Advancing The Front

Here's another label I've been meaning to get onto this site for a while: Indicator/ Powerhouse.  They're a UK outfit that started up in the tail end of 2016, releasing some impressive special editions, often of titles Twilight Time had released as limited editions in the US.  And that certainly holds true with today's film, The Front, which Indicator put out via their own limited edition Blu-ray/ DVD combo pack early this year.  Or last year, I suppose.  It's 2018 now.

Update 1/1/18 - 8/17/26: It's 2026 now, and Sony has advanced The Front to 4k on their all new UHD; and it's not even an overly limited, hard to find steelbook.

The Front's a great, comic take on Hollywood's blacklist during the red scare of the 1950s, that still manages to level lose site of the real history's gravity.  Woody Allen, who stars but doesn't write or direct this time, plays a small time bookie with pretty low aspirations in life.  When an old friend of his, a successful television writer who's been blacklisted from the entertainment industry due to his affiliations with the United States Communist Party, comes to him for help, he agrees because he needs the money.  In short, his friend would continue to write screenplays, but in Allen's name, and they would split the payments.  Their plan becomes so successful, soon other blacklisted writers come to Allen, and everything's going great, until Allen winds up becoming so successful, fame and attention starts to fall on him, and he has to go to greater and greater lengths to hide the fact that he's actually a talentless fraud.

So it's an easy, affable comedy premise.  It sounds like a sitcom, and even sometimes looks like one, since it's all about writing classic television.  But it's also obviously making a genuine political statement, peppered with real life moments of tragedy taken from screenwriter Walter Bernstein, who was himself blacklisted during the McCarthy era.  Lives ruined by paranoia and zealotry, a major character commits suicide.  It's a funny movie, but it's not all fun and games.  Director Martin Ritt and several other members of the cast and crew had also went through the blacklist - the closing credits demarcate everyone on this film who was - so they bring a truth to film that gives it real weight.  Nowhere is this stronger felt than in the supporting role of Zero Mostel (The Producers), the real life black-listed comic actor who gives a heart-rending performance as a black-listed comic actor who succumbs to deep desperation as he's pushed out of the show Allen is pretending to write for.   And the rest of the supporting cast is great, too, including Andrea Marcovicci and Danny Aiello, both of The Stuff fame.  But it's really Mostel's picture at least as much as it is Allen's.

The Front debuted on DVD from Columbia Tri-Star in 2004.  It was a single-sided disc but featured both full and widescreen presentations.  Otherwise, it was essentially barebones, but us Woody Allen fans had grown used to that.  And anyway, that disc was all we had of this film until 2014, when Twilight Time licensed the title from Sony and released it on blu-ray with a new 4k scan, and some nice features, including an audio commentary and their usual isolated score track.  That was limited to their usual 3000 copies, and Sony wound up issuing that remaster themselves as a MOD DVDR in 2015, sans extras.  Then, in 2017, Indicator came out with their limited (also 3000 copies), all region, dual format edition with that same 4k master, Twilight Time's new extras, and even a little bit more. It was the go-to extra until this year, when Sony came back, this time releasing the film as a full-blown 4k Ultra HD.

1) 2004 Tri-Star US fullscreen DVD; 2) 2004 Tri-Star US widescreen DVD;
3) 2017 Indicator UK DVD; 4) 2017 Indicator UK BD; 5) 2026 Sony US UHD.

So, I left the black bars around the first set of comparisons to highlight the differences in aspect ratio.  I mean, you don't need them to see the obvious difference between the Columbia Tri-Star's fullscreen version, and the other three widescreen versions; but it is interesting to note how the original widescreen transfer, though anamorphically enhanced, was slightly windowboxed.  The later 1.85:1 editions naturally took care of that, which frankly would only be an issue on more modern televisions anyway.  In terms of on-screen content, the shift in ARs is minute.  Interestingly, though, the fullscreen version is mostly just an open matte transfer, revealing excessive vertical information including lots of wasteful head space, and slicing just a little off the sides.

Anyway, Indicator's 4k scan is a huge improvement over the DVD, which was good for its time: anamorphic and no interlacing.  But it had some messy compression.  The film's always been a little on the soft side, but the DVD only made that worse, while the blu really zeros in on the detail, right down to the very natural, untampered with grain.  The general color timing is basically the same, but does have a more natural, authentic feel on the blu (or even Indicator's DVD).  And so yes, Indicator's disc was already a 4k master, but now Sony gives it to us a proper 4k disc with Dolby Vision HDR10.  The result is a similar transfer but a much stronger encode, making tiny detail and each fleck of film grain sharper and clearer.  I guess I should point out here that I've seen some online sources call this a triple layer disc, but it's just a 51.9 GB transfer on a dual layer disc.  But for a film this length, that's more than enough, and looks great.  Yes, it's an easily discernible improvement on the already strong transfer from Indicator.

