BETTER THAN THE CRITERION? | DR. STRANGELOVE 4K ULTRAHD BLU-RAY REVIEW 

I like it. New channel name

Goated comment

you ain't lying bout that...because presentation is everything

Hello Elliot

That Sony slipcase looks more like one of those cheapo DVD reissues of old movies! Can't see why they didn't use the original artwork used on the case inlay on the slipcase too. I guess that's what happens when your art director prizes uniformity of design across a package over good design. 😉

Swap it

Gayest comment ever.

store.hmv.com/store/film-tv/blu-ray/dr-strangelove-the-criterion-collection

As geoff 9 has stated, the Criterion release is available on Region B also. Please check out the BFI website for a full listing of available Criterion region B releases.

Did you sell your soul?

@@BlueBallofFur I am now one with the dark lord. 😂😂

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I recommend you look up the RU-vid channel of Mike Verta who is a Star Wars superfan who has developed a process to restore a movie just from combining multiple prints of the film. It's fascinating what can be done if you take enough time and have enough good sources to pull from. His Star Wars remaster is better looking than the actual restorations.

@@TheDarkeststar91 Thanks. I'm aware of the Star Wars restoration efforts from prints. It's simply not true to say that those restorations are better than the recent 4k ones. A print, as per my original point, will never offer the same resolution - even given the DNR that they added to them to clean up excessive grain, or match poor CGI. I have seen videos of various amateur restoration attempts on Star Wars, and simply put: they're really not that great. And they reinforce my original point... a print is poor substitute for the original negative - even if you do somewhat ruin things by adding DNR.

@@domcoke The restoration I was pointing towards has a collection of about 20 source prints, 3-4 used at any one time to pull the best version of each frame together. This restoration is based on original scans of different prints that have been natively transferred to 4k from the theatrical prints. While yes, half the point of the video is the restorer Mike Verta trying to bring attention to what he's done to Disney in the hopes they will give him access to the original negatives, the other half is comparing how the restoration he has done often has more detail, color and clarity than the official 4k releases. There are scenes that look better than they ever have, even compared to the official Disney releases. I say all this just essentially to bring up the point that a damaged original print doesn't doom all future restorations/remasters. If someone down the line wanted to do the painstaking restoration work ala Verta's method for Dr. Strangelove, it's possible a better complete print of the film is out there for us to view via pooling various film prints instead of just upconverting the same scan for 20+ years.

@@TheDarkeststar91 Sorry, but I simply don't accept, upon my own inspection, that these restorations look better than the 4k releases. They don't. Film prints, especially ones that are decades old, don't have the level of detail that negatives do. I'm not sure how many times I can make this point. Restorers are well aware of the need to collate different sources, so Verta is simply doing what experienced restorers do every day of the week. Often official restorations are a mixture of sources. But my point STILL stands, that the reason why Dr Strangelove is somewhat limited, in terms of detail, is because it's a 2nd generation source. As are the Star Wars prints.

@@TheDarkeststar91 An exemplar of this point re source generations, is when you look at old films with lots of dissolves... the spliced negative has sections in it that have been optically duped in order to creative the ins and outs of dissolves. You can clearly see a drop in resolution on the in and out shot of a dissolve. And this is just one generation down the line. A good example of this is It's A Wonderful Life. The in/out shots of dissolves have a softened look - the grain is softer. And this is basically what you're looking at with Dr. Strangelove - if you look at the grain, it's quite soft, poorly resolved. If it were from the original camera negative, this grain would be much sharper, and the image overall more detailed.

I think the adoration for Gandhi goes back to the Oscars. If not for Gandhi, ET would’ve probably won everything, and the Academy pretty much started dickriding this movie because showering praise and Oscars on a historical epic would have been more palatable in the old guard’s eyes then awarding Best Picture to ET. While nowhere as controversial as Dances With Wolves/Goodfellas was, it’s still the reason why Gandhi won tons of awards and is frankly forgotten today while ET is beloved with not as many Oscars to show for it.

MrEdWeirdoShow you can swap the filters at the top. But not everyone is doing 4K yet

All 4K releases are region free anyways

They probably will. But they invested in this box set so they probably want to make their money on that first.

Considering that the Box Set has them all in it, already in their own individual standard 4K cases....I would say it is almost a 100% certainty that within a year or so these titles will be put on shelves as stand-alone releases....matching their cases found in this box perfectly.

@@ChrisPeteG never double dip! Unless you release movies. Haha.

@@nosuchthing8 I was just saying that for anyone who doesn't get this set....they will likely put these out as individual releases in the future. They are already putting the discs in their own cases IN this set. So production wise, they are already producing "ready made" versions of these movies, good to go for individual releases. They just have to do more printings and throw these solo releases onto the shelves.

@@ChrisPeteG thank you sir

That's not true. HDR gives you a greater latitude on home video to see more of what a negative had to offer than ever before. It's a Wonderful Life is great on 4k Blu-ray.

