Kaleidescape

Review: Jerry Maguire

Posted on September 23, 2020

In the pantheon of directors who truly understand/understood how to use music in films, there are a few obvious names that immediately spring to mind: John Hughes, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers, and, of course, Cameron Crowe.

Crowe famously started his career as a journalist for Rolling Stone, and his love for music is evident in his films, which frequently feature iconic musical moments, such as John Cusack’s boombox serenade in Say Anything, the band singing

“Tiny Dancer” in Almost Famous, and arguably helping launch Seattle’s grunge scene with Singles.

Another element that runs deep through Crowe’s films is heart, loyalty, and discovering what is truly important, which is the central theme of Jerry Maguire.

I took my wife to see Maguire when it came out theatrically in 1996, and we loved it. In fact, it was actually the first DVD I purchased. (Fun fact: According to Wikipedia, “It is the best-selling non-Disney VHS tape of all time, with over 3 million copies sold on the first day and another 1 million on the second day.”)

Sports agent Jerry Maguire (Cruise) grows a conscience at 2 a.m. while on a junket after meeting with a client suffering yet another concussion who only cares about getting back on the ice to meet his playing bonus. Maguire’s epiphany leads him to write a 25-page mission statement about the state of the industry and taking on fewer clients to develop

MAGUIRE AT A GLANCE

Cameron Crowe’s Tom Cruise-fueled sports-laced romcom dramedy still holds up in this 4K HDR release, famous catch phrases and all.

PICTURE

Not exactly demo-worthy, with HDR sometimes making faces look overexposed and the transfer emphasizing the softness of some scenes, but overall looking great for a 25-year-old film.

SOUND

The Dolby Atmos mix is surprisingly effective for such a dialogue-heavy movie, adding ambience that pulls you further into the film and mixing the songs big and full across the front channels.

more personal relationships, which he has printed with a Salinger-esque cover and puts in the In box of every member of his firm. This call for fewer clients/less money gets him sacked from his job, but after an impassioned plea, he convinces office assistant Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger) to come join him in his new startup, where they’ll make a difference.

Maguire loses all of his clients—and income—save one athlete: Arizona Cardinals star receiver Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.). Unfortunately, Tidwell’s me-first, get-what’s-mine attitude off the field wins him no friends, the big contract he wants, or the Kwan he desperately craves.

After Maguire loses star prospect Cushman (Jerry O’Connell) as a client the night before the NFL draft, the impending doom of his career leads to an argument between Maguire and his fiancée Avery (Kelly Preston), which, of course, opens the door for a relationship with Dorothy and her overly-cute son, Ray (Jonathan Lipnicki).

It’s pretty easy to sum up Jerry Maguire by saying that a great story with great actors makes a great film, and the film holds up terrifically well, still giving all the laughs and feels at all the right moments. Not only did it grab Academy Award nominations for Picture, Actor (Tom Cruise), Original Screenplay, and Editing, it also earned a Supporting Actor win for Cuba Gooding Jr. And its still-quotable lines such as, “Show me the money!” “You had me at ‘hello’,” “You complete me,” and “Help me, help you!” still ring true, as well as Bruce Springsteen’s perfectly chosen “Secret Garden.” (I also had no idea that The Simpsons legend James L. Brooks has a producing credit for Maguire.)

A 4K scan was made of the original 35mm negative for the film’s 20th anniversary, which was used for the Blu-ray re-release back in 2017, and a 4K Blu-ray taken from the new 4K digital intermediate was released as part of the Columbia Classics Collection: Vol. 1 (along with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Dr. Strangelove, Lawrence of Arabia, Gandhi, and A League of Their Own) in June. For those wanting to enjoy Maguire in its full 4K HDR glory without having to purchase the box set, it is available for download from Kaleidescape as an individual film.

The image retains the look of film, with grain visible throughout but not objectionable. I did notice a few scenes where the bumped-brightness from HDR made some faces look a bit over-exposed and grainy, but these were not often. There are also a few scenes—notably in the hotel lobby post mission-statement delivery—that looked incredibly soft, or “that looks like a VHS tape” according to my wife. These defocused moments are more noticeable because the rest of the film has so much sharpness and detail.

Closeups feature tons of facial detail or patterns and texture in fabric such as the loops in the knit sweater Dorothy wears on the plane or a tight check pattern in a suit Maguire wears. The film doesn’t feature an excessive color palette, but the cardinal-

red of the Cardinals’ jerseys look deeply saturated and realistic, and skin tones and the grass in the football scenes look natural.

While not used aggressively, HDR does add some pop to the white shirts Maguire seems to always wear, and we get some nice specular highlights from sun glinting off car windshields or sunlight streaming in through windows. The film has nice and inky black levels when called for, with no hints of noise or banding, making the night scenes really pop. While Jerry Maguire won’t be in your “must-demo video” playlist, images look terrific for a nearly 25-year-old title, and this is certainly the definitive version of the film to own and enjoy.

Another bonus is a new Dolby TrueHD Atmos audio mix. For a primarily dialogue-driven film, I wasn’t expecting much from this mix, but it pleasantly surprised me. Mixers used the additional channels to add appropriate ambience to scenes, greatly expanding the soundstage and placing you in the environment. Interiors like the hotel lobby, airport baggage claim, restaurant, and Jerry’s office all come alive with the sounds of background chatter and scene-appropriate sounds. You will especially notice how the pandemonium in Jerry’s office—with sounds of phones ringing, keyboards clattering, and voices chattering—erupts after he concludes his “I’m leaving” speech. We also get some nice use of the height

channels from the voices that haunt Jerry prior to his mission-statement epiphany or in airport PA announcements.

Every important line of dialogue is clear and anchored to the center, but the Atmos mix gives room for the soundtrack to breathe, and songs are mixed big and full across the front channels and up into the height speakers.

Both the 4K Blu-ray and Kaleidescape download include a host of special features, including commentary tracks, some small featurettes, and a host of deleted scenes, many of which feature pretty abysmal picture quality, but are fun to see what was trimmed from the final cut.

Jerry Maguire is a great, genre-spanning film with elements of comedy, drama, romance, and sports that offers a bit of something for everyone. If you haven’t given it a watch for a few years, this new transfer provides the perfect opportunity to revisit a real gem.

—John Sciacca

Probably the most experienced writer on custom installation in the industry, John Sciacca is
co-owner of Custom Theater & Audio in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, & is known for his writing
for such publications as Residential Systems and Sound & Vision. Follow him on Twitter at
@SciaccaTweets and at johnsciacca.com.

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EP. 9: NEW FRONTIERS IN
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Review: Rear Window

Posted on September 20, 2020

in Kaleidescape, Movies, Reviews

by admin

As I mentioned in my Psycho review, more has been written about Hitchcock than any other filmmaker—and more has probably been written about Rear Window (1954) than any other film. It and Vertigo (1958) are often considered his most accomplished efforts—a conclusion I would vigorously dispute, but not here. Rear Window has gotten the most attention because, between the two, it’s the squeakier wheel.

It’s undeniable that this hubristic exercise in artifice, or stagecraft as cinema, would have completely unravelled in the hands of a lesser filmmaker. And it remains impressive how much Hitchcock is able to make the pure contrivance of his elaborate

set a big part of what makes the film so engaging. You almost don’t care that it’s the somewhat clunky epitome of mid-’50s Broadway stage design. There’s something about its sheer physicality that makes everything that’s presented on it feel convincing.

Because Hitchcock was relentlessly ambitious, his reach constantly exceeded his grasp, so Rear Window has more than its share of shots that don’t quite work, storyboard concepts that had to be triaged in post, characters that could have used a little more development. Thelma Ritter’s part is ridiculously overwritten, and you can feel her pausing for laughs that forever faded it into the void more than five decades ago. Grace Kelly is just a little too Grace Kelly, with a patrician accent that can’t help but grate on modern ears.

The film works mainly because of the ingenious way Hitchcock makes the set, with its vignettes, convincing as projections of Jimmy Stewart’s various states of mind,

REAR WINDOW AT A GLANCE

This 4K HDR presentation gives Hitchcock’s quintessential exercise in pure cinema an immediacy and sense of engagement it’s lacked in every previous home-video incarnation.

PICTURE

HDR is applied subtly, for the most part, but gives the finale an impact the film has likely lacked since its first run in theaters.

