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Blu-ray Picks for the Week of July 21 – Watchmen: Director's Cut (Review)

Brenden — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:00:22 +0000

WATCHMEN: DIRECTOR’S CUT (2009, Blu-ray released July 21, 2009 – MSRP $35.99)

It’s two in the morning and I can’t stop watching the Watchmen Blu-ray disc. I got home late from work. Totally bagged. Ready to hit the sack minutes after kicking off my shoes. I had been seriously committed to sleep before finding the Watchmen disc in my mailbox. And now I’m done. I can’t tear myself away. Zack Snyder has me held enthralled, talking at me from the blackened studio of his Maximum Movie Mode, unveiling the secrets of his violent, masked universe.

I was all ready to slam this disc. I admit, I didn’t care for Watchmen in the theatre. The film has, to my mind, too many problems to be considered a success. While a lot of my issues with the theatrical cut still exist in the Director’s Cut featured on the Blu-ray disc (awkward dialogue, wooden performances, horrific music choices) I’m delighted to say that this version works a hell of a lot better! Wow. Consider me shocked. Watchmen actually needed that extra 30 minutes or so to breathe. To be honest, I had to hit the internet after watching to figure out where most of the “new” footage was found. To my surprise, a good percentage of it comes from simple scene extensions, longer takes, fewer cuts. That’s why it plays a bit better. It doesn’t cut abruptly away from a character moment. It lingers a bit longer and allows the weight of its world to sink in. In this three hour cut, the Watchmen actually works.

On top of enjoying the film itself, I was drawn in by Warner‘s new Maximum Movie Mode, where the director literally steps into the picture to walk you through a sequence. This works brilliantly well (watch a preview over at our previously posted article here) but only pops into the movie periodically. This is a crying shame. I could watch the entire film over again like this. When Zack isn’t on screen Maximizing the Movie, the rest of film plays through with pop-up facts, timelines, Picture-in-Picture interviews, comments and behind-the-scenes footage and offers to zap you out of the film to look at other content. I’ve never cared much for that, you know. As much as some of these features might interest me, I don’t ever want to leave the film to see them! There’s some great stuff there too, you know: artwork, designs, photos, focus point videos (which you can thankfully access outside of the “Mode”.) I just don’t want to have to stop the film to experience them. You hear me, Warner?! Give me the same content but never stop the show. That’s what Maximum Movie Mode is for. To display lots of stuff while the film rolls on.

Oh yeah. Almost forgot. The 3-Disc Watchmen: Director’s Cut set has more stuff to appreciate too! There are a handful of featurettes and things on the second disc and they’re great. Really nice stuff. None of it is going to blow your mind but its all a nice compliment to the bounty of information found on disc one. There’s also a digital copy of the film, found on its own, on a third disc. Yeah. I know. Digital Copy. Who cares…

For a full run-down of the discs features, read our detailed article here: Watchmen: Director’s Cut Detailed, includes Facebook Social Media Connectivity

ANOTHER PICK – CORALINE

I can’t speak intelligently about this Blu-ray disc as the studio didn’t send me a screener but I can tell you that I’ll be heading out directly after work to pick this up tonight. I loved Coraline in the theatres. It was my first 3-D experience. Yes, I’m serious. No, I haven’t been living in a cave.

I was dazzled by the tech, the polarized-lens 3-D thing. I thought it looked amazing without having to sacrifice the colours of the film itself, as red-blue anaglyph 3-D does. Sadly, that’s the only kind of 3-D we’ve got available to us at home at this time and the Coraline Blu-ray disc provides a version in that style. I don’t hesitate to tell you that I’ll be avoiding that version, however and enjoying the film for the first time in standard old, flat 2-D. I wonder how it will hold up?

ANOTHER PICK – 300: THE COMPLETE EXPERIENCE

I’m not going to try to sell you on 300. You either like the film or you don’t. If you’re here, reading this review, you probably think the movie’s all right and are no doubt familiar enough with the story, so I’m not going to bore you with it. It is, at its core, a two-hour fight scene. It’s an amazing battle, and incredible eye candy to be sure. But really, this sort of action epic, light on story, heavy on special effects is either your bag or you’re going to look elsewhere for your cinematic delights.

