Tag: Blu-ray Review

Comparing the Old with the New: Universal Classic Monsters: Icons Collection in 4K

I bided my time like the Count for a proper 4K release, and Universal Studios have delivered with this home video release simply titled Universal Classic Monsters!

Universal Classic Monsters Scaring 4K UHD Blu-ray Available to purchase on Amazon USA

The most well known Universal Classic Monsters will shine this Halloween. All the icons from the Golden Age of Cinema from this studio–Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and The Wolfman–have been given a recent restoration, and now they’re in 4K! The quality is beautiful, and the hard slipcase booklet is a sweet way to keep the discs intact. It features the poster used when the film first came out.

There’s some film grain and audio buzz, which is to be expected, in the product. I’m glad some of the celluloid feel is kept, while the frame rate is increased.

Anyone who collected these older works from one medium to another over the years knows the challenges involved. Whether that’d be from VHS to DVD to Bluray and now 4K, there’s only so much the preservation team can do before putting the original negatives back in the vault. Dracula will be glad, and The Invisible Man can rest in peace.

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Little Vampire Lands on Home Video Oct 5th!

Little Vampire (Blu-ray)Shout! Factory
Release Date: Oct 5, 2021
Available to order on Amazon USA

Arriving just in time onto home video for the Halloween season is Joann Sfar‘s Little Vampire! This story about family and friendship has a lot to like, and it can make for a nice way to end Oct 31st with. 

The messages imbued into the tale is heartfelt. This latest adaptation of Angela Sommer-Bodenburg’s books of the same name goes in an entirely different direction. The animator makes it his own! I wrote a full review when it played during Fantasia Film Fest 2021. This French cartoonist turned his television series into a much more engaging film and I finally got to compare the graphic novel to this film. The story is an expansion of the first chapter in the USA release of the trade paperback, and I searched far and wide to see if the rest of his series exist translated. Alas, this volume is it.

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Shine On, Gattaca, You Crazy Diamond! (in a Rough)

Is this 4K edition worth the upgrade? If you don’t have the 2008 release and want the extras, buying the steel book edition (from after owning just the DVD) is a must for any science-fiction movie fan’s library.

Gattaca
Available to preorder on Amazon USA

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Sony Entertainment

Release Date:
March 23, 2021

Andrew Nicol’s thought-provoking Gattaca is looking very shiny in its 4K upgrade. Fans of this film will find the Sony’s investment into smoothing out this classic movie–where perfection and subterfuge are central to the plot–a fitting call to the concept of cleaning up the flaws in the film stock.

This movie stands the test of time. It’s a gorgeous film which looks visually sharp on a 4K screen. The science of looking at original film negatives on a computer and the mathematical process involved to make this sleek and deadly thriller look pristine requires both machine logic and humans mutually agreeing which is better. Only the human eye can tell.

This film was shot in 35mm photochemical film stock. Any noticeable grain on the original or intentional use of soft imagery through the lens was light when looking back at my DVD. Also, it doesn’t help when my 4K television does its own upscaling to give a simulated higher resolution on the screener version I examined; a 2160p version wasn’t available at the time. Kudos must still be given to the team behind the colour grading fixes, though.

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So What’s With the Music in Earwig and the Witch?

I wanted to know more about this world, and it’s a shame Jones passed away, leaving her latest idea unfinished.

Gattaca
Steelbook Edition available to preorder on Amazon USA

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

GKIDS & Shout! Factory
Now Available on Streaming (HBOMax)

DVD/Blu-Ray Release Date:
April 6, 2021

Spoiler Alert

Long time fans of Studio Ghibli’s works will find their decision to transition to CGI jarring. The production quality and advanced character design–the motion of the figures–is just not there. They don’t have the decades of experience other teams (like DreamWorks or PIXAR) have. It’s all new to them. Despite this setback, debuting Earwig and the Witch (アーヤと魔女) on television and the CGI quality doesn’t overshadow the tale by much.

Goro Miyazaki explains his reasoning behind the production design in one featurette offered in this home video release (it comes with a handy checklist of other Ghibli films for completionists to explore). Viewers can decide if his choice is for the better or worse. By mid-act I got accustomed to it and became more invested in the hilarious antics Erica Wigg (Kokoro Hirasawa) goes through with the help of her new pet to become a woman of the house.

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Hopping on the Promare Bandwagon Late

Promare Promotional Poster

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Available on iTunes and Regular Release Now

Collector’s Edition
August 4th, 2020

When humans are spontaneously combusting like nobody’s business, a new type of firefighter is needed to keep the peace in the feature-film length film, Promare. Some of these “victims” have learned how to control this pyrokinetic ability so they don’t die. They’re known as the Burnish and Lio Fotia rallied the bad ones together to form a terrorist organization to which the Freeze Force has to put (pardoning the pun) on ice.

30 years later, the struggle continues on. The Earth is undergoing a geologic change, and only a select few mutants can escape since they can “teleport” away. But nobody knows that there’s another race, the Promare, who resides in this planet’s inner core. They are in pain, and what’s happening results from the enemy toying with them.

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Sound! Euphonium It’s A Brand New Day in North America!

You can’t jump in and understand this Sound! Euphonium as easily without either some research or at least seeing the television series.

Sound! Euphonium Blu-Ray + DVD CoverAvailable to order on Amazon USA
June 2nd, 2020
Shout! Factory

To anyone who has not heard of Sound! Euphonium, a primer about this series is in order. It was originally a series of novels by Ayano Takeda which was quick to become a franchise. After its initial publication in 2013, a manga soon followed, along with an animation series and now movies. Our Promise: A Brand New Day follows Kumiko in her second year at Kitauji High School. Not only does she have to make the new band of recruits in this high school symphony work in harmony, but also has to deal with a certain romance potentially coming into her life.

Altogether, I could not help but be reminded of the National Film Board of Canada’s documentary, That Higher Level while watching this anime. We are examining what makes these characters unique, and where they will go next when they have graduated from Kitauji High School.

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