I miss the callibration menú on the THX discs

I miss the big loud deep opening on THX discs. Make your hair vibrate

Not really. Look up the Harmy Despecialized Editions or the 4k77, 4k80, and 4k83 fan restorations of the theatrical versions.

Depends. I say absolutely not. 1, 4, 5, and 6 are edited mercilessly. ANH even had another edit done to Han shot first just for this release. Why someone hasn’t gotten a uncut print and just made a bootleg Blu or 4K is beyond me. You’ll either think the edited Star Wars Blu-ray and 4K is the best thing ever or the worst, and I’m in the camp that says it’s the worst. Sorry to be a buzzkill but I’m not gonna lie to you:(

Then get the 4k edition.

It’s mostly contrast right. Color grading is maybe the wrong term. It’s all about black and white levels

@@JeffRauseo Isn't that what HDR is doing?

portland 182 well yes. And HDR is part of the grading. You have to color grade for HDR

@@JeffRauseo Isn't that the 'Wider Color Gamut', that the color grading is for, which is seperate from HDR? Any chance of a video to clear this up?

Your best bet would be to find someone in another country and do a trade. I’m probably going to wind up importing a lot of 4Ks from Europe, including several that legally can’t be sold or shipped to the US (rights issues), and I’ll probably have to ship them to someone (or even have them pay for them, if the sites don’t accept my payment), and then we each mail our items to each other. Also, American Criterion releases are region-locked, the DVDs are all Region 1 and the Blu-rays are all Region A. I think the UK Criterions Blus are Region B locked too.

Having a damaged print is not a mark of quality. Fixing damage is better because it shows the film as it was intended to be seen. Compare jaws 4K to the vhs and laserdisc is completely different because they fixed all the problems that happened to the negative. Film degrades over time and seeing a film print is great but damage doesn’t add to a films viewing it removes from it. Grain on the other hand is meant to be seen and should be present in anything that isn’t 70mm or IMAX that have almost no grain.

Also being a record collector and audiophile you don’t want cracks in your record. Analog audio is vastly superior to anything digital and sound have some lower hiss if anything but pops and cracks mean you got a bad pressing and you should probably as for a new copy. Vinyl records should not have pops and cracks in it. That’s just the same as a lazy blu-ray or DNR on a film.

I finally watched this movie and I must say, it's amazing. The movie was well written and in Stanley Kubrick fashion, the movie was well executed. Plus, I like watching these old movie (in 4K HDR for the most part) because I get to see history. I get to see what was trending back in the days. For Dr. Strangelove, it was the threat of a nuclear war. And the pilot riding the bomb in the end reminded me of a Simpson's episode where Homer was doing the exact same thing but I can't remember the exact episode since I haven't kept up The Simpsons since 2012. For AV, it was a very sharp movie. Although it had a very gritty tone to it. When it comes to the HDR, I didn't really notice much of a difference from SDR. I'm very sure there's a difference but I watch the movie one day and had my tv on the HDR preset but when I went to watch it the next day, I didn't realize I had the movie on an SDR preset and I didn't even notice a difference. I guess I'm biased against black and white movies. I still think HDR is really meant for colorful movies though.

Wow cool! Send me an email - filmsathomeyt@gmail.com

You can import the 4k Blu-ray. Sony only released it overseas for now. It looks excellent.

I heard that Easy Rider was a standard Blu with a 4K digital code. Is that true?

That would be incorrect. The fact we have a 4K scan is what makes this look so good.

@@JeffRauseo OK but the bluray is just fine as u yourself said (albeit a Criterion). Suggests the real 4k additional is very limited 🙂

Why? That makes them unique.

@@JeffRauseo they would look even better in color!!

@@lucalone Not really. The lighting must be more intense with color filmstock. Black and White film allows for a deeper contrast between shadow and light. Film noir would look like crap in color.

@@lucalone You tell em, Ted Turner!

Couldn’t imagine it in color. Just like Psycho or the beginning and end of Wizard of Oz

Have you seen Fear and Desire? That film sucks.

@@austinwilliams8635 : Fear and Desire was student work, and as I recall, Kubrick tried to find all the prints and destroy them. Oddly, though, that movie it still better than most of what I see at my local cineplex.

You don't have a dark sense of humor. Dr. Strangelove is an amazing piece of black comedy.

Everyone has movies of Kubrick’s that they don’t like. Mine is Eyes Wide Shut. Love Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket, and I thought Eyes Wide Shut sucked. I’ll eventually give it another chance, probably when I buy either the standalone Blu or one of the umpteen Kubrick Blu-ray box sets, but currently it isn’t one of my favorites. :/

I love League of their Own. I don’t own it, but whenever it’s on, I’ll watch it. It’s a feel good movie. Even if it does have Madonna and Rosie in it