Audio on all three discs (and indeed, every release of The Front) is just the original mono track in 2.0, but that's all any of us should want; and naturally all the HD discs rare in lossless LPCM.  The old DVD did include subtitles, in English, French, Japanese and Korean, while Indicator just boils it down to your basic English HoH.  Sony's UHD has 'em, too, and also brings back the French and Spanish.

So, again, the old Tri-Star DVD was barebones.  It just had a couple of bonus trailers.  But Twilight Time created a new audio commentary, with film historians Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman and actress Marcovicci, which Indicator has thankfully licensed for their release, because it's a great track.  Kirgo and Redman alternate between acting as moderators for a very lively discussion with Marcovicci and providing expert commentary for the rest of the film.  The also carried over the original theatrical trailer and the isolated score track from TT.  The only thing they missed was the small booklet with additional notes by Kirgo.

But then they took the extra steps of creating their own booklet, a heftier 36-pager with notes by Gabriel Miller, who wrote a book on Ritt's films, and archival interviews with Ritt, Bernstein and Allen.  Even more compelling, they've included a video interview with The Front's director of photography Michael Chapman.  It's short but very interesting - don't skip it.  Indicator has also included an image gallery of on-set and promo photos, and reversible artwork, which is basically the same artwork, but minus the ratings and Indicator logos.

Disappointingly, Sony hasn't added anything new (there's a vintage 'making of' featurette on Youtube featuring an interview with the director... why not include that?); and they dropped the Chapman interview.  Plus the booklet.  Fortunately, they at least kept the commentary, the trailer and the isolated score, but still.  One hopes for steps forwards, not backwards.  It does come in a slipcover. 

It makes sense that Sony gave this a reissue given that its last domestic release was from Twilight Time, who dropped off a long time ago.  Now it's back in print and better than ever.  And don't feel too bad about missing out on that Chapman interview.  It comes from, and can be found on, a website called webofstories.  I'd still prefer to have it on disc; but it's no reason to hold out on upgrading this film if you're otherwise inclined to.  And this film does deserve it.

Sony and Their Many Monty Python and the Holy Grails

Quick!  What's the difference between the Collector's Edition, Special Edition, 40th Anniversary Edition and Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition of Monty Python and the Holy Grail?  It's a comedy classic and, apparently, money in the bank for Sony, who seemingly re-release this film on home video every year in a new edition.  And I bet even the people who worked on them couldn't keep them all straight.  Is the new blu-ray different than the old blu-ray?  Did some newer editions lose special features that were on previous editions?  Does the framing and picture quality change dramatically between them?  Are some editions actually exactly the same discs as others, simply released in new, gimmicky packaging?  The answers to all these questions are: yes, yes, yes and yes! And I've decided to get to the bottom of it all.

Update 7/1/18 - 8/10/26: Would you believe Sony has re-issued this film again since I wrote it?  To quote Sally Struthers: "sure, we all would."  But this last one's a bit more justified than usual, as we're kicking it up to a whole new generation of disc.  Previously, Sony had already given us a 4k restoration of the film, but only on 1080p discs.  Now we've got a fancy, new edition (limited edition steelbook BD/ UHD combo pack) on a genuine 4k format, with more extras and what-not.

Is Holy Grail the best Monty Python film?  The Pythons themselves have said that The Life of Brian seems to be their most celebrated film in their home country, and Grail is the most popular in America.  For me it's hard to settle on a single best.  They're all so fragmented, and there are segments in each of their films that that stand out as favorites.  Grail might suffer a bit more than the others in that their are lines and moments that are so iconic than a younger viewer approaching the films today may well have heard half the jokes out of context before even seeing the movie, so it can feel like corny, old material even though this is where it originated.  But there are certainly elements that keep it fresh and ageless, including terrific production values dedicated to presenting an authentic and dung-ridden medieval period, a fantastically frustrated straight man in via the performance of Graham Chapman as King Arthur, and the stylish score and animation.  So even if the humor doesn't always do it for you, it's still an undeniably impressive little movie.

So let's get into answering our thesis question: what're all these varying editions all about?  Well, I've found you can boil it down to to five different discs, starting with the original, barebones DVD from back in 1999.  There are more than five releases, even just limiting it to DVDs and blu-rays put out in the USA market; but only five editions where the content of the actual discs change.  So, first, let's just briefly talk about where they don't change:

*The 2003 Collector's Edition is the same 2-disc set as the 2001 Special Edition, except in limited packaging with a hard copy of the script and a collectible film cell.