That out of the way, let me say WOW! I love this Blu-ray package. What an amazing job Warner has done with this set. Double-dip be damned, if you care at all about this film and are the sort of person who enjoys bonus features on a disc (I know there are two or three of you out there who couldn’t give a Spartan’s spear about them) then it’s worth ditching the old bare-bones one in favour of this, the 300: The Complete Experience.

Read my full review here: 300: The Complete Experience Blu-ray Disc Review

Blu-ray Picks for the Week of June 30 – Tokyo!

Brenden — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:28:40 +0000

PICK OF THE WEEK FOR JUNE 30 – TOKYO!

Oh, what a week. Barren. Forgotten. Kind of sad, all around. I’ve been avoiding my recommendation post for the last few days because there just wasn’t anything in the list of releases this week that moved me. And then I remembered Tokyo!

This is another one of those weeks where I’m recommending a film that I haven’t yet seen, but am kind of excited to get my hands on. I had forgotten that Tokyo! was hitting the shops this week. It’s a trio of short films directed by a trio of talented guys: Michel Gondry (Be Kind Rewind), Leos Carax (The Lovers on the Bridge), and Bong Joon-ho (The Host).

I’m a huge fan of Gondry’s work and appreciate what Joon-ho accompished with The Host but I’d be lying if I said I was at all familiar with Leos Carax. In fact, I’d be lying if I said I was excited about this film by anything more than Gondry’s involvement.

With the exception of his abysmal The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry has proven time and again that he is one of the most innovative and imaginative filmmakers of our time. I’ve nearly burned through my DVD of his Director’s Series work. I can’t wait to see what he’s got in store for us in his Tokyo! short, Interior Design.

I understand that the Tokyo! Blu-ray is encoded in MPEG-2 (shame on you Liberation! Get with the AVC/VC-1 program.) but thankfully, doesn’t impact to look of the film too drastically. The bonus features on the disc, when added together, sport a runtime in excess of the film itself! The extras include:

ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Clicking an image will take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more about the Blu-ray:

Blu-ray Picks for the Week of June 23 – Last Year at Marienbad

Brenden — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:02:33 +0000

PICK OF THE WEEK FOR JUNE 23 – LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD

What? Stop rolling your eyes! Don’t give me a hard time about this, ok? There’s a reason I keep recommending these Criterion Collection titles, you know. It’s because, well, they’re usually the best bets on any given week. The best films. The best transfers and restorations. The best bonus features. Time after time, Criterion beats the rest.

And this week is no exception. Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad) plays like a romantic version of The Shining through the lens of David Lynch. Yeah. Imagine that. But instead of focussing on the deteriorating mind of a man, Marienbad paints an ambiguous picture of a man and a woman who may or may not have fallen in love a year ago, told through a surreal fusion of past, present and future. Is this a love story? A ghost story? One thing is for certain, it’s one of the most mysterious and intriguing films to come out of the French New Wave.

Read our full detailed look at the Last Year at Marienbad Blu-ray disc and it’s features here.

ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Clicking an image will take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more about the Blu-ray:

Blu-ray Picks for the Week of June 16 – The Seventh Seal

Brenden — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:08:06 +0000

PICK OF THE WEEK FOR JUNE 16 – THE SEVENTH SEAL

Bergman! Blu-ray! Bliss!

Yes, it’s another Criterion week! I’m not going to waste your time with another impassioned rant about the quality of their work and why you should be snatching up every single one of their Blu-ray releases. Let’s cut to the chase and talk about Bergman and the Seventh Seal.

I know there are a few of you out there who won’t be able to watch this disc without thinking of Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. Yeah, that movie ruined The Seventh Seal for a lot of people. If you’re not familiar with either film, they both feature a depiction of “Death” as a man with a white face, black robes and a penchant for board games. Famously, in the case of Ingmar Bergman‘s Seal, chess. Death’s opponent in the game comes in the form of a war-weary knight of the Crusades, played by Max Von Sydow. He struggles to find his way home to his wife through the plague-ravaged land, while wrestling with his beliefs, the meaning of life and a strategy to beat death at his own game.

