush fur, which has obviously been through a lot, give the movie a sense of reality that helps make its fantasy elements thoroughly acceptable. The sound design is also perfect. Dialogue is always clear, and sound is dotted around the 360-degree soundfield in a realistic manner. Thunderous subwoofer action is reserved for the finale, making it all the more impressive when it happens.

There are dozens of extras that examine the making of the movie (and Day & Night, the included short that ran with it) as well as the general character of the Pixar company. If you haven’t seen this film yet, rest assured that this Blu-ray Disc is an eye-popping, heart-warming experience not to be missed!

Be sure to watch for: In chapter 23, Ken shows Barbie his closet full of outfits and then, at her insistence, models several. The individual textures, stitching, and color of each outfit are dazzling, just as they would be in reality. The colors really pop in this scene.

. . . Rad Bennett
radb@soundstagenetwork.com

October 2010

Luca Guadagnino’s Sumptuous Film Evokes the Spirit of Visconti

Magnolia 10345
Format: Blu-ray

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If you’re a film buff, you’ll only be about 10 minutes into I Am Love before you start to wonder if the ghost of Luchino Visconti has come back to earth to direct yet another cinematic masterpiece. That’s not to say that director Luca Guadagnino has made an entirely derivative movie, but past influences are predominant and the young director does mention Visconti in his rather lengthy interview in the extras section. Guadagnino makes his homage even more evident in naming one of his characters Tancredi, after the name of the nephew in Visconti’s seminal film, The Leopard.

That movie closes with a banquet; I Am Love opens with one, in which the camera virtually caresses the food, the accoutrements and the faces of the characters with whom we are to spend a few hours. The primary visage is Emma (Tilda Swinton), the head of the household, though brief scenes prior to the feast indicate that she acts more comfortably as a domestic. Later we learn that she’s Russian and that she married into a wealthy mercantile family in Milan, but she stands always apart, never fully joining the tight-knit family.

At the end of the dinner, a man arrives with a gift, a handmade cake for Edo, Emma’s son. The giver is Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), a master chef and Edo’s friend. Emma takes notice, and she begins to fall head over heels in love. It doesn’t seem to be a fling for her; this is the passionate relationship she’s waited for her entire life. The movie is about her relationship with her family and her lover, but it’s also about the breakup of a wealthy merchant class, a manufacturing aristocracy. Here again, the association with The Leopard is unmistakable. At the end of both films the main character vanishes and moves on, leaving behind a life that is no longer tenable.

Swinton doesn’t just act her role, she embodies Emma in every movement and expression. This is surely an Oscar-worthy performance, though the only award she won for her remarkable achievement, which involved learning both Italian and Russian, was from the Dublin Film Critics. The rest of the cast seems perfectly suited to their roles, and they offer rich character development throughout the whole movie.

Exterior and interior shots provide a feast for the eye, and the Blu-ray Disc, for the most part, looks colorful and well defined. Some of the very darkest scenes are a little murky, however, making me wish for better shadow detail and contrast. The soundtrack does an excellent job of reproducing the bustling John Adams music score, and it’s about the only time the surrounds come into play. During dramatic moments, even when there’s a lot of activity, the sound stays up front, where it’s well balanced, clean, and clear.

The extras include a commentary by Guadagnino and Swinton, and there are quite a large number of lengthy interviews with the cast members, who shed quite a bit of light on their characters. I Am Love gives Tilda Swinton one of her best roles and immerses the eye with visions of natural and manmade beauty. Its romantic sweep dictates that it should be seen on the largest screen you can find. Be forewarned that the shots of food are so inviting that you might emerge from a viewing with quite an appetite.

Be sure to watch for: The opening sequences show Milan during a rare snowfall, which transforms it into a surreal winter wonderland, bringing out incredible detail in both manmade structures and nature’s tree limbs. These gossamer opening credits made me want to see the rest of the film.

