Playing Play It Again, Sam Again

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.

2001 Paramount DVD top; 2025 Kino Lorber BD bottom.

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.

2012 Docurama DVD top; 2012 Soda BD bottom.

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.

Separated: Errol Morris In Standard Def

Speaking of one of the world’s greatest documentary filmmaker’s latest works coming out on DVD only, today sees the release of Errol Morris’s Separated from Kino Lorber.  Now, Morris films have unfortunately been relegated to DVD only or not at all for a long time now, starting with Virgil’s last minute scrapping of their announced blu-ray of The B-Side in 2017.  Since then, we’ve also had American Dharma on DVD, and Wormwood, My Psychedelic Love Story, Pigeon Tunnel and last year’s Tune Out the Noise all go unreleased.  I don't even know how or if anyone can watch that last one, online or anywhere.  Apparently, it's about advisors?  Maybe it's more of a feature-length work-for-hire advertisement, and that's why not much has been made of it.  But it played at festivals, so who knows?  Anyway, given that environment, I guess getting this DVD at all is cause for minor celebration.

Earlier this year, I saw Morris Tweet his dissatisfaction at NBC, who co-funded and maintained the initial rights to broadcast, for not showing it before the November election.  A warning coming too late.  Though seeing how that bore out, I doubt it would have swayed the results.  And looking at it from the opposite vantage: what would a pre-election airing have done for his doc?  Well, better timing may’ve elevated its perceived relevancy and maybe netted a few more political junkies’ eyes on it.  But with the new administration, and their 2016 policies swinging back into action, the subject matter will unfortunately still probably prove highly relevant for years to come.  And this movie shouldn’t be reliant on momentary buzz; for anyone who knows and appreciates cinema, a new Errol Morris doc is a newsworthy event in its own right.

If it hasn't already been obvious from the cover image, etc, Separated is about the child separation that was being enacted at the US's Southern border, where migrants and their children were being split apart as a deterrent to illegal immigration.  Officially, it's based on the book Separated: Inside an American Tragedy by NBC News' Jacob Sobokoff, who did some crucial first-hand investigation for Dateline at the time.  "It is not a partisan movie. It's about a policy that was disgusting and should not be allowed to happen again. Make your own inferences," Morris advised.

I was initially concerned this might be a quick NBC news item expanded into feature with Morris' name on the cover.  But no, in the music, the editing, the shooting style and his interview style, this definitely feels like an Errol Morris movie, albeit more like Standard Operating Procedure than Vernon, FL.  He gets some strong responses from his interview subjects, and the photography is impressive throughout.  But what proves a little distracting is his use of recreation to dramatize the immigrants' experience.  Morris famously used recreation to great and consequential effect in A Thin Blue Line, but since Wormwood, it feels more like maybe Morris is getting bored with the constraints of traditional documentary filmmaking, and like Josh Oppenheim, is looking to push the envelope for its own sake.  Here, it's certainly effective in illustrating every step of crossing the border, being detained, divided and deported again (in this instance with a happy ending of reunion, though the doc makes clear this has still never happened for over a thousand cases).  But the fact that he never talks with a single parent, child or anyone who's attempted that journey for real is a weak spot.

2024 Kino DVD.

Kino presents Separated in 2.38:1 (the case says 2.40, but close enough), with occasional exceptions for archival footage and creative reshaping.  Yes, this is progressive and anamorphic, no unfortunate surprises here.  And it's at least a dual-layered disc, so compression is strong for standard definition.  But small detail does look fuzzy and slightly out of focus, something which would look much stronger in HD.  But c'est la vie.  We're presented with the choice of 2.0 and 5.1 audio tracks and optional English SDH subtitles, with a handful of foreign language subs burnt in (see the second comparison shot).  The only extra is the trailer and a handful of bonus trailers.

So, it's not exactly the Criterion 4k special edition I would've liked, but I'm glad to have this on my shelf.

The Complete Martian Chronicles

The old fashioned look of The Martian Chronicles, the 1980 trilogy of television films, is sure to put a lot of potential viewers off.  In fact, I'll add, not just the look, but a lot of the old fashioned notions in the writing make this feel rather creaky and thoroughly un-hip.  But it's also so, so good that I would implore anyone, even if they're not explicitly science fiction fans, to give this a chance.  Especially since it's now readily available on a very affordable Blu-ray set from Kino.

