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Anime News

What's Old is New Blu-ray Gives Studios Backlist Opportunities
Date: 10/22/2008
With the Iron Man Blu-ray selling over 500,000 units during its first week of release, the Blu-ray disc (BD) is well on its way to becoming a mass medium with mass market retailers like Target and Best Buy devoting more space to Blu-ray and offering players for under $200. Netflix expects to have a half a million Blu-ray subscribers by the end of the year and The Dark Knight is likely to become the first million-selling BD, if Iron Man or Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn?t get there first. The idea that Blu-ray or hi-def DVDs would become a ?niche market? like laser discs seems quite mistaken now, especially remembering that the bestselling laser disc, The Star Wars Trilogy, sold just around 30,000 units.



Already the success of the Blu-ray format has provided Hollywood studios with another way to milk untold millions out of their backlist. Paramount?s Blu-ray release of Michael Bay?s Transformers was a major hit, but what about older films which weren?t necessarily shot with hi-def in mind?



Studios basically have two choices. The easy path is just making a high-def Blu-ray transfer of their existing materials. The other option is a full blown, frame-by-frame restoration of a classic movie to bring it up to contemporary standards for a high definition release. This is what Paramount did for The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration, a superb restoration job that recreates the theatrical look of the Godfather Trilogy without over-processing the images. Gordon Willis photographed a major portion of the triolgy in relatively low light and the film grain was visible in the first two films? theatrical release back in the 1970s. The Blu-ray version looks great, but it still has the texture and dramatic lighting that was so effective in the original theatrical releases.



In addition to the excellent restoration job on the films themselves, Paramount has included a wealth of extras making full use of the tremendous capacity of the Blu-ray format. Particularly interesting is ?The Masterpiece that Almost Wasn?t,? which chronicles the incredible hurdles the filmmakers had to get over in terms of casting, production cost, and the studio?s attempt to get Mario Puzo to change the setting of his saga to 1970s Los Angeles.



For an epic film trilogy like The Godfather, the Blu-ray format provides the incentive to put the effort and money into restoration. According to Home Media Retailing nearly 65% of all the copies of The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration sold in North America were in the Blu-ray format.



Thus Blu-ray provides the perfect excuse for re-releasing epic films such as Lawrence of Arabia, particularly in conjunction with a major restoration, but what about re-issuing genre films? Sony?s Ray Harryhausen Collection includes four classic Harryhausen science fiction and fantasy films, It Came From Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, 20 Million Miles to Earth, and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. The first three films were originally shot in black-and-white and are available in colorized versions on the Blu-ray discs, but, while the Blu-ray B&W versions are nice and clean, they are not appreciably better than conventional DVDs of the films in visual quality. The Blu-ray process does however work for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, which is definitely the highlight of The Ray Harryhausen Collection.



MGM has begun to release the James Bond films on Blu-ray with six titles releasing this week including Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Thunderball, Live and Let Die, Die Another Day, and For Your Eyes Only. While one can quibble about the titles chosen, there is no doubt that the films look really great, far better than the first DVD editions of these Bond classics. The visual difference between the Blu-ray version and the Bond Ultimate Editions issued a few years ago is less striking but still very noticeable in the sharpness of the image, intensity of color and lack of grain. The extras included on the Blu-ray appear to be identical to those on the Ultimate Editions, so Bondphiles may want to be selective and get just their favorite title on Blu-ray at first just to see if they think it?s worth it. But for anyone who doesn?t have the Ultimate Editions, these Bond Blu-rays are definitely the way to go.
Source: ICv2