Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. Are you ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence? Viddy well, my brothers, for surely the Blu-rays this week are gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh.
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All right, maybe most of the week’s new releases are the usual mixed bag, but a handful of titles stand out as notable. <\/p>\n
Fans of director Stanley Kubrick (and what right-minded film lover isn’t a fan of Kubrick?) would seem to be in for an embarrassment of riches this week. However, Warner’s ‘Stanley Kubrick Limited Edition Collection<\/strong>‘ box set is mostly a simple repackaging of discs previously available. These include ‘2001: A Space Odyssey<\/a>‘, ‘The Shining<\/a>, ‘Full Metal Jacket<\/a>‘, and ‘Eyes Wide Shut<\/a>‘. Warner licenced ‘Dr. Strangelove<\/a>‘ from Sony and ‘Spartacus<\/a>‘ from Universal. Again, these are the same discs previously available, not remastered in any way. ‘Spartacus’ is still that notorious DNR travesty.<\/p>\n The three new Kubrick titles in the box set are also all available separately: ‘Lolita<\/strong>‘, ‘A Clockwork Orange: 40th Anniversary Edition<\/strong>‘ and ‘Barry Lyndon<\/strong>‘. Unfortunately, ‘Clockwork Orange’ has not been remastered either. The dated transfer on the Anniversary disc is recycled from the old Blu-ray released in 2007<\/a>, even though a brand new restoration played at the Cannes Film Festival this year. The Anniversary Edition comes in a Digibook package and includes some new supplements such as the excellent ‘Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures’ documentary (in SD), but I fully expect Warner to reissue this one again with a new transfer based on the restoration sometime in the future. <\/p>\n There’s been a lot of controversy about the aspect ratio Warner used for the ‘Barry Lyndon’ transfer. The disc has been mildly cropped from Kubrick’s preferred 1.66:1 theatrical ratio (as ‘Lolita’ and ‘Clockwork Orange’ are both presented) to a screen-filling 1.78:1 at the instruction of Kubrick’s personal assistant (read: hanger-on) Leon Vitali, who has proven himself in the past to be an unreliable source of technical information. Arguments have raged<\/a> over which aspect ratio is “correct.” Realistically, the difference is very small and the disc looks perfectly fine at 1.78:1. I personally don’t think this is worth fretting over, except that ‘Barry Lyndon’ happens to be so deadly boring that there’s not much else to think about while its interminable three hours roll by. My advice is to pick up ‘Lolita’ (a genuine masterpiece) and skip the others for now. You may feel differently.<\/p>\n