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Dennis Burger

Achieving Serenity: The Sound Processing

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Achieving Serenity: The Sound Processing

Achieving Serenity | The Sound Processing

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Screen captures from the Altitude 32 processor show the placement of Serenity’s 35 speakers in 3D, overhead, and elevation views

above | the Altitude 32 reference immersive-audio processor
below | the Altitude 48 Ext add-on processor

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As important as all the other contributions were, it was some processing magic that took the Serenity theater over the top from impossible to real

by Dennis Burger
May 20, 2022

My initial impressions of the Serenity theater were based on a handful of images emailed to me by Mike Gaughn with a simple question: “Is there any way this room could sound good?” Given the layout of the speakers, the material construction of the space, the variable of moving walls, etc., I thought about it and said, “I could make it sound really good . . . but only with Trinnov.” So I wasn’t surprised to find out that’s exactly the audio processing employed in this room. 

The story of how Trinnov came to be involved is almost as interesting as the room itself. Integrator Jeff Williams effectively operated as a general practitioner here, calling in specialists to address the unique peculiarities of the theater. He turned over the speaker design, for example, to Triad, a company know for its built-to-order speakers. Triad, meanwhile, recommended Trinnov, knowing that its processing and digital acoustics capabilities would be necessary to make the room sound right. 

To understand why my brain went to Trinnov and nowhere else, we need to break the capabilities of the company’s Altitude 32 Immersive Audio Processor down into more digestible chunks. 

Speaker Remapping    Many AV receivers and sound processors have an auto-setup function, where a microphone is placed at and around the main seating position and test tones are played so the processor can listen to the output and determine what impact the room is having on the sound of the system. The Altitude 32 takes that to the next level by way of a unique microphone that not only analyzes the sound coming from the speakers but can also determine exactly which direction the sound is coming from, in three dimensions.

This feature was essential in the Serenity theater, where many of the speakers that should be at ear level were in the soffits and ceiling instead. Using the sonic 3D model of the room created with the Trinnov microphone, the system can effectively bring the sounds coming from those speakers down into the room. 

If that sounds unbelievable, consider that when you’re sitting in front of a stereo speaker system, you can hear sounds coming from precisely between the speakers, as well as to the left and right of the speakers and even out into the room. Trinnov uses similar principles to relocate the apparent source of sounds. Without that ability, this room would not have performed anywhere near as well as it does.

Room Correction    Simultaneously, Trinnov’s Loudspeaker/Room Optimizer allows you to evaluate the quality of sound reaching the seating position and correct for any distortions created by the room itself. Trinnov takes things several steps further than most surround sound processors by giving the integrator the ability to fine-tune the digital signal processing with incredible precision. Think “scalpel” instead of “chisel.”

That was essential here because the boundaries of this room can change at the touch of a button. With the curtain walls closed, it’s more like a traditional, predictable acoustical environment. With the walls open, it breaks practically all the rules of room acoustics. Thankfully, the Trinnov processor can have as many as 29 different presents, each with very different approaches to dealing with the acoustics. So here, they could measure the response with the walls closed and do a bit of correction, measure it again with the walls open and do a lot of correction, and then program the system to switch between those two presents automatically based on the state of the room.

Expansion and Customization  The Altitude 32 is also noteworthy for the sheer number of audio channels it can process. Whereas most Atmos-capable home systems max out at 13 or 15 channels, and most flagship surround processors hit a limit at 24, the Altitude is the only processor I’m aware of that can decode and render 32 channels simultaneously.

That was critical for a project of this size, which features 35 speakers in all—19 effectively (or virtually) at ear level, six subwoofers, and 10 height-effects channels. You might have noticed a discrepancy there, since the Altitude can decode 32 channels and the room has 35 speakers. That leads right to another unique Trinnov feature: Adding an Altitude 48 Ext allows the channel count to be expanded to 48.

You’d think that would mean this theater would have 13 unused channels, but its 35-speaker system actually has 41 channels of processed audio. Why the mismatch? Because, with the Trinnov, you can effectively split one speaker into multiple audio signals—one each for, say, the low, middle, and high frequencies.

Why  do this? Any speaker with more than one driver needs to have the signal split into different bands appropriate for each driver. This is usually done inside the speaker with something called a crossover. But, for this theater, the crossover function for the most important speakers—the front left, center, and right—was handled within the Trinnov system itself.  Separating the signal in the digital domain, before amplification, results in lower distortion, less interference between drivers, and better control over how the sound is directed toward the listener—in other words, better sound.

Remote Calibration  Since the Trinnov isn’t a straightforward, plug & play solution, chances are someone well-versed in one of its advanced capabilities might be on less-firm ground with the others, which is why it offers in-depth support and setup assistance for every Altitude 32 installed. In fact, Chuck Back (Managing Director, Trinnov Audio US) was heavily involved in the setup and calibration even though, thanks to the pandemic,  he couldn’t actually be in the theater when it needed to be tuned and calibrated.

“One of the unique capabilities of the Altitude platform is that once a processor is connected to the internet, we can access it remotely through our server in Paris and have full control over it,” according to Back. “It’s fairly common that we will do a remote calibration without being on site. We simply need someone to place the microphone in the appropriate locations, then we can take the measurements, evaluate the response graphs, and make any corrections if something is necessary.”

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.

“With the curtains closed, the Serenity theater is like a traditional, acoustical environment. With the curtains open, it breaks practically all the rules of room acoustics.”

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Second Thoughts: Licorice Pizza

Second Thoughts: Licorice Pizza

Second Thoughts | Licorice Pizza

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The differences between the original 1080p and new 4K HDR release are subtle but cumulatively add up to a far richer experience 

by Dennis Burger
April 30, 2022

What is the opposite of Death by a Thousand Tiny Cuts? It’s not a rhetorical question. I need to find a pithy idiom that fits such a description before I can fully wrap my brain around the differences between the 1080p release of Licorice Pizza and the new 4K HDR release that followed a month later on Kaleidescape (although not on disc—the 4K version is exclusive to the digital domain, it seems). 

In my original review, I said, “Of all the films I’ve seen in the past year, if any of them begs to have been released in UHD/HDR,” it’s this one. I also said you could “at times see the image struggling against” the limited resolution and squidged color palette of last generation’s home video standards. I complained of flesh tones that lacked nuance, highlights that were clipped, and detail that was lost in the shadows.

