Ken Russell's Best Tommy

The first thing you need to know about Tommy is that you don't have to give a crap about rock & roll or The Who to enjoy it. Yeah, it's a musical of their work, and if you're a big fan, obviously there'll be that extra appeal. But it's a Ken Russell movie. It's one of the craziest Ken Russell movies, which you know is really saying something if you're familiar with Ken Russell films. It's a big, bombastic visual roadshow, with a fascinating, dark undercurrent.

Update 5/9/17: I've gone back and added the original, 1999 US DVD.  Not only does it provide a nice bit of history to this post, but shows us a little something new, as it includes a fullscreen version.

Update 8/16/24: So, we looked at the US barebones DVD, the UK special edition DVD and the US blu-ray... Wouldn't it be great if there was a release that combined the best of both worlds: HD quality and all the UK extras?  Well, there is!  It's Update Week 2024 Day 3, and today I've also updated the pages for A Room With a View and Shoah with the Criterion DVDs I'd glossed over by jumping right to the Criterion blus.

Ken Russell has said he wasn't familiar with The Who or Tommy (it was a rock opera album years before it was a film) when he was approached to make the film. But not only did he like it when he listened to it, but he realized it had a lot in common with The Angels, a script about false religion he'd written to follow The Devils, but was unable to get funded. So this would be a sort of way to make that movie while still being able to be more faithful to the story of all the album than most previous attempts to turn it into a screenplay had been by other writers. So things just sort of dovetailed nicely into an adaptation that could deeply satisfy The Who and their fans, while still being unquestionably a Ken Russell film. After all, breaking boundaries between music and film was more than half of this guy's career.

So we meet Tommy as a young boy. His father, Robert Powell, goes off to war (originally WWI, but updated to WWII in the film), and his mother Ann-Margaret has an affair with Russell regular Oliver Reed. When Powell returns home, they kill him in front of the boy and he goes blind, def and dumb. Cut to a decade later and of course the boy grows up to be Roger Daltry.  He's abused and neglected, drugged and taken advantage of all his life - even psychiatrist Jack Nicholson can't help him - until it turns out he has an inexplicable gift for breaking records at pinball. He becomes a celebrity and even a sort of youth culture messiah, but obviously that can't work out for long.

Giving Russell a massive rock star budget lets him return with unparalleled spectacle. And I'm not a rock and roll guy, but even I have to admit the music's pretty good. I mean, when Tina Turner sings "The Acid Queen?" Come on! But beyond all that, the performances, even though they're all sung and often highly exaggerated, are quite good (Ann-Margaret was nominated for an Academy Award for this, after all) and the story is genuinely involving. This movie is super 70s, and got a lot of mileage out of simply being an epic music video before music videos existed. Nothing like it would fly today. But at the same time, if you love cinema, it holds up completely and shouldn't be missed.

So Tommy first hit DVD in 1999, and even Superbit DVD in 2002, both via Columbia Tri-Star. But those were disappointingly absent any features, and the one to own became the British Prism Leisure import from 2004, because it was a brilliant 2-disc special edition. And then the next noteworthy release was in 2010, when Sony brought it up to HD on blu-ray.  But it was barebones again. Grrr.  Fortunately, UK label Odeon came out with their own blu-ray, which included the Prism Leisure extras, now properly coupled with an HD transfer.

1999 Columbia widescreen DVD first; 1999 Columbia fullscreen DVD second;
2004 Prism Leisure DVD third; 2010 Sony BD fourth; 2013 Odeon BD fifth.

Well, say what you will, Sony really gave us a nice image with their blu. The UK DVD looked pretty good: anamorphic, un-interlaced, strong colors, 1.85 framing. It was a good DVD. Though surprisingly, the older US DVD, despite being from the 90s, actually looks a bit better, with cleaner lines and more precise colors.  But Sony does more than just present the same transfer on a less compressed blu-ray disc. The image is much sharper and cleaner, with more natural colors and clearer detail. The framing is slightly different, still 1.85:1, but the blu is pointed a little lower, with a bit more picture on the bottom, while the DVDs have a bit more on the top. I can't say one is really better than the other in that regard, but they're different so I'm pointing it out.  Oh, and of course the fullscreen DVD has a lot more on the tops and bottoms.  It's almost entirely open matte, just losing a little on the sides.  But of course 1.85:1 is the proper composition.

