They say physical media is dying, but there have been a lot of exciting blu-ray upgrades in 2025. And it may not've been high up on the list of fancy, boutique label cult titles, but one of the ones I was most excited to see announced was
Play It Again, Sam, a film by... no, not
Woody Allen,
Herbert Ross. It stars Woody Allen, and is written by Allen, based on his own Broadway play from 1969. Allen plays a film critic going through a break-up when he's visited by the spirit of
Humphrey Bogart who gives him romantic advice. It's as silly as it sounds, and some of it's naturally a bit dated, but it still largely holds up as smart and funny.
Diane Keaton and
Tony Roberts also reprise their roles from the Broadway version, and
Messiah of Evil's
Joy Bang plays a small role.
Paramount first released
Play It Again on DVD back in 2001.
It was barebones, which frankly most Woody Allen DVDs have been anyway,
but at least it was anamorphic widescreen. They released it the next
year in the UK, and reissued it here in the US in 2017, but apart from
the British disc being PAL, it's always been the same disc. It was fine
for the time, but it's been feeling pretty creaky for the past decade.
And finally, 2025 was the year. It was restored in 4k and released on
blu in the US by Kino and Australia by Imprint. I see a lot of people
went with the Imprint because it comes with a bonus documentary, but I
went Kino. I'll get into why below.
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2001 Paramount DVD top; 2025 Kino Lorber BD bottom.
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To
Paramount's credit, the old DVD and the new 4k restoration don't look
worlds apart. The color timing is essentially the same, except the blu
has slightly deeper blacks. The framing is very similar, too. The
aspect ratio has shifted from 1.77:1 to 1.85:1, which mostly comes down
to fixing a slight pinch. The benefit all comes in the jump to HD.
Finer edges replace the typical softness of SD, and yes, more detail
comes into focus. We can now read the title of that book on Woody's
desk ("THE COLLECTOR"). The DVD also has some light haloing, which the
BD fixes. Film grain is visible for the first time and fairly
distinct. It's captured a little unevenly, something that would surely
come off much better on an actual UHD. But for a 1080, this is
pleasingly film-like.
Paramount's DVD offers the original mono
track in Dolby 2.0 with optional English subs and a mono French dub.
Kino keeps the subs and bumps the audio up to DTS-HD, but dumps the dub.
As
I said, Paramount's DVDs were all barebones, but the blu-rays give us
something. First of all, both include their own expert audio
commentaries. I've only heard Kino's, but I can tell you it's a solid
mix of informative and fun. Critic
Justin Humphreys is joined by writer/ director
Alan Spencer (
Sledge Hammer,
Tomorrow Man).
There's some joking around but they're also prepared to break down the
differences between this and the original play and well researched
historical info (you'll be surprised who was originally intended to star
in this... it wasn't always Woody Allen). Kino also located the
original theatrical trailer (which neither Paramount nor Imprint have)
and threw on some bonus trailers. Both blus also come in slipcovers.
But as I mentioned earlier, Imprint does have one thing Kino doesn't...
2011's
Woody Allen: A Documentary was directed by
Robert B. Weide, who produced the
Marx Bros doc
In a Nutshell
(which, you may recall, is the one that features an interview with
Woody Allen), this is a made for TV, three and a half hour film that
originally aired on PBS in two parts. There's also a cut-down
theatrical version that lost over an hour of material, but fortunately,
every home video release seems to be the full TV edit, so we can forget
all about that hatchet job these days. This is essentially a career
overview, it's not especially biographical, and definitely not
interested in his scandals. They do spend a lot of time with Woody,
revisiting his old neighborhood and stopping by the set of his then
latest film,
You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger; but this mostly consists of interviews with practically all of his collaborators over the years: Diane Keaton,
Jack Rollins,
Scarlett Johansson, Tony Roberts,
Mariel Hemingway,
Martin Scorsese,
Louise Lasser and so many more. This is the documentary we'd all hoped we were getting when Allen handed us us
Wild Man Blues.
Docurama
first released this in a nice, 2-disc DVD set in 2012. It has special
features and everything. But the doc did air in HD, so us die-hards
naturally wanted a blu-ray. And fortunately, there were a couple of
import options who had our backs. I went with the UK blu from Soda
Pictures because it had an additional, exclusive interview. And now, of
course, it's available as a special feature on Imprint's
Play It Again
blu, but the doc must be in SD, if they're squeezing all 3 and a half
hours onto the same disc with the feature and the other extras.
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2012 Docurama DVD top; 2012 Soda BD bottom.
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There really is a strong difference between the SD and the HD. Both discs present the film in 1.78:1, although the DVD is slightly off at 1.73:1. Just like with
Play It Again, the DVD's a little pinched. In this case a little bit moreso. The DVD colors are also very slightly more feint, which is especially clear in some close-up interview shots, where the subjects appear a bit paler on the DVD. But mostly it's about the clarity. You can really see the difference in steady HD shots like that set second above (there's also plenty of vintage footage and film clips from different sources in varying degrees of quality). Just like you could only read the book title before, here you can clearly read the visible license plate numbers next to those girls on the blu but not the DVD. And there's some funky compression noise on the DVD when you get in close, that just gives the whole thing a low quality sheen.
The
DVDs give you an option between a 5.1 and 2.0 mix with optional English
subtitles. Soda just gives us the 5.1 (which is fine, as that's the
actual original mix, and it'll just down mix on your stereo TV anyway)
in lossless DTS-HD, also with optional English subs.
Docurama's
set includes five deleted scenes/ featurettes ranging from an interview
with Weide, 12 questions with Woody to the shortest, a 45-second clip of
Allen's mother. It's not massive, under half an hour's worth of stuff,
but any Allen fan who enjoyed the doc will appreciate these. And these
core extras are featured on just about every
Woody Allen: A Documentary release, including Soda's and even Imprint's
Play It Again blu.
But Soda goes further, with two additional featurettes. The first is called
Woody's Favourite Actor, an interview between Weide and
John Doumanian,
the actor who's actually been in more of Allen's films (sixteen!) than anyone
else. And the other is a a 16-minute pre-screening Q&A with Weide.
It covers a lot of the same ground as the first director's interview,
but hey, I'll take it. Obviously the Doumanian interview is the bigger
prize. And you won't find either of these on the Docurama set or the
Imprint disc. Soda's blu also includes a bonus trailer for
Eames: The Architect and the Painter.
So
Imprint's doc is a nice bonus for many viewers, but if you're serious
about it, you need the Soda blu anyway. And at that point, you might as
well get whichever
Play It Again blu is easier to obtain in your
region. I suppose, if you're really hardcore, you might even want both
for the two commentaries. But they're just experts and presumably
cover most of the same ground. So I'd recommend the Kino/ Soda route, it's how I went myself, but if you're just mildly interested in the doc, I'm sure you'll be more than satisfied with the Imprint and saving the extra cash.