We outlined the copious bonus features on the Blu-ray disc previously on The Blu-ray Blog. You’ll find a ton of stuff here, all well worth watching. We don’t have a copy to review yet but from what I understand, Criterion’s new high-def transfer is absolutely stunning and not to be missed.

ANOTHER PICK – GHOSTBUSTERS

It’s finally here – Ghostbusters is available this week in HD! The disc is loaded with special features, most ported over from the previously available DVD editions. Not bad. The transfer is controversial. I haven’t seen it myself, but the forums are going mad comparing the Blu-ray disc to older DVDs. Some take issue with alterations to colour timing, others the shifting contrast and brightness and even more complaining about a proliferation of grain. At the end of the day, all you need to know is that the Ghostbusters Blu-ray sports a transfer approved by the Director of Photography and that it’s film-accurate, faithfully representing what was up on screen, with all the limitations and shortcomings of 80s filmmaking and special effects work. I, for one, can’t wait to get my hands on the disc!

ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Clicking an image will take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more about the Blu-ray:

Blu-ray Picks for the Week of June 9 – Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music Director's Cut (Review)

Brenden — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:27:53 +0000

PICK OF THE WEEK FOR JUNE 9 – WOODSTOCK: 3 DAYS OF PEACE & MUSIC DIRECTOR’S CUT

What do I know about Woodstock? Yeah…nothing. I’m almost ashamed to admit that, as a musician, I have little interest or investment in any of the acts that played the famous festival. I look at it as more of a curiosity. But this 40th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition of Michael Wadleigh’s Oscar-winning documentary might just be the artifact that turns me around.

This Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music Director’s Cut box-set is bat-shit crazy! Warner has really pulled out all the stops here – taking the original Éclair 16mm shoulder-mounted camera footage, shot dirt-level full of scratches and grain and given it a stunning 2K transfer. I mean, this thing is never going to look pristine perfect like Planet Earth or Iron Man on your big screen. This was guerilla filmmaking in the 60s. It’s supposed to look dirty. But the Blu-ray transfer preserves the nature of the film. The grain. The scratches. And the soundtrack! Originally recorded on eight-track, using a remote sound truck, the Blu-ray producers have made the best of what they had to work with. This disc marks a substantial improvement over previously releases, sporting a new mix that make you feel like you’re a part of the crowd. Not a crisp, shiny 7.1 tracks of perfection, of course. But slightly noisy and poppy with the occasional hiccup. Just like you were there. There’s nothing wrong with that.

I’m not making apologies for the quality of the disc. No need. This is as good as Woodstock has ever looked and sounded. Just be prepared to watch a film that’s been restored and preserved with loving care, not one that’s been computer-enhanced to artificially bring it closer to today’s shiny standards. Bravo, Warner!

So, this thing’s a little bloated. Not only in the near-4 hour run-time of the film but also in the Blu-ray packaging. The fringed hippy box it ships in is loaded with goo-gaas and trinkets including:

Oi vey. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much bonus content here that watching these discs could become a full-time job:

And just in case this isn’t enough for you, you can nab yourself an additional exclusive bonus disc with never-before-seen performance footage and featurettes if you order from Amazon.com.

ANOTHER PICK – GRAN TORINO

“Urghhhhh…Grrrrrr…” That’s what I took away from Gran Torino. When you’re old, all you need to do is snarl and growl at the camera. It’ll get you where you need to be…

Ok, so, I’m not recommending this because I liked it. But the disc is slick. And it seems quite popular. So there. If cliche, ham fisted storytelling is your thing, or if you’re just such an unabashed Clint Eastwood fan you’ll watch anything the man is in then you kind of can’t go wrong here. But seriously, folks. Go and spend your hard earned cash on Fox/MGMs recently released The Good, The Bad and the Ugly instead. Clint is just genius in that. You’ll be doing yourself a favour.

ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Clicking an image will take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more about the Blu-ray:

Blu-ray Picks for the Week of May 26 – The Sky Crawlers (Review)

Brenden — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:05:39 +0000

PICK OF THE WEEK FOR MAY 26 – THE SKY CRAWLERS

I would never count myself among the legion of Mamoru Oshii fans. In fact, I find Ghost in the Shell a hard slog, tough to sit through. Like watching water boil.

