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Tuesday, December 14, 2010
BD impressions: Astérix et la surprise de César
12:50 PM / BD Impressions / 
4 Comments
The film: Released in 1985 after almost a decade since the last Asterix film (legal issues, naturally), ASTÉRIX ET LA SURPRISE DE CÉSAR (Asterix and Ceasar's Surprise, released in English as ASTERIX VS. CAESAR) is the first of three films produced by the Gaumont studio in the mid-to-late-80s and the first of two (the other being LE COUP DU MENHIR/ASTERIX AND THE BIG FIGHT) to be an amalgamation of two different books. The two sources were ASTERIX THE GLADIATOR and ASTERIX THE LEGIONARY, which actually fit together rather well in that both deal with Asterix and Obelix leaving their village on a mission to rescue one of their own, kidnapped by the Romans. With some light tweaking of the plot, the film takes in both LEGIONARY's North Africa and GLADIATOR's Rome, and indeed comes together far more effectively than LE COUP DU MENHIR/ASTERIX AND THE BIG FIGHT, which only succeeded in combining ASTERIX AND THE SOOTHSAYER and ASTERIX AND THE BIG FIGHT by jettisoning virtually everything from the latter (including, bafflingly, the Big Fight of the title).
CÉSAR, and ASTÉRIX CHEZ LES BRETONS/ASTERIX IN BRITAIN from the following year, were produced simultaneously, with BRITAIN being the more assured of the two. Still, CÉSAR has a lot to offer, and indeed I'm inclined to call it the more successful of the two overall, thanks to its brisker pace and greater variety. Still, it suffers to a degree from the same problem that afflicts most of the Asterix films, in that the stakes seem pretty low throughout. The Asterix books have a decidedly lackadaisical quality, generally conforming to one of two possible paradigms: the "village under threat" scenario and the "Asterix pokes fun at a foreign country" travelogue. CÉSAR conforms to the latter (albeit with the social satire largely excised in favour of a more plot-heavy format), and as a result of both the structure it inherits from the books and the decidedly G-rated nature of the film, there's never any real threat to the characters. It ultimately feels rather bitty and episodic, which is fine in a 44-page graphic novel but feels rather slight when transposed to a 75-minute film. Some of the strongest elements, and the ones in which the stakes are briefly raised, come in the form of additions not present in either of the books, particularly Asterix's near-drowning in a basement prison during a thunderstorm, which is about as dark as the series ever got.
Flaws aside, it's all good fun, and one of the unintentional pleasures of this film is watching the character designs change with virtually every shot. The phrase "on model" clearly wasn't familiar to the animators, resulting in a rather bizarre state of affairs in which the proportions and even overall artistic styles of the characters morph continuously over the course of the movie. It started out under the supervision of a British director, Ginger Gibbons, who was replaced by twins Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi (who later went on to work at Disney, directing the Firebird Suite segment of FANTASIA 2000), and while it's hard to know where Gibbons' influence ends and the Brizzis' begins, overall they do a decent job of pulling it together into a cohesive whole.
Image quality: I was pretty positive about this disc following the cursory glance to took at it on the day it arrived. Having now watched it from beginning to end, and had a chance to look more closely at it, I'm feeling slightly less generous. The disc itself is pretty solid, but underlying problems with the master prevent me from elevating it into the upper echelons of animation BDs.
To set the stage, this appears to be a completely new master of the film. Compared with the previous French DVD release from 2005, the image is darker and more richly saturated, which brings it more in line with the various British, Australian and German releases (VHS and DVD) I've seen. Additionally, the opening and closing titles have been electronically regenerated, which is not something I'm particularly happy about, as they... well, look like electronically regenerated titles. The DVD release was marred by some pretty significant DVNR artefacts in the form of disappearing lines and smearing, and while the problems are slightly less severe this time round, they're still there and still, to my mind, shockingly careless (see Example 6 and Example 8). A further problem emerges in roughly the final third of the film, in the form of heavy mosquito noise around the animation outlines and areas of the screen in which there has been recent movement (see Example 19). At first I suspected the culprit to be poor compression. Upon closer inspection, however, it appears to be some sort of crude grain reduction gone wrong. These problems are less apparent in motion than they are in still-frame form, but it still strikes me as incredibly sloppy that they were allowed to get through.
Still, it's the best the film has ever looked (well, outside of a cinema, at any rate), and I don't mean that as a back-handed compliment. Detail is incredibly impressive, with no hint of the ringing that plagued the DVD, and when you consider how poorly treated these films have been over the years on home video the results here are even more impressive. Flaws aside, this is extremely watchable even on a 123" display. It's just a shame it's not perfect. 8/10
Astérix et la surprise de César
studio: Gaumont; country: France; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 17.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 31.85 Mbit/sec
4 Comments
Brian:
Wow, sounds like an interesting experience. I believe the Brizzis also had a feature in development at Disney, but they left the studio (or were pushed) before it ever saw the light of day.
Kentai:
I hadn't really considered that the grain might be artificial, and looking at the disc again, I'm not really sure. For one thing, it's not consistent, varying in intensity from shot to shot. It's definitely been grain reduced, but I doubt it was completely obliterated and then regenerated. Also, bear in mind that the grain reduction and the automated scratch removal (which will be to blame for the likes of the rooster shot) will have been two independent processes (although it's certainly feasible that both were done at once).
Yeah, Bakshi's LOTR looks pretty good - still haven't got round to watching it in full. By the way, WIZARDS is also available on BD from Eureka in the UK, and it's all-regions.
(Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 10:11 PM)
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1. Brian said:
Interesting review Michael. Back in '93 I was in Paris working on The Goofy movie. The studio had been bought out by Disney, however Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi were retained as animation directors. Midway through the production they were removed due to creative differences between themselves and the American directors. I didn't know they went on to work on Fantasia 2000.
(Posted on Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 3:48 PM)