Fury
(2014/Sony 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray)/Gone
Are The Days
(2018/Lionsgate Blu-ray w/DVD)/The
Great Silence (1968/Film
Movement Blu-ray)/A Lost
Lady (1934/First
National/Warner Archive DVD)/No
Down Payment
(1957/Fox/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)
4K
Ultra HD Picture: B+ Picture: B/B+ & C+/B/C+/B Sound: B+
& B/B & C+/B-/C/B- Extras: C+/C+/B-/D/C Films:
C+/C/B-/C+/C+
PLEASE
NOTE:
The No
Down Payment
Blu-ray is now only available from our friends at Twilight Time, is
limited to only 3,000 copies and can be ordered while supplies last,
while A
Lost Lady
is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive
series. All can be ordered from the links below.
Here
are some dramas crossing into various genres that deal with serious
issues and situations...
David
Ayers' Fury
(2014) was a mixed critical and commercial success at best, but Sony
rightly believes it is a high quality production and has made it one
of their early back catalog 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray set
releases. You can read our coverage of the film on DVD at this
link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13278/Bird+People+(2014/MPI/Sundance+Selects+DVD
My
opinion of the film has not changed, but it looks more ambitious to
me now and especially in 4K, you can see how all involved were going
all out to make this work. There is a larger audience for this one,
even if it has its issues and the 4K version in particular shows what
a serious piece of filmmaking it is. If you have not seen the film,
outside of a solid 35mm print, see it in 4K if you can.
Extras
(much more than the DVD) include Digital HD Ultraviolet Copy for PC,
PC portable and other cyber capable devices, while the Blu-ray adds
over 50 minutes of deleted footage that I still say shows the film
was not cut optimally, a Photo Gallery, Director's Combat Journal and
three Making Of featurettes: Blood
Brothers,
Armored
Warriors
and Taming
The Best.
In an unusual case, the Ultra HD Blu-ray adds extras, including
Original Theatrical Trailers and Behind The Scenes pieces Tiger
131,
Heart
Of Fury,
Clash
Of Armor,
No
Guts No Glory: The Horror of Combat
and documentary Tanks
Of Fury.
Next
are back-to-back Westerns, new and old. First, this new Western from
Lionsgate, Gone
Are The Days
(2018), features a great cast which includes Lance Henriksen, Tom
Berenger, Meg Steedle, and (a very fun) Danny Trejo but is a slow
burn that hits on many of the Western story beats that we come to
expect in such a romp. While not as heavy hitting as Hostiles,
Gone
isn't badly shot or produced even if it isn't entirely original.
Famed
Gunman Taylon Flynn (Henriksen) has led a life made of the stuff of
legends. But even such a man is mortal and soon finds himself the
victim of illness. Deciding to go on one last romp he returns to a
mining town, where his abandoned daughter lives, in hopes of making
things right... and saving her from the brothel she works in. Along
his journey he encounters several interesting characters and
ultimately hatches a brilliant rescue mission.
Special
Features include...
Behind
the Scenes featurettes
Cast
and Crew Interviews
Gone
are the Days
Trailer
and
a Trailer Gallery.
The
other, older Western is Sergio Corbucci's The
Great Silence
(1968), one of the better Spaghetti Westerns of the time, now
reissued by Film Movement on Blu-ray in a very well-restored edition
whose playback quality renders the older DVD from the underrated
Fantoma label very hard to watch. You can read our coverage of the
film and that DVD at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5426/The+Great+Silence+(1968/Fantoma
Since
we last looked at the film, a forgettable new wave of would-be
Spaghetti Westerns have been made, but most of them were weak and
seeing this restored, you can seed it really is one of the best
Sergio Leone did not direct, as odd as it gets. Jean-Louis
Trintignant is very convincing as the title character and Klaus
Kinski excellent as his counterpoint opposite. Corbucci directed the
original Django
(reviewed elsewhere on this site) and can just about claim second
place to Leone for these films. Seeing it restored makes it more
memorable, effective and serious film fans should seek this one out.
Extras
repeat the previous DVD content for the most part, including an
alternate ending created for distribution in foreign markets, a
theatrical trailer and video introduction by Alex Cox (director of
the '80s cult favorite Repo
Man,
et al with Cox
On Corbucci)
and he also contributes a brief commentary over the otherwise silent
alternate ending. However, his liner notes were not carried over,
but we get in their place a new illustrated booklet with new Simon
Abrams essay, a second Alternate Ending and the vintage 1968
documentary on the film: Western,
Italian Style,
that is very well done.