Now that my Kaleidescape download has been upgraded to 4K HDR, though, and I’ve had the opportunity to compare the full-resolution, full-gamut release to the scaled-down Blu-ray equivalent, I have to say I have a newfound appreciation for whoever oversaw the film’s high-definition down-sampling. The differences between the two are subtler than I might have expected in isolation but they add up to an experience that is cumulatively borderline transformative. 

There are, it must be said, a handful of scenes in which the 4K resolution and HDR grading make all the difference in the world. The early scene in which Gary (Cooper Hoffman) and his mother sit in a brightly lit diner discussing his upcoming trip to New York stands out. In 1080p, without the benefit of HDR, the light pouring through the windows is blown out, obliterating  a lot of the detail in the various goings-on outside the diner. 

There’s also a scene late in the film in which Alana (Alana Haim) sits on a curb in darkness watching Gary and his friends horse-play around a broken-down delivery truck. In 4K, the shots of Alana have been brought way down in overall brightness to properly reflect the time of day, but given the expanded dynamic range, we can still see details in the shadows that would have been lost had the 1080p transfer been brought down to this same overall level of darkness. 

Aside from such obvious standouts, comparing scenes between versions is a meditation on subtleties. Skin tones are a little less patchy and a little more balanced. Textures pop just a bit more. There’s significantly more consistency in the luminance from scene to scene. But frankly, the differences are often so finespun that less-attentive viewers might miss them altogether. 

I’m here to argue that those differences still matter. Perhaps you could claim that the limited color gamut and resolution of 1080p was able to capture, say, 90 percent of the meaningful chroma and luminance information locked in the original film negative. (Remember, there was no digital intermediate for this one.) But in the moment, even if you’re not consciously aware of it, your eye and your brain register those limitations—those distractions—without really putting in context how close to the target they got. 

So, yeah. Let’s call it “Revitalization by a thousand tiny boo-boo kisses.” By the time those tiny improvements are summed, you’re left with a film that’s much less distracting to watch, whose remaining imperfections were baked in the moment light passed through the lens and exposed a frame of 35mm film. Frankly, I don’t think your average videophile would fully appreciate the benefit. But for cinephiles, these differences matter. Watching the film in 4K HDR—once I got through with the academic exercise of quantifying the improvements—I found I was able to give myself over to Licorice Pizza fully in a way I don’t think would have ever been possible in 1080p. And I legitimately enjoyed it more this time around. 

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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The Cineluxe Comfort Viewing Guide to The Lord of the Rings

The Cineluxe Comfort Viewing Guide to The Lord of the Rings

The Cineluxe Comfort Viewing Guide to The Lord of the Rings

menus from the iTunes 4K streaming version of the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring

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Tackling this legendary trilogy for the first time can be daunting—here’s a map for making that epic journey with ease 

by Dennis Burger
updated April 28, 2022

So, you’ve decided to watch Peter Jackson’s epic The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time. You’re certainly not alone. More and more, I’m seeing YouTube clips dropped onto my timeline with some variation of the title, “Reacting to Lord of the Rings for the first time” or “I’ve never seen Fellowship of the Ring,” or “FIRST TIME WATCHING Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

I don’t understand the appeal of these “reaction” videos any more than you do, but it speaks to the power of these films that so many people are deciding to commit to an 11-plus-hour movie marathon for the first time. Despite its focus on hobbits and elves and dwarves and magical artifacts, The Lord of the Rings is, at its heart, about times like those we’re currently living through. It’s about defiant endurance in the face of uncertainty, about clinging to hope when there seems to be none. 

But, my goodness, it can be a daunting endeavor to dig in now if you’re not already a fan. The first question you have to ask, of course, is: “Which version of these films should I watch?” 

Wait, there are different versions of The Lord of the Rings?

Yep! There are the theatrical editions, which are the versions people saw on the big screen back in the early aughts. But every November that followed, each film was released in an Extended Edition on DVD, with 30 to 50 minutes of additional footage and hours of in-depth supplementary materials spread across four discs.

Jackson has famously said the theatrical cuts are his preferred edits, and that the Extended Editions are simply “a novelty for the fans.” This is absolute rubbish. The theatrical cuts are a roller coaster of unevenness, with the first and third films—The Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the King—being perfectly enjoyable for what they are, but only as self-contained movies with no connection to the rest of the trilogy. On the other hand, the second film, The Two Towers, is a confusing mess in its original edit. At 178 minutes, it’s a laborious slog, filled with one non sequitur after another, packed with characters whose motivations make little sense. The 228-minute Extended Edition, by contrast, positively whizzes by. It also gives you a deeper understanding of the histories and motives of its primary and secondary protagonists and the mythical lands they populate. 

From a purely narrative perspective, the Extended Editions of Fellowship and Return are almost, but not quite, that essential. They do add some much-appreciated depth and context, and also insert some connective tissue that ties the three films together into one unified work. If you skip the Extended Edition of the first film, for example, you may be left wondering where certain items and artifacts central to the plot of the second and third films came from. Watch the shorter theatrical cut of the third film, and one of the second film’s major characters just disappears from the narrative with no explanation and no resolution.

Your best options for viewing the Trilogy

So if you’re committing to watch all three films—and why wouldn’t you?—the Extended Editions are the preferable option. But where to acquire them? The 4K Blu-ray box set released in late 2020 is the most obvious option, as it contains both the theatrical and extended editions so you can compare the differences, if you care to, purely as an academic exercise. The extended trilogy is also available in the digital domain, either in streaming quality via services like iTunes/Apple TV or in full-bandwidth downloads from Kaleidescape.

There are pros and cons to each format, with the main benefit of the physical release being that each Extended Edition film is split across two discs. This actually works to the advantage of The Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the King, though, since you can treat the first and second half of each as a film in its own right. Take a break between each half to take a nap or grab a meal or even sleep for the evening and you won’t disrupt the flow of the experience too much. The Two Towers—the middle film in the trilogy—doesn’t break quite so cleanly, so you’re better off treating it as one long film with a quick potty break between scenes.

If you’re watching on Kaleidescape or iTunes/Apple TV, you don’t get such neat breaks since the films run straight through from opening to closing credits. But you can always hit the Intermission button on your Kaleidescape remote or just hit Pause after “The Council of Elrond” in The Fellowship of the Ring (you’ll know it when you get to it, I promise) and just after “The Siege of Gondor” in Return of the King. (That one’s not quite as obvious, but just remember to take your break right after the orcs start pushing a big flaming battering ram shaped like a wolf’s head toward the gates of the city of Minas Tirith and chanting “Grond! Grond! Grond!” That’s the name of said flaming wolf-headed battering ram.) Make your way through one more disc (or a few more hours of film) after that and you’ve finished your first journey through the lands of Middle-earth.