*The 2005 And Now For Something Completely Hilarious collection features the same disc first disc as the 2001 Special Edition (and single discs of the other films), but lacking the second disc of special features.

*The 2008 Monty Python's Holy Trinity set, happily, fixes that by including both discs from the 2001 Special Edition, which also came with a book and T-shirt (as well as 2-disc sets of the other films).

*The 2015 Limited Edition Castle Catapult Gift Set just includes the same 40th Anniversary blu-ray disc, but with a whole, wacky playset.

So, that was all the editions that stayed the same.  Now, let's look at the differing editions.  First, there's the 1999 barebones DVD.  It's widescreen, but non-anamorphic.  Then there's the 2001 Special Edition, a 2-disc set which is now anamorphic.  The 2006 Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition, which not only has new special features unique to this edition, but boasts an updated transfer with a new aspect ratio.  Fourth is the first blu-ray release, which of course gave the film its HD debut in 2012.  And then there's the 2015 40th Anniversary Edition, which added new, additional special features (and sometimes a catapult).  And now there's the limited edition 50th Anniversary BD/ UHD steelbook combopack, which has both stayed the same (the BD half is just the 40th Anniversary disc again) and changed with a brand new 4k restoration on a proper Ultra 4k HD disc.

1) 1999 DVD; 2) 2001 DVD; 3) 2006 DVD; 4) 2012 BD;
5) 2015 BD; 6) 2025 BD; 7) 2025 1080p UHD; 8) 2025 2160p UHD.

So, yeah, it's interesting to see how this film's come along over the years.  The original 1999 DVD is a non-anamorphic 1.76:1.  It's also a bit murkier, definitely softer, with detail smoothed away.  The 2001 special edition brightened the image - though they pushed it a bit red - made it anamorphic and definitely brought in more detail.  It's got a little dead space in the overscan issues, which it would've gotten away with in its time, presenting the film in the widest of all its aspect ratios: 1.81:1.  Don't be impressed by that, though, because it was accomplished by trimming the most off of all four sides, making it actually the most cropped edition.  The 2006 edition corrects that, bringing us to a taller 1.67:1 aspect ratio.  It doesn't add much more clarity, but does restore more picture around the edges, particularly vertically.  Coming to the HD blus, the aspect stops shifting around; it's 1.67:1 from 2006 'till 2025.  But the color palette is more natural (look at the historian's skin tones), and it's definitely clearer.  Even the best, 2006 DVD looks pretty soft.  It's pleasingly sharper now on the BDs, which are for all intents and purposes identical, with detail as clear as it's likely to ever be, and grain now highly visible and distinct.  Technically, the 2006 and 2014/ 2025 blus must be different encodes, but you can match each granular pixel between the two's screenshots.

And all that brings us to the 2026 UHD.  It actually has two versions on it.  Their new 4k restoration and the "Near-Theatrical Version Of the Film," which is the theatrical cut minus the "Get On With It" deleted scene removed.  The latter is only in 1080p, but it is the new 4k restoration.  If you compare it to the 40th Anniversary edition, you can see, for example, the highlights in the Black Knight scene filled in now, where they were blown out before.  The framing is 1.66:1, just a pixel or two's worth of difference from the older blus.  The color timing, brightness levels are essentially unchanged.  But if you compare the 4k remaster to any other version, even the 1080p version on the same disc, it's evident how much better rendered detail and film grain is.  What looks like a big pixelated line running up the historian's forehead, for example, is now properly displayed as rounded grain.  In short, it's not a huge revelation - both because the previous transfers were well done and the fact that the original film is already a bit rough and not always perfectly in focus - but it is this film finally displayed in proper 4k HDR with Dolby Vision.

Audio-wise, the original DVD just had the mono track in Dolby 2.0 with optional English, Spanish and French subtitles.  The 2001 special edition introduced a new 5.1 mix as well as a French mono dub to those options, plus joke subs "For People Who Don't Like The Film," which just plays text from Shakespeare's Henry IV pt 2.  The 2006 Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition keeps all of that, and adds additional language options, specifically a Portuguese 5.1 mix and Chinese, Portuguese and Thai subtitles.  Then both of the blu-rays bumps the audio to lossless DTS-HD and adds even more audio options: a Japanese 5.1 mix as well as Japanese, Korean and Mandarin subtitles.