As for the Odeon blu, it's virtually identical to Sony's.  They're clearly using the same master.  Zooming in way close, though, the grain is a smidgen softer in places, which I'd put down to compression.  You'll never see the difference in motion, but technically Sony comes out a tiny step ahead.

Both DVDs have a Dolby stereo track and a 5.1 mix. Audio is especially important in a musical, after all. And Sony appreciated this as well, giving us DTS-HD master tracks for the 5.1 mix, and a 5.0 Quintophonic Sounds mix. "Quintophonic Sounds" was a special 4-way stereo mix designed for this film.  Anyway, Odeon has both tracks in DTS-HD, too, and each release also includes optional English subtitles.

But yeah, for whatever reason, Sony didn't carry over any of Prism's extras. They don't even have the trailer, just a couple of random bonus trailers.

Well, the UK discs do have the trailer, but that's nothing. They start out with a Ken Russell commentary. He always did great commentaries, and he delivers a great conversation here alongside moderator and famous British film critic Mark Kermode. This alone is a treasure, and it's crazy to think it never made it to the US, but anyway. Russell also has a nice on-camera interview. Ann-Margaret, Roger Daltry and composer Pete Townshend also give fun on-camera interviews, and they're some pretty big gets! Finally, there's The Story Of the Sound, which is a terrific twenty-minute feature on the Tommy's Quintaphonic sound, including interviews with the film's dubbing mixer Ray Merrin, music editor Terry Rawlings and Robin O'Donoghue, head of sound at Shepperton Studios. Well, technically there's one more extra on the DVDs: a 20-minute "Press Promo,' which is a sort of an advertisement featurette, combining clips from the film and the interviews already on this disc. There's no new content, so it's just as well Odeon didn't bother with it.

Instead, they have an extra, albeit brief, television interview with Russell that even Prism Leisure doesn't include and is easily preferable. The 2-DVD set does also come in a nice slip-sleeve and includes an exclusive 12-page booklet with vintage posters, cards, notes by Matt Kent and an essay by Pete Townshend, though.  But I'll always take proper video content over swag.

Odeon's exclusive interview.

So for years, most serious fans had both the UK set and the US blu - one for the extras and the latter for the superior presentation of the film. That's still a winning combo today. But if you don't already have both and are deciding what to pick up today, the Odeon's the clear way to go.  At least until UHDs start coming out, which feels somewhat likely.  But if just Sony does it in the US, they still probably won't have the extras, so the Odeon feels like a fairly safe investment.

A To Die For To Die For

Oh boy, when you do true crime black comedy right, you've got an instant masterpiece on your hands.  And yes, 1995's To Die For is a true crime flick.  They don't use her real name, and make a few key changes (particularly the ending) to keep from getting sued, but this is a direct adaptation of the novel by Joyce Maynard, which is unofficially telling the story of Pamela Smart, right down to the juiciest details.  Oh, and fun fact, Helen Hunt had already played Smart in a TV movie a few years before this.  But then Nicole Kidman swooped in and took that crown, quite definitively.

This is easily Gus Van Sant's best work, in no small part thanks to an amazing cast including, of course, featuring Kidman in a real star turn, but also packed with brilliant performances from a young Joaquin Phoenix, Illeana Douglas, Matt Dillon, Casey Affleck, Dan Hedaya, Wayne Knight, Kurtwood Smith, George Segal and David freakin' Cronenberg.  And at least as much credit has to go to Alison Folland, who was an unknown at the time.  She went on to star in the baby dyke flick All Over Me before disappearing into a series of minor roles, which is a real shame because she's pitch perfect in this.  It's beautifully shot, plus we're also getting some of screenwriter Buck Henry's most biting satire since Catch 22 and one of Danny Elfman's greatest film scores in a project that really knew how to use him.  This is just one of those projects where everything fell together into the ideal configuration.

Now, To Die For's been available on anamorphic widescreen DVD since 1998, thanks to a Columbia Tri-Star flipper disc (reissued in 2010 by Image Entertainment).  And it's been available on blu-ray, again from Image, since 2011.  But the smarter move had been to import it from the UK, as Network's BD had the correct audio (more on that below) and at least a vague hint of special features.  But there's only one way to go now in 2024, as Criterion has just released an all-new 4k restoration from the original 35mm OCN in a fuller BD/ UHD combo-pack that finally delivers what we've all been waiting for.

