A24 Films (via Lionsgate distribution) will be releasing Past Lives (2023) on Blu-ray on September 19th. The film marks the directorial debut for Celine Song, who also wrote the screenplay as well. I saw this film in theater a couple weeks ago, and thought it was really beautiful, and bittersweet story of love. One of the best films of the year so far.
Audio Commentary with Writer-Director Celine Song and Actors Greta Lee and Teo Yoo
"Bound by Fate: Exploring Past Lives" Featurette
Deleted Scenes
Boy on the Playground
Drunk Walk
Grad School
Subway Ride Home
Toronto Family Home
Optional English, Spanish, and Korean subtitles for the main feature
Quote:
Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrested apart after Nora's family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life, in this heartrending modern romance.
Thanks for posting this news. I watched this in a theater here in Bangkok on Sunday, and left thinking that it was at least a 9 out of 10, but in pondering over it since then I realize that it deserves a 10 out of 10.
This movie has only generated a bit over $10 million worldwide so far on a $12 million budget. Contrast that to "Barbie" which has been in release about a month less at $812 million against a $145 million budget. Yesterday voted for "Past Lives" in a poll to select the best movie of the year so far. I was only one of three that did so out of about 500 votes, with "Oppenheimer" leading.
I wrote in reply to a comment from one fellow voting as I did. He wrote, "Past Lives needs a hell of a lot more votes." My reply is as follows:
"From its boxoffice receipts so far, apparently just a bit above $10 million, I think far too few have seen it. Movies this good are rare, and far between, but when I encounter one like this it restores my faith that truly great cinema can still occur.
To be honest I was a bit surprised that it was one of the selections, considering the tastes on this board tend to gravitate towards mainline blockbusters and 'genre' offerings.... this is verified looking through the comments in this thread. Lower budget thought-provoking personal dramas have far fewer adherents here."
I intend to buy this as this movie will yield more and more insights upon each viewing.
Thanks! I prefer getting things at Best Buy for the rewards points (and also cause they ship things so they arrive a day before release for me lol) but I locked this in at that good price in case BB doesn't end up having it for as cheap ~
I finally saw it, and wow, what a film. I'm even more upset no local cinemas decided to show it, as it was absolutely amazing. It destroyed me emotionally in the best way possible. The less said the better, but it's an absolute must watch which feels timeless in its filmmaking and masterful, naturalistic acting.
Unfortunately the Blu-ray is not good. Surprisingly, compression and disc authoring weren't handled by Pixelogic as I would expect of Lionsgate, but rather Digital Blu Post Production.
The bitrate is shockingly low, with a massive amount of unused space, which makes me wonder if this was intended to be a single layer, BD-25 disc before extras were produced, and the film wasn't re-encoded at a higher bitrate after that choice was made. 25 mbps is still enough to produce a good enough encode with proper encoding settings, but unfortunately the encode is rather poor.
General examples of how it looks (randomly chosen; All shots taken in MPC-HC with MadVR renderer):
At its best, grain is mushy in brighter areas, sometimes fine, often looking more like noise, but still what many will find acceptable (it really isn't), while darker regions devolve into rather intense macroblocking.
I don't need to spell out the issues here.
The optomisation of said bitrate is rather bad, as evident by the bitrate graphs provided above, which doesn't help things, and I suspect that by keeping the quantization rather high (instead of lower), the encoder (the program) is targeting the wrong areas to assign bits to. Or it's possible that advanced quantization was disabled, as we're just seeing the encoder struggle to manage with the material, I honestly don't know how you end up with this.
Either way, it doesn't matter in the end; it's mediocre for most of the duration, but downright awful at its worst. It's a shame such a great film was handled so poorly on disc. Hopefully StudioCanal's Blu-ray turns out to best it, or even better, either they or A24 do a UHD. According to IMDB it was finished in 4K, and the 4K Kaleidescape release even has an Atmos track, so I think it would be nice to have on UHD.
The film itself is outstanding and worth a watch, but unless you're fine with the images you see, maybe wait until the possible A24 UHD happens, or at least until StudioCanal's release comes out (assuming one is region free).
The StudioCanal Germany release is out in November, although Canal is notorious for doing bespoke discs for each territory for most new releases, so unfortunately, the German release probably says little to nothing about the UK release, which isn't even dated and not at all guaranteed.
