News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

Boo² for being Region A only :(

(Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 1:18 PM)

Boo! (scary noise ghosts make)

(Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 3:12 PM)

Yay! For including original 1.33:1 ratio. Doesn't look like the upcoming UK Sony is going to have this.

(Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 6:52 PM)

I have a feeling the UK sony disc is going to be an identical transfer, the extras are the same and the only thing missing is the original aspect ratio, having said that director Sam Raimi went over this new widescreen transfer scene by scene so it should work better than the original release.

I absolutely love the quality of this release, shame they couldn't get the original short which inspired the film onto this release.

This is so far my best disc of the year.

(Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 7:22 PM)

The loss of 1:33 version on the Sony release probably won't be a big loss considering the widescreen version is so gorgeous. Unlike all previous widescreen releases, they individually framed each shot. Check out the last comparison shot on caps-a-holic:

http://www.caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleiche/index.php?vergleich=the_evil_dead_matted

I feel I would have preferred a 1.66:1 ratio like how the film was projected in theaters (apart from the premiere, where they showed it open matte), but this is still really cool and doesn't feel cramped unlike the widescreen DVD releases.

The audio bites, however. It's lost all the punch of the DVD tracks. And for a movie that relies so heavily on sound, this is a huge blow to the gut.

(Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 9:42 PM)

I actually disagree with you about the audio, it sounds more open to me nowand i feel they did an excellent job remixing it.

The loss of the original aspect ratio would be a big deal to me which is why i bought the American disc and didn't wait for the Sony release and i agree 1.66:1 would have been a better compromise.

(Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 11:49 PM)

I have my reservations about the BD not including the original mono track too, but with the numerous (though seamless) digital tweaks to the video removing crew members and light sources, this is hardly replicating the original theatrical experience anyway.

I really have my doubts that The Evil Dead was ever actually shown at 1.66:1 (much less that he had "intended" for it to be shown in a non-standard US ratio). Supposedly, Kubrick had to make a fuss and ensure that Warner Brothers sent a 1.66:1 matte with Barry Lyndon (circa '75), because 1.66 would usually be cropped to 1.85 on American screens. Call me crazy, but I can't see Raimi's low-budget and independantly-distributed horror picture being shipped out with custom mattes.

(Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 11:55 PM)

I'm just going by what "The Evil Dead Companion" says on the matter.

Link

But, who knows? Perhaps soft matting at that ratio would have been rather cumbersome and unlikely.

Now that I think about it, the section of the book does say, "Sam had composed the film for a 1:1.66 ratio," and I doubt any such thought was put into the framing to that degree. I think it was more like, "Let's get whatever we can in the full frame and go with it," with no thought really to how it would look matted for widescreen. Which is kind of evidenced by the previous widescreen transfers looking so photographically compositionally inept.

(Posted on Friday, October 1, 2010 at 1:09 AM)

Still, however, I kind of think a 1.66:1 ratio would have been a good thing for home video, like with what Paul Verhoeven requested for the Criterion release of "RoboCop", but since I have no problems with the way they did it and it looks good filling the screen so much, I suppose it's unnecessary.

(Posted on Friday, October 1, 2010 at 1:12 AM)

Now they just need to re-release Evil Dead 2 with a better transfer and release the Director's Cut of Army of Darkness.

(Posted on Friday, October 1, 2010 at 2:41 AM)

"I really have my doubts that The Evil Dead was ever actually shown at 1.66:1 (much less that he had "intended" for it to be shown in a non-standard US ratio)."

...but at that point, 1.37:1 would've been a non-standard U.S. ratio too, wouldn't it? The intent was always for it to get a theatrical run, and I'd think Raimi would have to be aware that most theatrical screens by that point were wider than that.

I have no idea what Raimi was thinking, although I do wonder if he'd read somewhere that Texas Chain Saw was 1.66:1 and he decided to mimic that, but the rough-and-tumble nature of production didn't exactly allow for meticulous framing.

(Posted on Friday, October 1, 2010 at 4:09 AM)

"Now they just need to [...] release the Director's Cut of Army of Darkness."

Heck, I'd just take a good BD release of the theatrical cut, since the Blu-ray that already exists looks so shitty (and nothing like the beautiful film prints I've seen; most recent one I saw was just a few weeks ago and it was marvelous).

Though ideally we'd have both the theatrical and director's cuts in excellent quality.

(Posted on Friday, October 1, 2010 at 9:41 AM)

1.37:1 would be the standard ratio of 16mm with synch-sound, and thus the ratio that Raimi probably would have used as an independant college film maker. (His short ED predocessor, Within the Woods, was also 1.37:1.)

I've thought for quite some time that Raimi shot it using the full 1.37:1 frame and never consciously realized that 1.85:1 would be the inevitable US ratio. That may seem like an unfair guess considering what a stellar film maker Raimi is, particularly in terms of camerawork, but let's not forget he was only 21 when the film premiered. He was as green as a feature director gets, and I can't blame him for not realizing one technical aspect of the film wasn't going to work for the big screen after having projected his own for some time.

All this said, the 1.85:1 ratio on the BD is much, much nicer than the center-crop we had on the BOTD master. The 1.33:1 ratio on BD has more breathing room from time to time, but I don't know that I'd call it "better" anymore.

(Posted on Friday, October 1, 2010 at 6:43 PM)

Yeah, I've always preferred the 1.33 ratio for this film, but after seeing the "custom-framed" 1.85 on a widescreen TV and in hi-def, I think I may actually prefer that.

(Posted on Friday, October 1, 2010 at 8:12 PM)