All right, I’m exaggerating here. Oshii never fails to deliver beautiful moments and thrilling action in his films but in order to uncover the candy he forces you to suffer the interminable plastic wrapping of verbose philosophical monologues, pretentious classical quotations and ham-fisted expository detail. I’m happy to say that his latest animated film, The Sky Crawlers manages to side step these complications. For the most part.

The Sky Crawlers paints itself as a story about war. It leads you to believe you’re in for one hell of an airplane ride but while director Oshii delivers the occasional immaculately rendered, viscerally engaging dogfight – single and dual propellor CGI vehicles tearing through the computer-rendered sky and each other with dizzying speed and intensity – he’s less interested in action and more keen on theme and concepts. Adapted from Hiroshi Mori‘s novels of the same name, The Sky Crawlers follows a group of eternally adolescent pilots into the skies as they struggle to understand the meaning of the corporate war they wage. The mysteries of the other-dimensional Europe of the film are revealed through the eyes of Yuichi, a ‘Kildren’ pilot with a missing past and a deepening relationship with the girl who holds the key to it – his self-destructive young airbase commander, Suito. As is par for the course with Oshii, we come to know the characters less through action or dialogue and more through their expression of the thematic concepts at hand – in this case, broadly, youth and war. But for once, this doesn’t get in the way of the film. Though moving at the pace of fanciful poetry, The Sky Crawlers remains inventive and engaging throughout, punctuating long stretches of haunting silence or ponderous exchanges with breathtaking images, lightning flashes of action and stirring music by Kenji Kawai.

The Blu-ray disc looks and sounds tremendous. I can’t heap enough praise on Sony for their work with animated features. These guys really seem to know what they’re doing. The transfer is immaculate, three-dimensional and electric on the screen, with the 2-D, cell animated scenes on the ground as clean and vibrant as the CGI aerial dogfights. The intense audio work by Skywalker Sound is some of the most realistic and present I’ve ever experienced in an animated film and immaculately represented here in Dolby TrueHD 5.1.

The Sky Crawlers Blu-ray disc includes three documentary shorts, each a candid look at the creation of the film and each worth your time. “Animation Research for The Sky Crawlers” (30:52) follows Oshii and his team all over the world as they photoggraph, sketch and record all the visual details required to build the alternate-universe European setting of the film. “The Sound Design and Animation of the Sky Crawlers” (32:16) takes Oshii to San Francisco and Skywalker Sound, giving insight into the critical nature of the film’s sound effects and music to the overall experience. Exclusive to the Blu-ray disc is the 15 minute featurette, “Sky’s the Limit: An Interview with Director Mamoru Oshii”, a sit-down conversation with the director that reveals his intentions for the film and the thought process that ushered the book to script and finally to screen.

The Sky Crawlers is available for $22.99 on Amazon.com – 34% off the MSRP of $34.95

ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Clicking an image will take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more about the Blu-ray:

Blu-ray Picks for the Week of May 19 – 3 Days of the Condor

Brenden — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:49:07 +0000

Don’t crucify me. I’m not going to take the popular route this week.

You see, there are so many titles of worth hitting shelves today. You’ll find Amazon links to most of them below. But they’re films you probably know about. They’re movies that you’ll pick up without a recommendation. T2, Batman, A Bug’s Life…You’re no doubt intimately familiar with all of them at this point. I thought I’d throw the spotlight on a film that’s a bit older, far from perfect but one of my all time favourites:

PICK OF THE WEEK FOR MAY 19 – THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR

It’s been almost a year since the great Sydney Pollack passed on. Probably best known for his award winning films, Out Of Africa and Tootsie, Pollack was more than just a talented director. He was also an actor and good, close friend of Robert Redford. After sharing the screen in the 1962 film War Hunt, the two men would go on to make six more films together, not least of which is Three Days of the Condor, available now on Blu-ray.

This is one of those claustrophobic seventies conspiracy thrillers, like Coppola‘s The Conversation and Pakula‘s All the President’s Men that played on the cultural paranoia of the time, as audiences found themselves still recovering from losing trust in government through the Watergate scandal and Vietnam. The amazing thing is (read: not so amazing) that these taught political thrillers play just as well today as they did thirty years ago! And Condor is no exception.