But if you’re like most people, once you’ve experienced all three films, you’ll be itching to know more about the books that inspired the film and the process of adapting them. That’s where the Appendices come in. Unfortunately, the UHD Blu-ray release lacks the six bonus discs that have accompanied every physical media release since DVD. You can, though, find all six Appendices on Kaleidescape or iTunes.

Making sense of the Appendices

On DVD, HD Blu-ray, iTunes, and Kaleidescape, the Appendices are broken into six parts (two per film, with each Appendix getting its own disc if you opted for physical media for this journey). The neat thing is, they follow a reasonably predictable structure, so if you know for sure you don’t want to watch all 21 hours’ worth of documentaries (not a typo), you can hone in on the sort of background information that interests you most. The odd-numbered Appendices (the first disc or batch of bonus content) tend to dig into the history, themes, and meaning of the books along with the writing and planning that went into adapting this supposedly un-filmable book into three of the best films ever made. Appendices 1, 3, and 5 explore the life of author J.R.R. Tolkien; the publication of the book; the characters, peoples, and locations of Middle-earth; and preparatory work like writing the screenplay, adapting the scripts from two films to a trilogy once Miramax passed on the adaptation and New Line stepped in, designing and building the costumes, sets, props, etc. 

The even-numbered Appendices are probably more your speed if you’re primarily interested in The Lord of the Rings as a trilogy of films and not so much as an adapted work. Appendices 2, 4, and 6 look at the long process of shooting the films, as well as post-production work like editing, special effects, sound effects, score music, and so forth. 

Watching the films again with friends you’ve never met

“But wait!” he says in his best Billy Mays voice, “There’s more!” Each film is also accompanied by four full-length audio commentaries. Again, there’s some consistency here, with one track for each film focusing on the writing, one on the design, one on production, and one with the cast. The cast commentaries are the best by a long shot, since Sean Astin (who plays Samwise Gamgee) is a walking/talking film encyclopedia and Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd (Merry and Pippin) are straight-up laugh-out-loud hilarious throughout. Andy Serkis also performs part of the commentary for Return of the King in character as Sméagol/Gollum, which is something you don’t want to miss. The commentaries featuring Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens are also absolute gems if you want to take a deeper dive into the story than the documentaries in the Appendices provide. 

The other two commentaries for each film are for hardcore fans only, so unless you’re absolutely obsessed by this point, you can safely skip them. To wit, I’ve only listened to the design and production commentaries two or three times over the past two decades. (By contrast, I watch all of 21 hours’ worth of  Appendices every other year, and dig into the cast and writers’ commentaries at least once every three years.) 

Summing it all up

If all of the above was so laborious that you’ve forgotten it all, here’s a handy cheat sheet to ensure you get the most out of your first viewing of The Lord of the Rings:

●  Watch the Extended Editions. Forget the theatrical cuts even exist.

●  Buy the films on Kaleidescape, UHD Blu-ray, or iTunes/Apple TV. The other options are too compromised in sundry ways.

●  You can treat Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the King each as two-part films. If you need to take a long break at the midway point, the structure of each of these films lends itself to such.

●  The Two Towers needs to be approached like one long film, with a quick potty break at most halfway through.

●  If you want to explore the supplemental features (and you totally should, even if bonus documentaries aren’t normally your thing) but you’re not sure you’re up for all 21 hours’ worth of extra content, you can go straight to the Appendices that suit your specific interests:

●  The first batch for each film (Appendices 1, 3, and 5 in the three-film collection) focus on the book, its author, and the translation from page to screen.

●  The second batch for each film (Appendices 2, 4, and 6) are more like your typical movie-making documentaries, with a focus on production and post-production, including filming, special effects, sound, and music.

●  Still hungry for more info? Each film comes with four audio commentaries, which range in appeal from “must listen” to “for hardcore nerds only.

●  The cast commentaries are amongst the most entertaining audio commentaries ever recorded, as long as you don’t mind a bit of silliness.

●  The writers’ commentary with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens is like a college course in Tolkien lore and filmmaking.

●  If you’re just getting around to watching The Lord of the Rings now, it’s probably safe to say the design and production commentaries are a deeper dive than you’re willing to take. But you never know. Save them for a rainy day (or a Noachian deluge), perhaps.

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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Without having seen the Extended Edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, Samwise’s use of the Phial of Galadriel in Return of the King has no narrative context.

available on Kaleidescape

The Cineluxe Comfort Viewing Guide to The Lord of the Rings
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The Films That Made Star Wars–Complete

The Films That Made Star Wars--Complete

The Films That Made Star Wars—Complete

A three-part look at the eclectic group of movies that helped provide the inspiration for Lucas’s space-opera saga

by Dennis Burger
May 2, 2022

It’s sometimes easy to forget that before it became a nine-film saga supported by three standalone films, two made-for-TV movies, three excellent TV series, a few terrible TV series, and a holiday special that is best forgotten, Star Wars was just a movie. An incredible movie, mind you, one that sparked the dreams of uncountable future filmmakers and other creative types. And one that practically created the concept of the modern blockbuster and changed the cinema industry forever (for better and for worse). It’s also easy to forget that Star Wars did not spring from George Lucas’s brain fully formed. In fact, the journey of its creation was difficult and often circuitous. But many famous (and not so famous) films and directors inspired Lucas along the way, providing tropes and influences that would become signature elements of the Star Wars universe.