This new edition really goes all out in the audio department.  It still has the 5.1 mix in DTS-HD, plus French, German, Italian and Spanish 5.1 dubs, also in DTS-HD.  But it also has a new remixed Dolby Atmos track and, for us purists, the original mono in 2.0, also lossless.  And yes, it has a slew of foreign subtitle options, plus optional English ones, both HoH and pure.  And it still has the Henry IV ones.  Though this is for the theatrical cut.  The "Near-Theatrical" cut only has the English 5.1 in DTS-HD and optional subtitles.  And the blu-ray version, of course, is unchanged, as it's the same 40th Anniversary disc as before.

Now let's really dive deep and take a look at the special features.  We start off easy: the 1999 DVD only has a handful of bonus trailers, not even the Holy Grail trailer.   Then the 2001 Special Edition comes with almost all of the extras that have been on any and every subsequent edition: two audio commentaries, one by directors Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, and one by the remaining Pythons: John Cleese, Michael Palin and Eric Idle.  Both of these maybe get a little cheesy at times, but are mostly both informative and entertaining, and I doubt any Python fan would want to skip them.  There's a really fun documentary called Quest for the Holy Grail Locations, where Palin and Jones tour the old filming locations, and there's a nice, 13-minute behind-the-scenes featurette made for British television.  There's a couple trailers, stills galleries, a trivia track and weblink kinda stuff... and then, if you thought those Henry IV subtitles were a bit silly, buckle in.  Sony has packed all these DVD and blu-ray editions with a plethora of silly, gag extras, that do little to add to the film experience, but are just jokes in and of themselves.

The film starts with a bluff, fake educational short called Dentists On the Job, as if you got the wrong disc or something, which plays for about two minutes before the real movie begins.  Michael Palin also does a spoof educational short on how to use coconuts as horse hoof sounds like they do in the movie.  There's a fake location scouting film where Gilliam and Palin narrate some old travelogue footage as if it was their real experiences.  There's a few short clips of the Japanese dub presented as extracts, clips from the musical numbers presented as sing-a-longs, and a pretty amusing Lego rendition of the Camelot scene.  It's more fun than the big budget Lego movies they release theatrically now, if you ask me, because except for the animated faces and fire effects, it's all real stop-motion photography of actual Lego pieces, not CGI cartoons in the Lego style.

a featurette only available on the 2006 Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition DVD

So then we come to the Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition.  Now, in 2006, the main reason to upgrade to this version would've been the updated transfer with the corrected aspect ratio.  But that can be tough to sell to the general public, so they had to spice things up with some new features.  But they also didn't have a whole lot to add, so there are a few new things here, but they're pretty thin.  First of all, everything from the previous special edition is carried over.  And it came packaged with a third disc - a CD of the soundtrack album.  But in terms of new, on-disc content there's: a new trailer, that starts out very serious and dramatically before revealing that it's for this silly movie, a little trivia question game and most substantially, a seven minute featurette called A Taste of Spamalot.  Obviously promoting the Broadway show, it features clips of songs from the films (not the full songs) set to Gilliam inspired cut-out animation.  Interestingly, these exclusives remained exclusive to this release, and were not included on subsequent releases, i.e. the blu-rays.

The 2012 blu-ray did include all the other special edition stuff, however, and added two decidedly better extras to the mix.  There's almost twenty minutes of extended scenes and outtakes with an intro by Terry Jones, and then about thirteen minutes of animation outtakes and unused clips, with an introduction and narration by Terry Gilliam.  Also, disappointingly, they lost the original trailer, which sucks because it had some unique jokes that are only in the trailer.  ANd the film no longer has the Dentists On the Job fake-out clip.  Oh, and it touts another big exclusive called "The Holy Book of Days Second Screen."  It's a direct connection to a website full of behind-the-scenes videos or something, but it doesn't seem to actually function.  If you go to the website, it directs you to a link in the App Store; but the app isn't actually in the App Store, despite their claim.  Their help page says the option to sync it up to the blu-ray is no longer available (I'm not convinced it ever really was), but the whole thing seems to no longer exist in any capacity, except for a false promising landing page.  So it boils down to being just a dead, useless weblink.

And now we come to the latest release, the 40th Anniversary Edition.  They've done away with "The Holy Book of Days Second Screen," naturally, but this disc includes an insert directing you to that same landing page with a link to the non-existent app.  Oh well.  Stupid tease.  Anyway, it includes all the content from the 2012 blu except for that, and adds a bit more.  First of all, they brought the trailer back, which is nice.  I assume the 2012's dropping of it was an oversight.  But really what the 40th Anniversary Edition brings to the table, what justifies its existence since it's otherwise the same transfer and same collection of features, is a new half-hour featurette.  It gives us two festival Q&As with the Pythons from Holy Grail screenings, one of which is hosted by John Oliver.  It's okay.  They tell a lot of the same anecdotes they tell in the commentaries and other extras, and they clown around a bit, but nothing especially funny.  It's certainly worth the watch if you've got the disc, but not worth double-dipping for.

this man likes the movie...

