The Deer Hunter (1978) 4K UHD

[I KEEL YOU]

Does anyone know if France has finally started making properly made discs?

I haven't bought a French-made blu ray disc in years, thanks to their manufacturers ruining the rep of French-made discs with poorly built discs that die after a few years (I'm waiting for my French made copies of Danton and Paris, Texas to die, only seems to be a matter of time).

I've recently bit the bullet and bought the French release of Man on the Moon because it's not available anywhere else in the world, aside from the OOP Scandinavian release that is MPEG2.

This Deer Hunter package looks really nice and I really like the cover art, which some people seem to hate with a passion. But if France are still making crap quality discs, then I would rather wait for the US or some other country's release, even if the packaging won't be as nice.

[Fat Phil]

Originally Posted by I KEEL YOU

Does anyone know if France has finally started making properly made discs?

I haven't bought a French-made blu ray disc in years, thanks to their manufacturers ruining the rep of French-made discs with poorly built discs that die after a few years (I'm waiting for my French made copies of Danton and Paris, Texas to die, only seems to be a matter of time).

I've recently bit the bullet and bought the French release of Man on the Moon because it's not available anywhere else in the world, aside from the OOP Scandinavian release that is MPEG2.

This Deer Hunter package looks really nice and I really like the cover art, which some people seem to hate with a passion. But if France are still making crap quality discs, then I would rather wait for the US or some other country's release, even if the packaging won't be as nice.

Pretty sure the UK release will be manufactured in the UK because it's for sale on Zoom's website and all their stuff is dispatched directly from Sony DADC who handle the disc replication. Why not buy that if you're worried about France's manufacturing?

[I KEEL YOU]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

Pretty sure the UK release will be manufactured in the UK because it's for sale on Zoom's website and all their stuff is dispatched directly from Sony DADC who handle the disc replication. Why not buy that if you're worried about France's manufacturing?

I didn't know that UK was getting the exact same packaging. Will definitely get that one.

[UseY0ur1llusi0n]

Originally Posted by Schu

That trailer looks awfully soft...

That's Vilmos' trademark. And it looks f*cking amazing. If they get the encode right this could be contender for best blu-ray of the year.

[GenPion]

Originally Posted by Schu

That trailer looks awfully soft...

Even just from that trailer, the restoration looks better than any previous release.

[MAUL xx]

Will this be region B locked?

[Joce]

Originally Posted by MAUL xx

Will this be region B locked?

UHD Blu-rays are always region-free.

[Jay Glennie]

I have written the making of essay for The Deer Hunter rerelease booklet. I have interviewed cast and crew for my forthcoming book on the making of the film. It’s a huge story and a thrill to chat to Bob De Niro and his colleagues.

[Geoff D]

Did he say anything else aside from "**** Trump?".

[I KEEL YOU]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Did he say anything else aside from "**** Trump?".

Considering it's a Vietnam movie, perhaps he should've mentioned Trump's suave "bone spurs" draft-dodging move, and how it ties into the legacy of the Vietnam war... As in many of those who weren't born to multi-millionaire parents couldn't dodge the draft and died in battle, whereas those who were born with silver spoons in their mouths could dodge it and ended up being presidents, while calling those who were captured as prisoners in that war "losers". Such is life.

[rezpekt]

Carlotta has the trailer in 4K on their Youtube channel:

Voyage au bout de l'enfer de Michael Cimino : bande-annonce - YouTube

[Geoff D]

Not bad, not overwhelmingly amazing either. The underlying restoration is fine, the image is clean and stable and the colour is very old fashioned, though I don't mean that in a bad way. Skies look blue, properly blue, with no teal in sight and greens and reds also look very handsome. Skin tones generally have a reddy/orangey hue (aside from John Cazale's downright cadaverous look, God rest him) that also reminds me of transfers of old. Detail is fine, the movie doesn't leap off the screen but then it was never meant to and the anamorphic glass of that period wasn't the greatest, though for what it's worth the 4K does contain appreciably more fine detail than the remastered Blu-ray or the Universal HD DVD when compared directly (look at the start of chapter 9 for example, the brickwork on the building in the middle background is much more keenly resolved). Grain is ever present, rarely looking as outrageously busy as the average Sony joint but as this was shot on a slower stock (I would guess at 5247, the main taking stock of the late '70s) I'll give StudioCanal the benefit of the doubt.

For the HDR (mastering display metadata reads as 1000 max/0.0001 min) the movie tends to looks a lot dimmer in terms of average picture brightness than the accompanying SDR Blu-ray but it draws down a LOT more highlight information in the brightest speculars like fire, light fixtures and exterior windows. This is one of those times though where I didn't really feel it was necessary to be able to see the filament burning inside a bulb, but it's there nonetheless. The flamethrower that Mike uses on the Viet dude looks blown out to balls on the SDR versions but the HDR retains the detail in the flames, although it trades in the intense yellow of the SDR for more of an orange glare.

Black levels are VERY dense indeed but it's not an uncomfortable look, for unlike my recent bête noires there isn't evidence of harsher transitions into black or odd colour tints that are inherent to a wholesale clipping of the black level, this has been brought down with more care. And the lower picture level of the HDR helps to get the eye used to that dimmer image so that when the darker shots occur they don't seem to stand out, whereas the brighter SDR disc actually makes the darker spots and the lack of shadow detail feel more awkwardly balanced, if that makes sense.