SOUND

The DTS-HD Master Audio stereo mix respects Hitchcock’s innovative original mix, with its uncanny evocation of space.

making the film from early on feel dreamlike. And it works because of Stewart’s performance. He, pre-World War II, was a good, even great, actor—his work in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is jawdropping, even today. But he was also kind of lightweight, sometimes clownish. After the war, there’s an undeniable sense of experience behind his eyes that he was able to employ deftly in his best roles—like in the Anthony Mann westerns, in Vertigo, and here.

Not that his performance is flawless. As always with Hitchcock, there are weak moments in the script and in the direction that cause Stewart, adrift, to lapse into his patented Stewartisms. But in the hands of a more traditional Hollywood pretty boy type, L. B. Jefferies snooping out of the back of his apartment could have seemed just comic, or even warped. Stewart creates a perfect tension between making it all seem justified and also the dangerous preoccupations of a troubled soul.

The 4K HDR presentation is a must-have for anybody who even thinks they care about movies—not because it smooths over the flaws but because it presents everything honestly, the good and the bad. Seeing Rear Window in any other format inevitably puts you at a distance from the film, which inevitably places you at too great of a distance from what’s going on in the apartments across the way. You need to see it at this resolution to get pulled back into the film, so it stops feeling quaint and again becomes relevant and compelling.

The flaws are pretty egregious. Hitchcock, of course, endlessly obsessed over how to present Kelly, but there’s a shot at 29:51, during a sequence meant to scream “beguiling beauty,” where she looks like a walking corpse. Even more jarring is a closeup at 1:50:29 of the hapless Wendell Corey that looks like it was originally part of a wider shot that was ruthlessly enlarged on an optical printer.

For whatever reason, cinematographer Robert Burks didn’t do as good a job here as he would on Vertigo, but for everything that takes you out of the film, there’s plenty to keep you engaged. Probably no other movie has better conveyed the feel of New York at sunset, or especially at three in the morning. And, while the HDR makes its presence felt just here and there, it is

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an absolute revelation during the climax. Anyone who knows Rear Window will know exactly where I’m going with this, but Raymond Burr being blinded by Stewart’s flashbulbs fell solidly into the “suspension of disbelief” camp until now. Presented in HDR, those white flashes become searing, making you feel Burr’s disorientation and sense of absolute loss. Rear Window is worth seeing in this form just for that moment alone.

The audio is “only” DTS-HD Master Audio stereo. I used quotes because the thought of somebody mucking around with Hitchcock’s innovative and masterful sound mix to take

it into the land of Atmos is both terrifying and nauseating. In the right hands, it could definitely enhance the experience—but who’s got the right hands? And I think there’s a good chance an enhanced sense of spaciousness could actually end up emphasizing the one-dimensionality of a lot of the stagecraft.

The mix here does a great job of allowing you to savor what Hitchcock originally wrought, where he used mainly volume, timing, and reverb to convey the sense of voices and other sounds heard in various spaces and from various distances away.

The soundtrack, as is, is so strong it could almost stand on its own as a radio play.

But allow me just a brief swipe at Franz Waxman’s score, which is the weakest link in the film. It’s not that I don’t like Waxman—his work on Sunset Boulevard represents the pinnacle of the film-scoring art—but he’s just not in sync with this film at all. The opening theme—if you can call it that—is a hackneyed pastiche of Gershwin clichés—42nd Street meets The Naked City. But what makes it really fall flat is the sense of complete disconnection from the evocative use of source cues that makes up the rest of the soundtrack. I know Hitchcock was aiming for a kind of overture as the curtains literally went up, but he missed the mark.

And then there’s that song. Another of Hitchcock’s offerings placed on the altar of Grace Kelly, it was a great idea in concept—show a composer struggling to write a song to parallel Jimmy Stewart’s conflicted feelings about Kelly and then have it all come together as an example of songwriting perfection. Problem is, the song sounds fully worked out—and not very good—from the start. Had it been great, it could have elevated the whole film—and not made the salvation of Miss Lonelyhearts look like the worst kind of Victorian contrivance. But “Lisa” is a real stinker.

I’m not a big fan of Top 10 or Top 100 or whatever lists—they’re almost all laughable when they’re not outright dangerous. So let’s just say that Rear Window, for too many reasons to ignore, is an essential. Not only does it stand on its own as entertainment for all but the most jaded contemporary viewers (and let’s not go there), but its reverberations can still be strongly felt in present-day film. In 4K HDR, it becomes not just another movie, but the very definition of cinema.

—Michael Gaughn

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review,
Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtable, marketing, product design, some theater designs,
a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

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Inception

Posted on September 14, 2020

in Kaleidescape, Movies, Reviews

by admin

After the mental calisthenics of watching and trying to unpack Tenet, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to return to another of my favorite Christopher Nolan time-bending films, Inception. This was especially the case after my 13-year-old daughter—whose introduction to Nolan was Tenet—asked if all of his films were “that confusing and hard to understand,” and after I saw that a 4K HDR transfer was available for download from Kaleidescape.

Scoring an impressive 87% Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score and 91% audience score, Inception made over $825 million at the box office, and was a critical success as well, winning four Academy Awards for Cinematography, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects, with additional nominations for Original Screenplay, Original Score, Art Direction, and Best Picture.

The core plot of Inception is actually fairly simple—getting someone to do something you want them to by planting a simple idea in their subconscious that they believe is their own. But it is the path of getting there that is so complex and visually stunning to watch, as Nolan creates dream worlds within worlds within worlds, with time expanding exponentially the further down you go. What takes seconds in “real life” might equate to hours or even decades multiple dream-levels deep.

Similar to lucid dreaming—a dream where the person is aware they are dreaming and can then exert control over the dream universe—Inception allows for group dreaming where an architect designs and builds the dream world, which is then populated by others who can control the dream, with the actual dreamer filling out the world with the characters of his subconscious mind. (If you’ve seen the film, you’ll understand; if you haven’t, trust me that it actually makes a lot of sense.)

INCEPTION AT A GLANCE

In the wake of his mindbending Tenet, Christopher Nolan’s dream-world thriller Inception gets the 4K HDR treatment, with a slew of bonus features to help you figure out what it all means.

PICTURE

Tons of detail and resolution in nearly every frame, with plenty of opportunities for HDR to make things pop from the film’s muted palette.

SOUND

The 5.1 mix features plenty of subtle ambient and aggressive surround effects to place you in the action, and massive low-frequency information that will take your subwoofer—and walls—to their limits.

Besides the striking visuals and stunt sequences, another element that really elevates Inception is the fantastic cast, with practically every role handled by A-list talent. This includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Tom Berenger, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, and Michael Caine. DiCaprio does an especially good job here, as do Gordon-Levitt and Watanabe.

The film revolves around Cobb (DiCaprio), an expert “extractor” who is able to steal valuable information from someone’s subconscious while they are dreaming, being hired by Saito (Watanabe) to infiltrate the dreams of Robert Fischer (Murphy)—the newly appointed CEO of a multi-billion-dollar energy concern—in order to plant the idea in his head to break up his company to avoid a future monopoly. In return, Saito promises he can arrange for Cobb—who has been on the run for years after having been wrongfully accused of killing his wife Mal (Cotillard)—to be able to come home to see his children.

Cobb’s subconscious is haunted by memories of Mal—with whom he spent a decade in the abyss of their shared subconscious and where she ultimately lost track of reality—and any dreamworlds he now creates are quickly corrupted and

JOHN SCIACCA |
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overrun by her. He hires one of his father’s (Caine) top students, Ariadne (Page), whom he teaches how to design and construct elaborate labyrinthian dream worlds that will give his team more time to move about before they are discovered and attacked by the dreamer’s subconscious. (Again, this all makes sense when you see the film.)

The dream worlds are often filled with fascinating Escher-like architecture—entire city blocks that twist upwards at 90 degrees to fold back onto the world, rooms filled with never-ending staircases, topsy-turvy gravity, and cities disintegrating as the dreamworld collapses.

You’ll likely find yourself asking, “How did they do that?”

and fortunately there is a slew of featurettes included with the download that provide answers to many of your questions. It is especially impressive when you see that many of these are actually in-camera practical effects as opposed to CGI trickery. Especially interesting is a short animated graphic-novel-esque prequel film, The Cobol Job, which gives some interesting backstory on how Cobb ends up encountering Saito in Inception.

