Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo (Sony Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B     Sound: B     Extras: B-     Film: B

 

 

I fully appreciate how Cirque du Soleil has completely revolutionized and reinvented the circus, in fact they have fused together a variety of art forms together to create a truly unique experience that ultimately takes the circus to a whole new level.  Primarily by combining music, literature, dance, gymnastics, ballet, comedy, miming, juggling, theater, and a variety of other performance-based acts together to create shows that are full of diversity, fun, excitement, and thematic as well. 

 

I’ve seen several of their shows and while the formula remains the same throughout, the results are always equally rewarding.  Corteo tells of a clown who has recently died and now remains somewhere between heaven and hell, the remainder of the show pulls together many vignettes of his life and combines some wonderful music with choreographed dances and other amazing acts.  At times it’s funny, while other times it’s full of wonder and amazement, but it never becomes dull or mundane as things are constantly moving and new acts appear.  Perhaps the only weakness is that it struggles to keep us informed of the theme, we never really gain a full sense of the storyline and ultimately suffers a bit from not pulling everything together. 

 

When DVD arrived many of the Cirque du Soleil shows were available in that format, and even one of them Dralion was beefed up and turned into a Superbit DVD, which was released by Columbia/TriStar and featured the show in DTS 5.1 with more space on the disc utilized for picture and sound.  It was decent, but nothing great.  I was very interested though in seeing how a show would look in true High Definition when Corteo was announced for Blu-ray.  The results?  Well.  Not so good either.

 

Corteo arrives in a 1080p 1.78 X 1 High Definition transfer that is plagued with a variety of problems.  The first and most obvious problem is that it seems to have colors that smear and looks like a recycled transfer from a DVD instead of a real High Definition transfer for Blu-ray.  Colors seem flat and do not demonstrate some of the finer details that Blu-ray has to offer.  Close-up shots look better, while darker or wide shots do not look quite as good and blacks are almost always an issue.  Most of the time the transfer looks soft, especially when there are dark and light tones within the same parameter.  There is even a notice on the back of the packaging for this Blu-ray that states:

 

This performance film utilizes low-light photography and other factors that contribute to the overall grain structure.  This visual style has been retained for this high definition presentation.  

 

Ok, this disclaimer at least lets us know that they are aware that grain and softness is going to be an issue, so I guess they are blaming that on the photography technique used.  I have seen other performance-based theatrical performances on Blu-ray as well and they didn’t have near the issues that this particular one has, maybe in the future they will invest in better equipment if they know they are going to issue in Blu-ray?

 

As if the picture is not enough of an issue, then there is the audio, which is also problematic as well.  Not sure what they are going to blame that on, but I would simply state that it’s the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix.  However, this release features a lossless Dolby Digital TrueHD mix and shouldn’t have these issues, but yet it does.  The biggest issue is the muddiness of the mix.  Most of the time there are many things going on at once within the show.  More often than not there is music happening as well as some dialogue or singing, but the mix has a share of problems as it becomes hard to hear what they are saying at times, when you turn it up then the music becomes too loud.  There needs to be a better balance between the softer and louder portions, plus the low end is flat sounding, which also creates a bit of a problem as well.  When you turn the sound up in order to try and recreate being there live it just turns too ‘boomy’ with the low end not really having much dynamics, despite its presence.  The higher fidelity parts are not as much of an issue, but everything feels distant and seems too thin or spread out within the soundstage.

 

There are a few extras that are all behind-the-scenes and take the viewer into the world of the artists and the show, which are quite informative and really help give a perspective on just how dedicated these performers are and how complex the show is.  It really gives an appreciation for what they do and what it takes to make a show happen.  All the supplements are in standard definition.

 

Overall a good show, even with the problems that it faces on Blu-ray, one can only hope that more shows will arrive to Blu-ray, but with better picture and sound.

 

 

-   Nate Goss