. . . Rad Bennett
radb@soundstagenetwork.com

October 2010 

Psycho Looks, Sounds, and Scares Better Than Ever 

Universal 61112067
Format: Blu-ray

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Psycho broke the mold in so many ways that it has become often imitated but never surpassed. One of the interesting featurettes in the extras section has famous directors like Martin Scorsese and William Friedkin talking about Hitchcock’s influence on them, and there’s a separate featurette on François Truffaut and Hitchcock. The director’s name has even been absorbed into the English language as an adjective. If someone describes an event as Hitchcockian, we know exactly what they mean. 

While other movies come and go, Hitchcock’s films remain viable and entertaining without seeming dated. Psycho is no exception. It still stirs the blood and stimulates the senses, and though some of the original suspense might be tempered by our knowing what’s going to happen, we’re perhaps freed to admire the subtleties of the terrific acting team and take satisfaction in noticing how pivotal scenes are expertly set up. 

Universal has always done reasonably well by this masterpiece of terror. The LaserDisc and DVD editions looked very good, but the Blu-ray is even sharper, with contrast between dark and light that seems exactly right. You can enjoy in greater detail the minute twitches that enhance Anthony Perkins’s Norman Bates and delight in the horrific details of Norman’s stuffed-bird collection. The Blu-ray reveals all, including the celebrated shower scene, where the water has more texture than ever. 

The soundtrack has received special treatment, sounding richer and fuller. Using new techniques, the sound engineers have constructed a 5.1 presentation from the original mono track. This process is thoroughly discussed in one of the featurettes. It’s mostly Bernard Herrmann’s masterful score for string orchestra that benefits from stereo separation and surround warmth, but there are also subtle sound-effect placements that make a great difference in the movie’s enjoyment. The people in charge here have wisely kept it subtle and not gone for any extreme surround effects so that the tracks still go well with the images on screen, but you will notice a difference in the way you react to certain parts of the film. It was already impossible to think of Psycho without Herrmann’s music, and now his score seems even more indispensible. 

I mentioned three featurettes, but there are many more, as well as lobby cards, advertising art, and some of Hitchcock’s droll trailers for the movie. Universal has done well by one of its most durable films and produced an anniversary edition on Blu-ray that’s truly a cause for celebration. 

Be sure to watch for: Chapter 7, with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) driving in the rain and discovering the Bates Motel. The rain is terrifically realistic, and you’ll marvel at how the motel emerges and takes shape and focus between arcs of the wiper blades.

 . . . Rad Bennett
radb@soundstagenetwork.com

October 2010

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinematic Sorcery Examines the Relationship Between Artist and Audience

The Criterion Collection 537
Format: Blu-ray

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Released right after the highly successful debuts of The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician is often ignored as representative of the revered director’s best work. Its moods vary to the point that it’s difficult to know whether to call it a comedy, as did Bergman, or something darker. When it was released in 1958, it was somewhat scary and quite disturbing. I remember seemingly endless college conversations about the eyeball in the inkwell during the attic scene. But what was grisly then now seems tame, and you can finally focus on the movie as Bergman intended it: a revenge on his critics and a study on the relationship between an artist and his audience.

In the film, Max von Sydow plays Albert Emanuel Vogler, Bergman’s alter ego, a 19th-century alchemist and peddler who’s become little more than a charlatan deceiving his audiences with cheap tricks. There are hints that he was once a great theatrical artist, but in the movie he has a somewhat unsavory reputation, so much so that he’s been called before the officials of Stockholm to present a private performance so the bureaucrats (critics) can decide if his show is worthy of public consumption. Suffice it to say that Vogler still has a few tricks up his sleeve, and the tables get very effectively turned.

Deception is a watchword in this film. Vogler is not who he seems, and his young assistant, assumed to be a boy in the beginning of the movie, turns out to be his wife in disguise (acted by the radiant Ingrid Thulin). There are many other sleights of hand, the most remarkable being a mistakenly autopsied corpse. The whole affair is presented in stunning black-and-white photography that’s rife with shadow and light, and it’s supported by Erik Nordgren’s remarkable score, which proves that less can be quite a bit more. Some scenes are scored for only a single harp or for timpani, yet these sparse instruments are more effective than an entire symphonyorchestra.