1) 1998 Columbia Tri-Star DVD (wide); 2) 1998 Columbia Tri-Star DVD (full);
3) 2015 Network BD; 4) 2024 Criterion BD; 5) 2024 Criterion UHD.

So, the framing for Columbia Tri-Star's DVD is a bit odd.  Yes, I mean even for the widescreen side.  It's roughly 1.78:1, but with a single pillarbox on the right-hand side, tweaking it to 1.77:1.  I guess they figured it was in the overscan area, so it really didn't matter; but it strikes you now, in the age of modern flat screens.  Anyway, the fullscreen side is a more classic 1.33:1, which just slightly shaves the sides, but is largely open matte, revealing a whole bunch of extra vertical information.  Being a UK disc, Network stuck with the 1.78:1 ratio, sans that weird pillar, with very slightly adjusted framing.  Criterion, of course, mattes it to an exact 1.85:1, while still managing to reveal slightly more on the sides.

The colors for the previous editions are essentially the same as they presumably used the same master.  But Criterion's are a bit warmer and generally smartened up.  I can't declare its accuracy, per se, but Criterion does boast that their transfer is approved by both the director and DP, and I will say, subjectively, it's a more attractive image now, and objectively it's lusher and more vivid.  Detail-wise, Network's blu already looked pretty good, but comparing it to Criterion's, it looks like it had just a touch of edge enhancement (look at the framed photo over Nicole's shoulder in the second set of pics), which Criterion does away with.  And even just comparing the two 1080p BDs, there's less jagged pixelation and grain is rendered more thoroughly.  But then on the Dolby Vision HDR'd UHD, the grain is perfectly rendered, and finer detail is more lifelike - impressive even when judged against other UHDs.

Did I mention something about the "correct audio?"  Yes.  Every disc here has the 5.1 mix (in DTS-HD on everything except the DVD) with optional English subtitles.  But the original US blu-ray from Image only had a stereo track.  You'd be right to say I usually don't care much about 5.1 remixes, but To Die For is a modern enough film that the 5.1 was the original audio mix, so it was a loss for Image's blu (though anyone watching on just a stereo TV or PC would be listening to it folded down, anyway).  So it's nice that Criterion brought it back for US audiences.  Columbia and Network also threw in a separate 2.0 mix (in LPCM on the BD), but Criterion didn't bother, which is perfectly fine.  Oh, and the DVD also had a French dub and set of subtitles.

And did I also say something about "what we've all been waiting for?"  Oh yeah, let's talk extras.  Now the Columbia and Image DVDs all had nothing but the trailer.  And Network didn't have much more.  They threw in several TV spots and stills galleries.  But one stills gallery stood out, because they depicted deleted scenes.  The actual deleted scenes weren't included, but we knew they existed, and Network tried their best to deliver them without actually being able to access them.  But Criterion finally got 'em.  And we're talking over 30 minutes of stuff, from an alternate opening credits sequence to a whole, clever subplot involving a tattoo.  The footage is raw (and interlaced), but fans will still be as happy as a pig in mud to roll around in these.  And Criterion gave us a fun audio commentary, too, by Gus Van Sant himself, along with his DP and editor.  They have some really good info, including some surprising alternate casting potentialities, though they do run low on steam in the final stretch.  I'd say definitely listen to the first half, but if you find yourself getting bored or sleepy, it's okay to shut it off after that - you'll have caught all the good stuff.

This new set also includes the trailer and one of those fold-out "leaflet" booklets with notes by film critic Jessica Kiang.

So yes, this is a real must-have from Criterion.  To Die For has looked alright on home video before, but it's finally gotten the first class treatment it deserves.  A great release for a great film.  Now, maybe Vestron will follow this up with a double feature of 1988's To Die For and its sequel.  Our shelves needs all three standing alongside each other!

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice & DVD & Blu

If you've never seen Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice before, I can understand being disinclined to.  It's from the 60s, has that cutesy poster, starts out in the "new age" clinic where everybody's hugging each other... it all looks super dated, like one of those movies that may've had its moment in the past, but can be left right there in the past, too.  But no, actually, it's great and holds up just as well today as ever. 