While I don’t think of Inception as an action film, it actually has a surprising amount of action, with the dreamworlds filled with car chases and numerous shootouts. One of the final dream levels—a heavily fortified hospital on top of a snow-covered mountain—always reminds me of a level of a Bond-like video game, using snipers, stealth, and force to overcome a large force on skis and in tracked vehicles to infiltrate a massive complex and achieve the objective.

Originally shot on 35mm and 65mm film, there is no information on the resolution of the digital intermediate used here, but there is tons of detail and resolution in nearly every frame. Closeups reveal loads of facial detail, and you can especially appreciate the detail, design, and fabric texture in the actors’ clothing. For example, in the opening moments, we see Cobb lying in the surf, and there is sharp line texture and detail in the fabric of his jacket. Later, in the snow-mountain scene, you can appreciate the slightly pebbled texture on the leather accents of Cobb’s teams’ uniforms, or a delicate white-on-white pattern on one of Saito’s shirts. Long shots of Paris and Mombasa are also sharp and full of detail, as are the busy city streets of the Paris dream world, where every building edge is sharp and defined. There are the occasional shots in soft focus, but this appears to be more a limit of the original material.

While the film has a generally muted greyish, overcast, or steely-blue color palette, there are still plenty of opportunities for the HDR grading to improve the viewing experience. One big difference I noticed over the Blu-ray transfer was the enhanced pop of the white shirts worn by many of the actors, and the brightness of the overhead lighting in rooms. The early scene in Saito’s castle especially benefits from this, with the lighting looking far more realistic and bathing the room in a rich, warm, golden glow. Interior scenes also benefit from rich shadow detail while still delivering bright highlights either from light streaming in through windows or internal lighting, and the added contrast also benefits the snowy scenes, providing more detail and depth to the white-covered landscape.

Nolan famously eschews next-generation audio formats like Dolby Atmos, and we are once again “limited” to a 5.1-channel DTS-HD Master mix here. Even so, it is pretty dynamic, with plenty of subtle ambient and aggressive surround effects to

place you in the action. From street sounds at a Paris café, to a freight train whizzing past in the side surrounds, to the creaking and groaning of an elevator shaft and cabling, to dynamic gun fire and bullet strikes discreetly placed around the room, to the distinct sounds of objects exploding in air, Inception’s sound mix is active and entertaining.

The film also features some truly massive and immense low-frequency information that will take your subwoofer—and walls—to their limits. From the opening scene, the sounds of waves crashing at the beach pound your room with bass. Even more aggressive are the deep—and lengthy—bass signals when a dreamworld is collapsing, or the crashing of an avalanche.

Another thing Nolan is becoming infamous for is difficult-to-understand dialogue. This was a real complaint of mine from his two most recent films—Tenet and Dunkirk—where dialogue was completely unintelligible for many key sequences, often drowned out by effects and music mixed significantly louder (and characters mumbling behind masks in the case of Tenet). While most of Inception isn’t plagued with this, there are still a few moments where dialogue is buried beneath other sounds.

Nolan re-teams with frequent collaborator Hans Zimmer for the score here, and it

is often an aggressive, dynamic, stress-filled mix that comes at you from all corners of the room. The film’s finale is heightened by the score, which is like a constant assault on the senses and will get your heart pumping. One of the songs, “Mombasa,” reminded me of the frenetic electronica and bass assault of a Blue Man Group track.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Inception remains incredibly entertaining, and as visually exciting and entertaining as any modern film. With a new 4K HDR transfer, the film looks better than ever, making it the perfect time to revisit this modern classic.

—John Sciacca

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EP. 9: NEW FRONTIERS IN
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Psycho (1960)

Posted on September 11, 2020

in Kaleidescape, Movies, Reviews

by admin

This was supposed to be a review of Rear Window. But I had such a strong reaction to watching Psycho in 4K that Hitchcock’s lurid horror classic quickly pushed its way to the front of the reviewing queue.

More has probably been written about Hitchcock than any other filmmaker, most of it boxing him in so tightly that he’s ended up as badly embalmed as Norman Bates’s mother. So I’m going to try to avoid retreading any of that ground here. My comments will be mainly about why you should care about Psycho in 2020—and why you should care about it in 4K.

First off, there’s Anthony Perkins. Sure, people have praised his performance before, but I didn’t realize exactly how groundbreaking it was, and how much it still reverberates today, until this most recent viewing. Hitchcock was notorious for

putting blinders on his performers, so while there are some exceptional breakout performances in his films (I’m thinking of Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train in particular), they’re rare, and tend to happen not because the actor was given extraordinary latitude but because he figured out how to roll within Hitchcock’s often stifling restrictions.

Perkins turns that straitjacket into a virtue, offering the most direct, nuanced, and startling performance in any Hitchcock film. (His bursting in on Vera Miles at the end always seems so comical because he has kept Norman on a such a believably tight leash until then.) There are many things in Psycho that are unique for a Hitchcock film (I’ll get to that in a minute), but this is the most unusual. As soon as Perkins says his first lines to Janet Leigh, Psycho pivots from a traditional studio-era production into the cinematic unknown.

And then there’s the enduring influence of his performance, which has become the standard for any actor attempting to explore the extreme edges of dissociation. It’s hard to

PSYCHO AT A GLANCE

This 4K version of Hitchcock’s lurid horror classic helps show how much the director used this film to reinvent himself and also helps showcase Anthony Perkins’ groundbreaking performance.

PICTURE

Being able to watch Psycho at the equivalent of 35mm resolution is a huge leap over earlier home video incarnations, restoring some of the impact the film had for audiences at the time of its release.

SOUND

While the stereo and 5.1 mixes are only adequate, they both do an excellent job of presenting Bernard Herrmann’s justly famous score.

watch his Norman Bates and not see De Niro’s Travis Bickle—or even Rupert Pupkin. To watch Perkins in this film is to watch him actively and radically reinvent film acting—all while under his director’s unblinking gaze.

But Hitchcock ventured into all kinds of new territory in Psycho, and it’s fascinating to see him trying to reinvent himself as he grapples with the collapse of the studio system and the realization of how tightly he was bound to it. The tragic thing about Psycho was that he found it impossible to build on the new ground he carved out here, instead retreating to what he already knew, which is why all of his later films feel half-baked and out of touch.

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A lot has been made about Hitchcock using a TV crew to shoot this film, but that kind of misses the point. Psycho, on the moviemaking level, is mainly about Hitchcock grappling with his increasing bitterness, cynicism, disorientation, and misogyny in a world where he could feel his influence as a filmmaker and a personality waning, and figuring out what the hell to make of his unmistakable attraction to La Nouvelle Vague, a movement that worshipped his work but that couldn’t have been further removed from his Hollywood-machine style of filmmaking.

Any balanced consideration of Hitchcock’s misogyny in the

age of the New Puritanism is guaranteed to fall on deaf ears—but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be said. His take on women was far more deft and complex than he’s usually given credit for (consider, for instance, that the two most assertive and courageous characters in Rear Window are Thelma Ritter and Grace Kelly, and how Eva Marie Saint makes Cary Grant look like a dope in North by Northwest). Yes, the sense of personal aggression in his handling of the Marion Crane character is troubling, but the film hinges on being able to see her through Norman’s eyes from the second he first encounters her in the rain at the Bates Motel.

That’s one of the more New Wave elements in this very New Wave-y film, that not only is Marion not very likable—nobody in this film is, which is what forces you to gravitate toward Norman and feel some uncomfortably complex emotions about him as it all plays out.

As for the shock factor—it’s there, but not in the broad strokes that enticed and repelled audiences at the time. Probably the two most disturbing images now are Janet Leigh staring out at the audience with her face flattened against the bathroom floor and Perkins mounting Martin Balsam, butcher knife aloft, while Balsam lies on his back squealing like a stuck pig.

What’s more disturbing are the droller, more perverse touches, like forcing the audience to suffer John Gavin through the whole second half of the film, and the justly infamous penultimate scene where the smug psychiatrist explains all. But it’s worth enduring that to get to the brilliant Godardian shot of Norman in confinement, leading to him giving the camera what would become the patented Kubrick crazy stare, with that almost subliminal superimposition of Mother’s rotting face.