Robert Redford plays Condor, CIA reader Joe Turner who finds himself on the run when his entire office is massacred. After a call for help to headquarters in Langley, he quickly discovers that his own people are out to get him. With nowhere to turn, he kidnaps innocent photographer Kathy Hale, played by Faye Dunaway who he eventually seduces into helping him. Condor comes face to face with Ming the Merciless himself – Max Von Sydow – ruthless hitman for hire as he races to unravel a web of secrets that some people would kill to keep.

Considering the age of Three Days of the Condor, it really looks quite good on this Blu-ray disc from Paramount. It hasn’t been given the platinum restoration treatment reserved for classics and hollywood eye-candy but it sports a nice honest, film-like transfer with accurate colours, solid blacks and just enough grain to make me happy. I’m sure cinematographer Owen Roizman would approve.

While I’m impressed with the film-to-video transfer I can’t say that I was blown away by the flat, thin audio on the disc. It’s serviceable but far from thrilling. Perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise as Condor features one of the worst musical scores ever set to film! That’s not to say that Dave Grusin‘s smooth jazz is a work of profound incompetence, simply inappropriate and dated. Okay…maybe it’s just a lot suckier than it should have been, I admit it. Bad music.

What about the special features, you say? Um…how does a trailer grab ya? It would’ve been nice to see a retrospective or listen to commentary track but to be honest, I feel privileged to just have a chance to see this film in 1080p high-def. I’ll do without the extras if I must…

3 Days of the Condor is available for $19.99 on Amazon.com – 33% off the MSRP of $29.99

ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Clicking an image will take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more about the Blu-ray:

Blu-ray Picks for the Week of May 12

Brenden — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:06:57 +0000

I saw the new Star Trek film on a giant IMAX screen this past Thursday night. I was so tired and stressed out from deadlines that all I really wanted to do was skip the film, go home and sleep. Instead, I powered through and by God am I ever glad I did! While far from high art, J.J. Abrams has managed to craft a fantastic popcorn entertainment from a dull, beaten down decades old property. He’s polished up the franchise and breathed new life into the adventures of Captain Kirk and his crew, paving the way for a twenty-first century Star Trek renaissance. As such, I’ve eschewed the more obvious picks this week – films from the Coen brothers, Leone, Penny Marshall – in favour of this glorious collection of six sci-fi classics:

PICK OF THE WEEK FOR MAY 12 – STAR TREK: ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE COLLECTION

Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture Collection on Blu-ray disc features one of my favourite films of all time, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, for the first time on home video in 1080p high-def. There’s nothing like watching two of television finest over-actors chewing big-budget scenery in a tightly scripted, brilliantly scored (James Horner!) sub-battle styled space-operatic epic. In Khan, Nicholas Meyer delivered a film that not only stands the test of time as a great Star Trek film, but a truly fine piece of sci-fi cinema. Smart, boisterous, and touching, Star Trek II on Blu-ray is worth the purchase of the box-set alone.

While I haven’t had a chance to examine the results of the transfers in this box-set, I can recommend it whole-heartedly on the basis of the feature-rich collection of extras and the entertainment value of most of the films (if you value your time, you’d do well to skip the fifth film in the series, The Final Frontier directed by William Shatner on a shoestring budget. It’s a real stinker).

For a full list of all features, see our previous run-down of all the Star Trek releases.

Watch the video below for a special preview of Star Trek: The Captains’ Summit bonus disc:

ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Clicking an image will take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more about the Blu-ray:

Blu-ray Picks for the Week of May 5

Brenden — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:06:59 +0000

The two releases that excite me the most this week are Ip Man and Red Cliff II, both imported Region A Blu-ray discs of amazing Hong Kong films. They’re tough to get a hold of and hard on the wallet if you do track them down (Amazon.com has them both for around $60 US). The Red Cliff films, directed by John Woo will be making their way to North American shores sometime later this year and Ip Man, the story of the Kung Fu master who trained Bruce Lee, is such a major film that we’ll no doubt see a domestic release at some point. Best to hold off purchasing and save your money for this week’s pick:

PICK OF THE WEEK FOR MAY 5 – THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

Again, I find myself recommending the Blu-ray disc of a movie I’ve yet to see. However, since this is an Oscar nominated film directed by the brilliant David Fincher and released on Blu-ray by Criterion, I doubt you’ll go wrong with this investment.

