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Friday, January 7, 2011

A few thoughts on Arrow Video's new Deep Red BD

3:56 PM / BD Impressions / Blu-ray / 35 Comments

It's a little-known fact that this is not actually the first ever high definition release of Dario Argento's masterpiece DEEP RED (a.k.a. PROFONDO ROSSO). While Arrow Video can justifiably lay claim to having produced the world's first Blu-ray Disc release, back in 2005 Italian label Medusa released a special 2-disc edition of the film, the first disc a standard DVD and the second a DVD-ROM containing a 1440x816* high definition version of the film encoded as a Windows Media Video 9 file and playable only on Windows PCs. I suspect most would consider this format overly limiting and the cramming of an HD encode of a movie with a running time of over two hours on to a single DVD-9 to be a less than ideal situation, but the end result wasn't actually all that bad. The compression was heavy, to be sure, but it looked like a nice enough master was lurking underneath all that blocking. It certainly compared very favourably with the various DVD releases and gave me a lot of hope for an eventual BD release.

* The unusual vertical height is derived from the film's 2.35:1 aspect ratio and the fact that the black bars were not encoded as part of the video file itself.

The packaging

Arrow's DEEP RED comes in the now-standard packaging for their special edition BD releases: inside a windowed slip cover with reversible cover art for four possible configurations. In addition to newly commissioned artwork by Rick Melton (the "default" configuration), we get the Italian, US and French theatrical posters. I must confess that DEEP RED is one of those films where I've never really been all that keen on ANY of the official art designs - the US version is kinda cheesy and the Italian version doesn't really work as a DVD/BD cover - so this is one instance where I'm actually OK with the new artwork (the upcoming PHENOMENA cover also looks pretty neat - though I'm a whole lot less taken by the art for THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE and THE CAT O' NINE TAILS). I certainly like it a whole lot more than the overly tacky art used for Arrow's INFERNO release.

We also get a double-sided poster (with the Melton artwork on one side and the US poster on the other) and an 8-page booklet with a new essay by Alan Jones.

The extras

As with INFERNO, this is a 2-disc release, with the first disc containing the full-length 127-minute version of the film and the bulk of the extras, while the second disc features the truncated 105-minute US theatrical cut English-language export version (cheers, Vincent!) and a solitary extra which I'll get on to discussing in a moment.

Disc 1's extras open with a rather grotty-looking Italian theatrical trailer and a high definition version of the US theatrical trailer, which I'd hazard a guess was actually reconstructed from the scan of the film itself, given its very similar look (in spite of the aspect ratio difference) and the fact that it drops down to standard definition when the title and US distribution credits appear.

The main extras, however, consist of separate interviews with three of the film's main players - co-star Daria Nicolodi (speaking a mixture of Italian and English), composer Claudio Simonetti (speaking English) and writer/director Dario Argento (speaking Italian). Barring the elaborate (and in my opinion over-long - sorry!) cut-out animation opening and closing credits, the presentation is fairly straightforward, with each participant addressing the camera and interspersed with clips from the film, the choice of which is often quite amusing and inventive. As is so often the case, the juiciest comments come from the delightfully unrestrained Daria Nicolodi, who spares no expense in letting us know precisely how she feels about her former partner, Argento (she clearly has a great affection for the film, however). Argento himself starts off rather subdued but becomes a lot more lucid as the interview progresses and recounts a very amusing story about discovering a heavily edited French VHS release of the film and calling up the distributor in a rage. Simonetti's comments about starting out as a musician and the doors scoring DEEP RED opened for him and Goblin are also interesting (and probably also the most coherent of the bunch!), but I did get the feeling I'd heard a lot of what he had to say before. I was also a little disappointed by the lack of clips from the 2007 DEEP RED musical he mentions. (It's also worth pointing out that a number of the pieces of music highlighted in this featurette were actually written by the film's original composer, Giorgio Gaslini, rather than Goblin.)

There is also a very brief introduction by Simonetti which plays at the start of the film.

The final, slightly surprising, inclusion on Disc 1 is the commentary by Danish filmmaker and Argento expert Thomas Rostock previously found on the AWE DVD release of the film from a couple of years back. As I understand it, this was a fairly late addition to the line-up, but it's a welcome one as it's a good, informative track even if it does at times lean a little towards describing what's happening on screen. Carefully researched and rehearsed, it's an entirely different approach to the more informal one adopted by Alan Jones and Kim Newman in their Argento commentary collaborations, but no less valid. Rostock's commentary also compliments the other extras on the disc nicely given that he delves into areas overlooked in the three interviews, such as Giorgio Gaslini's involvement with the score and the role of co-writer Bernardino Zapponi.

Finally, Disc 2 features an interview with long-term Argento collaborator Luigi Cozzi, owner of the Profondo Rosso store in Rome. The bulk of the feature consists of a personal tour of the various exhibits in the store's basement by Cozzi, largely comprised of props from films Argento either directed or produced in the 80s.

The sound

DEEP RED has a bit of a problematic history regarding its audio, owing to the fact that, despite being shot in English (post-dubbed for the most part), no English audio exists for significant portions of the film given the decision to cut the English-language export version down to 105 minutes. The Arrow BD takes its cues from the Anchor Bay DVD, offering the option to view the film in Italian or in English with the film dropping back to Italian where no English audio exists. The latter approach takes a bit of getting used to and I know some who refuse to watch the film that way because they can't stand the constant back and forth between two different languages. Arrow clearly regard the all-Italian version as the optimal viewing experience for the full-length 127-minute cut, with the default mix being a lossless Italian DTS-HD Master Audio track, remixed into 5.1. Lossy Italian and English (with partial Italian) 2.0 tracks are also to be found, although there is no lossless English option - not even on the second disc, which presents the 105-minute export version in lossy English only.