PART 1

Both classic films of the ’30s and low-budget sci-fi serials of that time helped feed into the conception of Star Wars

“As unique as 1977’s Star Wars seemed at the time of its release, there was barely anything original about it. Sure, the way it was put together was fresh—mind-blowingly so—but dig down to the nuts-and-bolts level and it’s clear that this Galaxy Far, Far Away didn’t spring to George Lucas’s mind fully formed. The film was, in many ways, a reaction to the grim and gritty films that dominated cinemas in the early 1970s. But first and foremost, it was a homage to the serials and adventure movies that Lucas enjoyed seeing on the big screen in his youth.”    read more

PART 2

Lucas leaned heavily on the work of a number of iconic directors to bring some weight to A New Hope

“Ask me to sum up the appeal of Star Wars as succinctly as possible and I would have to describe it as the cinematic child of Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone dressed in Flash Gordon Underoos. But dig beneath the surface, and the movie we ended up with shares almost no meaningful DNA with sci-fi serials. If you really want to understand what makes Star Wars tick, you have to ignore the ray-guns and robots and starships—or at least look past them. And when you do, what you’re left with is mostly the samurai and the cowboy.”    read more

PART 3

A mélange of WWII movies, classic sci-fi, and hero mythology rounds out this survey of seminal influences

“If you wanted to, you could spend years watching the westerns and samurai flicks that influenced Star Wars in one way or another, but there are other essential elements of this pop-culture collage that we can’t overlook. Namely: World War II movies. In editing the film’s final space battle, Lucas famously cut footage from old war pictures to inspire the special effects team at Industrial Light & Magic, specifically to give them the sense of pacing and movement he was looking for in the dogfights.'”
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the Star Wars Collection

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The Films That Made Star Wars, Pt. 3

The Films That Made Star Wars, Pt. 3

The Films That Made Star Wars, Pt. 3

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A mélange of WWII movies, classic sci-fi, and hero mythology rounds out this survey of seminal influences 

by Dennis Burger
updated April 28, 2022

If you wanted, you could spend years watching the westerns and samurai flicks that influenced Star Wars in one way or another, but there are other essential elements of this pop-culture collage we can’t overlook, namely World War II movies. In editing the film’s final space battle, Lucas famously cut together footage from old war pictures to inspire the special effects team at Industrial Light & Magic, specifically to give them the sense of pacing and movement he was looking for in the dogfights. He later spliced these scenes into the movie’s working print to serve as animatics and editing placeholders. If you’d like to see some of the films he used, I would recommend The Dam Busters (which was a huge inspiration for the trench-run attack on the Death Star) as well as The Bridges at Toko-Ri and 633 Squadron.

These can be tough to find in good quality, but The Bridges at Toko-Ri is available on Kaleidescape (in standard-definition only, sadly) and you can find 633 Squadron for rent on most digital platforms like Amazon and iTunes. It hasn’t always been an easy film for American audiences to access The Dam Busters in acceptable quality but a new Blu-ray release last year rectified that. 

For a fun look at the parallels, check out this YouTube video mashup of the imagery from 633 Squadron combined with the soundtrack of Star Wars (and ignore the needless potshots at The Dam Busters—it’s still a relevant influence).

To fully understand the roots of Star Wars, you also need to consider the influence of classic science-fiction. Again, Star Wars is decidedly not sci-fi, but it certainly looks like it in places. 

And to understand where Lucas got the inspiration to attempt space battles the likes of which no one had ever seen onscreen before, look to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In that film, Kubrick practically redefined what was possible with special effects, and Lucas would go on to borrow many of the technicians who made those effects possible. Stuart Freeborn, who created the hominid creatures at the beginning of 2001, would go on to create Chewbacca, as well as many of the creatures found in the Mos Eisley cantina (as well as Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back). Lucas also attempted to hire 2001‘s effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull but Trumbull turned him down, likely due to his commitment to work on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ill-fated adaptation of Dune.  

To experience 2001 in its best form, I can’t recommend the Kaleidescape 4K HDR release highly enough. The film is also available on most digital retailers in 4K but the highly detailed cinematography really deserves the pixel-perfect transfer available on Kaleidescape. 

Speaking of Dune, we can’t overlook the influence that sci-fi epic had on Star Wars. The similarities are striking. Desert planet? Check. Fascist galactic emperor? Check. Youthful chosen one with magical abilities? Check. Hell, Star Wars even calls its elicit substances “spice” as an homage to Dune. Of course, it bears repeating, Star Wars is not science fiction, and it could not be narratively or thematically more different from Dune. But Lucas certainly stole elements from the original novel where he saw fit. And there’s also reason to suspect he was, in some ways, influenced by the mid-’70s film adaptation of Dune that never got made. 

Check out the excellent 2013 documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune for more details on this, but the short story is that Jodorowsky created a massive illustrated bible and script for his adaptation that was shopped around to every major studio in Hollywood in an attempt to secure the last $5 million needed to flesh out his budget. He failed in that respect and the film never got made, but you can see elements of his storyboards and designs in everything from Alien to Prometheus to Mike Hodges’ 1980 Flash Gordon film to, yes, Star Wars. 

Whatever you do, please avoid at all costs David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Dune (which, by the way, he directed after turning down the chance to helm Return of the Jedi). Skip instead to Denis Villeneuve’s new adaptation from 2021, which does its best to hide many of the parallels with Star Wars, out of fear I suppose that some would see it as a ripoff instead of a new adaptation of source material Lucas himself ripped off. Admittedly, this is all starting to turn into a bit of an ouroboros, but if you’re not up for reading the novel, Villeneuve’s Dune is a great way to explore some of the inspiration behind Star Wars, even if indirectly.

Two last influences you can’t overlook if you want to understand Star Wars (more from a storytelling than cinematic point of view) are the works of Joseph Campbell and J.R.R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings was not, of course, adapted to film until well after Star Wars was made but the book certainly had a powerful influence on young George Lucas, which you can see in the numerous parallels between them. Consider, for example, the similarities between the overall narrative arc of Fellowship of the Ring and A New Hope: Young lad raised by a relative (second cousin once removed in one work, uncle in the other) befriends a mysterious wizard and goes on a quest to defeat evil. You can also see direct correlations between specific scenes, such as the sacrifice of Gandalf/Obi-wan so the young lad and his party can escape. And if you want to extend this to the entire trilogy, there are even more similarities. Compare, for example, the death of Anakin Skywalker in Return of the Jedi to the death of Théoden in Return of the King. 

While Lucas only had the original book as inspiration, we of course have Peter Jackson’s epic cinematic trilogy to enjoy (which, coincidentally, was itself inspired in parts by Star Wars). You can read more about that adaptation here.

Lastly, you can largely thank Joseph Campbell for Lucas’s ability to look at all of these disparate works of inspiration and pull from them exactly the right elements he needed to craft something that felt new and fresh while also being evocative. Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth is a fantastic PBS series from 1998 that explores the author’s work on mythology, namely the common elements of all myths and how they serve as metaphor for the human experience. You can purchase all six episodes of the interview series on Amazon, but if you’re itching for some deeper reading, I also recommend Campbell’s seminal The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Without this book, there would be no Star Wars as we know it today. And if you need proof of that, just check out J. W. Rinzler’s comic book series The Star Wars, a graphic-novel adaptation of one of the last drafts of the original film before Lucas discovered Campbell’s work and transformed his own story to fit the template of the monomyth. It was between this draft and the final script that Star Wars would transform from light science-fiction into epic fantasy, and the differences—narratively, symbolically, and thematically—couldn’t be starker. 

