Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Card Player BD

10:51 PM / Blu-ray / Comments10 Comments

The Card Player BD

Another day, another Argento film makes the leap to BD. While everything from the classic period with the exception of OPERA is now at least available, if not necessarily in particularly good quality, much of his work from the 90s onwards has yet to show up. German label Edition Tonfilm are filling in a couple of the gaps, with the (somewhat overrated, in my opinion) "greatest hits" effort NON HO SONNO/SLEEPLESS coming out in November, while the underrated (my opinion again) THE CARD PLAYER came out last week. My copy showed up today, and I've taken a quick look. Note that these opinions are NOT final: I haven't watched it from beginning to end yet, so don't take this as a definitive review.

First impressions are actually pretty positive. I wasn't sure what to expect from this title, and the beat-up, low detail opening titles didn't exactly fill me with confidence. Once the credits are over, however, things improve pretty dramatically, and the results are definitely on the watchable side:

The Card Player
label: Edition Tonfilm; disc country: Germany; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.78:1 (theatrical 1.85:1)

The Card Player The Card Player The Card Player The Card Player The Card Player The Card Player The Card Player The Card Player The Card Player The Card Player

Clearly no LVR jobbie, this! A couple of points: Example 1 is the last shot of the opening credits sequence immediately before the image quality improves dramatically, and Example 5 is representative of a segment of approximately 24 seconds beginning at the 00:26:16 mark, where for some reason the film drops to ugly-looking upscaled standard definition footage. The aspect ratio also switches from open matte 1.78:1 to OAR 1.85:1 during this stretch. I'm at a loss to explain why this happens, and I can't guarantee that this is the only time this happens as I haven't watched the disc all the way through yet.

 
10 Comments

1. Neil said:

Sleepless is definitely 'greatest hits' Argento, there's a staggering amount of references to past works. But what a score by Goblin. Also a great double murder *cough Suspiria* opening, Von Sydow & that amazing carpet shot. And yes, Card Player is under-rated, unfairly shat on imo...

(Posted on Friday, September 28, 2012 at 1:07 AM)

2. Nicholous said:

I'm becoming a fan of Edition Tonfilm, have enjoyed their Franco releases. What are the language options?

(Posted on Friday, September 28, 2012 at 6:14 PM)

3. Author Profile Page Michael said:

NICHOLOUS:

Language options are German (DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0) and English (lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 only, unfortunately). German subtitles are optional.

(Posted on Friday, September 28, 2012 at 6:28 PM)

4. Cop killer said:

I'd be inclined to agree with you about NO HO SONNO - I really enjoyed it upon initial viewing but, the opening aside, found it severely lacking second time around, even quite boring. I've only seen IL CARTAIO once and quite enjoyed it but I really do not think that Argento has made a great film since TENEBRE, even though I rate PHENOMENA, OPERA, THE BLACK CAT and THE STENDHAL SYNDROME all very good, if flawed. Everything else to me is mediocre at best or exceptional poor at worst.

(Posted on Saturday, September 29, 2012 at 9:40 PM)

5. Neil said:

My only problem with Stendhal is the iffy cg pills down throat shot. Everything else is a cut above. Last masterpiece? Probably...

(Posted on Monday, October 1, 2012 at 3:59 PM)

6. Copkiller said:

Ha! Yeah, the pill are bad. The bullet through the face shot's not much better, either! It was like Stivaletti was a bit of a kid in a candy store on this film!

(Posted on Monday, October 1, 2012 at 4:44 PM)

7. Mike said:

Is the package a DVD or Blu-Ray size, can't tell from the pic. Also is it region coded B?

(Posted on Tuesday, October 9, 2012 at 1:19 AM)

8. Author Profile Page Michael said:

MIKE:

It's DVD size, and it's coded for all regions, despite what it says on the cover.

(Posted on Tuesday, October 9, 2012 at 10:35 AM)

9. Argento Fan said:

Any update on whether the rest of the film features additional spots of upscaled SD footage?

(Posted on Wednesday, October 24, 2012 at 4:12 AM)

10. Author Profile Page Michael said:

ARGENTO FAN:

Yes, there are additional moments - generally close-ups of corpses or the (occasional) moments of gore, which makes me suspect a censored print was used for the HD transfer, which was then augmented from an SD source to fill in the missing material. I'm going to try to put together a definitive list at some point, but it's dependent on me having time to watch the whole thing and make notes.

(Posted on Friday, October 26, 2012 at 1:34 PM)

 
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