It's not all good news though as the compression isn't great. Now, bear in mind that Geoffy is Geoffy (kinda like "this is this" ) so your personal sensitivity to this sort of thing will greatly vary, but to my eyes this encode always looks like it's skirting the line of breaking out into a shower of macroblocking at any moment. In calmer, bright-lit scenes then sure, it's okay, but when things get a bit darker and/or a bit more hectic then it can look very shaky indeed. There's also an odd kind of fluttering in the darker scenes like Nicky in the room with the hooker, not typical density flutter as it only affects the area just above and below the letterbox bars which keeps flickering and it's not there on the new Blu-ray or the old HD DVD, though this may just be an LCD backlight artefact - albeit one I've never seen before. If I click the black level down by a single point then the problem is overcome.

The crazy thing is that in the opening steelworks scene all the sparks flying about look great but the molten steel itself is riddled with chroma noise, and in the shot when De Niro drops that white stick into the steel it almost looks like it's glittering (like a Star Trek special effect!) there's so much noise in there. All this is despite the movie having been put onto a 100GB disc, and although I regularly chide Disney and Fox for treating triple deckers like the plague this disc is proof enough that even if you've got the space you still need to have people who know what they're doing with it.

The aforementioned chroma noise is that which I've lamented on several other titles, and during the bit in 'Nam when the injured woman carrying the baby staggers past the fire in the foreground (roughly 1h10m30s into this presentation) the flames and smoke are literally built of big fat macroblocks, in motion it looks like a screen door effect so it's not horribly unpleasant but in still form, sheeeeeeeeit. The hilarious thing is that the compression on the new StudioCanal Blu-ray is far better in that same scene, but on the old VC-1 Universal HD DVD it has the exact same trouble, great big macroblocks! I guess that particular compression conundrum skipped a generation

I'm not saying that this UHD the worst thing ever, far from it, as it holds together pretty well and even in its most dire moments it'd take a keen eye to spot it. The restoration itself is good because it still looks like The Deer Hunter, I mean it's fresher than you've ever seen it but still unmistakably of its time, and although the HDR does some typically HDR-y things it doesn't attack your eyes with brightness, quite the opposite. If a display's tone mapping isn't up to snuff then I can envisage potential issues with people saying that it's too dark, but mercifully this hasn't been encoded with 4000-nit mastering metadata so it should be able to get by.

I'm not even gonna go medieval on StudioCanal's ass for the compression niggles because they're certainly not the only ones who've had these sorts of troubles on UHD, and we all gotta start somewhere I suppose. (Yes, I know they've encoded other UHDs locally but none as grainy as this I think, and grain in HDR needs to be carefully handled lest the luminance channel steal too many bits from the chroma channels.)

Oh, and the film itself is still a mesmerising masterwork. During the final russian roulette showdown with Mike and Nicky I'd forgotten all about nits and chroma and metadata and all that other bullshit and was bricking it when Michael put the gun to his head, even though I've seen the movie plenty of times before. And when Nicky briefly wakes from his reverie and seems to recognise Mike, wow, what a brilliantly acted moment made all the more gut-wrenching given what happens next. An extraordinary piece of work from all involved.

[Agent Kay]

Bloody SC compression

[Geoff D]

That about sums it up in three words, yep

[Agent Kay]

Wankars.
Eh the rest sounds good, so will wait on a sale.
But like you I always see it

[Fat Phil]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

The crazy thing is that in the opening steelworks scene all the sparks flying about look great but the molten steel itself is riddled with chroma noise, and in the shot when De Niro drops that white stick into the steel it almost looks like it's glittering (like a Star Trek special effect!) there's so much noise in there. All this is despite the movie having been put onto a 100GB disc, and although I regularly chide Disney and Fox for treating triple deckers like the plague this disc is proof enough that even if you've got the space you still need to have people who know what they're doing with it.

Haha. Funny you mention that shot, just saw it and it was definitely a WTF moment for me

Not going to watch the movie until this weekend but I did have a cheeky little look at the opening five minutes and A/B'd the old Studio Canal disc. The additional highlight information struck me straight away. You hit the nail on the head with the 'filament in the bulbs' analogy. Almost seems like they rescued a little too much on occasion.

[Fat Phil]

And just a little addition to Geoff's review if I may, since I know he's not so much about the sound side of things.

The 5.1 track on the old Studio Canal disc was pitched a semi-tone too high thus making it a worthless piece of garbage. Fortunately, it's pitched correctly on this new release. So thumbs up for that.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

Haha. Funny you mention that shot, just saw it and it was definitely a WTF moment for me

Not going to watch the movie until this weekend but I did have a cheeky little look at the opening five minutes and A/B'd the old Studio Canal disc. The additional highlight information struck me straight away. You hit the nail on the head with the 'filament in the bulbs' analogy. Almost seems like they rescued a little too much on occasion.

Well, the good thing is that the speculars themselves aren't incredibly bright, there are only one or two moments that have anything approaching HDR 'pop' (as much as I loathe that word, like "reference", it's still a handy shortcut) so the extra highlight detail is rarely a distraction. It's just there on light bulbs and car headlights and flamethrowers etc, should people really need it to make this HDR treatment worthwhile in their eyes.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

And just a little addition to Geoff's review if I may, since I know he's not so much about the sound side of things.

The 5.1 track on the old Studio Canal disc was pitched a semi-tone too high thus making it a worthless piece of garbage. Fortunately, it's pitched correctly on this new release. So thumbs up for that.

Interesting that the 5.1 is derived from the 6-track 70mm mix, even when listening to both back and forth on my TV speakers there was a definite difference, not one being better or worse, just different. Lol at SC calling it a "Six Track Dolby Mix" but encoding it in DTS though, according to some people on here you can't actually cross encode Dolby into DTS! (Of course you can because the compression codec is just a carrier of the signal)

[Fat Phil]

You hit me with that because I said that thing about you being "not so much about the sound side of things" didn't you?

Folks. School is in session