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.

The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)

Part 1

Part 2

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The Films That Made Star Wars, Pt. 2

The Films That Made Star Wars, Pt. 2

The Films That Made Star Wars, Pt. 2

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Lucas leaned heavily on the work of a number of iconic directors to bring some weight to A New Hope

by Dennis Burger
September 24, 2020

Ask me to sum up the appeal of Star Wars as succinctly as possible, and I would have to describe it as the cinematic child of Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone dressed in Flash Gordon Underoos. As I mentioned in the Pt. 1, what would eventually become Star Wars began as George Lucas’s attempt to make a modern Flash Gordon film. And indeed, the serial adaptations of the 1930s and ’40s strongly influenced the structure and some of the aesthetic trappings of the film he eventually made.

But dig beneath the surface, and the movie we ended up with shares almost no meaningful DNA with those adventurous sci-fi serials. If you really want to understand what makes Star Wars tick, you have to ignore the ray-guns and robots and starships—or at least look past them. And when you do, what you’re left with is mostly the samurai and the cowboy. 

Akira Kurosawa

Kurosawa’s influence on Lucas has been so thoroughly discussed and dissected by this point that I have little to add. But if, for whatever reason you’ve never explored the connection for yourself, you’re in for a treat. Start with 1958’s The Hidden Fortress (aka Kakushi toride no san akunin or The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress). 

You’ll notice some superficial similarities, especially Kurosawa’s heavy use of wipe transitions, which Lucas employed liberally in Star Wars. But after just a few minutes’ worth of viewing, you should start seeing deeper parallels. There’s the fact that the peasants Tahei and Matashichi map nearly perfectly to Artoo and Threepio, in personality as well as their relationship to the other characters and their roles as catalysts of the plot. Kurosawa’s film also features a battle-weary general who becomes wrapped up in a rebellion led by a princess. Even the overall story beats for both films follow a very similar structure. When you get right down to it, Star Wars is effectively a remake of The Hidden Fortress, something Lucas himself has admitted to on several occasions. 

But Kurosawa’s influence can’t be limited to one film. You should also check out 1961’s Yojimbo, which provides definitive proof that Lucas was directly inspired by Kurosawa, and not merely Kurosawa by way of Leone. If you don’t understand the distinction, it helps to know that Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars was such a blatant ripoff of Yojimbo that Kurosawa sued. 

But there’s one distinctive element of Yojimbo that Leone didn’t pilfer, but which made its way into Lucas’s movie. Check out the first fight in the film. Imagine Toshirô Mifune wearing Jedi garb instead of samurai robes, and holding a lightsaber instead of a katana. (That shouldn’t be too difficult, since Lucas actually wrote the role of Obi-wan Kenobi for Mifune, and only asked Sir Alec Guinness to play the part after Mifune turned him down.) Now imagine the scene as a gloomy cantina instead of a dusty street. What you’ll notice is that the fight plays out strikingly similarly to the cantina brawl in Star Wars, complete with the severed-limb gag that would appear in practically all of Lucas’s Star Wars films.

It wasn’t merely Kurosawa’s samurai epics that inspired Lucas, though. You should also check out 1975’s Dersu Uzala, a Soviet/Japanese collaboration about a Nanai trapper and hunter by the same name. Noteworthy for being Kurosawa’s only 70mm film, it came out not long before Lucas began filming A New Hope, and you can see visual influences throughout. 

Perhaps the most striking involves a scene in which the two main characters look out over a horizon that includes both the setting sun and the rising moon. You can catch a glimpse of the scene about a minute into the film’s trailer, although the visuals there don’t do it justice. Unfortunately, the only way I know of watching Dersu Uzala, short of buying a disc, is on The Criterion Channel, but since that streaming service is also home to many of Kurosawa’s classic films, it may be worth signing up for a 14-day trial if you don’t want to buy them on Blu-ray. 

Sergio Leone

When I said Lucas was influenced directly by Kurosawa and not merely Kurosawa by way of Leone, I didn’t mean to imply Sergio himself didn’t also have some measurable impact on Lucas’s style. The look of Tatooine, the desert planet on which Luke Skywalker grew up, certainly owes a lot to the aesthetics of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, not only in its landscape but also in its architecture.  

But a much bigger influence on the overall visual style of Star Wars comes from 1969’s Once Upon a Time in the West. And it’s not so much the scenery that rings familiar here; it’s more the movement of the camera, as well as the characters. Watch the scene in which Frank, the villain played by Henry Fonda, strides his way into the film, flanked by his flunkies, silently strutting and letting his boots and cloak do all the talking. 

Compare this to Darth Vader’s first appearance onscreen, and you can see that while Lucas wasn’t necessarily quoting Leone, he was definitely paraphrasing him. The instant you see Frank and Vader, you know they’re the baddies of the picture. You know they’re evil to the core without a hint of mustache-twirling or monologuing. 

Once Upon a Time in the West has been remastered in 4K, but whether or not any of the supposed 4K releases online come from this remaster is up for debate. Until it’s officially released in UHD HDR, the best way to view the film is via Kaleidescape. You can also buy or rent it via most major digital movie retailers, and it’s currently streaming for free on Paramount+.

John Ford

While you’re in a western mood, I would also recommend checking out The Searchers. The films of John Ford certainly had an influence on Lucas’s cinematic sensibilities, but none influenced Star Wars quite so much as this one. As with Leone’s westerns, the desert landscapes here can be seen echoing all throughout the Jundland Wastes in A New Hope, but there’s one unforgettable scene Lucas would pretty much lift straight out of Ford’s film and paste into his own. It’s the one in which John Wayne comes home to find his brother’s ranch in flames and his relatives slaughtered. 

David Lean

Tired of westerns but still itching to dig into Lucas’s desert inspiration for Star Wars? Look no farther than David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia. So much of that film’s style can be seen reflected in the work of Star Wars cinematographer Gil Taylor, but as the official Star Wars website points out, there were also a number of scenes in Lawrence that were practically traced in Star Wars:

Many moves from David Lean’s epic were cribbed for sequences on Tatooine. The shot of Mos Eisley from the distance as Luke and Obi-Wan look from on high reminds one instantly of shots looking down at Damascus. Shots of Tusken snipers looking down at speeders moving below echo the same sorts of shots in Lawrence of Arabia.