Speaking of special features not worth double-dipping for, we come to the 50th Anniversary edition.  First of all, it duplicates everything from the 40th disc (remember, it actually has the exact 40th Anniversary disc as part of the set), and still no Holy Book of Days Second Screen.  They've basically added one new featurette to the 4k disc, called 'Tis But a Tribute, which is exactly what it sounds like.  A bunch of celebrities (including David Cross, Paul Feig and a surprising number of people I didn't recognize even when they put their names on screen) offer brief testimonials to how much they like this movie and quote some favorite lines.  It's about fifteen minutes long and all shot on webcams.  I'm not really disappointed, because the existing documentaries and commentaries are already all this movie needs.  This is just one quick little extra thing you can watch if you get the new release, but nothing to go out of your way to buy the set just to watch.

So this new 50th Anniversary edition is a pretty satisfying, essentially definitive release.  The only content you're missing out on across all the past editions, really, is that little Spamalot featurette and Dentists On the Job.  It would be nice to see all that mysterious "Holy Book of Days" content put on a bonus disc so we can actually just watch like regular people, without trying to sync our blu-ray players up to our ipads or whatever other ridiculous broken idea they had.  And maybe a new featurette with more legit Spamalot content, like a little footage of the Broadway show and interviews with the cast.  They could even go back and recover that little animated featurette...  I mean, a 60th Anniversary is coming.

But in the meantime, we now have all the Python films in 4k; and.this 50th Anniversary Edition steelbook is really all any fan could need.

The Great Woody Allen Anamorphic Project, Part 1

Naturally, Pretty much every Woody Allen movie is available in America on DVD.  I say "pretty much," because where is Harvey Wallinger?  Come on, WNET!  But what I'm really getting to is that, while we've got 'em all, many are so old, they're non-anamorphic.  Yuck.  That was the case with the original Annie Hall DVD, which I already covered.  Even the 2012 reissue was non-anamorphic, and who ever heard of a non-anamorphic blu in the 2010s?  But that's a celebrated enough film that MGM eventually put it out on blu.  Of course, now we've got Twilight Time and Arrow putting out all these great Woody Allen HD editions.  But there's one big problem area in his filmography.  A middle period around the late 90s where his films weren't with MGM (who learned their lesson after Annie Hall complaints), famous enough to get an updated blu-ray, or or new enough to debut with HD masters.  Yeah, in America we're stuck, but fortunately there are some relatively obscure import options that have us covered.  In fact, there's one DVD boxed set from Germany that seems almost specifically designed to replace all our old problem discs.  And there are other options, too, including a couple blu-rays I've got for us to look at, all of which put our American selection to shame.

Update 8/9/17 - 10/1/19: Well, gee, what's happened since I first wrote this post?  Well, the #MeToo movement pretty efficiently pulled the brakes on Arrow and Twilight Time's HD restorations.  And a new blu-ray boxed set came out in Germany from a label called Concorde Entertainment.  What does that mean?  More overlooked Woody Allens in HD, so let's take a look!

Update 3/20/26: Sweet & Lowdown has finally been released on blu-ray... technically.  Also, so did Deconstructing Harry, which I've just added to Part 2 of the Anamorphic Project.  Both are very long-awaited BDs; but are they worth a damn?  DVDExotica investigates...

So let us begin with 1994's Bullets Over Broadway.  It's the first film chronologically, and it's one I have a blu-ray edition of as well.  So we get a fuller comparison; and once you see this one, you'll get an idea for how the cases of all these films are going to go ...at least until we get to the last one, which is all kinds of messed up.  But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Bullets Over Broadway is a period piece that was nominated for a half a dozen or so Oscars in its year.  John Cusack stars as a young, starving artist playwright in 1920's New York City who finally manages to get one of his plays produced... by throwing in with the mafia. Theatrical troupes and the mob are both rife for comedy, but the fun really comes from meshing these two worlds together and the unexpected results.  This is less of a heady piece for Allen, and more of a straight-forward display of light character humor, with a truly star-studded cast, including Jennifer Tilly, Chazz Palminteri who steals the picture, Jack Warden, Dianne Wiest (winning her second Oscar), the always underrated Jim Broadbent, Mary-Louise Parker, Harvey Fierstein, Rob Reiner and Debi Mazar.  Wow.  This is just one of those movies that will play for any audience.