What 4K brings to all this is distressing—as in, you can see all the little nicks and scuff marks and tears and stains that evoke the shabby decay of the Bates Motel. It’s hard to emphasize how much this heightens the experience of the film. Given Hitchcock’s horror of any kind of filth, the idea of a place—and a mind—that rundown was probably truly terrifying for him, and it takes all the clarity of UHD resolution to faithfully convey that.

Strangely, capturing the full impact of 35mm film makes the subtle verbal duel between Perkins and Balsam that begins in the motel office and continues out on the walkway far more intense than it felt in earlier home video incarnations. This is another scene where Hitchcock went well outside his comfort zone, not only in the way he allowed the actors to fence, but in the way he turned it into a duel of acting styles that had until then been foreign to his work. This scene had always felt kind of flat seen anywhere other than in a movie theater, until now.

But 4K both giveth and taketh away. This transfer does its best with some occasionally bad film elements, the worst instance probably being a POV shot through Marion’s windshield at the 24:11 mark where the resolution and image enhancement create a giant swarm of digital gnats that make it feel like you’re watching the opening to Men in Black.

Also, without getting pulled into any sweeping generalizations, it needs to be pointed out that while the HDR version bests the UHD version, the differences are so subtle they’ll probably only register with hyper-critical viewers. Spot-checking scenes with

a lot of gradation, like Marion and Norman in the lobby parlor (Chapter 8) or Norman burying evidence in the swamp (Chapter 12), showed only the slightest difference between versions.

But it’s hard to emphasize how much 4K does to revive Psycho and make it feel vital, instead of like some vaguely appreciated but permanently filed-away relic. And experiencing it in either UHD or HDR brings a new respect for its mostly restrained black & white cinematography. Color would have been too distracting, visually drowning out the impact of the film’s brutally pared-down main elements. And we can only shudder at the thought of 4K colorization.

As for the sound, you’re probably best off experiencing Psycho with the DTS HD Master Audio stereo track. The Master Audio 5.1 mix doesn’t make the film more engaging, just different. That’s not to say that someone someday couldn’t do a compelling Dolby Atmos remix, but they would have to be an absolute virtuoso to make their efforts dovetail with Hitchcock’s aesthetic.

And let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge Bernard Herrmann’s groundbreaking score, which is well served by both mixes. I had never really appreciated until I heard it here just how much Herrmann relied on the primal

physicality of the bows scraping across the strings and the rough resonance of the string instruments’ body cavities—the cellos and basses in particular. Sure, that impression had always been there, on the verge of recognition, but this time that naked musical aggression seemed far more crucial to the impact of the score than the notes themselves.

Anybody who cares about movies beyond junk-food event flicks needs to make the pilgrimage to Hitchcock at some point in their lives, and there are far worse places to start than Psycho (like, say, Family Plot). Whether it gets under your skin on your first viewing is a matter of blind luck, but it will stick with you. If you haven’t seen it in a while, your best chance beyond the local revival house (do they even have those anymore?) will be these UHD and HDR releases. And if you’re a rabid fan of the film, you should have already hit the download button by now.

—Michael Gaughn

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Beetlejuice

Posted on September 9, 2020

in Kaleidescape, Movies, Reviews

by admin

Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice probably doesn’t spring immediately to mind as a prime candidate for a 4K/HDR remaster. That’s not to say anything about the quality of the film itself, of course. In fact, I would rank it as the second-best “goth” film of all time (right after Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude, of course). It’s just never been a film that made for decent home theater demo material. The DVD release looked like a skit performed for public-access TV, and the Blu-ray—while a huge improvement—was still a blown-out, garish, overly saturated mess of a thing that could be categorized as “watchable” at best.

That kind of thing sticks with you. For the past 32 years, the home video presentation of Beetlejuice has left a lasting impression in the mind of viewers of how this quirky and adorably dark film is supposed to look. My only hope here is that

enough people give the UHD/HDR release enough attention to undo some of the damage done by previous home video efforts.

To be frank, you don’t really notice the advantages of the new HDR color grade at first. And I suspect that’s because the opening credits sequence—with its sweeping overhead view of the village of Winter River, CT, which morphs into a model thereof—seems to have been taken from a print, not the original film negative. So while you immediately get a sense of the enhanced resolution of this new restoration, the color palette is still a little limited and the overall quality of the image is ever-so-slightly dupe-y.

As soon as the last title fades away, though, we quite obviously move to a scan of the original negative, and from here on out the image takes on all the qualities of beautifully restored (or perhaps lovingly preserved) 35mm film.

Maybe the most startling thing about this new presentation is how nuanced the colors are. Gone are the ridiculously

BEETLEJUICE AT A GLANCE

This 4K transfer of Tim Burton’s surprisingly affirmative romp through goth darkness shows what a boon HDR can be for ’80s films—when it’s done right.

PICTURE

This 4K HDR version avoids the garishness of, and restores a lot of the detail missing from, earlier home video incarnations.

SOUND

The tastefully done Dolby Atmos mix results in audio that sounds better than the original soundtrack sounded on the mixing stage, enhancing the clarity of the dialogue and giving Danny Elfman’s score plenty of room to breathe.

ruddy skin tones and the Hulk-Smash green of the foliage (both outdoors and in the scale model of Winter River that dominates the plot of the film). Yes, as the lovely Geena Davis and a surprisingly sufferable Alec Baldwin make their trek into the idyllic little town toward the beginning of the film, the image is still peppered with vibrant primary hues—the sign on the hardware store, the covered bridge where Davis and Baldwin’s characters lose their lives—but because of the wider color gamut of HDR10, the saturation of the overall image doesn’t have to be cranked to 11 to allow for such vivid chromaticity when and where it’s appropriate.

The second thing you notice is that there’s just so much detail in the image that has been lost in previous home video transfers, and not wholly as a function of resolution. Take the short scene in which the pushy real-estate agent played by Annie McEnroe surprises Baldwin’s character at the window in a desperate push to talk him out of his home. Even on Blu-ray, the scenery behind her is a white-hot blur, devoid of depth or detail. And that makes sense, given the 8-bit limitations of HD video. The choice had to be made whether to overexpose the world outside that window or underexpose the interior and risk

losing Baldwin in the shadows.

In this new 10-bit transfer, both interior and exterior are perfectly exposed. Baldwin exists in the shadows, yes, but doesn’t get lost in them, while the depth and detail of the foliage behind McEnroe still shines through.

That’s one scene out of dozens I could point to in

extolling the virtues of this new UHD/HDR restoration and its ability to breathe life into this tale of the dead. Other details that come to mind are the imperfections of Winona Ryder’s teenaged complexion and the fine filigree lace of Davis’s bridal gown, both of which are resolved beautifully. The film grain is also perfectly organic throughout—not too noisy, not too overbearing, but never artificially smoothed over.

But perhaps my favorite thing about this new transfer is the way it handles the scenes in the bureaucratic Neitherworld, which have always been the worst-looking aspect of the film’s home video releases. Here, the HDR gets to flex its muscles with no concern for lifelike skin tones or believable greenery. Simply put, these sequences now glow and iridize like a fluorescent

blacklight poster, which is how they’ve always looked in my memory of seeing the film far too many times to count on the big screen in the spring of ’88.

The sound on the other hand? I think it’s safe to say Beetlejuice didn’t sound as good on the mixing stage as it does here. Aside from a few cute and subtle exceptions, the new Dolby Atmos remix doesn’t get too carried away with repositioning sound elements or making the film sound like a modern blockbuster, mind you. And thank goodness it doesn’t include any re-recorded sound effects, as does the travesty of a remix included with the new 4K/HDR remaster of Hitchcock’s Psycho. The mix mostly serves to simply give more space to Danny Elfman’s delicious score and the wonderfully uplifting Harry Belafonte soundtrack. But it’s also apparent that there’s also been some equalization done to the audio. There’s an enhanced richness and fidelity I don’t recall ever hearing before, and dialogue clarity is among the best of any home video release. Like, ever.

There’s nothing much by way of extras here, aside from three episodes of the Beetlejuice Saturday-morning cartoon that ran from 1989 to 1991. These haven’t been restored and are horribly compressed, so they likely aren’t worth your time. The Kaleidescape download, unlike the recent UHD Blu-ray release, also includes an isolated music track—that is to say, a version of the film devoid of dialogue or

sound effects. But it’s unfortunately married to the pan & scan standard-definition transfer of the film, so its value is debatable at best.

