You may recall, about two years ago, I got interested in sussing out all those Spanish blu-rays... which were grey market, which were BDRs or upconverts? Well, there's still a lot of really enticing exclusives down there, so for the next two Days of Import Week, I thought I'd swing back around there, this time for
The Sea Inside, an impressive Academy Award winning film (it won Best Foreign Film and was also nominated for Best Makeup) that still remains DVD-only here in the states.
The Sea Inside is the fourth film by
Alejandro Amenabar, the at least once highly acclaimed writer and director of indie cinema darlings
Thesis,
Open Your Eyes and
The Others.
I'll be honest, admired a lot of the style and originality he brought
to his work, but I also found the writing to be a little shaky.
Fortunately,
The Sea Inside is based on the true story, and writings, of
Ramon Sampedro (played by
Javier Bardem).
So while Amenabar still wrote the screenplay, and quite well, there was
a lot already established, making this a safer venture than an original
work.
Sampedro, if you're not familiar, became a quadriplegic
early in life, and spent decades fighting with the Spanish government
for his right to die. We see a little bit of his early life and how he
fell into his situation through flashbacks, but by and large this film
just examines the end of his life for him and his loved ones,
particularly the ethical and moral issues his struggle raises. It's
definitely kind of a tear jerker (no scientist rushes in during the
third act with a miracle cure), being both a very humanistic, empathetic
experience, and also at times a rather cold, logically argued one.
Highly emotional but unsentimental.
The Sea Inside came
out as a new release special edition DVD from New Line in 2005. It was
reissued by Warner Bros for their Archives collection in 2017, where
they really missed their shot to put this out on BD. Fortunately, the
same mistake wasn't made overseas. There are Japanese and German blus,
but since this isn't an English-language film, there's no original
English language audio track for them to preserve. And naturally they
just subtitled it into their own languages. Only the 2015 20th Century
Fox blu from Spain bothers to include English subtitles (sold
separately, or as part of their 5-film Alejandro Amenabar boxed set).
Fortunately, it's a legit, properly pressed disc.
 |
2005 US New Line DVD top; 2015 Fox BD bottom.
|
The
color timing and everything looks the same, so we're probably looking
at the same master, although you will notice the aspect ratio has
changed. We've gone from 2.40:1 to 2.35:1, which basically is just the
BD slightly lifting the mattes to reveal a bit more along the top and
bottom. I do believe 2.40 is actually the correct AR, but the
difference between 2.35 and 2.40 is even less than the common 1.85 to
1.78 switcharoo the major studios like to pull, so it's fine. It's just
a sliver extra picture. The mids are also a shade brighter now on the
blu. The important thing is this is a 100% legit jump to HD, with the
much sharper, clearer image picture one expects when jump to blu-ray.
New
Line's DVD has the original Spanish audio in both 2.0 and 5.1, with
both English and Spanish subtitles. The BD has exactly the same
options, except both audio tracks are in lossless LPCM.
One
great thing about the DVD is how full it is of great extras. It starts
us off with a first rate audio commentary by Amenabar (in Spanish, but
subtitled into English), but that's not even the highlight. The crown
jewel is the feature length 'making of' documentary that details every
stage of production, from at home with the director and producer
pre-production, on location and in the studio, to composing and editing
in post. There are also a handful of deleted scenes, several galleries
of storyboards, photos, etc, and the theatrical trailer (and a couple
bonus trailers).
The
blu-ray has all of the same extras as the DVD, but unfortunately, none
of their
English subtitles. The movie is English-friendly, but the special
features aren't. Language doesn't enter into it for the storyboards or
stills galleries, but for everything else, you still need to hang onto
your DVD copy if you want them translated.
So it's another one of
those
"build your own special edition" situations where you have to get the BD
for the ideal movie presentation and the DVD for the extras. Warners
really blew it making their Archives release DVD-only. But it's a
relief to know that the opportunity to build such an edition exists,
because yes, the blu-ray is all good. You just have to import.
No comments:
Post a Comment