Everything it's really satirizing is just as pertinent now as it was then.  Any fad psychology at play is dealing with the same inherently existential issues in relationships we face today.  It's witty and incisive, like the best of Allen, Brooks or Baumbach, with more depth than much of his later, more obvious comedies.  And the ensemble cast is brilliant.  I mean, you should expect that from Elliot Gould and maybe Natalie Wood, but Dyan Cannon is really on top of the humor of her character and Robert Culp, primarily known for milquetoast television series like I Spy (keep your eyes pealed for Bill Cosby cameo!) and The Greatest American Hero is surprisingly nuanced.  Unfortunately, I don't think anything else in his long filmography has ever asked as much of him, because it turns out he's really adept. 

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice's life on home video is has been pretty straight forward.  Columbia Tri-Star originally released it as a pretty decent special edition DVD in 2004.  It got released a couple of times... once as a 2008 triple feature with two unrelated films, and once in 2010 by Image.  But it was always the same disc.  It finally hit blu-ray in 2018 from Twilight Time in the US, and Arrow Academy in the UK, with a couple more extras.

2004 Columbia Tri-Star DVD top; 2018 Arrow BD bottom.

Arrow's case calls this a "brand new restoration from original film elements by Sony Pictures," and you can tell.  The aspect ratio is corrected from 1.80:1 to 1.85:1, effectively by lifting the slight pillarboxing the DVD had in the overscan area (I left the negative space around the first set of shots so you can see) and correcting a barely perceptible vertical stretch.  The whole DVD had a slight washed look to it, so now the BD has slightly bolder colors and higher contrast with brighter highlights and distinctly blacker blacks.  They're clearly using a whole new master for the blu, which is much clearer, free of the DVD's light edge enhancement and with crisply captured grain, which is barely even hinted at on the old disc.  The DVD only had slight damage, but it's been cleaned up on the blu (note the black spot on Dyan Cannon's collar only in the first of the second set of shots).

Both discs have the the original mono with optional English subtitles.  The DVD also had Japanese subtitles, and the blu bumps the audio up to LPCM.

Columbia already had some pretty strong extras, primarily an audio commentary by Mazursky and the three surviving stars.  It's a pretty great and informative reunion.  There's also an on-camera interview with Mazursky, where he's interviewed at a screening (enhanced by a few additional soundbites from Mazursky filmed separately), which is a little redundant at times, but fills in more of Mazursky's back story.  Besides that, there's just a couple bonus trailers.

Arrow thankfully hangs onto all of that, except the bonus trailers, and adds a couple more experts into the mix.  Australian critic Adrian Martin adds a second commentary, which is pretty interesting, and critic David Cairns provides a nice little overview in visual essay form, although if you've already watched all the other extras, a lot of what he's saying will be sounding pretty familiar.  The original Columbia features are the important must-watch stuff, but at least Arrow makes you feel like you're getting more.  Their release also includes reversible artwork.

Man, I miss Arrow Academy.  Although, to be fair, Twilight Time's blu is probably just as good.  I don't have it, but I'm pretty certain both blus are using the same restoration.  It's missing the visual essay, but it has one of TT's signature isolated score tracks instead.  So either way.  But hey, Twilight Time's gone, too.  And the fewer labels like those we have just means the fewer films like these we see get releases at all, let alone high quality ones like this.  And that's a shame, because this is a masterwork that's worth a spot in anyone's collection.

Import Week, Day 1: Vatel

Our planet may be incinerating in an unprecedented climate crisis while we suffer through war, economic crisis and burgeoning new diseases, but if you're here to read this, congratulations, you've lived to Import Week.  Import Week is a rather self-explanatory stretch of roughly six (still to be decided) posts where we look at blu-ray releases of films that are only available overseas.  I know the internet is worldwide, so apologies for writing from an exclusively American perspective, but hopefully all our foreign readers can take this "week" to cherish the moments where we here in the United States didn't get all the luck, because these essential releases are all only available overseas,

And as you're about to see, you'd be hard pressed to find a more necessary import that 2000's Vatel.  I mean, just to rattle off its credentials, Vatel is a gorgeous, Academy Award-nominated period drama by Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields and the original Oppenheimer film, Fat Man and Little Boy), written by the ingenious playwright Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz & Guidenstern Are Dead, Brazil).
Gérard Depardieu plays the titular, real-life 17th century French chef who served under Louis XIV (played expertly here by the late Julian Sands), famous for putting on the most outlandishly extravagant festivities.  But operating beneath the wild spectacle are torrid love affairs, diplomatic intrigue, betrayals and one of history's most famous suicides.  The costumes and production design are show stoppers, beautifully photographed, but it's a witty yet dark drama underneath.  The supporting cast includes first rate performances by Tim Roth, Uma Thurman, Timothy Spall and Julian Glover.  It's surprising this film isn't better known and appreciated in the US, but we can kind of thank two infamous film villains for that.