But don’t let the lack of supplemental goodies bum you out. Beetlejuice is one of the worthiest UHD/HDR remasters I’ve seen to date (almost on par with The Wizard of Oz), and the film itself is such a joyous (and ironic) celebration of life that it stands on its own.

—Dennis Burger

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast
who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-
end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with
his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire
Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

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EP. 9: NEW FRONTIERS IN
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The Goonies

Posted on September 3, 2020

in Kaleidescape, Movies, Reviews

by admin

I wish I could say something—anything—meaningful about The Goonies without referencing the numerous works it has inspired over the past 35 years. Truth be told, though, this 1985 Richard Donner classic, penned by Chris Columbus from a story idea by Steven Spielberg, is more a cultural touchstone than it is a work of cinema in its own right. The ripples it has left on the surface of the pop culture pond have by this point overshadowed the pebble itself.

Stranger Things, for example—for all its references to the films of Ridley Scott and John Carpenter and Stephen King—could easily be seen as an episodic riff on The Goonies with a gaggle of other pop-culture references piled on for good measure.

To this day, 35 years after its debut, you can feel the echoes of The Goonies in everything from Ready Player One to Deadpool 2. Heck, even the last Star Wars movie made a ham-fisted and nonsensical homage to this beloved ’80s romp. (Although, to be fair, of the many cinematic sins committed by Episode IX, insulting the intelligence of Goonies fans while also clumsily attempting to tug at their heartstrings is far from the most egregious.)

I guess the point is, The Goonies wouldn’t still hold such sway over filmmakers and viewers alike if it didn’t have something going for it. But I’m just too close to it to evaluate the film objectively. I notice its flaws—the clumsiness of the climax, the laughable special effects in places, the ridiculousness of its very premise—and I see them as charming virtues.

My wife, on the other hand, had never seen the film before I downloaded the UHD/HDR remaster on Kaleidescape. What can I say? She was a military brat who spent her formative years in Europe. She missed out on much of American popular culture between the release of The

GOONIES AT A GLANCE

This might not be the best 4K HDR makeover of an ’80s film ever, but it’s worth the upgrade to have a great-looking and -sounding version of this hugely influential kid-adventure classic.

PICTURE

The cinematography is a little too flat and soft to consistently take full advantage of UHD’s increased resolution and expanded color gamut, but there are some breathtaking shots in this transfer and HDR helps with things like lanterns & lightning.

SOUND

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is a big step up from earlier releases, with enhanced atmospheric effects and a bit more bottom end to support the action.

Empire Strikes Back and Tim Burton’s Batman. And catching her up on all of the ’80s nostalgia-fuel she missed is always a hit-or-miss proposition. She thought E.T. was “OK.” She didn’t think The Thing was scary at all. I hesitate to sit her down in front of The Last Starfighter or Flight of the Navigator for fear of her inevitable reaction. Divorce attorneys are expensive, y’all.

But much to my relief, she ate The Goonies up flaws and all, giggling at all the funny bits, clapping at the little victories, jumping at all the cheap scares, and cooing every time Sean Astin did something adorable (which is quite frequently). And I think its sway over her had a lot to do with the aspects of the film that just don’t age as the years go by: The excellent cast, the believable performances, and ultimately the heart of its very simple narrative. The Goonies is, when you get right down to it, a straightforward adventure tale—equal parts treasure hunt, dungeon crawl, and crime thriller. And that straightforward story gives it enough momentum to overcome things like the silliness of a few of its gags or the groan-worthiness of things like obviously rubber bats being flung on strings at the actors’ faces.

Of course, you don’t really need me to tell you any of the above. You likely either know what you think about The Goonies or you’re beyond caring. The question you really want answered is: Should you upgrade to UHD/HDR if you already own the film?

The simple answer: Yes, this one is worth the upgrade.

The not-so simple answer: I wouldn’t put this on my Top 10 list of 4K remasters. Hell, I wouldn’t even put it on my Top 10 list of 4K remasters of ’80s flicks. The cinematography is a little too flat and a bit too soft to consistently take full advantage of the increased resolution or expanded color gamut. That said, there are shots here and there that are simply breathtaking in this new transfer, and the high dynamic range does enhance things like flashing lightning and the glare of lanterns. What’s more, the middle passage of the movie—which takes place entirely underground—does benefit from a little more range at the lower end of the value scale. I only caught one or two scenes with uneven black levels. Aside from those, the gloomy-looking second act looks better than it ever has before.

The new DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is also an appreciable step up, with enhanced atmospheric effects (especially during the thunderstorm near the beginning) and a bit more bottom end to support the action. As has been the case since the film’s debut, though, dialogue clarity is the weak spot in the sound mix, and there’s likely nothing that can be done about that,

since much of the dialogue was improvised and the actors talk all over each other near-constantly. Had Donner attempted to spackle over the roughly recorded dialogue with ADR back in the day, the results would have likely been a lip-sync disaster on par with the American kung fu movie craze of the 1970s.

So don’t go into this expecting a film that sounds like it was recorded yesterday, but do expect a minor upgrade in sound quality over the 10-year-old Blu-ray release.

That Blu-ray, by the way, is the source of all the bonus features included with this new 4K release, which is to say there’s not much here, and you can probably skip most of it. The seven-minutes’ worth of deleted scenes are cute and shed some light on the reference to an excised octopus attack mentioned in the final moments of the film. But practically everything here was best left on the cutting-room floor.

The only bonus goody that’s absolutely must-see is “Hidden Treasures: Video Commentaries from the Cast.” As the name implies, this is a commentary with the Goonies (along with Donner), recorded (if memory serves) for the DVD release of the film in 2001. What sets this one apart from most commentary tracks is that the

participants were filmed sitting together at a table watching the film projected in front of them, and we get to see much of their interaction by way of picture-in-picture popups.

Do I think The Goonies deserved a new retrospective documentary for its 35th anniversary? I absolutely do. As I said from the giddy-up, the movie still has far more influence on modern popular culture than most of its contemporaries, and a fresh look at its lasting relevance would have been nice. Maybe we can hold out hope for some new bonus features on its 40th or 50th anniversary.

But if you’re just here for the movie itself, I seriously doubt any future releases will look (or sound) better than The Goonies does here.

—Dennis Burger

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Bill & Ted Face the Music

Posted on August 31, 2020

in Kaleidescape, Movies, Reviews

by admin

In another combination theatrical and home day-and-date release, the third film in the Bill & Ted franchise, Bill & Ted Face the Music, dropped this past Friday (August 28)—29 years after the second film, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, and 31 years after the original Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, making it one of the longest gaps between film sequels ever. Available for rental or purchase through a variety of streaming outlets, you can purchase Face the Music for download from Kaleidescape for $39.99, where it is available at Ultra HD resolution (not HDR) with a DTS-HD 5.1-channel audio mix.

I was 19 when Excellent Adventure came out and saw both it and the Bogus Journey sequel in the theater. It had been years since I’d watched either movie, so I prepped for Face the Music by watching Excellent Adventure again. Unquestionably a

cheesy, schlocky B movie, what really drives the film is the fun of watching these two likable idiots bumbling through time in an attempt to fulfill their musical destiny by first acing a high-school history presentation so they can graduate. While often described as a “stoner comedy,” there is never any evidence of the duo getting high; rather, they are just a wildly optimistic pair that look for the best in situations and get by on dumb luck and the help of a telephone-booth time machine.

My memories of the second film are far less fond, with the ridiculousness of evil doppelgängers sent from the future, trips to the afterworld to beat Death in a variety of games, and Bill and Ted building robot versions of themselves to win a “battle of the bands” competition playing along with Death and some aliens called Station. It just didn’t have the fun of the original, and the proclamations of, “Dude!” “Excellent!” and “Righteous!” wore thin.

So, the real question here is: After 29 years, did the world

FACE THE MUSIC AT A GLANCE

Arriving a scant 31 years after Excellent Adventure, with Keanu Reeves displaying questionable judgment returning as Ted, this sequel will likely appeal mainly to GenXers but isn’t such a bad way to spend your time with so few other new releases out there.

PICTURE

The 4K transfer is clean and sharp, with plenty of detail, but the absence of HDR results in the images looking flat, without pop or depth.