Goblin's score sounds particularly imposing on the lossless 5.1 track - enough to persuade even a purist like me to view the film that way. Some of the added multi-channel effects (for example the chatter in the restaurant emanating from the rears at the start of chapter 4) sounds a bit out of place and there is a mildly annoying echo to the dialogue not present in either of the 2.0 tracks, but as remixes go this one is pretty decent.

As with the Anchor Bay DVD, English subtitles come in two flavours for the 127-minute cut: covering the entire film or just the scenes not available in English. The 105-minute cut also includes subtitles.

The video

I was rather critical of Arrow's previous Argento BD release, INFERNO, on account of the overzealous application of grain reduction, which eroded the film's texture and left it looking mushy and video-like. Such criticisms certainly can't be levelled against their release of DEEP RED, which is decidedly grainy... too grainy, I'm sure some will argue. It's clearly the same master used for the Italian WMV-HD release from a few years back, retaining that release's dense grain and noticeable yellow tint. The HD master was created in 2004, and is never going to compete with a modern scan à la THE SOUND OF MUSIC (OK, I'm dreaming, I know). As with a number of other Italian films released on BD, such as DJANGO, SALÒ and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, the grain has an overbearing, noise-like quality to it. The more of these I see, the more inclined I am to suspect that a whole bunch of these films were transferred in high definition at around the same time using the same or similar equipment, and the more convinced I become that this is not how these films should look. (Compare them with TENEBRAE, a modern scan with a very different appearance.)

Now oddly enough, my memory of the WMV-HD version was a lot more favourable despite being derived from the same master and despite having a lower horizontal resolution. After wrangling for some time with Windows' media usage rights (DRM, yay!), I finally managed to get the disc to play, and it turned out that my recollections were mostly accurate. While the compression frequently turns the whole thing into soup, on the occasions when the grain IS allowed to shine through, it looks a whole lot more natural and less "electronic" than what I'm seeing on the Arrow BD. I'm at a loss to explain why this might be, to be honest. It's unquestionably the same scan, so what's going on? Is there a problem with Arrow's treatment of the materials or is it simply that the lower resolution of the WMV-HD disc helped "smooth over" problems inherent in the master? I suspect we'll have a better idea once Blue Underground's BD, which is due out in March and will almost certainly use the same master, materialises. I'd be willing to concede that the problems on the Arrow BD might be down to poor compression (their version of CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD certainly didn't compare very favourably with Blue Underground's version, derived from the same master, in that department) and/or some sort of dodgy scaling (I've a feeling the original master was probably 1440x1080 and therefore would have had to be rescaled to 1920x1080). Until we know for sure, though, I don't intend to start pointing fingers.

Compare the grain in the shots below (left: Medusa's WMV-HD rescaled to 1920x1080; right: Arrow's BD at its native 1920x1080) and let me know what you think:

How does it look in motion, then? A whole lot better than any DVD edition and, in my opinion, preferable to Arrow's smoothed over INFERNO BD, although your mileage may vary depending on your tolerance for all things grainy. I'm torn as to whether it looks better or worse than the WMV-HD version, to tell the truth. It varies from frame to frame and shot to shot, and while there are a lot of very nice-looking moments on the WMV-HD disc, there are also a lot that are so mired in compression artefacts that the picture more or less disintegrates completely. I certainly won't be going back to my Anchor Bay DVD any time soon, that's for sure, but I do suspect things could look a whole lot better than they do here.

I should point out that the 127-minute and 105-minute cuts both look comparable, with the 105-minute cut clearly having been recompiled by removing the appropriate scenes rather than having been sourced from an actual print of the shorter version. However, the presentation of this version is marred by having had its English-language opening and closing credits inserted from a standard definition source. I can't help wondering whether it would have been better to have just left them in Italian.

Oh, and it's also worth noting that there is a fairly noticeable glitch at the 00:45:27 mark, during which the image briefly disintegrates into severe blocking. I've checked this with multiple BD players and playback software and, in case anyone's wondering, it's present to the same degree on all of them, pretty much ruling out any likelihood of this being a player issue. It's minor, but it does take you out of the film momentarily. The same moment is also affected in the 105-minute cut. The problem does NOT appear in the WMV-HD version.

Overall

All told, I'm of two minds about this release. The extras are plentiful, the sound is good (despite the lack of a lossless English option), and I'm sure many will welcome the ability to watch both cuts of the film in high definition (though for me the full-length 127-minute cut is the only one that matters). The image quality is rather iffy, but it's unclear how much better it could reasonably have been expected to look.

I know quite a few people intending to pick up the upcoming Blue Underground release have been waiting to find out whether the extras alone justify the purchase of the Arrow version. That's a question I can't really answer: this is one of my favourite films and I was always planning on picking up both editions anyway. For those only intending to buy one or the other, we'll have to wait for the BU release to see how it compares to Arrow's version on the audio-visual front. Different people will have different views on this matter, but this is mine: extras, no matter how informative and numerous they are, are just that - extras. For me, it's all about the presentation of the film itself, and personally, given the choice between a feature-packed disc with a decent transfer and a bare-bones one with a superb transfer, I'd pick the later without a moment's hesitation.

Of course, this is all rather academic at the moment, given that BU's release is a good three months off. So, should you buy the Arrow version now or wait and see what the competition looks like? That's not a question I'd feel particularly comfortable answering. The only advice I can give is to read my review (as well as the various others floating about the 'net) and decide how you want to play it.

PS. In the interests of balance, here's a more positive review than mine, as well as a more critical one.

35 Comments

 
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