Bullets Over Broadway was released in America on a non-anamorphic, barebones DVD by Buena Vista/ Miramax back in 1999.  And that's it forever.  The 2002 UK DVD didn't fare any better.  But thank goodness for countries that wouldn't stand for such shabby product on their more modern releases.  I've got the anamorphic DVD in the aforementioned 2013 German box set called The Woody Allen Collection (not a very helpful title in regards to separating it from all the other Woody Allen box sets out there, I know) from Planet Media.  In fact, there was also a 5-disc blu-ray set from Art Haus that was released at the same time as the DVD set with matching artwork, just leaving out a couple of key films.  And this 2018 Concorde box seems to just be a repackaging of that set - I presume due to rights changing hands.  Honestly, there are also blu-rays from France, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Japan... I've got one here from Finland put out by Atlantic in 2011.  This film's on blu just about everywhere in the world but here; it's almost like we're a giant pack of philistines.  But anyway:

1) Buena Vista US 1999 DVD; 2) Planet Media 2013 German DVD;
3) Atlantic 2011 Finnish BD; 4) Concorde 2018 German BD.

Since being anamorphic (anamorphia?) is today's topic, I left the borders around the first set of images to demonstrate how the non-anamorphic Buena Vista DVD compares to the others.  Framing-wise, they're all basically the same aspect ratio.  The original DVD is floating at 1.85, and tall three newer discs are slightly matted to 1.88:1, gaining a tiny bit around all four sides.  The colors are very similar, too, with the US DVD being just a little flatter than the others.  The German DVD and the two blus clearly share the same master, with the DVD just naturally a little softer and more compressed for being SD instead of HD.  The blus are virtually indistinguishable from each other, from compression to brightness levels, while the older DVD is even more compressed by virtue of being a smaller image, and thus with less resolution.  When you compare the latter set of images in full size (click 'em!), you can see the murkiness of the older disc more, and what looks like a little edge enhancement or similar tampering to try and further define the lines.

Both DVDs give us the mono track in Dolby 2.0, though the German DVD also throws in a German dub.  The US DVD has optional English subtitles, while the German has optional German ones.  The Finnish blu-ray has just the English audio track, which is also Dolby 2.0 with optional Swedish, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian subtitles, while the German blu English stereo track in DTS-HD, as well as a German dub and optional German subs.

But now here's the neat thing about these German box sets... both the US DVD and Finnish blu are completely barebones, not even the the trailer or unrelated bonus trailers.  But the German Woody Allen Collections (yes, both of them) actually cooks up some special features.  Not a lot, but for Woody Allen films, even a tiny bit is a watershed moment.  So, for Bullets, it's simply titled "Woody Allen Featurette," and the narration is in German with no English subtitles.  But once it gets going, we see it's an audience Q&A with Allen addressing the audience in English interspersed with clips from his films.  But then the German translator starts to speak over him, making Woody very hard to hear.  This is one of the least English-friendly extras in the set - the rest are mostly in unobscured English with German subs - but if you work at it, you can make everything out, as he discusses his body of films and relationship to his work.  Besides that, the German DVD set just has bonus trailers for other Woody Allen films in this set, dubbed into German.  The German BD has several non-Allen bonus trailers dubbed into German, but also has the original English language Bullets Over Broadway trailer.

1999's Sweet and Lowdown wasn't quite as critically or commercially blessed as Bullets Over Broadway, but it still netted Acting noms for Sean Penn and Samantha Morton (The Walking Dead's Alpha). I figured I'd follow the 1920s period piece with the 1930s one, this time focusing on struggling jazz musicians.  It's less of a mild comedy and more of an actorly character study, also with Uma Thurman, John Waters and Anthony LaPlaglia.  It's presented as a drama with documentary-like reminisces by Woody Allen and others, essentially just like Reds.

It's also anamorphic.  That's right; the original 1999 US DVD from Columbia Tri-Star?  It's anamorphic, no problem.  I know what I wrote at the top and what this post is about, but hey, it's in Planet Media's Woody Allen Collection, too, so I figured I'd be thorough and cover it here, too.  I mean, it's still a great film to cover on this site; and it's also never been released on blu-ray in any country, not even Germany's corresponding blu-ray boxed set.  I think it's safe to say the reason why that is is that they've never made an HD master for it.  So, I think it's safe to assume, at least in terms of PQ, the US and German DVDs should be about the same, as they would be on pretty much any disc anywhere.  Oh, except the US DVD is a flipper disc with a fullscreen version on the other side.  So that'll be interesting to compare.  And of course, now in 2026, we actually have a blu-ray, from Italy's Cecchi Giro and Raro.  However, it's highly unlikely they would've struck a new master or anything, so we'll just be looking to see if there's any kind of slim upgrade at all.

1) Columbia Tri-Star 1999 US DVD (wide); 2) Columbia Tri-Star 1999 US DVD (full);
3) Planet Media 2011 German DVD; 4) Cecchi Gori 2026 BD.