Update 8/14/24: Thanks to Australia's Imprint label, there's now a special edition in town!  And since it's Update Week, I've also updated a couple older posts today, specifically A Child Is Waiting and A Rainy Day In New York with additional DVD versions.  And it's just Day 2, so we're just getting started!

This opening screenshot should give you an idea of what I'm talking about; our protagonists have landed on the surface of Mars and exited their spacecraft without spacesuits or any other method to address the atmosphere.  They just describe the air as "thin."  The Martian Chronicles was broadcast in 1980, but it's based on Ray Bradbury's 1950 novel of the same name, and much of is gathered from short stories first published in the 1940s.  So there's a lot of rough, early (mis)understandings of science in the material that the series' adapter Richard Matheston, himself a great science fiction writer, opted not to alter/ update for more modern viewers.  It's also surprisingly sexist (in an abandoned city, a man searching for a lone female survivor not only asks himself, "if I was a woman, where would I be?  Hmm... The beauty parlor!" but he turns out to be correct; the author agrees with the character).  These films are faithful, perhaps to a fault; but having made a study of it now, I completely concur with Matheson's decisions here.  I daresay, he's crafted these films even better than Bradbury would have himself.

So just to clarify, The Martian Chronicles is based on a series of short stories Bradbury had written about man's explorations and colonization of Mars.  The stories were compiled and altered, with many new additions, to shape it into what is essentially still an anthology, with different characters set in their individual plots, but which push a larger narrative of mankind's advancement, or failings.  Matheson's own talents come into play, then, as he very intelligently walks a fine line between anthology and a single narrative.  Characters come and go, their stories begin and end in a sometimes episodic way, but they all contribute to this one over-arching adventure, which winds up being more meaningful and impactful than the sum of its parts.  It's not about spectacle, although for a television production it's very ambitious and there are a bunch of cool visuals.  It has an impressive all-star cast, including Rock Hudson, Roddy McDowall, Bernie Casie (who's awesome in this), Demon Seed's Fritz Weaver, Bernadette Peters (albeit not in the most flattering role) and Darren McGavin.  Yes, the martians themselves tend to look like some of the cheesier aliens you'd see on Star Trek, but there's also some really cool and inventive production design.  And the theme music is cool in a very early 80's way.  But what's really important is just that this is really a great, classic science fiction story, expertly told, with a lot to say that still stands the test of time.

The Martian Chronicles debuted on DVD from MGM as a 3-disc set in 2004, though there had previously been a 1999 laserdisc set from Image and a series of different VHS releases in its day.  The DVDs were really the way to go, though, until 2018, when Kino treated us to a 2-disc blu-ray upgrade.  Then in 2023, while the the transfers were the same, Imprint came with a bunch of new features on their new 2-disc BD set, which turned it into a proper special edition.

2004 MGM DVD top; 2018 Kino BD mid; 2023 Imrpint BD bottom.

Honestly, when Kino's blu-rays were first announced, I wasn't expecting as much as we got here.  I figured we'd get the same old master on a higher resolution disc, and with a little luck, the interlacing might be cleared up.  As it's a vintage television broadcast program, so I wasn't even counting on that second part.  But hey, look, we've clearly got a whole new scan with greater clarity, more natural colors (arguably, maybe the blus are a little on the cool side, but the DVDs are over saturated, so this is a big improvement) and yes, the interlacing is gone - just look at that guy in the red & white striped shirt.  And the Imprint blus are for all intents and purposes identical to the Kino.  If you zoom way in and flip between screenshots, you can see the grain shift slightly, but that's the only difference.  All three transfers are 1.33:1, though you can see the framing has shifted slightly.  But there's no way to judge, outside of implicitly trusting one release over the other, which is more accurate, as neither appears particularly better than the other, and it's barely visible outside of a direct comparison like this.  However, given how superior the BDs are in every other aspect, I am inclined to trust Kino on this change, too.

All three sets offer the original mono track, but the BDs have bumped it up to lossless DTS-HD.  All three also include optional English subtitles, though only the MGM also comes with optional French and Spanish subs.

As I said, though, MGM's release was completely barebones.  Kino's set is no packed special edition, but we got a little something.  Specifically, we got a very brief, but fun and insightful, on-camera interview with actor James Faulkner.  He talks about his experiences playing a martian, but unfortunately, he's unable to speak to so many of the broader topics that Martian Chronicles fans would like to know, about the history of the novel, how it differs from the show, how the show came to be produced, etc.  That's no fault of Mr. Faulkner's, of course - and I also appreciate that most of the key players: Matheson, Bradbury, Hudson, etc have passed, so they'd be limited as to who else they could interview - but even just an expert's participation would have been very welcome.  Still, this is a good, if small, step forward.  There's also a couple bonus trailers and reversible artwork (using the same imagery as the MGM cover).