R.I.P., your majesty.

Because before we go any further, it is essential we talk about the alternate cuts.  By which I mean, the proper complete cut and the absolutely to-be-avoided hacked up version.  Unfortunately, the latter is the only one available here in the US.  As they were wont to do, Vatel's American distributor Miramax crassly cut the film for the US market (thank you, Weinsteins) by about fifteen minutes, so only the original European version is complete.  It has more scenes of the preparation, the lavish spectacle itself, a nude scene and a whole subplot with Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, now of Emily In Paris fame.  You can spot if you're watching the US version right away - it adds a voice-over scene of Spall writing an expositional letter between Roth's introduction and the opening credits.  Curiously, you won't find much info online about the US release being abridged, but yeah, it's a problem.  So that's already a pretty definitive argument for importing this title.  But it's not the only one.

Vatel first came out from Columbia Tri-Star as a new release DVD in France in 2000.  That was quickly followed up in the US by Miramax in 2001, but it didn't have quite as many features (more on that below).  And more importantly, of course, it's the cut version.  It's also, apart from an identical Lions Gate reissue, still the only release Vatel's ever gotten in America.  Eventually, in 2015, we got it on blu, but only in France from Gaumont.  Luckily, it's the complete uncut version; and yes I checked, it's region free.

1) 2000 Columbia Tri-Star DVD; 2) 2001 Miramax DVD; 3) 2015 Gaumont BD.
(This shot is missing from the US cut.)

The good news is that all three discs are anamorphic, in at least close to the correct aspect ratio, and properly progressive.  Geometrically, the French DVD is closer to the proper AR than the US: 2.37:1 compared to 2.28:1.  But you can see the French disc zooms in tighter, cropping more of the image, especially along the top.  The BD widens the frame back out to 2.35:1, while actually pulling out to reveal more of the image than either prior DVD.  It also kind of splits the difference between the two DVDs color timings: the US is warmer, the French is cooler, and the BD is the most natural of all, and considerably brighter (though not overly so; the night scenes are still full of solid blacks).  It's also a substantial boost in clarity, bringing fine detail into focus, though it still feels like an old master, with film grain ranging from soft to absent.

The Columbia DVD gives us both the proper English track and a French dub, both in 5.1, with optional English and French subtitles.  The US DVD just, naturally, shaves off the French options, giving us the English 5.1 with optional English subtitles.  And the blu-ray gives us the best possible collection of options, including both the English and French audio, restored in their original stereo tracks, now in DTS-HD, plus the 5.1 mixes also now in DTS-HD.  And they give us both English and French subtitles - everything you could want.

First off, the French release offers us an untranslated audio commentary by the production designer and costumer.  Sounds neat, but unless you're fluent, you can factor that out of your equation.  It also has a half-hour 'making of' doc, which is more of a mixed bag.  It's kind of a promotional piece, but at that length manages to get pretty deep, interviewing not just the stars but a lot of the key cast members and giving you more than your standard soundbites.  But the problem is, the English people speak English (including Joffé and most of the stars), and the French people speak French (including most of the crew), sans subtitles.  So there's a lot of good stuff and I'm glad we get it, but you have to sit through some frustratingly untranslated moments.  Anyway, there's also a brief look at the scoring of the film, and the trailer.

The US DVD doesn't have any of that, not even the trailer.  But it does have it's only, very brief (3.5 minutes) featurette, which is clearly using the same EPK interview and B-roll footage as the French doc.  But it includes multiple clips not used in on the French disc, so it does retain some value even if you have the French disc.  At three and a half minutes, though, that's some pretty thin gruel.

Finally, the blu-ray maintains all of the same extras as the French DVD, with no additions, subtractions or additional translations, though they did update the trailer to anamorphic.

So it's a shame about the untranslated extras, but it's still an absolute must-import.  Even the only partially-English friendly extras are better than the paltry US DVD.  More importantly, it's the only HD option, with a substantially improved transfer that's a lot more than just the same master on a bigger disc.  It also restores the original stereo track and overall has easily the most and best language/ audio options.  And, oh yeah, you have to import to see the complete, uncut version of the film.  You can't ask for more of a compelling mandate than that.