So yeah, basically as expected.  The US (1.84 widescreen) and German DVDs (1.86) are pretty similar and likely taken from the same core master.  The colors are a bit different, though, with the US having brighter, bluer whites, while the German goes for a more naturalistic, warmer hue.  And when you get in close, the US DVD does seem to have more artifacting and digital noise (look around her hair and hat) than the smoother German disc.  I wouldn't go out of my way to double-dip for it, but I do see a credible improvement in the newer DVD.  Oh and the fullscreen version, yeah.  It's 1.33:1 and looks like your usual, compromised pan & scan deal adding some vertical information while losing some of its sides, and of course looking boxy and utterly misframed.

Now the blu-ray is the first to be framed precisely to 1.85:1, albeit by virtue of zooming in a little tighter than the previous releases, and making the image slightly wider (correcting a horizontal pinch?).  And the colors are closer to the German disc.  Detail appears slightly more distinct, but this is real thin gruel in terms of any advancement in PQ.  Especially since these new CG blus are 25fps.  There are no duplicate frames, the 25 is because they're playing at PAL speed.  Why?  Most European blu-rays of 24fps films do actually play at proper 24 frames.  Well, presumably because they're using the same old PAL masters.

Both DVDs give us the original English in Dolby 2.0, though the US DVD has a French dub, while the German DVD naturally has German.  Columbia Tri-Star also includes optional English, French and Spanish subtitles, while Planet Media just has German and German HOH.  And now CG offers both the English and Italian dub in DTS-HD lossy Dolby Digital... the menu and packaging says the DTS-HD track is 5.1; but every track on this disc is two channels.  And it includes optional Italian subtitles (the menu tries to force them on the English track, but you can just hit your Audio or Subtitle buttons during playback to nix that).

Again, the US DVD is barebones, apart from three unrelated bonus trailers (well, technically Sean Penn is in U Turn).  But the German disc comes through at least adequately.  First of all, it does have the trailer, in both English and German, plus the same German language Woody trailers as the other discs in the set.  Then there's a photo gallery.  But the big thing this time is a one hour long press conference with Allen and a very pregnant Morton.  It's mostly in English, though Woody tackles answering the French reporters in French, and it's all only subtitled in German. So we get more than half of it, but you'll have to fast forward a few pieces.  Of course I wish it had English subs, or just edited the French bits out, but it's still great to have, since Allen so rarely speaks on his releases.

The only extra on the blu-ray is an Italian language trailer.

So okay, guys, let's stop mucking around and get back to the anamorphically deficient titles, like Celebrity from 1998.  A movie crew looks up to see a sky-writing bi-plane spell out "HELP ME" above their city.  That's how Celebrity opens, a black and white satire of Hollywood culture.  Kenneth Branagh stars as Woody Allen, effectively, in the role of a reporter and aspiring screenwriter going through a divorce with Judy Davis.  It's a smart comedy with a lot of great lines and memorable moments from it's amazing cast of characters, including Leonardo DiCaprio (the one everybody remembers from this film), Winona Ryder, Charlize Theron, Joe Mantegna, Frasier's Bebe Nuewirth, Andre Gregory, Hank Azaria, Larry Pine and yes our one and only POTUS, Donald Trump.  I'm not sure this film is completely successful - a lot of the shots at the shallowness of celebrity culture are a little obvious, and while I'd say Branagh's performance is pretty great, I can't entirely disagree people who find his aping of Allen's mannerisms to be distracting from the drama at the core of this film either.  But it's still a great time at the movies.

Buena Vista's 1999 barebones, non-anamorphic DVD is once again still the only version ever released in this country to this day.  Meanwhile, thankfully, there is new remaster available around much of the rest of the world.  It's in the Planet Media and Concorde sets, and yes, there are additional blu-rays from Atlantic, as well as France and Japan.  So there are plenty of importing options.  It's just us being screw-ups.

1) Buena Vista US 1999 DVD; 2) Planet Media 2013 German DVD;
3) Concorde 2018 German BD.

The images here look pretty alike, apart from the obvious point of the 1999 DVD being non-anamorphic.  But the 1.85:1 framing (more like 1.82 on the old disc and 1.84 on the new ones) is slightly different, with a tiny bit of extra picture on the left hand side throughout Buena Vista's transfer.  I guess that's a tiny point in its favor, but it loses plenty to not being encoded for widescreen televisions, plus it's got softer focus because, again, it's a smaller, lower resolution image.  The German DVD and BD, on the other hand, are clearly sharing the same master, so the only difference is the increased resolution.  That does give the BD a distinct boost in clarity and sharpness however, giving us the most attractive image yet.

