Dr Strangelove (1962) 4K HDR10 review, US UHD disc. HDR metadata: P3-D65 colour primaries. Mastering display levels: 4000/0.005 max/min nits. Maximum Content Light Level: 10,000 nits. Maximum Frame Average Light Level: 563 nits.
Strangelove comes to us via the 2004 4K restoration carried out by Sony using intermediate elements because the OG negative had been destroyed long ago. I thought that the UHD of Lawrence of Arabia suffered a little for using the 2012 restoration of that one, so surely a restoration of Strangelove that's twice as old (16 years vs Lawrence's 8) and not even using camera negative should come off far worse on UHD? Well...no.
It's worth saying straight away that the actual spatial detail in 4K is only resolving a fraction more than what the 1080p BD does - not surprising, given the source materials available - and that the HDR highlight range is similarly constricted, resolving little more than what the SDR BD is already very capable of handling (the Sony and Criterion Blu-rays are interchangeable in these regards). Okay, so what does the UHD do better then? The thing about the 1080p BD, and this even dates all the way back to the 2004 DVD edition of the 4K remaster which some people may recall was criticised for being too dark (my old DVD Debate review is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20041112...ticle&sid=4883, note that even 16 years ago I was comparing highlight information between old and new versions, although the screencaps are long gone
), is that drawing out all that highlight information comes at the expense of a rather low brightness level that has great blacks but tends to eat up shadows, while the SDR highlights lack any kind of impactful luminance and so the contrast feels quite soft and dull. But the physical brightness of the HDR gives a new dimension to the crisp black and white imagery, literally.
Normally I'm the first one to stick the boot in when Sony applies the HDR Light Cannon™ to whatever catalogue movie because I no longer feel that this approach is right for older stuff shot on film, but here it works like gangbusters. More by dumb ****ing luck than judgement, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. Why does it work so well? Because black and white is predominantly about contrast, about that interplay between light and dark, and what the UHD does so brilliantly is allow the deep blacks to remain in place while giving the luminance of the brighter parts a chance to break out; as I said before, we're not getting any more highlight detail but the intensity of the highlights transforms the perception of contrast, the lighting looks sharper but moodier at the same time. The movie makes use of a fair bit of top lighting and in HDR the effect is heightened, if you'll pardon the pun. And I love how punchy the A-Bomb montage looks at the end. Even the blacks themselves have a slightly lower gamma than the SDR so you can see into the shadows a little better, all without comprising that rich low end. If the older open matte transfer was far too bright and the DVD/BD versions of the 4K transfer a touch too dark (though you get used to it), then the UHD is just right. If your tone mapping is on form then you should not be losing ANY highlight detail vs the BD, nor should the average brightness be dimmer than the SDR (when the latter is viewed at the intended ~100 nits, anyway).
As mentioned, the outright resolution doesn't seem to be greatly advanced over the 1080p BD, if at all, but in motion the one thing that sets them apart is the grain. Yes, again, this is usually an aspect that I dislike about Sony's HDR treatment because all that brightness amps up the grain way beyond where it should've ever gone but, again, here it just works. The grain looks so tight and sharp, even for coming off of intermediate elements, and where it tends to fall off in the BD the UHD just keeps on going. It never swarms or overwhelms the image mind you, it just gives it a constant sense of texture that makes it feel so much sharper in motion than the BD.
Something else that gives the UHD image more integrity over the BD is how the grain manages to dither the image more successfully. Pyoko pointed out in his comparisons that the BD has a posterised look to the gradations and by god he's right, there's a kind of solarised feel to people's faces where the mid tones hit the shadows, even the grain in the title sequence has a kind of two-tone look to it and there's some outright banding during the A-Bomb montage. I mean, I ****ing gushed over the Criterion BD when I reviewed it for The Digital Fix (when re-reading it I secretly hoped I'd mentioned something about the gradations but nope, gushing it is:
https://www.thedigitalfix.com/film/b...on-collection/) and I suppose it was easier to chalk up any slight imperfections to the usage of lower generation elements, but compared to the UHD there's no contest, and not just with a few still frames but in motion throughout. That solarised look is banished on the UHD, the gradations are superbly handled and it's got a more organic feel than the slightly electronic countenance of the BD.
Another concern of mine with Sony's HDR approach is how the more pronounced grain becomes trickier to compress than it otherwise should be, but it's handled impressively here. Perhaps it's because there's no colour component bouncing around in there, or that not a lot of the movie takes place in bright exteriors where grain shows up the most, but even so, hectic sequences like the attack on Burpelson AFB (still some of the best combat footage ever filmed for a dramatic production IMO) show no signs of the compression creaking under the strain. The one time it looks fractionally less wholesome is in the scene with Miss Foreign Affairs answering Turgidson's phone, it seems to get a bit chunkier there but it could well be the source.
From older viewings of this transfer I can recall seeing some restoration artefacts, like buzzing columns of noise where scratches were painted over, especially in the stock footage, but the UHD looks wonderfully competent in that regard. There are still a few blips of dirt but what I found interesting was that the UHD has been cleaned up a bit more vs the 2009 Sony BD, I know that the book with the restoration notes said this but upon checking the Criterion BD that same clean up was in evidence, like here with Miss Foreign Affairs' face getting bisected by a massive scratch that's gone in the UHD and Criterion:
2009 BD
[Show spoiler]
UHD
[Show spoiler]
I'm going to do something I don't usually do and mention the audio, specifically the OG mono track. Now, with the hefty caveat that I'm only listening with TV speakers (long story short: partial hearing loss in one ear, tinnitus, so home cinema is just too fatiguing on my ears) there are some marked differences between the mono as heard on the Sony 2009 BD and Criterion BDs and the mono as heard on the UHD. The 2009 and the Criterion both have a very 'bright' presentation that sounds quite strident at times (which I noted in both of my previous DVD and BD reviews of Strangelove, back when I was using an AVR with speakers etc etc, so that's not just the TV speakers doing it
), and although the Criterion's uncompressed PCM 1.0 encoding is slightly cleaner than the compressed Dolby Digital 2.0 of the Sony 2009 they're clearly the same source.
The first thing that struck me about the DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono of the UHD is how much lower in volume it is than the previous mono mix, and yet even when turned up to the same level it sounds fuller and way less harsh, with a notable reduction in sibilance and more of a percussive 'snap' to the gunfire, rather than it just being loud for loudness' sake. I had a feeling that Sony might've remastered the OG audio for this release after the amazing job they did with the mono on the Easy Rider UHD (which sounded much better than the mono as presented on the previous Sony and Criterion BDs), and I believe that to be the case. But hey, that's just the opinion of old cloth ears here, compare the UHD's mono to the 2009 BD or the Criterion and see what you think.
To sum up, I think Strangelove is a triumph on UHD. Not the cleanest, sharpest, showiest bit of 4K content ever, as such it would be very easy to take a look and say "it's the same as the BD", but the refinements to the grain and the lighting are most welcome and once again show that 4K HDR can be a true friend to black and white material. The film is of course a darkly satirical masterpiece that will never go out of fashion as long as we humans are still ****ing and fighting.
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