Ken runs down a gaggle of DVDs

[Ken_McAlinden]

Well, not exactly a gaggle, but here are a number of recent releases I have picked up and would recommend for rent or purchase, only one with a slight reservation.

Miyazaki films

Castle in the Sky
Kiki's Delivery Service
Spirited Away

Three films from the great Japanese animation director currently pictured in my Avatar. All three have been done justice in recent R1 DVD releases from Disney. They are available to watch dubbed or subtitled in 2-disc editions. They were originally released in 1986, 1989, and 2001 respectively in Japan. "Castle..." and "Kiki..." both include the complete film in storyboard form as a supplement on a second disc. "Spirited Away", which won an Oscar this past March for best animated film, includes a Nippon TV special about Miyazaki and the production of the film which is fascinating to watch.

Classic "Cole Porter" Musicals from WB

High Society
Silk Stockings

Five films were released by Warner Brothers, but these are the two I have seen and they are both spectacular transfers in true stereo.

High Society is a musical remake of "The Philadelphia Story" starring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, and Louis Armstrong. The stems for High Society were recorded with stereo mixing in mind, assuming the film would be shot in CinemaScope, but when the decision was made to shoot it in VistaVision, a multi-track stereo release became impractical - until this DVD. The 5.1 remix is outstanding, although the original mono track is nowhere to be found. The video transfer is also exceptional.

Silk Stockings is a musical remake of "Ninotchka" starring Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Peter Lorre, Janis Paige, and Cyd Charisse's legs (which deserve top billing:love: ). Audio and video are both very good. If you are weary of audio/video/film format wars, you will get a kick out of the song "Stereophonic Sound". If you are interested to see what the result would be of asking Cole Porter, Hermes Pan, and Fred Astaire to develop a musical set-piece to capitalize on the rock and roll "fad" of the mid-50s, then you will want to see the performance of "The Ritz Roll and Rock".

Robert Harris covers these and the other three films (Broadway Melody of 1940, Kiss Me Kate, and Les Girls) released in this collection well in his recent column at the digital bits web site (http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/robertharris/harris041403.html).

Standing in the Shadows of Motown

This DVD release has just about everything one could hope for including the film and tons of supplements including commentary, a subtitle trivia track, supplements shot since the film's release, and outtakes featured in both deleted scenes and biography segments of the individual funk brothers. It is a great presentation of a wonderful documentary about the musicians behind the Motown sound. I hope it makes a boat-load of cash so we can see a documentary about the technicians and engineers called "Sniffing in the Solder of Motown". :) The sound for the concert sequences is very good, surpassing the soundtrack CD whether you are watching in DTS ES, Dolby Digital EX, or Dolby Digital 2.0 pro-logic. There are reportedly some atypically interesting DVD-ROM features that I have not checked out yet.

Ran

My one recommendation "with reservations" is the Masterworks edition of Akira Kurosawa's epic "Ran". The previous DVD of this title was a crash and burn disaster. The recent re-release is an improvement in every respect, but the new 16:9 transfer suffers from digital over-processing that results in a number of artifacts that you do not need a large hi-def display to notice. It includes two scholarly commentaries and includes the original mono Japanese soundtrack in addition to a fairly well done 5.1 stereo remix.

It is a major improvement, but should have been even better. Despite this criticism, the film, Kurosawa's take on King Lear intertwined with some of his favorite themes from his career, is too good not to own in its best video form.

Regards,

[John B]

Thanks Ken. Your reviews are much appreciated. We're buying a DVD in a month and will rent some of theses titles.

John

[Todd Fredericks]

Thanks Ken! I watched 'Kiss Me Kate' this weekend and it was wonderful. I'm looking forward to watching the other Cole porter DVD's...

Todd

[CM Wolff]

Thanks Ken.

I have already watched the Standing in the Shadows of Motown DVD a couple of times in the last week. I agree with your comments. Being able to spend quality time listening to the sound on the DVD makes me realize what the hubub was about re: unnecessary compression of the film's soundtrack. Enjoyable as it is, the soundtrack is no competition for the DVD, that is for sure. H. Weinger did recently confirm that the special 4 disc set is still slated for sometime around September (the date is up to Artisan). I am trying to think of a polite way of asking whether the film's CD soundtrack will be remastered for this deluxe edition, knowing how much flack Harry seemed to take.

Definitely buy this DVD.

[Pinknik]

Has anyone tried to watch the HD transfer of Standing in the Shadows of Motown? It's on the second disc and can be watched using Windows Media Player 9 on a PC. Terminator 2 (The Umpteenth Edition) is supposed to have an HD transfer on it as well.

[JohnG]

Spirited Away is an excellent animated movie that is great for the whole family.

My kids love it and we were lucky to catch in the theater before its final run.

It looks great on DVD! :thumbsup:

[sgraham]

Originally posted by Ken_McAlinden
High Society is a musical remake of "The Philadelphia Story" starring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, and Louis Armstrong. The stems for High Society were recorded with stereo mixing in mind, assuming the film would be shot in CinemaScope, but when the decision was made to shoot it in VistaVision, a multi-track stereo release became impractical - until this DVD. The 5.1 remix is outstanding, although the original mono track is nowhere to be found. The video transfer is also exceptional.