I finally saw it, and wow, what a film. I'm even more upset no local cinemas decided to show it, as it was absolutely amazing. It destroyed me emotionally in the best way possible. The less said the better, but it's an absolute must watch which feels timeless in its filmmaking and masterful, naturalistic acting.
Unfortunately the Blu-ray is not good. Surprisingly, compression and disc authoring weren't handled by Pixelogic as I would expect of Lionsgate, but rather Digital Blu Post Production.
The bitrate is shockingly low, with a massive amount of unused space, which makes me wonder if this was intended to be a single layer, BD-25 disc before extras were produced, and the film wasn't re-encoded at a higher bitrate after that choice was made. 25 mbps is still enough to produce a good enough encode with proper encoding settings, but unfortunately the encode is rather poor.
General examples of how it looks (randomly chosen; All shots taken in MPC-HC with MadVR renderer):
At its best, grain is mushy in brighter areas, sometimes fine, often looking more like noise, but still what many will find acceptable (it really isn't), while darker regions devolve into rather intense macroblocking.
I don't need to spell out the issues here.
The optomisation of said bitrate is rather bad, as evident by the bitrate graphs provided above, which doesn't help things, and I suspect that by keeping the quantization rather high (instead of lower), the encoder (the program) is targeting the wrong areas to assign bits to. Or it's possible that advanced quantization was disabled, as we're just seeing the encoder struggle to manage with the material, I honestly don't know how you end up with this.
Either way, it doesn't matter in the end; it's mediocre for most of the duration, but downright awful at its worst. It's a shame such a great film was handled so poorly on disc. Hopefully StudioCanal's Blu-ray turns out to best it, or even better, either they or A24 do a UHD. According to IMDB it was finished in 4K, and the 4K Kaleidescape release even has an Atmos track, so I think it would be nice to have on UHD.
The film itself is outstanding and worth a watch, but unless you're fine with the images you see, maybe wait until the possible A24 UHD happens, or at least until StudioCanal's release comes out (assuming one is region free).
Ugh, this is just terrible. My BD has already been on the way before you wrote this very revealing post. Thanks so much for the warning.
I may keep my BD sealed until seeing what SC comes up with.
As a result of the BD being disappointing, I rented the film on Apple TV (where it streams in 4K Dolby Vision and Atmos) and it looked shockingly good there. Truly surprisingly good for a stream of a shot-on-film film, like a nicely mastered BD.
And with the film being so wonderful, the encoding botch job hurts even more. Who knows if we ever get an A24 UHD. Maybe more likely from Criterion similar to Uncut Gems but they can’t be compared in terms of popularity and potential physical media collector appeal. SC is my only hope for now. I have that BD on pre-order already and will gladly follow-up here once I get it.
This is my #2 movie of the year and I absolutely loved it (and was destroyed by it).
I wonder if any premium companies are gonna release a cool version of this (Plain Archive, etc). I'd hate to buy a standard copy now, only to have to double dip in the future.
I watched the german Blu-ray from SC on Monday and was really happy with the disc. I definitely didn't spot any problems with compression ur such. The PQ was actually very good and I would love to see this on a 4K disc.
Speaking of the film itself, this one is a must-see!
This is my #2 movie of the year and I absolutely loved it (and was destroyed by it).
I wonder if any premium companies are gonna release a cool version of this (Plain Archive, etc). I'd hate to buy a standard copy now, only to have to double dip in the future.
Plain would make a beautiful edition of this but their output has been odd for the past several years lol
I watched the german Blu-ray from SC on Monday and was really happy with the disc. I definitely didn't spot any problems with compression ur such. The PQ was actually very good and I would love to see this on a 4K disc.
Speaking of the film itself, this one is a must-see!
By any chance, did the German Blu-ray have a country selection menu and / or English subtitles? I'm trying to determine if the German and upcoming UK Blu-rays are actually identical, which sometimes happens with StudioCanal.
By any chance, did the German Blu-ray have a country selection menu and / or English subtitles? I'm trying to determine if the German and upcoming UK Blu-rays are actually identical, which sometimes happens with StudioCanal.
Thanks!
No country selection and only German subs. So it appears to be a slightly different disc to the UK.
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
Past Lives (2023) Blu-ray (A24 Films)
Linear Mode
