News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Some thoughts on Arrow Video's new Inferno BD

9:26 PM / BD Impressions / Blu-ray / 35 Comments

The release of Dario Argento's INFERNO on BD is a double cause for celebration. Not only is it the first high definition release of the film anywhere in the world, it's also the first time it has been released uncut in the UK (those few crucial seconds of mouse-chewing are now restored, a testament to the tendency of the British Board of Film Censors' standards to change with the wind). The film's predecessor, SUSPIRIA, experienced something of a problematic BD release via Nouveaux Pictures thanks to the creation in 2007 of an HD master that took considerable liberties with the film's look... so how does the sequel measure up?

The packaging

The cover design fits the mould of previous Arrow Video BD releases like CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD, and I'm sure everyone has formed their own opinions on it by now. Personally, while I'm not a fan of the deliberate attempt to recreate the trashy look of 80s VHS covers (I'm considerably more appreciative of the more "tasteful" approach taken by the likes of Camera Obscura with their Italian Genre Cinema Collection), I can understand why they've gone down this route from a marketing standpoint... and hey, at least they don't call the film they're selling you "trash", as Nouveaux Pictures did with SUSPIRIA. For that alone Arrow deserves some kudos.

And yes, the newly commissioned artwork by Rick Melton is, erm, questionable to say the least. I can appreciate the craftsmanship that went into it in much the same way that I can appreciate the craftsmanship of a film like TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN - in that talented individuals clearly put a lot of work into their respective specialities - but the end result just doesn't work. Simply put, it's not INFERNO. If you flip the case round inside the translucent sleeve, you can proudly display the original Italian poster artwork, although if you take it out of the sleeve you're still faced with the tacky new artwork on the back. The reverse side of the sleeve, which shows the Spanish theatrical poster and Greek video cover on the left and right side respectively, seems a tad pointless, but three cheers for freedom of choice.

Also included in the package are a fold-out poster with the Melton art on one side and a reproduction of one of the UK quads on the other, six postcards consisting of Italian, French, German and English promotional art, and an eight-page booklet containing a new essay by Alan Jones. All in all, some nice goodies.

The extras

This is a 2-disc release, consisting of a dual layer BD-50 containing the film and the majority of the new bonus features (presented in high definition), plus a single layer DVD-5 containing a number of features that have previously been released elsewhere (all standard defition, obviously). These include the DARIO ARGENTO: AN EYE FOR HORROR documentary which has appeared on so many DVD releases I've now lost track, the 9-minute Argento/Lamberto Bava interview from the Anchor Bay DVD, the Argento trailer reel that Arrow includes on all its Argento DVD releases, and the International and Spanish theatrical trailers.

On to the newly produced extras on the BD, and I've noticed a few people claiming that these are merely standard definition upconverted to 1080p. There is no truth in this. The various film clips that are interspersed throughout the features are definitely standard definition (and very poor-looking standard definition at that), but the interviews themselves are unquestionably HD. On the other hand, they are afflicted by some pretty hefty video noise, particularly the Luigi Cozzi interview, shot in the basement of Argento's Profondo Rosso store, so I can see perhaps where the confusion has come from. It's not very pretty HD, but HD nonetheless.

Having said that, my biggest issue with the extras is not so much the image quality, which doesn't really impact on the enjoyment of the material itself (more on it in a bit) too much, but rather the graphics used for the opening and closing credits and the various still frames and captions with which the interview footage is intercut. The graphics seem to be going for a children's scissor art style, in keeping with INFERNO's status as a sort of adult fairytale, but unfortunately a lot of the time the artwork, combined with computer animation effects applied to it, leans towards tacky. If used in moderation, this would have been less of a problem, but way too much time has been devoted to it: for example, of the 19-minute Daria Nicolodi featurette, a full one and a half minutes are taken up by the opening credits and a further 40 seconds by the closing credits. It's just excessive and would have remained so even if the production values had been much higher.

Thankfully, it's worth persevering, because the material itself is very good. In the 16-minute DARIO's INFERNO, Argento is as cagey as ever about the meanings behind his spellbinding visuals, but he tells some amusing stories about then-president of Fox Sherry Lansing's reaction to the film, as well as recounting his reasons for taking so long to complete the trilogy with MOTHER OF TEARS. INFERNO has always struck me as being the film Argento seems least willing to discuss, and given it's cryptic nature and steadfast refusal to make any sense I'm inclined to think he's being deliberately evasive about it - which is perhaps as it should be. As such, it's arguably one of the less enlightening interviews the maestro has given, but it's still well worth the watch.