Benjamin Button, the story of a man (Brad Pitt) who is born in his eighties and ages in reverse, comes to us in a brilliant looking 2 disc deluxe collection from Criterion, packed with incredible special features that, according to early reviews I’ve read, rival or best the finest supplemental material ever found on any other home video release. The first of the two discs houses a 44.2GB AVC MPEG-4 encode of the film, almost entirely maxing out the capacity of the dual layer disc! Just to prove they’re the best at what they do, Criterion also manages to squeeze a commentary with director, Fincher onto the bloated Blu-ray. Well done!

Disc two again sees Criterion pushing capacity, cramming almost 44GB of extras onto another dual layer Blu-ray. The bulk of the special features combine several featurettes into one long 3 hour documentary covering all elements of the filmmaking process from development and preproduction to in depth examinations of the ground-breaking special effects all the way to the premiere of the film. Still galleries and production designs are spread throughout and accessible separately.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is available at Amazon.com for $25.99, that’s 35% off the MSRP of $40.

ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Clicking an image will take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more about the Blu-ray

Blu-ray Picks for the Week of April 28

Brenden — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:49:48 +0000

ARRRRGH! I can feel my wallet getting lighter and lighter!

What an amazing week of releases. How can I possibly select only one as my pick of the week when there is both a new Criterion disc AND a box of my favourite TV episodes hitting the shelves? Solution: choose both!

PICK OF THE WEEK FOR APRIL 28 – STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES (SEASON ONE)

Paramount brings us the long awaited release of Star Trek: The Original Series with this first season box, timed to coincide with the theatrical release of J.J. Abrams’ re-imagining. I really can’t wait to get my hands on this and deliver a full review but from what I’ve read around the internets, I can tell you that this box is truly the definitive collection of this classic series. Season One features the first 29 episodes of Star Trek, starring William Shatner as Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as his Vulcan first officer, Mr. Spock, in full 1080p High Definition in the original 4:3 television aspect ratio, with your choice of either 7.1 DTS-HD MA or the original English 2.0 Mono. While this set is chock-a-block full of special features (click over to our previous report to read all the details), what intrigues me most about it is the ability to toggle back and forth using the ‘angle’ button on your Blu-ray player remote between the original special effects and the updated CGI effects! I can’t wait to compare 1960s Enterprise-on-a-string to 2009 computer-generated, super-powered Enterprise. Here’s hoping that George Lucas is paying attention and gives his Star Wars films this treatment when they eventually hit Blu.

And there’s more good news about Star Trek: The Original Series (Season One)! Amazon.com has the box-set on sale for $64.99. That’s 50% of the MSRP of $129.99. Click on over to Amazon to pick it up before they bump the price back up.

PICK OF THE WEEK FOR APRIL 28 – IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES

It’s sad that In the Realm of the Senses, an explicit Franco-Japanese production directed by Nagisa Oshima, is looked upon as pornography. As a result, it’s been hacked, reframed and out-right banned in most countries, including Canada. Based upon a true story taking place in 1930s Japan (read profiles of the real-life Sada Abé and the actress who portrayed her on Criterion‘s website), Senses is “a graphic portrayal of insatiable sexual desire” about a prostitute and a hotel owner willing to sacrifice everything to indulge their hunger for one another. The film focuses on the power dynamics between the two characters, leaving Abé’s status as folk hero for others to explore (see Noboru Tanaka‘s film A Woman Called Sada Abé). Criterion’s Blu-ray treatment sports a 1.66:1 theatrical aspect ratio delivered in 1080p using the AVC codec and looks spectacular. Colours are rich and deep and the overall image is sharp without a hint of edge enhancement. Just what you’d expect from Criterion.

Get all the details of Criterion’s presentation of In The Realm Of The Senses, including a full list of special features in our previous post, here.

ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK

The Blu-ray Blog » Weekly Picks

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