SOUND

The DTS-HD 5.1 mix is room-filling when appropriate, with surprisingly potent bass.

really need or even want another episode in this franchise? And, perhaps even more curious, why would Keanu Reeves want to return to playing valley guy Ted while in the midst of a career high point with the insane success of polar-opposite character John Wick? And will another 90-minutes of his “Whoa! Dude!” surfer-Ted persona somehow diminish the Wick franchise?

I was skeptical going into viewing Face the Music, and likely would not have watched it if not for Cineluxe. And I wonder if the film will actually find more financial success because of the current theatrical shutdown, giving content-starved viewers something new to watch at home that they otherwise would have taken a pass on.

With Reeve’s current popularity, I was thinking Face the Music’s real hook would be some incredible cameos sprinkled throughout to add another element of fun to the adventure, but that was not the case. (Though we do get one scene with a rather famous musician who pops in to play himself.) Also, I hoped director Dean Parisot would bring some of the same fun and understanding of the genre that he did with Galaxy Quest. While the film has a surprisingly high Rotten Tomatoes critics rating of 81% and an 82% audience score (both franchise highs), I think it will mostly appeal to Gen-Xers who will give a lot of its shortcomings a pass by playing the nostalgia card and appreciating the fan service. (When I asked my 13-year-old daughter, who had never seen either of the other films, how many more times she’d watch Face the Music, she said, “Negative one. I wish I’d never seen it the first time.” Ouch!)

The movie begins with Bill S. Preston, Esquire (Alex Winter) and Ted Theodore Logan, the sole remaining members of their once super-band Wyld Stallyns, who have gone from playing concerts viewed all over the world to playing empty bars on Taco Tuesday, still struggling to write the one super-hit song destined to unite mankind around the world.

Besides the leads, Face the Music manages to get other members of the band back together, including Hal Landon Jr. returning as Ted’s dad, Chief Logan, Amy Stoch as Missy-mom (now marrying Ted’s younger brother after divorcing both Bill and Ted’s dads), and William Sadler as bass-shredding Death. The wife-princesses, Joanna and Elizabeth, are still here but have been once again recast. (These two characters have now been played by six different actresses.)

New to the cast are Thea Preston (Samara Weaving) and Billie Logan (Brigette Lundy-Paine), Bill and Ted’s music-loving daughters, who play a major role in the plot and do their best to maintain the mouth-agape bewildered expression and mannerisms of their respective parents, as well as the always-delightful Kristen Schaal as Kelly, daughter of Rufus (George Carlin) from the first two films, and the time-traveling Terminator-esque self-aware robot, Dennis Caleb McCoy (Anthony Carrigan).

Without the benefit of a universe-uniting song, things are unraveling throughout time, with people and landmarks transporting to different times and places, and Bill and Ted are up against a deadline with which to create and perform the song or risk the irreversible collapse of reality.

With the clock ticking—and with a time-traveling phone booth once again at their disposal—the boys decide to visit themselves at different points in the future after they’ve already written the song so they can just steal it and bring it back. Billie and Thea decide to help out by gathering some of the greatest musicians throughout history—Jimi Hendrix, Louis Armstrong, Mozart—to help perform the song.

Watching the various incarnations of Bill and Ted—whose lives get progressively worse the further they go into the future—brought some of the film’s funnier moments, and the girls’ quest to get famous musicians was certainly reminiscent of Excellent Adventure (as well as the musical number from the talent show of Revenge of the Nerds). But my family and I all thought one of the film’s highlights was the song and video over the beginning of the closing credits, which feels like the

cameo-filled moments (we spotted “Weird” Al Yankovic and Guillermo Rodriguez, but it seems like there were many others we just didn’t recognize) I hoped the film would have. Also, stick around for a final post-credits scene, which will likely be the last we see of Bill and Ted.

As mentioned, this is a non-HDR 4K transfer (at least for now) and the opening Orion logo offers a throwback to ‘80s-era VHS-level picture quality, but rest assured things quickly improve. Shot in ArriRaw at 2.8 and 3.4K resolutions, images are clean and sharp, with enough detail to reveal how much our leads have aged as well as the fabric detail in clothes and outfits throughout time. But the picture quality doesn’t have that razor-sharp look of many modern transfers, and backgrounds are often a bit soft.

Most noticeable—especially after watching so many modern films—is the lack of HDR grading. Without it, images just look a bit flat, and lack pop and depth, especially in scenes with bright images in the background such as in the therapist’s office or when talking to Death in his office. Also, you can see where images would benefit from the wider color gamut, such as the bright flashes of color as Bill and Ted are traveling through time.

Even without an immersive audio mix, the sound is entertaining, and room-filling when appropriate, such as the time-unraveling scenes and the big musical performance. Bass is also surprisingly potent, with the time-traveling phone booth slamming into the ground with room-shaking authority. Scenes also have a nice bit of spaciousness, such as the background wails in Hell or the reverb of Jimi’s guitar. Dialogue is also clearly presented and easily understood throughout.

If this is the last we see of Bill and Ted, this was certainly a better sendoff than their Bogus Journey. And their message to “Be excellent to each other!” and “Party on, dudes!” isn’t such a bad thing for these crazy times.

—John Sciacca

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Pacific Rim

Posted on August 18, 2020

in Kaleidescape, Movies, Reviews

by admin

If you’re the type of person who enjoys mecha-versus-giant-monster action flicks, chances are pretty good that you saw Pacific Rim when it hit cinemas in 2013. Unfortunately, chances are equally good that you saw its awful followup, 2018’s Pacific Rim: Uprising.

Look, I know bad sequels are the rule, rather than the exception. But Uprising wasn’t just a bad sequel. It was a sequel so bad that it actually made the original worse by virtue of existing. Its convoluted plot and nonsensical character relationships, if accepted as true within this cinematic universe, somehow manage to retroactively undermine the straightforward plot of Guillermo del Toro’s ridiculously fun original movie. And as such, I’ve had trouble returning to Pacific Rim for the better part of

two years now, unable to wipe the stain of Uprising from my robot-and-monster-loving brain.

If you find yourself in the same camp, it’s time to give the first Pacific Rim another look-see. And if you’ve never seen either of them, I beg you to ignore the second movie and give the first one a fair shot, assuming the premise doesn’t offend your sensibilities.

Because, yes, Pacific Rim involves gigantic walking tanks that look vaguely humanoid, piloted by hotshot jockeys whose sole purpose is to clobber gargantuan other-dimensional creatures that stomp up from the ocean depths to lay waste to human civilization. But that’s not really what the movie is about.

As with all of del Toro’s movies, it’s a story about humanity.

RIM AT A GLANCE

With interesting new releases in short supply, now is the perfect time to rediscover Guillermo del Toro’s inspired 2013 robots vs. monsters slugfest.

PICTURE

One of the most stunningly detailed and visually awe-inspiring transfers of the 4K era.

SOUND

One of the few Atmos mixes that manages to be immersive and enveloping without distracting from the onscreen action.

But specifically, it’s about the endurance of the human spirit in the face of impossible odds. The director draws a lot of inspiration from obvious sources like Gojira, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Tetsujin 28-go, and Ultraman. But it’s also impossible not to see the influence the works of H.P. Lovecraft had on his vision for this mash-up universe. And it’s in inverting and subverting the themes of Lovecraft that Pacific Rim really finds its heart.

If you’ve not familiar with Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythology, it was the foundation of what’s known as cosmic horror, a genre about coming to terms with notions of the ultimate insignificance of humanity in the face of problems too large for us to comprehend. Pacific Rim effectively takes these horrors and says, “Hell, no. One way or another, we’re not going to let this be our end.”

As such, you can see it as an allegory for all sorts of things, from the threats created by natural disasters to the impending doom of climate change. No matter what existential threat you plug into the equation, though, del Toro is saying that cooperation—indeed, vulnerable acceptance of our reliance on one another—is the solution to problems too large for any of us to deal with.

Of course, I’m not digging too deep to get to these themes. Pacific Rim isn’t even remotely opaque. It wears its meaning on its armor-plated sleeves like any good rock-‘em-sock-‘em end-of-the-world battle royale movie should. But ultimately, the fact

that Pacific Rim is about something—that it means something—is what sets it apart from so many other recent big-monster movies.