In the 19-minute ACTING IN HOT WATER, Daria Nicolodi is her usual eccentric self (and I mean that in a good way), talking both about the film itself and about the whole ordeal surrounding her authorship of SUSPIRIA, as well as discussing in loving detail her experiences working with the legendary Mario Bava and giving her opinion of MOTHER OF TEARS (I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't got the disc yet). All in all I really enjoyed this one.

Frequent Argento collaborator Luigi Cozzi shows up for the 16-minute THE OTHER MOTHER: MAKING THE BLACK CAT, in which he discusses his unofficial 1989 sequel to INFERNO. I haven't personally seen the film, but it looks... interesting to say the least, judging by the clips shown here. That said, perhaps the most entertaining part of the interview comes during the closing credits, when Argento is shown being asked whether he has ever seen Cozzi's effort. Again, I won't spoil it for you.

Finally, we get a half-hour Q&A session recorded at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles, featuring MARIO BAVA: ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK author Tim Lucas, INFERNO composer Keith Emerson and star Irene Miracle. I'd previously seen this Q&A on YouTube with considerably weaker video and audio quality and was very happy to revisit it here with this upgraded presentation. It's all great stuff and in many ways the highlight of the package. (Note that this featurette and only this one is encoded at 1080i 60 Hz.)

Presentation complaints aside, I'm very happy with this line-up of extras. It's a shame we didn't get another excellent Alan Jones/Kim Newman commentary like the ones found on SUSPIRIA and THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, but I don't suppose we can have everything.

The sound

A nice, all-encompassing array of audio options here, all of them lossless - hear that, Blue Underground? ;) We get the original English stereo mix, the original Italian mono mix, and a 5.1 English remix, all in DTS-HD Master Audio, accompanied by English subtitles for either the English or the Italian dialogue. The English stereo tracked was my preferred viewing option, though I sampled all three and was particularly pleased to see the inclusion of the Italian track for completeness' sake. The 5.1 remix tends to sound a little on the artificial side, spreading the audio across the front three channels. It also sounds considerably thinner than its stereo counterpart, although in terms of bass it does have a bit of added "oomph", particularly for Keith Emerson's score, that will probably be appreciated by those who don't mind losing a bit of the original audio's "purity". It sounds to my ears to be the same one included (albeit in lossy form) on the Anchor Bay DVD - certainly, it has that noticeable "skip" in the music during the first shot of the film. It's also worth pointing out that the English stereo track has a bit more audible hiss and crackle than its 5.1 counterpart, which may sway things for some viewers.

Overall, no major complaints here. INFERNO never really had an equivalent to the debacle surrounding the Anchor Bay SUSPIRIA remix, so there was a whole lot less chance of things going wrong here than there were for that film.

The video

This is where Nouveaux Pictures' release of SUSPIRIA fumbled, and unfortunately the same is true of INFERNO... albeit for different reasons. The source used here is the same high definition master that was prepared by 20th Century Fox/MGM in 2007 and found its way on to the Italian Fox DVD of the same year... albeit with what looks like a heavy-handed layer of additional digital manipulation. Don't bother looking for film grain: a lot of the time, there basically isn't any, except for some heavier stuff in the shadows. Static shots, such as the close-up of the knife that opens the film, look uncannily like video freeze-frames because literally all the grain has been sucked out, and slow pans generally leave trails of mushy grain. Gabriele Lavia's face looks waxy, and the chequered pattern on his shirt smears whenever he moves. The lengthy underwater sequence fares particularly poorly, with copious amounts of smearing and trailing. This sequence is obviously meant to look murky, but not in this way. It's been a while since I saw noise reduction this overzealous, and while it's not quite on the level of PATTON or the remastered edition of PREDATOR - both crimes against cinema - someone somewhere clearly dropped the ball. There's light DNR to clear up dirt and scratches, and then there's grain scrubbing taken to excess. This is the latter.

On a more positive note, the BD offers a clear improvement in terms of detail over the Italian DVD. Taking into account that the film is unlikely to have ever been razor-sharp in the manner of a modern, DI-sourced title, the image looks pretty crisp if a little on the murky side... though I'm unsure as to how much of this can be blamed on the digital manipulation and how much is simply down to the film's look. I suspect it was always a naturally soft-looking film, but when robbed of its natural grain texture this becomes all the more readily apparent. There is also some noticeable ringing around high contrast edges, but again I'm not sure whether this was digitally induced or the result of the optical process. Either way, it could have been far worse.