My jaw dropped when I heard the quality of the sound of the musical portions of this when this was broadcast on our local PBS station a couple of years ago. (And that was over the air!) Unfortunately it dropped back to "academy mono" when the music ended. I don' t know if the soundtrack has been re-remixed for the DVD.

[Ken_McAlinden]

Originally posted by sgraham


My jaw dropped when I heard the quality of the sound of the musical portions of this when this was broadcast on our local PBS station a couple of years ago. (And that was over the air!) Unfortunately it dropped back to "academy mono" when the music ended. I don' t know if the soundtrack has been re-remixed for the DVD.
The DVD is in 5.1 so it has to be a remix, although it could still be very close in character to what you heard on the broadcast.

Regards,

[Ken_McAlinden]

Two more recommendations to add to the list - both from Disney.

Treasure Planet

This is a very entertaining film that underperformed at the box office, but gets a good second chance with a well produced DVD. Picture (1.66:1 windowboxed in a 16:9 enhanced frame) and sound (DD5.1 @ 448Kbps) are terrific, and there is a cool "video commentary" feature which works like a normal filmmakers' commentary but with the addition of frequent video features inserted at appropriate points throughout the film. They didn't do it with one of those silly interfaces requiring you to find the remote and press enter when an icon appears on the screen, either.

Treasure Island

Disney's first foray into 100% live action films. It sports a very good transfer that does justice to the technicolor cinematography of Freddie Young (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Forty-Ninth Parallel). It sports a mono repurposed for 5.1 soundtrack that thankfully is not too heavy on the stereo processing, but I would have just as soon they leave it in mono as it belongs.

There are zippo extras, but the 96 minute film is spread over two layers on a disc so the video bitrate is very high and there are no compression artifacts or signs of softening the grain structure of the film to fit onto the disc. There are blemishes from the film element, especially in the first reel, but color and contrast are rock solid. The film is presented in 4:3 full-screen consistent with its original theatrical presentations.

Every time you see a comedian doing a pirate's voice ("Arrr" "Aye" "Shiver Me Timbers" "Cut of Me Jib", etc.) they seem to be doing an impersonation of Robert Newton's take on "Long John Silver". Bobby Driscoll plays a wonderful Jim Hawkins. He is the prototypical Disney child star. He had previously been featured in animation-live action hybrids "Song of the South" and "So Dear to My Heart" and would go on to provide the voice and performance reference for Peter Pan. Unfortunately, like too many child stars, his life and career took a turn for the worse, and he died young after falling on hard times and drug abuse in the 60s.

Regards,

[Ken_McAlinden]

Originally posted by Ken_McAlinden
Three films from the great Japanese animation director currently pictured in my Avatar.

OK. As of today, make that "formerly" pictured in my Avatar. :)

Regards,

[John Moschella]

Hi Ken,

I just watched High Society and was quiet disappointed. Not with the music or the sound which was excellent. It was the movie. Grace Kelly was out of her element and it showed. Her performance was forced. Crosby is fine when he is signing, but there is little else there. Overall, I kept thinking how much better the Philadelphia Story was. High Society just wasn't funny and didn't have much to hold my interest. The scenes with Louis Armstrong were great but they can't carry the movie. I thought the video quality was only OK. There were a few scenes, like the very opening sequence, that were clearly transfered from inferior quality film stock. This happened throughout the film. For most of the DVD the transfer was pretty good. There are many transfers from 50s films that are superior, like Sunset Boulevard.

[Ken_McAlinden]

Originally posted by John Moschella
Hi Ken,

I just watched High Society and was quiet disappointed. Not with the music or the sound which was excellent. It was the movie. Grace Kelly was out of her element and it showed. Her performance was forced. Crosby is fine when he is signing, but there is little else there. Overall, I kept thinking how much better the Philadelphia Story was. High Society just wasn't funny and didn't have much to hold my interest. The scenes with Louis Armstrong were great but they can't carry the movie. I thought the video quality was only OK. There were a few scenes, like the very opening sequence, that were clearly transferred from inferior quality film stock. This happened throughout the film. For most of the DVD the transfer was pretty good. There are many transfers from 50s films that are superior, like Sunset Boulevard.

While I don't think it is as uniformly great as "The Philadelphia Story", I also don't think Grace Kelly was too bad. As a matter of fact, I thought she was excellent and very funny in the scene where she puts on airs for the reporters. The scenes with Louis Armstrong coupled with the on-screen duet between Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby would have been enough for me even if I did not enjoy the rest of the film.

The opening sequence is a number of film generations down from the rest of the film because of the title opticals. It would look this way in a theatrical presentation of the best available film element, too. Sunset Boulevard was restored entirely in the digital domain at great cost because there was not a film element that was good enough for archival or preservation purposes. The video is very clean, if not particularly film-like.

Regards,