THE PROMISED LAND (THE BASTARD) (BASTARDEN) (THE PROMISED LAND)
Venice Film Festival 2023 – Nominated Golden Lion for Best Film.
EFA European Film Awards 2023 - Best Actor (Mads Mikkelsen); Best Cinematography (Rasmus Videbæk); Best Costume Design (Kicki Ilander).
Shortlisted for the 2024 Oscar® for Best International Film
In 1755, impoverished Captain Ludvig Kahlen sets out to conquer the harsh and inhospitable Danish wastelands with a seemingly impossible goal: create a colony in the name of the King. In exchange, he will receive a noble title that he desperately desires.
However, the sole ruler of the area, the ruthless Frederik De Schinkel, arrogantly believes that the land belongs to him. When De Schinkel realizes that his maid Ann Barbara and her servile husband have escaped to take refuge with Kahlen, the privileged and spiteful ruler swears revenge and promises to do everything in his power to drive away the captain.
But Kahlen is not intimidated and undertakes a battle so unequal that it will put not only his life at risk, but also the family of marginalized people that has formed around him.
Extras: Long trailer in Spanish, Catalan and Danish with Spanish subtitles • Short trailer in Spanish and Danish with Spanish subtitles • Gallery.
Image: 2.39:1
Duration: 127 minutes
Disc region: B
AUDIO: Spanish, Catalan and Danish in DTS-HD MA 5.1 and 2.0. Spanish for people with visual disabilities.
SUBTITLES: Spanish, Spanish for people with hearing disabilities and Catalan.
Last edited by Deciazulado; 04-27-2024 at 03:54 AM.
Great news! Release date is in May, so hopefully we get some news from other countries as well. I'm afraid the Spanish label localised any on-screen titles. If this remains the only UHD, I'm in.
This UHD comes highly recommended for Spanish speakers and everyone capable of adding external subtitles. It’s indeed a SDR release as already revealed on the cover. Disc is a BD-100.
The master this label used is directly from Zentropa with all the original Danish titles and on-screen texts retained. Subtitles are optional and nothing appears to be burned-in.
However it has to be mentioned that the master itself is barely 4K. Any gain from the BD (judging from the included BD) is minimal at best. Textures are subtly more refined. I assume the intention of the filmmakers was to give it a softer, less harshly digital or modern look. The color grading supports that in some of the scenes I saw.
Besides, a VFX demo is on the discs and they employed quite a bit of VFX which may have enhanced the visual softness too. Encoding is very good.
For casual buyers, the US / UK BD may be just right but I don’t regret the Spanish UHD as it presents the film in its original master without alterations.
This UHD comes highly recommended for Spanish speakers and everyone capable of adding external subtitles. It’s indeed a SDR release as already revealed on the cover. Disc is a BD-100.
The master this label used is directly from Zentropa with all the original Danish titles and on-screen texts retained. Subtitles are optional and nothing appears to be burned-in.
However it has to be mentioned that the master itself is barely 4K. Any gain from the BD (judging from the included BD) is minimal at best. Textures are subtly more refined. I assume the intention of the filmmakers was to give it a softer, less harshly digital or modern look. The color grading supports that in some of the scenes I saw.
Besides, a VFX demo is on the discs and they employed quite a bit of VFX which may have enhanced the visual softness too. Encoding is very good.
For casual buyers, the US / UK BD may be just right but I don’t regret the Spanish UHD as it presents the film in its original master without alterations.
Not surprising it's a good disc, Divisa know their stuff. Even when they don't produce the encode themselves, they make sure to license the best one (see Total Recall which uses the Eagle encode). Surprised the subtitles aren't forces tho, they do have a habit of doing that.
Divisa has been excelling on UHDs because they're giving their all for them.
Their BDs used to be worse a while ago. Now they aren't so bad, but budget ''releases'' may have an issue or two or not be with a high bitrate like the UHDs.
This UHD comes highly recommended for Spanish speakers and everyone capable of adding external subtitles. It’s indeed a SDR release as already revealed on the cover. Disc is a BD-100.
The master this label used is directly from Zentropa with all the original Danish titles and on-screen texts retained. Subtitles are optional and nothing appears to be burned-in.
However it has to be mentioned that the master itself is barely 4K. Any gain from the BD (judging from the included BD) is minimal at best. Textures are subtly more refined. I assume the intention of the filmmakers was to give it a softer, less harshly digital or modern look. The color grading supports that in some of the scenes I saw.
Besides, a VFX demo is on the discs and they employed quite a bit of VFX which may have enhanced the visual softness too. Encoding is very good.
