Tuesday, November 9, 2010

BD impressions: Alien

1:11 PM / BD Impressions / Comments8 Comments

BD Impressions
Blu-ray

It's always nice when you finally get round to watching a film widely considered to be a classic and it completely lives up to the hype. It doesn't really happen all that often for me, probably owing to my somewhat eclectic taste in films. As such, I sat down to watch ALIEN hoping for the best but knowing there was a strong chance it wouldn't have quite the impact on me that it did on so many other people.

How wrong I was. I honestly don't think I need to tell you that ALIEN is an utterly brilliant exercise in tension and terror, brilliantly realised by one of the most gifted directors in the business. I doubt there's anything I can say about the film that hasn't been said a million and one times by other people, so I'm simply say I thought it was absolutely superb - a pinnacle of the horror genre - and leave it at that. I just wish I hadn't had prior warning of what I'm sure should have been one of the most unexpected and shocking moments in the movie. Curse you, Channel 4, and your "100 Top Scariest Moments" countdown.

Image quality: Because I hadn't seen ALIEN until watching it on this BD, I don't really feel qualified to talk about the film's look and whether or not this new transfer is faithful to it. I do know that it was supervised and approved by Ridley Scott, so we can pretty reasonably assume that it looks the way he wants it to, if not in 1979 then certainly in 2010. Anyway, it's a very impressive offering with excellent encoding and rich detail. It looks to me like some grain reduction has been carried out, but it's not particularly intrusive and, while personally I would have preferred a completely natural-looking image, this level of digital manipulation is a long, long way indeed for the horrors of the likes of PATTON and the re-release of PREDATOR (two name two Fox titles that most assuredly WERE mangled). 9/10

Alien
studio: 20th Century Fox; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 30.2 GB (theatrical cut), 29.9 GB (director's cut);
average bit rate (including audio): 37.19 Mbit/sec (theatrical cut), 36.99 Mbit/sec (director's cut)

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8 Comments

1. Greg M said:

I hope you watched the Theatrical Cut. The "2003 Director's Cut", as Ridley Scott says in the video introduction on the disc, is not actually the director's preferred cut! Anything not included in the original '79 cut is best viewed separately as a deleted scene.

(Posted on Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 1:56 PM)

2. Author Profile Page Michael said:

I did indeed watch the theatrical cut. I saw Ridley Scott's flat and almost grumpy introduction to the director's cut and immediately surmised that this was going to be another GLADIATOR situation: i.e. an alternate cut prepared for home video at the behest of the studio rather than a genuine example of the director revisiting the film to better match his intended vision.

(Posted on Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 2:04 PM)

3. Matthew McKinnon said:

Also very nice - one of the many nice things about this set - is that the colour timings for the Brett-looks-for-Jones sequence are different for each version. The theatrical has a bluer more natural look, the 2003 edit had a golden tint. Both are represented.

(Posted on Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 9:31 PM)

4. bosque said:

Agree with Matthew, those alternative colour timings are a very nice touch. Same with Blade Runner with the optional blue or green cuts. That is what we want the new medium to offer: something both lavish and appealing to an obsessional nature in film fans !

(Posted on Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 11:36 PM)

5. Kentai said:

Haven't seen this film since I was a teen, but still remember it (and the first sequel) wowing the living shite out of me. Scott combined the slow, deliberate, and brutal nature of the emerging slasher film with the nightmarish vision of H.R. Giger, and probably wound up directing the best film of his career. I don't mean that as a slight, merely that it's worthy of that much praise.

My only slight disappointment (I can't really call it a complaint) is seeing how "human" the monsters' movement and speed appears in a few lingering shots. It doesn't hamper the threat or ruin the film, but the world has taken the realistic nature of a humanoid monster so much further since (be it in Pumpkinhead or Pan's Labyrinth) that I can't help but think that the "Queen" in the follow-up fixes the only minor flaw the first film has. The Queen isn't a guy in a rubber suit, and as amazing as Giger's costume was, knowing that what we're looking at can't be a guy in a rubber suit makes for a much more satisfying visual. Or, that's how I've always looked at it.

For what its' worth, the DTheater version from 2003 (the "Director's Cut") looks generally similar, but somewhat inferior to the new BD. This has more natural looking (lower) contrast and no sharpening or major compression artifacts. Plenty of people are nit-picking this box set apart like their lives depended on it, and while I can see some wiggle-room in thinking ALIENS' new color timing is "off", anyone saying that ALIEN is wrong leaves me speechless. Based on the caps I've seen it looks absolutely phenomenal, and I'd be overjoyed if half the BDs I bought looked that good.

I only hope I can win the lottery or something to justify $90 for two films I really love, and two I really don't feel much for either way. I can't blame Fox for being as unenthusiastic about ALIEN3 and "4" as I am, using old 2k transfers and all that, but it still make it harder to justify paying a premium price for them. (Even $60~65 for the almost-identical UK set is a stretch, and at that point I'd almost rather pay the extra $20 for the US "Book Case".)

(Posted on Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 4:21 AM)

6. Marcus said:

I also like the feeling of watching films that took quite a beating critically and finding out they are underrated gems. The work of Radley Metzger comes to mind.

(Posted on Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 4:37 AM)

7. bosque said:

One point to add about Alien 3, how good is that score ! I've watched the extended cut a couple of times on DVD since the Quadrilogy came out, but I wasn't previously so struck by the score - hearing it on Blu-Ray it seems to be the highlight of the movie. There is a particularly good music cue when the Alien and Ripley come face-to-face. What a superb release this is.

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

8. Buster D said:

Kentai said:
My only slight disappointment (I can't really call it a complaint) is seeing how "human" the monsters' movement and speed appears in a few lingering shots. It doesn't hamper the threat or ruin the film, but the world has taken the realistic nature of a humanoid monster so much further since (be it in Pumpkinhead or Pan's Labyrinth) that I can't help but think that the "Queen" in the follow-up fixes the only minor flaw the first film has. The Queen isn't a guy in a rubber suit, and as amazing as Giger's costume was, knowing that what we're looking at can't be a guy in a rubber suit makes for a much more satisfying visual. Or, that's how I've always looked at it.

Yeah, I can agree with this. When I went to a local theater showing (which ended after the buses stopped running so I had to walk through 5+ miles of suburban Pittsburgh in the dark to get home, but it was worth it) about 10 years ago while I was in college, I distinctly remember the audience not gasping when the Alien suddenly appears and reaches out for Dallas, but laughing out at how cheesy the costume appeared in that scene.

(Posted on Friday, November 12, 2010 at 5:38 AM)

 
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