Unfortunately, the best way to view Lawrence of Arabia is still on disc, as part of the Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection, which also includes Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Dr. Strangelove, Gandhi, A League of Their Own, and Jerry Maguire. Lean’s classic has not been released on UHD Blu-ray on its own, and the digital releases of the film all lack the Dolby Vision HDR version featured in this collection. If, for whatever reason, you’re not interested in HDR, your next-best bet is Kaleidescape‘s UHD release of the film.

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.

Dersu Uzala (1975)

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Atmos Finally Grows Up

Atmos Finally Grows Up

Atmos Finally Grows Up

The ultimate immersive format no longer relies on filling your room with gimmicky effects just to make its presence known 

by Dennis Burger
April 19, 2022

It never fails. Every time I admit to liking a new Dolby Atmos mix, my fellow home-cinema aficionados refuse to let me live it down. They behave as if I’ve converted to some weird cult, or—more charitably—as if I’ve finally seen the light. You can almost hear them chanting, “One of us! One of us! 

And you could say I brought this on myself, given what a vocal detractor I’ve been of Atmos and other “immersive” audio formats. That I’ve recently had nice things to say about some of these mixes could, I acknowledge, be interpreted as a change of heart. 

It isn’t. I haven’t changed. Nothing about my taste in surround sound mixing has evolved or softened, and if you put any of the abusive, distracting Atmos mixes I’ve griped about over the years in front of me now, I’d gripe just as vociferously. What has changed is that after a decade of trial and error, mixers have finally figured out how to make Atmos work with the films they accompany rather than against them. Of course, I’m not entirely sure you can blame the mixers. After all, those technicians and artists were simply giving early adopters what they demanded. 

We see this sort of thing happen any time a new expansion of sound comes to market. Think back to the awful stereo mix for The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, an album that can only be truly appreciated as a cohesive work in mono. Even a few years later, the stereo mix for Jimi Hendrix’ Are You Experienced was a curiosity at best.

Fast forward to the era of digital surround sound, when DVD arrived on the scene and we were convinced to replace our old surround sound receivers with spiffy new 5.1 models. We all wanted to hear more discrete surround effects and more pronounced deep bass to justify our new purchases. As a result, Hollywood gave us soundtracks like that of The Fifth Element, which made for a great home theater demo but was a major distraction if you wanted to actually enjoy the movie. (Ironically, the 2015 Atmos remix is actually subtler and more immersive—meaning less distracting—than the 5.1 mix included with the original DVD in the late ’90s.) 

It’s no surprise we had to go through the same growing pangs with Atmos. Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it an arms race. Those who were first to adopt Atmos at home shelled out a pretty penny to have additional speakers installed in their ceilings, more amps to drive them, and new receivers or preamps to decode and process the soundtracks; and they demanded to be rewarded for their investment with a torrent of sound coming from every which direction. But now that they’ve gotten their cheap fix, the rest of us can finally start to enjoy Atmos mixes that genuinely add something to the experience of watching a film rather than smacking you over the head with a newspaper at every opportunity. 

Take Nightmare Alley. It’s hard to imagine a mix like this one being created—or tolerated—ten years ago at the dawn of Atmos. It’s often—though not always—subtle. There are things going on in the overhead channels almost constantly, but they all work in the service of creating and enhancing the mood of the film and the feel of its environments. It’s the slow roll of thunder overhead and off toward the horizon, as well as the hum of mercury-vapor lamps indoors, that make the film’s locations feel tangible and multi-dimensional. They draw you into the experience rather than pulling you out of it. The soundtrack doesn’t fill your room with sound—it makes your room disappear. You don’t consciously think about where the sound is being placed because it simply feels right.

But I’m not saying Atmos mixes have to be subtle to be effective. The immersive soundtrack for last year’s Dune is incredibly aggressive. It leans on the overhead channels far more than do many of the Atmos mixes from years past that I find overbearing and counterproductive. But re-recording mixers Ron Bartlett and Doug Hemphill knew what they were doing. They didn’t crank up the mix and leave it there. They leaned hardest on the overhead and surround channels at the moments when the film becomes a pure operatic experience of sight and sound, and also when the visuals are simply so compelling no audio gimmick could pull your focus away from the screen. 

There have also been some recent experiments in Atmos that accomplish with sound what The Wizard of Oz did with Technicolor. Last Night in Soho is a perfect example. I can’t imagine that film working nearly as well without the benefit of its inventive 3D sound mix. The very shape of the soundfield is a subtle but unmissable clue about the lead character’s mental state and the delineation between reality and fantasy within the context of the narrative.

Granted, just because we’re getting there doesn’t mean we’re there yet. The recent Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood is a sweet and endearing little semi-autobiographical memoir that’s hobbled by an Atmos mix that treats the experience more like a theme-park ride than a work of cinema. Thankfully, such mixes are becoming less common, especially for films of this sort.

All of which is a long and roundabout way of saying that I haven’t come around to Atmos. I haven’t seen any light. I’m not a convert. I’ve long understood the potential of Atmos as a way of further immersing the viewer in the cinematic experience. I’ve simply been disappointed by Hollywood’s insistence upon using it to turn nearly every film into the experiential equivalent of Jaws 3-D. Now that it’s becoming something grownups can actually enjoy, I’m all for it. But make no mistake: I haven’t changed. Atmos has. 

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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My Love/Hate Relationship with Dolby Atmos

My Love/Hate Relationship with Dolby Atmos

My Love/Hate Relationship with Dolby Atmos

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Atmos might be a little too unnatural—and gimmicky—to be satisfying as a surround sound experience

by Dennis Burger
January 9, 2019

I have a friend who turns his nose up at surround sound. Press him on the matter and he’ll demur and hedge his argument, but it’s pretty clear he thinks stereo is where it’s at for movies and music alike. And I think he’s absolutely bonkers. 

I mention that not to pick on him but rather to empathize, because I imagine the face I make at him is the same face our own John Sciacca makes at me when I admit that I just don’t like Dolby Atmos—at least not for movies. That might seem strange given that I’m on record as lauding the format—with its overhead speakers and innovative use of audio objects instead of channels—when applied to video games. You haven’t really played Overwatch until you’ve heard Pharah scream, “Justice rains from above!” from above your actual head. 

The weird thing is, I love Atmos with gaming and generally hate it with movies for pretty much exactly the same reasons. And to understand why, you’re going to have to do a little homework.