For casual buyers, the US / UK BD may be just right but I don’t regret the Spanish UHD as it presents the film in its original master without alterations.
I guess also recommended for Danish speakers right?
This UHD comes highly recommended for Spanish speakers and everyone capable of adding external subtitles. It’s indeed a SDR release as already revealed on the cover. Disc is a BD-100.
The master this label used is directly from Zentropa with all the original Danish titles and on-screen texts retained. Subtitles are optional and nothing appears to be burned-in.
However it has to be mentioned that the master itself is barely 4K. Any gain from the BD (judging from the included BD) is minimal at best. Textures are subtly more refined. I assume the intention of the filmmakers was to give it a softer, less harshly digital or modern look. The color grading supports that in some of the scenes I saw.
Besides, a VFX demo is on the discs and they employed quite a bit of VFX which may have enhanced the visual softness too. Encoding is very good.
For casual buyers, the US / UK BD may be just right but I don’t regret the Spanish UHD as it presents the film in its original master without alterations.
Thanks, this is all the motivation I need to buy this now.
I watched this tonight. The film is excellent and Mads Mikkelsen's performance elevates the film that much higher. I was really impressed by the picture and sound quality, especially in the many landscape shots (I didn't have the same problem as nicwood with the dialogue...I did notice a slight buzzing at a couple of points of rumbling intensity on the audio track, but it actually could have been a decoration vibrating on top of my speaker) although I didn't bother to sample the Blu-ray, particularly as if it is locked to Region B as indicated, I would need to play it on my BDP-103, anyway.
One thing I want to point out is that while nicwood is correct about subtitles being optional for the dialogue, the Danish texts inside the body of the film are translated with forced Spanish or Catalan subtitles. This only occurs at the beginning of the film and a few times thereafter, but even with external English subtitles, I could not prevent these Spanish or Catalan translations from playing, as well. Here is an example:
[Show spoiler]
Also, the opening title card has been localized. Intriguingly, when played with the Catalan dub, the title card appears to have been localized into Catalan instead of the Spanish title, so instead of a title card that says:
[Show spoiler]
you instead get
[Show spoiler]
(These are not matching frames)
Now, because I didn't watch the film dubbed in Catalan, I can't say if this localizing actually works. I didn't see this for myself until I scanned the Blu-ray and can't scan the 4K UHD disc, but on the Blu-ray, this has been accomplished by seamless branching of the first chapter, which ends on the same shot as the title card. I did have some trouble with my external subtitles at this time and I can only surmise that they were deactivated by the change in .m2ts files, so you may have to reactivate your subtitles after the title card. After the title card, the rest of the film is included in one file. The end titles are in Danish, but the end credits are in English, ending with the original Danish title card.
I do wish Divisa (or Zentropa) had kept the original Danish opening title card on the film, but I appreciate that they left everything else alone.
One other thing I noted was the participation of Plaion Pictures as the German partner, so I would hope for a German 4K UHD release as well, though it may well end up having the Danish texts localized into German, and if that happens then this Spanish 4K UHD would be a keeper, even without HDR.
That being said, the obvious goal here is to get an English-friendly 4K UHD, with or without a filmmaker-approved HDR grade.
Extras are brief and consist of a short, music-only featurette on the VFX in the film, Divisa's Danish, Spanish and Catalan-language trailers, Divisa's Danish and Spanish-language TV spots, a photo gallery and a poster gallery. Interestingly, when I played the Spanish-language trailer on the 4K UHD, I could swear it seemed to play in Spanish with burned-in Spanish subtitles, so maybe that was an authoring mistake? The Blu-ray has the trailers all correct.
On the 4K UHD disc, all the extras are in 1080p.
Anyway, here is a BDInfo scan of the included Blu-ray only:
Here is the version of the film that plays when either the original audio or the Spanish dub is selected:
[Show spoiler]
Code:
Total Video
Title Codec Length Movie Size Disc Size Bitrate Bitrate Main Audio Track Secondary Audio Track
----- ------ ------- -------------- -------------- ------- ------- ------------------ ---------------------
00016.MPLS AVC 2:07:49 38,065,219,584 41,616,385,712 39.70 29.85 DTS-HD Master 5.1 2385Kbps (48kHz/16-bit)
Saw this last night. Great film and a very nice 4K disc from Divisa. The few burned-in spanish subtitles didn't bother me at all. I had zero issues with understanding the danish dialogue.
There was some of the Swedish I didn't always understand completely but that was not really an issue.
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
The Promised Land (Bastarden) 4K UHD (2023)
. Looks like I'm stuck with the UK blu.
Linear Mode