The compression is solid, although after the NR there can't really have been anything left to give the encoder trouble anyway. Colours, brightness etc. are identical to those found on the Fox DVD. I've noticed some people claiming that the BD looks darker and others that it looks brighter. I can only assume that they have the inputs to which their DVD player and BD player connected are calibrated differently, because I've been through multiple identical frames from both with the eyedropper tool in Photoshop and there is no difference. Full stop.

Of course, this means that the colour values are dramatically different from the 2000 Anchor Bay DVD, derived from a standard definition DigiBeta master. That release was considerably more saturated, some might argue to the point of oversaturation. There has been a lot of back and forth on which (if either) colour palette is correct, and I'm going to hold off on making any claims on that front for the time being, but should point out that I've discussed the matter at some length with Thomas Rostock from Another World Entertainment, and he is of the opinion that the look of the Anchor Bay DVD is more accurate. Certainly Thomas has actually seen the film projected theatrically from a 35mm print, which is a pleasure I'm sorry to say I've yet to experience.

I've decided to share a portion of what Thomas told me:

Having plowed through several VHS, Laserdisc and film-print incarnations of this the director's most accomplished visual achievement (seeing this on the big screen by way of the excellent UK print in circulation around 1995 was truly an astonishing experience for me. Totally blew me away in a way SUSPIRIA couldn't even begin to match), I must say that look of the Anchor Bay DVD of 2000 actually fares much closer to Romano Albani's intended look than the new MGM/FOX. Romano Albani along with Argento worked hard to achieve a fuller, more lush look than SUSPIRIA using in particular the two new lighting color gels named Rose and Deep Blue introduced into the market in 1979.

[...]

In short, Rose and Deep Blue are the governing colors of INFERNO. However, the MGM/FOX transfer suppresses exactly these two colors to the point oblivion (Rose) and to a dull, faded hue (Deep Blue) [...] If one is aware of literally the hours it can take to light with different color-gels on a film-set, it is especially disheartening to witness MGM/FOX's negligent attitude towards the intended color-specific look of INFERNO. But perhaps even worse is the fact that this is the only transfer making its rounds to all corners of the world commercially through MGM's cost-efficent licensing and will stand as a misrepresentation of the real beautiful and haunting color-scheme that is at the very heart and soul of INFERNO. One can voice many a fault about William Lustig's AB/BU releases, but on the visual, color-correctional side of things, he has yet to make mistake.

I've included some captures below comparing the 2007 Fox DVD (upscaled to 1920x1080) to the 2010 Arrow BD. Note that there is a small amount of cropping on all four sides on the BD compared to the DVD. I'm not sure why the image has been zoomed in, but it's worth stressing that the difference is pretty minor - certainly a far cry from Optimum's BD release of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

DVD (20th Century Fox, Region 2 Italy)

BD (Arrow Video, Region ABC UK)

Overall

The first ever BD release of INFERNO could have been something really special in the looks department. Instead, it's basically a case of "It'll do until something better comes along." There are a number of other BD releases of the film in the pipeline, including discs from Another World Entertainment, Camera Obscura and Blue Underground, so there are plenty more opportunities for someone to get it right.

Still, for what it's worth, Arrow have served up some interesting extras, which get a definite thumbs-up from me and which I can't imagine too many Argento connoisseurs passing up the opportunity to check out. On the other hand, given the image quality, I can't say I'm too eager to encourage everyone to rush out and pick up a copy, particularly with three rival BD releases in the pipeline. Perhaps one for a rental... or at the very least wait and see what the other labels come up with before committing to a purchase?

The bottom line: audio - good, extras - good (despite some presentation issues), video - not so good.

35 Comments

 
To combat spam, commenting is automatically disabled on entries older than 30 days.

Did a comment you tried to post accidentally get eaten by the spam filter? It happens from time to time. I get upwards of 200 spam comments every day and unfortunately don't have the time to weed through all of them in case something genuine ended up there by mistake. If one of your posts gets incorrectly flagged as spam, email me at m.r.mackenzie[at]gmail[dot]com and I'll do my best to retrieve it.