Unlike the 2014 remake of Godzilla and its 2019 King of the Monsters sequel, Pacific Rim stays grounded in the (admittedly overwrought) human drama of it all. Guillermo del Toro understands that if you don’t care what happens to the humans at the center of the story, you won’t really care when kaiju start ripping through

cityscapes and knocking down buildings. As such, it leans on a rather unusual structure. Although, interestingly, it’s a structure that would be blatantly ripped off by Avengers: Endgame a few years later: Cram what the audience expects to be the entire movie into the first 15 or 20 minutes, then flash-forward five years and spend a protracted second act focusing on the character relationships before rocketing toward an epic battle late in Act 3.

The result is such a wonderfully paced movie that its 132-minute runtime feels like a brisk 90 minutes at most. (By contrast, Uprising’s 110 minutes felt like a brutal, relentless, never-ending gauntlet of incomprehensible masochism.)

Pacific Rim’s excellent UHD/HDR10 transfer is further evidence for why we need to quit worrying about resolution. Sourced from a 2K digital intermediate (despite the fact that the movie was shot in 5K resolution), this remains one of the most stunningly detailed and visually awe-inspiring transfers of the 4K era. It’s true that the high dynamic range and wide color gamut aren’t used to mimic the look of film the way so many other successful 4K/HDR transfers do. Instead, the 10-bit color and cranked contrasts are used to give this neon-colored cartoon of a live-action movie the sort of depth and weight it lacked in high-definition.

I’m not knocking the 1080p release. It was one of the finest transfers of its day. But unburdened by the limitations of 8-bit video, the HDR transfer of Pacific Rim positively brims with a richness and intensity of color that was never possible at home

until recently. The streets of Hong Kong come to life with a neon vibrancy that makes this unbelievable world just a little more believable.

Bottom line, I would rank it in the Top 5 HDR home video transfers to date, and Kaleidescape’s release captures it all perfectly, from the rain-soaked inkiness of the predominately nighttime setting to the crackling potency of the radiation spewing from the mouths of the otherworldly beasts. Kaleidescape also offers the film with your choice of Dolby Atmos or Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks, and although I would normally opt for the latter, this is one of the few Atmos mixes I truly love. It manages to be immersive and enveloping without distracting from the onscreen action, and the robust bass adds much-needed weight to the massive mechanical and alien combatants.

Interestingly, the Kaleidescape download of the 4K/HDR version includes something the UHD Blu-ray release doesn’t: All of the extras included with the original HD release. The 4K disc only features 13 short documentaries, known as “Focus Points,” which spotlight different aspects of the making of the film. The Kaleidescape download also includes deleted scenes and a hilarious blooper reel.

The best of the extras, though, is the audio commentary by Guillermo del Toro,

which you’ll have to download the 1080p version of the film to listen to. It’s worth the effort, since he dives deep into the color coding he used throughout the film to give viewers insight into the characters in a way that exposition simply couldn’t. The commentary also reveals the primary reason why this movie works when so many similar efforts are simply awful—because it was a labor of love. Del Toro genuinely adores big robots and gigantic monsters, and sees no reason why a movie about them can’t be made with the same care and attention to detail you would expect from a serious film.

Make no mistake about it: Pacific Rim is not a serious film. It’s a feel-good action flick with a ridiculous premise that only works if you buy into it. But it’s an incredibly well-made feel-good action flick with a ridiculous premise that only works if you buy into it. So, unless you’re simply allergic to that premise, give it a shot. If nothing else, I think you’ll find that it’s one of the best home theater demo movies ever made.

—Dennis Burger

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COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU

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EP. 9: NEW FRONTIERS IN
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Braveheart

Posted on August 17, 2020

in Kaleidescape, Movies, Reviews

by admin

With a scarcity of new releases on the horizon, it’s a great time to mine your collection for some classic content you might not have watched for some time—especially when that title has received a 4K HDR makeover with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack. Braveheart certainly qualifies as one of those films, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and available for download from Kaleidescape in a whopping 102.4 GB file.

Released in 1995, Braveheart was the darling of the 1996 Academy Awards, grabbing a total of 10 nominations, and winning five statues, including Picture, Director, Cinematography, Sound Effects, and Makeup. (It was also nominated for Screenplay,

Costume Design, Sound, Editing, and Music.)

While Mel Gibson has gone on to direct several films since, it is hard to believe Braveheart was only his second time in the director’s chair, following up on 1993’s The Man Without a Face. When you see the massive scale of the film, it’s beyond impressive that Gibson was able to pull this off as such a relative neophyte director, not to mention while simultaneously handling producing chores and portraying William Wallace, the film’s leading role.

I’m not a history buff, but Braveheart apparently plays a bit fast-and-loose with historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment. So if you’re a student of 13th-century English and Scottish lore (the film opens in 1280 AD) and looking for a movie that ticks off all the factual boxes, it will likely raise your ire. Instead, maybe consider Braveheart as “historical fiction,” depicting people who actually existed—William Wallace, Princess Isabella (Sophie Marceau), Robert the

BRAVEHEART AT A GLANCE

A love story and some history provide the springboard for a series of increasingly bigger and more brutal battle scenes in this Mel Gibson Oscars fest.

PICTURE

The 4K transfer brings out the intricate detail in the Oscar-winning cinematography while HDR helps deliver a better range of black & shadow detail.

SOUND

The new Atmos mix isn’t particularly active, but it is atmospheric and does a great job of presenting the James Horner score.

Bruce (Angus Macfadyen), King Edward I (Patrick McGoohan), Prince Edward (Peter Hanly)—doing the kinds of things they more-or-less did.

Rated R for “brutal medieval warfare,” Common Sense Media says, “Expect torture, hackings, stabbings, throat-slitting, and arrows and spears dealing horrible death and injuries,” and it doesn’t lie. The battle scenes are brutal, with body counts that would likely be in the hundreds. However, in my mind, I recall it being much more graphic—especially the ending—so maybe 25 years of movie watching things like John Wick and shows like Game of Thrones has just desensitized me a bit. Also, whereas many films today prefer to linger on the blood, viscera, and gore of combat, Gibson instead chooses to quick-cut away from much of it. (Possibly to reverse the MPAA’s initial NC-17 rating.)

With its epic, just minutes shy of three hours running time, nothing about Braveheart feels rushed—except possibly the reunion and relationship of Wallace and Murron MacClannough (Catherine McCormack)—giving you plenty of time to know and care about the characters. The film opens with a bit of narration telling you all the backstory required, with “The king of Scotland had died without a son, and the king of England, a cruel pagan known as Edward the Longshanks, claimed the throne of Scotland for himself. Scotland’s nobles fought him, and fought each other, over the crown. So, Longshanks invited them to talks of truce—no weapons, one page only.”

Young William sees the hanged bodies of those Longshanks betrayed, and, shortly, after his father and brother are also killed by Longshanks’ soldiers. William is then raised by his uncle, who educates him and teaches him to use his wits before he uses a sword, and takes him on a tour of Europe. Years later, William returns to his village, wanting to have a simple life as a farmer, where he hopes to marry lifelong love Murron, and raise many sons.

In order to keep the Scottish population in check, Longshanks institutes an old tradition known as Primae noctis—First Night—giving nobles the right to take a maiden on her wedding night to have sex with her with the goal of getting her pregnant with English blood.

As you can imagine, this doesn’t go over well, and Wallace and Murron marry in secret, telling no one so the local lord won’t discover. Of course, a blossoming love can’t be kept hidden, and after Murron hits a soldier who attempts to rape her, she is killed, inciting Wallace to start a rebellion to just kill as many English as possible, but leading him to ultimately take up the cause of freeing Scotland.

Along the way, more and more clans hear of Wallace’s exploits and successes in battle, causing his legend to grow to mythic proportions and having many join his cause until he is leading an actual army, fighting larger and larger battles, including the battle of Stirling, Falkird, and attacking the English city of York, where they start inflicting actual damage against Longshanks.

At its heart, Braveheart can be boiled down to love—what starts wars, and what is ultimately worth fighting and dying for. Beyond the initial love—and later outrage—Wallace feels for Murron, you see the love he has for his men, and ultimately his love of the idea of a free Scotland. This is contrasted with the ruthlessness and heartlessness of Longshanks, who only cares about positioning things for future rule, along with the lack of love between Princess Isabella—daughter of the King of France, forced to marry for an alliance—and Prince Edward—who is played as overly effeminate and having no interest in women.