Buena Vista again gives us a mono mix in 2.0 with optional English subtitles, while Planet Media gives us the stereo with optional German subtitles, and of course an additional German dub.  Concorde gives us both English and German stereo tracks in DTS-HD, with optional German subs.

Now you don't need me to tell you that the US DVD has nothing, not even the trailer, right?  Well, the German DVD and BD do have the trailer and the bonus trailers, albeit all in German.  But far more importantly, they have a roughly 20 minute interview with Branagh and Allen together (and interestingly, Ken says early on that he didn't try to base his character on Woody in any way).  It's 100% in English, with no over dubbing or foreign reporters.  It has German subtitles, but even they're removable.  It's pretty great.

Okay, one more for Part 1, and then we'll swing back for the rest of Woody Allen's anamorphically challenged DVDs in Part 2.  We'll have all the original US DVDs, finish out the German box set, and even throw in a couple extra import versions to flesh it all out.  But for now, let's wind up with Woody Allen's musical, 1996's Everyone Says I Love You.  It takes its title from the great musical title of the same name in The Marx Bros' classic Horse Feathers.  Now, you may've noticed two of the previous films we've looked at already have relied on a cavalcade of stars.  All his films have terrific actors and some major star power, but Bullets Over Broadway and Celebrity, he's jam-packing them in.  And Everyone Says I Love You continues that tradition.  Woody Allen for the first time in this grouping takes a major role in this film, alongside Edward Norton, Drew Barrymore, Tim Roth, Goldie Hawn, Alan Alda, Natalie Portman, Natasha Lyonne, Billy Crudup and even Julia fuckin' Roberts.  It can certainly feel saccharine at times - though with its tributes to classical Hollywood musicals, that's at least partially intentional - but Roth's and Allen's characters manage to bring enough genuine humor to the screen to keep us from eye rolling too hard.

Anyway, it's the same old song: Buena Vista's DVD came out in 1999 completely barebones and non-anamorphic, and has never been updated in the states.  But again, a newer master was created and used to make the German DVD for Planet Media's box, and also multiple blu-rays from around the world, all of which are decidedly preferable to what we get here.  But we shouldn't just assume that, so let's look at the evidence.

1) Buena Vista US 1999 DVD; 2) Planet Media 2013 German DVD;
3) Concorde 2018 German BD.

Exhibit A: Buena Vista's DVD is non-anamorphic, and that's already enough to condemn it to the "must upgrade" bin.  Exhibit B: those colors!  I might almost believe that the walls of the apartment in the first set of shots were meant to be tan instead of pink (though the BD is slightly less pink than the German DVD, probably the most accurate of the three), but the fact that it's a hue overcasting the entire image says otherwise.  Also look at the flared out brights and ugly contrast on poor Drew. Exhibit C: the framing!  Actually, the German DVD is open matte at 1.78:1, as opposed to all the other discs they've been matting to 1.85:1, and I'm not really sure which would be correct here.  The Concorde blu even has a black bar on the left-hand side, pushing it to 1.77:1 and cropping a sliver of picture off the right, which surely shouldn't be happening.  The framing looks a bit tight in the first set of shots (cutting off the top of Woody's head), but you'd think the proper OAR would be 1.85, so I'll give Buena a pass on that one.

Buena Vista DVD left; Planet Media DVD mid; Concorde BD right.

Exhibit D: the tampering!  It looked like Alda was too soft in the original master, so someone drew in all his lines with a thick, black magic marker.  Sure, the Planet Media side looks a little soft, which is improved slightly with the BD's natural boost in resolution, but the 1999 DVD is one sorry looking excuse for a filmic or digital image.  I'd sentence that DVD to a mercy killing.

Anyway, the German discs also have no extras this time around, apart from the German-language bonus trailers, which I suppose is still more than Buena Vista gave us.  The Concorde BD at least has the Everyone Says I Love You trailer in German.

Both DVDs use the English track in Dolby 2.0, with the music sounding nice on either version.  Though this time around, the German dub is bumped up to a 5.1 mix.  The US DVD has optional English subtitles, and interestingly, since all their other discs have optional German ones, the Planet Media disc has none.  This is the worst film to do that to the German viewers on, too, because the dub only replaces the actors' speaking, reverting to the original English for the songs.  So the Germans would have no idea what's being sung.  D'oh!  Anyway, the German blu fixes that, giving the Germans subs for the songs, too, though their dub still reverts to English for the songs.  The BD has DTS-HD versions of both English and German stereo mixes, and said removable German subtitles.

Anyway, that's all for now.  Stay tuned for Part 2!