Once again, Criterion has achieved a triumph with a black-and-white film. The high contrast is perfect, allowing blacks to be inky and whites to be very bright. Detail in hair, clothing, and set decoration is perfect, and the English subtitles that translate the Swedish soundtrack are placed at the very bottom of the 1.33:1 frame where they’re easily read. The sound is also excellent, especially considering the film’s age. Only the extras disappoint. There are two brief interviews with Bergman, one in Swedish with subtitles and one in English, and a good but very brief visual essay by Bergman scholar Peter Cowie. There are also good essays in the supplied booklet by Olivier Assayas, Geoff Andrew, and Bergman himself. Were this not a Criterion release, that would be enough, but by Criterion’s usual standards things feel a bit lean.

By all means, if you haven’t seen this film, rent or buy it. There’s much to enjoy and many mesmerizing images to see.

Be sure to watch for: In chapter 7, the camera discovers two servant girls working in the foreground of a kitchen while Vogler and his disguised wife are eating in the far background. The detail of both foreground and background is exceptional, as is the accurate delineation of set details and costumes, with Vogler and his wife in black and the maids in cheerful stripes with bright white accents.

. . . Rad Bennett
radb@soundstagenetwork.com

October 2010

Disney’s Blu-ray of Beauty and the Beast boasts Perfect Picture and Sound

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment 104629
Format: Blu-ray/DVD

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Extras

I’ll confess it: Every time I come to the end of this animated classic, I get a lump in my throat and my eyes well up with tears. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast resonates in a very deep place that knows no boundaries of age or background. And now Disney has brought it to home video in versions that are technically flawless. Versions? Yes, you can obtain it as a three-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo pack either in DVD packaging or in Blu-ray packaging, and there’s also a two-disc DVD edition.

With music by Alan Menken, Beauty and the Beast plays like the ultimate Broadway show. The biggest difference is that it’s not limited to stage action, and since it’s animated, it can use special effects not available to live productions. But that didn’t stop it from becoming a hit Broadway show that has gone on to be a favorite production for local theater groups all over the US. The voice casting is perfect, as is the editing, and the story flows without a hitch or dead spot. The Blu-ray offers three versions of the movie: the original theatrical release; an extended version, which seamlessly reinstates the musical number “Human Again”; and a picture-in-picture storyboard edition with commentary by producer Don Hahn.

The DVD included in this set looked awfully good, especially when upsampled on my Oppo Blu-ray player, but the Blu-ray Disc is perfection that I can’t find fault with. The notes tell us that Disney technicians found some water spots on the master that weren’t noticeable on DVD but would have been on Blu-ray, so they cleaned up the entire print with loving care -- and a great deal of expertise, I might add. There’s not a spot, hole, jaggie, ghost image or any other aberration here. The vivid colors seem to leap off the screen, the definition is beyond reproach, shadow detail is ideal, and blacks are really black. This is HD video done to perfection.

The audio has been re-mixed into 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and it, too, is ideal. The front stage is lively, with dialogue often distributed left to right rather than being all in the center, and the rears are alive with sound throughout virtually the entire film. I believe that Robby Benson’s voice performance as the Beast is one of the greatest voice characterizations of all time, and it comes across well on this Blu-ray, ranging from loud roars and rants that involve the LFE channel to softly spoken inner-directed asides. Audio for the music is focused and transparent, and nothing is slighted in this mix, which is one of the best I’ve heard for any film, animated or live action.

The extras (spread across all three discs) are what you’ve likely come to expect from Disney’s Diamond Edition releases: They’re plentiful and meaningful, and they’ll enhance your appreciation of the movie considerably. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast remains a timeless classic that you can view over and over, and it now stands as a Blu-ray demonstration disc with few peers.

Be sure to watch for: The film opens and closes with drawings of stained-glass windows that tell the story. At the end of the movie, we see the final one close-up, and the camera then pulls back to reveal the window frame adorned by vines and flowers. The window retains its astonishing sharpness all the way from close to distant.

. . . Rad Bennett
radb@soundstagenetwork.com