Take a lawn chair out into your front yard and sit in it with your back to the street. Your neighbors may give you strange looks, but this is for science. Just run with it.  Now pull out a book and start reading it. At some point, a car might drive by behind you. If the book is decent enough, chances are you won’t even notice, unless you live on a street so remote that passing traffic is an oddity. 

Keep on reading until a plane or helicopter passes overhead. Your concentration immediately broke, didn’t it? OK, maybe not if you live near an airport or airbase, and you’re used to planes flying overhead. But for most of us, if something flies overhead, we’re gonna drop the book and look upward. 

Atmos is a lot like that for me. It triggers something in my primate brain—a fight-or-flight mechanism, if you will. I’m reminded of vervet monkeys, who have different words in their rather complex vocabulary for “python” and “eagle.” If a monkey shouts “python,” nearby members of its tribe scan their surroundings. If the cry is “eagle,” on the other hand, they drop what they’re doing and run for the nearest hidey hole. 

And Atmos generally does that to me. There’s just no denying that sound coming from overhead is hardwired into our brains as something we have to focus on. In a video game, that can be critically important since these virtual worlds often contain threats coming from every direction. Hearing that a baddy is attacking you from overhead can be the difference between virtual life and death.

But unlike video games, movies aren’t sandboxes. Our focus is on a rectangle of space right in front of us; someone else gets to decide where our eyes turn. It’s an inherently horizontal experience, and while sounds coming from the sides and behind don’t violate that experience, sounds coming from overhead do. As with our daily lives, anything that happens outside of that horizontal plane is somehow distinct, different, and disconnected.

That can actually be kinda cool with movies like Ready Player One or others that live or die purely on audiovisual spectacle. Heck, it’s even great with movies like The Last Jedi, where the overhead sound effects generally work to add ambiance and a sense of space, not vertical sensationalism. But such mixes are few and far between. For the most part, Atmos serves only to distract me from the narrative experience. And just to be clear, I’m not saying John or anyone else is wrong for liking that effect. I’m merely rebelling against the increasingly pervasive notion that if you don’t have an Atmos-capable sound system, you’re somehow doing home cinema wrong.

Try to seek out an Atmos demo before you decide if this “immersive” audio technology is right for you. And if it’s not—if tried-and-true surround sound does the trick—don’t feel like you’re selling your movie-watching experience short. I mean, as long as you’re not just watching movies in stereo . . . 

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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Review: Minari

Minari (2020)

review | Minari

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A deceptively simple story that could have easily wandered off into cliché, masterfully told

by Dennis Burger
March 22, 2021

There’s a certain frustrating injustice in the fact that Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical Minari came out in 2020. While this gorgeous slice-of-life drama is being hailed as one of the year’s best films, that recognition carries with it some tallest-kid-in-kindergarten connotations. The truth is that Minari would be a triumph of cinema in any year, but to be plucked from the dustbin and heralded as such this year almost seems like a consolation prize.

I’ll admit that I have some significant bias as far as this film is concerned so maybe take my adulation with a grain of salt. I’m a sucker for a simple story. Writing complicated tales is easy—you string together a bunch of “what had happened was”es, cut between disparate narrative threads when one has gone on too long, throw as much as you can at the wall, and hope enough of it sticks to be honed in the editing. Writing a simple story is significantly more difficult, and writing one that holds together narratively and thematically is an admirable accomplishment. 

Minari is the simplest of tales, and a familiar one at that: A family, facing unendurable financial hardship and lack of opportunity, moves to a strange new place in search of a better life. Familiar though that plot kernel may be, Chung tells it in the most unexpected ways, never going for the obvious twists or beholden to the traditional three-act narrative structure. 

A lot of what you’ll get out of the film depends upon what you bring into it because Chung’s thumb never rests too heavily on the scales. Speaking purely for myself—a Caucasian southern man whose familial roots grow in rural soil very similar to the setting of Minari—I was drawn almost as much to the setting as I was to the human drama of it all. I’ll admit, though, that I tensed up the first time a white southerner appeared onscreen. You almost can’t help but expect the residents of rural Arkansas to be portrayed as caricatures, as overtly racist and malicious bumpkins. They aren’t, though. They’re portrayed as ignorant to be sure but the exact sort of ignorance that feels 100% authentic to the film’s setting, the sort of ignorance that I’m met with at every big family gathering. This is simply one of the most accurate portraits of the rural south in the 1980s I’ve ever seen.

The story that unfolds against that backdrop is one of duty—to one’s parents, children, partner, and oneself. And most of the drama comes from trying to find the right balance between those interdependent dials. Duty to his parents is largely to blame for the financial struggles Jacob Yi (played to perfection by Steven Yeun) and his family suffer in California. Duty to their children is what forces Jacob and his wife Monica (played to equal perfection by Han Ye-ri) to the Ozark Plateau. Frustration with this tug of war and a disproportionate attempt to be dutiful to himself contributes to Jacob’s Sisyphean struggles in his new home, both within his family and on the land he obsessively farms.

The farm serves as an unnamed character in the film. It embodies the tension at the center of the struggle between an untenable past and an uncertain future. Those two forces receive their embodiment in the forms of David—Jacob and Monica’s ill son—and Soon-ja, Monica’s mother, who comes to live with the family to care for her grandchildren while their parents work at a nearby hatchery, and who plants the perennial herb that gives the film its name and so much of its meaning. 

David and Soon-ja not only serve as the heart of the film, they also serve as its funny bone, adding much-needed levity exactly when it’s needed most. As with the rural whites, it would have been all too easy to paint both characters with too broad a brush, but Chung packs each with the sort of contradictions essential to any human. In the case of David, that’s not all that surprising, since the boy serves as the writer/director’s proxy. But Soon-ja must have been a much trickier character to write, no matter how much real-life inspiration Chung had for her. She represents tradition, but she’s an idiosyncratic, eccentric force of nature who defies tradition at every turn. That Chung didn’t chisel off her rough edges to force her into the symbolic mold she fills in the film is a credit to his skills as a writer and his faith in the audience. Individually, David and Soon-ja are fascinating (and indeed somewhat tragic) characters. Together, they’re absolutely hilarious—the sort of duo that Taika Waititi would write if he made dramas instead of comedies. 

But don’t dwell too much on that comparison. I’ve simply been so primed by a culture that’s obsessed with every new thing being categorized as “this meets that” that I found myself drawing that parallel before I could catch myself. If forced to draw deeper parallels of the same sort, I would call this film Waititi meets Faulkner meets Sinclair.” But that’s hardly fair. Minari is boldly, unapologetically its own thing. 