Alfred
E. Green's A
Lost Lady
(1934) is our oldest film here, but very interesting with an early
performance by Barbara Stanwyck as a woman who quickly becomes a
widow soon after marriage and goes into shock when a wealthy lawyer
comes into her life and gives her the opportunity to remarry. She
does, but doing so on the rebound is never a good idea, though the
twist here the filmmakers could not have expected is that rich man is
played by Frank Morgan, who is actually really good here holding his
own in many extended scenes. Impressive. In five years, he would be
immortalized in the classic Wizard
Of Oz.
Of
course, she still wants love and not money, an option offered by a
young Ricardo Cortez. To the credit of all, this does not become a
sloppy melodrama, though it still is to some extent and even then,
Stanwyck's star power as obvious. Lyle Talbot also stars in a pretty
good film worth seeing once, including for how good Morgan is here.
There
are sadly no extras, so they couldn't even find a trailer?
Finally
we have Martin Ritt's No
Down Payment
(1957) with its own melodrama to offer, but the twist is showing the
dark side of post-WWII U.S. life as several families move into a
nice, clean, fun new suburban housing community where they have
money, happiness and peace.... or do they? Tony Randall plays a
drunk, everyone has secrets and the 'happy' closeness is about to
backfire for just about everyone involved. Joanne Woodward is great
here in an early performance, Jeffrey Hunter, Sheree North, Pat
Hingle, Patricia Owens, Cameron Mitchell and Barbara Rush make it all
believable, though some twists in the script are still shocking and
at least one would get booed by a healthy audience today.
Still,
Ritt is a great director, handles the cast very well, they deliver as
well and the script (by blacklisted Ben Maddox) deals with money,
sex, racism and the empty side of success. Despite anything dated
about it (and you'll love all the great outdoor footage, especially
of al the business in the good old days of competitive,
share-the-wealth capitalism) is as much a time capsule as a film with
points still relevant today.
Fox
has licensed this to the great Twilight Time label to be one of their
highly collectible Limited Edition Blu-rays, so get it while you can.
An
Isolated Music Score track and another nicely illustrated booklet on
the film including informative text and yet another excellent,
underrated essay by the great film scholar Julie Kirgo are the
extras.
Now
for the tech performance of these discs. The
2160p HEVC/H.265, HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High
Definition 2.35 X 1 image on Fury
is an impressive performer shot in real anamorphic Panavision on
state-of-the-art 35mm Dolby Vision 3 film negative stocks. The
result is a great-looking film that holds up, has very convincing
darkness, yet also has exceptional color and a solid look that
impresses throughout. Of course, it is a war film, so the color
scheme is not wide-ranging, but convincing. The 1080p 2.35 X 1
digital High Definition image still looks good, but it is not as rich
and solid as the 4K version. Of course, both are much better than
the old DVD. As for sound, the Dolby
Atmos 11.1 (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mixdown on older systems, its original
form before the 12-track upgrade here) is impressive on the 4K disc,
while the regular Blu-ray settles for a respectable DTS-HD MA (Master
Audio) 5.1 lossless mix. All this is professional through and
through.
Presented
on Blu-ray in 1080p high definition and its original widescreen
aspect ratio of 2.39:1 and English 5.1 DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
lossless mix, Days
looks and sounds pretty good on the aging format. Color and sound
are up to standards with a more naturalistic than stylistic look. The
set also includes an anamorphically enhanced, standard definition DVD
with similar (more compressed) specs (like lossy Dolby Digital 5.1
sound) and a digital UV copy.
The
1080p 1.66 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Great
Silence
can show the age of the materials used, but this restoration is far
superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film on home
video ans those responsible for the upgrade and 2K restoration did a
great job to the point that it looks better and more authentic than
the recent 'upgrades' of the Leone/Eastwood Dollars
film where the persons fixing them took too many liberties for all
concerned. The PCM 2.0 Mono sound is also just fine and an
improvement over previous compressed presentations, with this critic
favoring the Italian language track.
The
1.33 X 1 black & white image on Lady
comes from decent 35mm materials and though a little more restoration
would help, this looks good, but
the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono shows the films age, sounds a
generation down and needs some more work. Be careful of high
playback levels and volume switching.
Finally,
the 1080p 2.35 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfer on Payment
rarely show the age of the materials used, looking crisp and clear
for the old CinemaScope format in what looks like a new HD master
from the Fox vault. Great work and we get two soundtracks: DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless and DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0
Stereo lossless mixes based on the original 4-track magnetic
soundmaster with traveling dialogue and sound effects, so that is to
be expected. The music, well-recorded dialogue and sound is pretty
good and I liked the 5.1 especially.
To
order the No
Down Payment
limited edition Blu-ray, buy it and other great exclusives while
supplies last at these links:
www.screenarchives.com
and
http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/
...and
to order the A
Lost Lady
Warner Archive DVD, go to this link for it and many more great
web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.wbshop.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo & James
Lockhart (Gone)
https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/
