The Elvis Blu-ray Collection (Elvis On
Tour (1972)/Jailhouse Rock
(1957)/Viva Las Vegas (1963)/Warner
Bros.)
Picture:
B/B+/B+ Sound: B-/B/B Extras: D/C+/C+ Films: B-
In the
midst of revisionist thinking on Elvis Presley and a time that he has become
more of an imitated figure than a remembered one, Warner Bros. new Elvis
Blu-ray Collection arrives at a good time to really see the performer and star
for who and what he really was. That
includes a groundbreaker, singer, personality and good man who cared about his
fans and was truly always down to earth.
This
includes two of his few good dramatic films, so good that Warner had previously
issued them as single Blu-rays. We
previously reviewed the now defunct HD-DVD editions of Viva Las Vegas and Jailhouse
Rock at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6032/Jailhouse+Rock+++Viva+Las+Vegas
They
still look and sound as good as they did when in the early days of HD formats,
they were two of the most impressive back catalog titles. Jailhouse
is still as fine as we would expect a black and white, older CinemaScope
transfer to look, with some distortion from the older lenses, plus some motion
blur, but Video Black that still impresses.
Viva is still the best
MetroColor film on Blu-ray to date and still impresses with its usually
impressive definition from the Panavision shoot. The sound is also impressive for the age of
the films.
After
Elvis made the unintentionally hilarious Change
Of Habit for Universal, he was back at MGM, but decided that was the end of
his acting days. Following Elvis: That’s The Way It Is, he made Elvis On Tour, an underrated 1972
Rockumentary (yes, it qualifies) about his 15-city tour that shows The King in
his comeback glory. The Beatles had
broken, up, his 1968 career resurrection (including the great hits Burning Love and Suspicious Minds) proved bad “Elvis Musicals” had not killed off
his talents and he had a huge (and I mean HUGE) fan following that still loved
him and went nuts for him at every turn.
He loved his fans, remained down to earth and cared about his work
without pretension or believing his own hype.
Wish most music performers who are successful today were half this
sincere.
A
well-edited compilation, its lack of pushiness works to its favor, with the
added bonus of seeing how to do such a piece without the phony pretension that
we know as the degrading monster of so-called reality-TV. This is a mix of the quiet, honest,
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 image in each case has a different source and Tour was shot in 16mm, made into widescreen by a mix of split
screen, zoom-ins, flipping the same image on opposite sides of the screen to
bookend a main one, etc. in the Woodstock
style. Supervised by Martin Scorsese,
this is very effective and we also get stills and vintage TV footage in the
mix. This is all more interesting than
you would expect and the quality of the footage is decent throughout.
The Dolby
TrueHD 5.1 mixes on each of the older releases remains as good as they were
before, though maybe a tad weaker than I remember, while the DTS-HD MA (Master
Audio) lossless 5.1 on Tour is a
warm, but a mix of those silences, monophonic sound when people are talking and
when the music is on, the 5.1 kicks in from what was a multi-channel sound mix
recorded as Elvis and company performed.
Included are The Jordanaires and Sweet Inspirations with Cissy Houston,
resulting in Tour never looking or
sounding as good. Extras are the same on
the previous releases and Tour sadly
has none.
You can
also see the films via On Demand: http://bit.ly/WB_ELVIS75 and for download via iTunes: http://bit.ly/WBE_ELVIS
- Nicholas Sheffo