It’s also beautiful to behold. The film is currently available on PVOD, or “Theater at Home,” as described by Vudu, where I rented it. Vudu presents Minari in Dolby Vision with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack, both of which serve the material well. Although shot digitally, the cinematography has a very organic look that’s vaguely reminiscent of Kodachrome stock. It’s incredibly contrasty, with inky shadows and dazzling highlights; but its most prominent aspect is the richness and warmth of the colors, all of which are captured beautifully by the transfer. 

Despite the 2K digital intermediate, there’s a wealth of detail, in everything from the tattered interior of the Yi family’s mobile home to the chaotic kaleidoscope of patterns caused by overlapping layers of flora blowing in the breeze. If the film’s presentation proves anything, it’s that lenses are more essential to the final look of a cinematic work than are capture resolution (3.2K in this case) or the pixel-count of the DI. 

Interestingly, when I switched between my Roku Ultra and my Apple TV 4K purely for the sake of thorough comparison, the latter didn’t hold up quite as well. The Vudu stream was marred to a degree by some banding, digital noise, and lack of definition on the Apple hardware that was nowhere to be seen on the Roku. 

Minari doesn’t seem like the sort of film that would benefit from an Atmos mix, but does it ever. It’s another case where, if Atmos were handled this gracefully by every sound mixer, I would be a bigger fan of the format. The extra channels are used in this case to construct the film’s world in three dimensions. Heck, if you took away the dialogue and music, it seems like 90% of what would be left would be the chirping of crickets and tree frogs and—to borrow a beautiful turn of phrase from Randy Newman—the song that the trees sing when the wind blows. Once you get over the novelty of sounds coming from overhead, the film’s mix just sounds authentic, like strolling through the wild acreage of my dad’s property with my ears attuned to the aural landscape. 

And in a way, that’s an apt metaphor for the film itself as a whole. It’s obviously contrived—every story is—but give yourself to it and there’s nearly nothing about Minari that feels contrived. It’s as honest and unforced a work of cinema as I’ve experienced in ages. Its show-don’t-tell approach to grappling with the struggles of the working poor and the realities of cultural assimilation, combined with its pitch-perfect performances and effortless artistry, make it an absolute must-see.

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.

PICTURE | Although shot digitally, the cinematography has a very organic look, vaguely reminiscent of Kodachrome stock, that’s beautiful to behold

SOUND | This doesn’t seem like the kind of film that would benefit from an Atmos mix, but the extra channels are artfully used to construct the film’s world in three dimensions

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The Films That Made Star Wars, Pt. 1

The Films That Made Star Wars, Pt. 1

The Films That Made Star Wars, Pt. 1

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A three-part look at the eclectic group of movies that helped provide the inspiration for Lucas’s space-opera saga

by Dennis Burger
updated April 25, 2022

It’s sometimes easy to forget that before it became a nine-film saga supported by three standalone films, two made-for-TV movies, three excellent TV series, a few terrible TV series, and a holiday special that is best forgotten, Star Wars was just a movie. An incredible movie, mind you, one that sparked the dreams of uncountable future filmmakers and other creative types. And one that practically created the concept of the modern blockbuster and changed the cinema industry forever (for better and for worse). 

It’s just as easy to forget that as unique as 1977’s Star Wars seemed at the time of its release—especially to my five-year-old eyes—there was barely anything original about it. Sure, the way it was put together was fresh— mind-blowingly so—but dig down to the nuts-and-bolts level and it’s clear that this Galaxy Far, Far Away didn’t spring to George Lucas’s mind fully formed. The film was, in many ways, a reaction to the grim and gritty films that dominated cinemas in the early 1970s. But first and foremost, it was a homage to the serials and adventure movies that Lucas enjoyed seeing on the big screen in his youth.

And I’m sure you’ve heard that before, but have you ever actually seen the direct correlations? If not, you should spend some time with the Flash Gordon serials of 1936, ’38, and ’40. This is no great surprise given that Lucas originally intended to develop his own Flash Gordon film in the early ’70s and only set about creating his own universe because he couldn’t secure the rights to Alex Raymond’s legendary comic-strip character. 

Despite the fact that Star Wars ended up being way more fantasy than sci-fi, a lot of the retro-high-tech set-dressing of Flash Gordon remains, but that’s not all. Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe in particular loaned a number of story elements to the first Star Wars and its two sequels, including character archetypes and relationships, and even settings. But the biggest thing Flash Gordon gave to Star Wars was, of course, that iconic opening crawl. 

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe is available in its entirety on YouTube, as are the 1936 original and its sequel, Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars. They aren’t exactly high cinema, but if you’re interested in understanding the genealogy of Star Wars, this is where you want to start. 

The Films That Made Star Wars, Pt. 1

Other serials worth a look (and also available on YouTube) include 1939’s Buck Rogers (another fantastic opening crawl!) and a delicious little oddity known as The Fighting Devil Dogs (1938, shown above). The latter in particular is famous for being one of the cheapest serials ever made (and it shows), but also for including the first costumed super-villain, The Lightning, whose garb almost certainly inspired the look of Darth Vader and the bounty hunter Boba Fett, as well. 

Other classics of the era that seem to have had an influence on Lucas in his youth (although he likely saw them in early TV broadcasts rather than at a movie theater) include The Wizard of Oz, from which Star Wars borrows much of its group dynamic, fairy-tale nature, and monomythic structure; the films of Ray Harryhausen, such as Mighty Joe Young, which no doubt shaped his attitude toward special effects; the works of Laurel & Hardy, which certainly had some influence on the relationship between Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio; and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, whose Art Deco Maschinenmensch (Robot), despite being feminine, undoubtedly influenced the look of Threepio. Hell, you could even argue that Lucas drew some inspiration from the 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will—not its ideology, but rather the scale and grandiosity of its imagery, especially in the triumphant Royal Award Ceremony after the Battle of Yavin, in which Luke and Han are celebrated as heroes of the Rebellion.

Of course, you could just as easily argue that all of the above (save perhaps Flash Gordon) represent superficial influences at best. But to deny the importance of these elements would be to deny that Star Wars is, at least in part, a pop-culture collage, a pastiche of cool design elements that make it feel both fresh and timeless.

In Part 2, though, we’ll dig into some of the more substantial cinematic gold Lucas mined in creating the first Star Wars film, as well as the first two sequels.

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.

Metropolis (1927)

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