As I didn’t remember much of the film, I was curious how it would hold up after so long. Not only are the acting and dialogue solid throughout and the scenery and cinematography beautiful (shot entirely abroad in Scotland and Ireland)–what you really appreciate is the massive scope of the large battles, which were filmed with practical effects. There are no CGI armies or digital doubles, or computer-enhanced backdrops—these are literally hundreds, nay thousands, of actual people pitched in battle in real environs. In many ways, you can see how the large battle scenes here could have served as a blueprint for The Game of Thrones “Battle of the Bastards.”

Originally filmed in 35mm, this 4K transfer retains an incredible amount of sharpness and detail, but keeps its film-like look rather than having the tack-sharp razor detail of modern productions. There is a bit of grain in some of the grey-colored sky shots, but I never found it distracting or objectionable.

The best images are scenes shot in close and mid focus, with longer-range shots not having as much detail and being a bit soft. Closeups bristle with detail, showing every line, pore, and beard growth, as well as the dirt and grime that seems to cover every non-noble. Edges are sharp, detailed, and well-defined, letting you clearly see every rock that went into building a structure or wall. You can also appreciate the craftsmanship and attention to detail that went into the costuming, seeing threads and weaves and wear in the battle uniforms, as well as the set design. There were some shots—usually conversations between two people—that were slightly out of focus, which appears to be more a product of the original production.

This isn’t a film that pushes the bounds of UHD’s wider color gamut, with much of it having a muted, earthy, dirt and ground-colored palette. Even the tartans of the Scots are mainly muted mossy greens and browns. This contrasts with the vibrant

reds and golds worn by Longshanks, or the colors of his soldiers. We are given many opportunities to appreciate the lush countryside, and you can definitely appreciate the rich greens and beauty of Scotland.

HDR is used less here to deliver eye-searing highlights—though there are a few fires that burn brightly—and more to deliver a better range of black and shadow detail throughout. Much of Braveheart’s action takes place outdoors in wide-open fields or in low-lit night or indoor scenes, and the enhanced contrast lets you better appreciate dark-level detail, resulting in a more lifelike image.

As mentioned, Braveheart also received a new Dolby TrueHD Atmos soundtrack, and what benefits most is James Horner’s Oscar-nominated score, which is given plenty space to open up across the front channels as well as being mixed up into the front height speakers for a truly large presentation.

I wouldn’t describe this as an overly active Atmos mix, and they definitely don’t look for every opportunity to push sounds up overhead unnecessarily. Instead, we get a much better sense of being in a large, open outdoor space, with swirling winds, birds chirping, leaves rustling, and other ambient sounds putting you outdoors. Other interior scenes have ropes swaying and rafters creaking

overhead, with battles filling the room with the sounds of shouts, arrows whistling, swords clanging, fires raging, and smoke billowing up overhead.

Your subwoofer will have long moments of rest, but it is called into play when needed, either during big emotional moments of the score or from the pounding of horse hooves charging into battle that are powerful enough to rattle your seats.

Braveheart ranks high on many movie fans’ Best Movies’ list, though it sits at #78 on IMDB’s Top Rated Movies, and doesn’t manage to crack AFI’s Top 100. (It does place #62 on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Cheer: America’s Most Inspiring Movies list.) Prior to this viewing, I actually only saw the film once before, and that was on LaserDisc more than 20 years ago! (With a running time just minutes shy of three hours, I can only imagine how many side flips and disc changes it would have required back then!) The film definitely looks and sounds its best here, making it a perfect movie-night selection if you haven’t screened it recently.

—John Sciacca

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The High Note

Posted on August 4, 2020

in Kaleidescape, Movies, Reviews

by admin

New movie releases have been pretty slim pickings lately—and are likely to be that way for the foreseeable future—so when a new film from a major studio (NBCUniversal, in this case) becomes available, it’s worth giving it a watch to see if we can recommend it.

The High Note was scheduled for a wide theatrical release on May 8, and actually did have a limited run in about 60 select theaters and drive-ins across the country while simultaneously being released as a premium video-on-demand (PVOD) title.

It is now available for purchase from Kaleidescape at the very reasonable price of $19.99.

The film is directed by Nisha Gantra, who specializes in directing episodes of comedic TV series such as The Last Man on Earth, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Fresh Off the Boat, and is the first writing credit for Flora Greeson. The film’s big draw is its cast, with Dakota Johnson in the starring role as worked-to-death personal assistant Maggie Sherwoode and Tracee Ellis Ross—daughter of iconic singer Diana Ross and best known for her role as Rainbow Johnson on Black-ish—as R&B singing legend Grace Davis. Ice Cube plays Grace’s manager, Jack, with Bill Pullman in little more than a cameo as Maggie’s father, Max. There’s also another
brief cameo by the musician Diplo in his big-screen debut as producer Richie Williams.

After years of doing all of Grace’s grunt work, music-loving Maggie is looking for more, and wants to break into the

HIGH NOTE AT A GLANCE

This teen-targeted tale of an aging R&B diva’s ambitious assistant might not move the rom-com needle forward, but it does feature some spectacular-sounding musical performances.

PICTURE

The 4K HDR transfer has natural-looking, lifelike images but often appears soft, perhaps to benefit the film’s aging stars.

SOUND

The Dolby Atmos soundtrack takes full advantage of the music-driven scenes, kicking up the SPLs and waking up your subwoofers.

music industry by producing Grace’s next record, a live greatest-hits album. Of course, she doesn’t tell Grace this, instead spending her free time in the studio working on putting a new spin on Grace’s classics. Jack thinks Grace’s career is winding down, and—along with the record label—is pushing her to take a residency in Las Vegas where they can capitalize on her history of 11 Grammy wins to cater to a large fan base, stop touring, and enjoy an easy life with guaranteed easy money rolling in.

Along the way, Grace has a classic meet-cute with David Cliff (Kevin Harrison Jr.) at a grocery store where they discuss music while shopping, and she walks outside to discover Cliff is an aspiring musician who has tons of talent, but needs a producer to get him to the next level. Maggie convinces him that she is a professional producer and offers to work with him to make an album, and they happen to fall in love along the way.

The movie spends much of its time with the “drama” of Maggie trying to serve two masters—being available for Grace’s every whim at all hours of the day while also making time to work with David in and out of the studio. Ultimately, things come to a head, with Maggie’s world falling apart in a single evening where she loses both her job with Grace and her relationship with David, and then runs home to her DJ dad. Everything then suddenly comes back together in classic Hollywood fashion for a nice happy ending.

Shot in ArriRaw at 6.5 K resolution, The High Note transfer is taken from a true 4K digital intermediate, but I never felt it was giving me that ultra-level of detail of many modern 4K transfers. In fact, many shots had a soft, film-like quality as if the

camera was slightly defocused to be a bit kinder to the older actors. There are some moments of sharp detail like the seat stitching in Grace’s McLaren or the texture and weave in clothing, but up until I read the technical specs I was convinced this had been sourced from a 2K DI.

Of course, high dynamic range often plays a bigger part in picture quality than resolution, and images here have a really natural, lifelike quality. Many interior shots are lit by rich, warm lighting that reminded me of the glow of analog tube amplifiers or natural, Southern California sunlight. Nighttime scenes are nice and dark, punctuated by bright highlights from car headlights, billboards, and glowing neon signs. The pre-sunset skies in Hollywood are also filled with color and detail with no banding or noise.

This movie is about the music industry, and the Dolby Atmos TrueHD soundtrack is really where it shines. Every time music kicks in, it does so with a lot of volume and impact, letting you really appreciate the energy of the live performance. From the opening moments when Maggie is in the studio working on Grace’s album, you get a huge soundstage that fills the room, with hard-hitting kick drums and a bass line you feel in your chest, with cheering crowd noise all around you. There are several scenes of live music, and they all sound great, kicking up the SPLs

and waking up your subwoofers, with the actors turning in believable performances. There is one nice audio moment where David is listening on a pair of headphones to a mix Maggie did of one his songs. You still get a full soundstage here but with a much different mix, letting you experience what the character is hearing. Dialogue was also clear and intelligible throughout.

While The High Note doesn’t tread any new rom-com ground or challenge you in any way, and you’ll likely see its “big” plot twist coming from miles away, it is an easy, entertaining film featuring solid performances and singing that is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 69 and Audience Score of 75. In a time when the news is filled with enough negative information, a nice, easy, upbeat film can be just the night at home you’re looking for.

—John Sciacca