Now, where Imprint breaks away from the pack is the impressive collection of extras.  First we have an audio commentary for all three films by expert Gary Gerani, and they're pretty great.  He's really well informed and delves deep into the differences between this and the book, and knows plenty about other versions as well.  It does start to feel like he's filibustering a bit in the third chapter to fill time, but for the most part, he's a great addition, and if you own this set, you should definitely check him out.  Then, there are three new, on-camera interviews with the special effects artist, composer and sculptor.  They're all pretty great, though some memories are a bit disappointingly faded and vacation-focused (you'll see what I mean).  And there's also a pretty great, vintage made-for-TV documentary about Ray Bradbury, which really rounds out the package.  Imprint's release also comes in a fancy slip-box with a cool lenticular cover.

The same moment in The Martian Chronicles and Ray Bradbury Theater.

Before I wrap this up, I have something else to address.  I said, perhaps rather boldly, that I felt Matheson adapted these films better than Bradbury would have himself, and I don't just say that because I appreciate and admire the work so much, but because Bradbury had his chance to adapt this material himself.  The Ray Bradbury Theater is a television series that ran through the late 80s and early 90s, for the first two season on HBO, and the later three on the USA Network.  Each of the 65 half-hour episodes is written by Bradbury, adapting one of his own famous short stories for the screen, often with some fun celebrity stars like Jeff Goldblum, Leslie Nielsen, Shelley Duvall and many more.  And eight of those are key stories from The Martian Chronicles.  What's fun about this is it includes two chapters that Matheson omitted, including the very dramatic Usher II, which brings Edgar Allen Poe to the space age.  Also, the whole first Martian Chronicles film was about three expeditions to Mars.  In the novel, there were four, and another TRBT episode is about that fourth expedition.

The others are alternate takes on chapters that were in the films; and honestly they're quite good and fun alternate takes on the material, with some noteworthy cast members like John Vernon, David Carradine and Patrick Macnee.  As stand-alone episodes without the macro-narrative, though, they feel more like Twilight Zone episodes: clever stories leading up to an amusing twist, but without the dramatic weight or substantive heft of the films.  Bradbury has taken the opportunity to update them - they wear spacesuits and female characters have actual utility.  And there are some clever details here that Matheson omitted.  And the other episodes in the series are fun, too.  Having recently rewatched the complete Tales From the Darkside, I'd say this series is generally better written with higher production values.  So if you liked that, you're sure to dig this.

2018 Kino BD top; 2005 Echo Bridge DVD bottom. Same scene.

Unfortunately, though, the home video options for The Ray Bradbury Theater are disappointing.  In short, Echo Bridge has them.  And they have released them on DVD, multiple times even.  You can get them as a full 5-disc set, a collector's tin, individual sets, and a more recent re-release.  My shots are from the original 2005 set, but they're all the same actual discs, and ugh.  These are low quality, over-compressed and noisy tape-to-digital transfers.  They squeeze too many episodes on each disc to save space, though the masters are poor anyway.  This series seriously needs remastering; it's a real mess.  And the episodes aren't even put in release order on the discs.  They're just randomly organized.  The 5.1 audio is clear enough, but there are no subtitles.  And no, there are no extras.

So yeah, if your idea of science fiction is the latest special effects and blockbuster actions, admittedly, you're going to be disappointed in The Martian Chronicles.  But if you prefer headier stuff and can look past superficial imperfections, The Martian Chronicles is actually pretty terrific.  And the Imprint blu really delivers a satisfying package (though it's too bad they couldn't license that little Faulkner interview, too).  And then I'd also recommend anyone who does come to love the films to check out the Ray Bradbury Theater episodes as excellent supplements.  But they're not the same tier works of art that the films are.

The Fletch Chronicle: Fletch, Fletch Lives & Confess, Fletch

I've been planning a Fletch post for a while.  But then Confess, Fletch came out, so I decided to wait for that.  And then Kino's 2k restorations of the first two films were announced, so I decided to wait for those.  Now a lot of time has passed, and this post has become a taller and taller order, but I'm glad to finally unveil the complete Fletch chronicle on home video.

Chevy Chase has had a handful of great roles... in Caddyshack, the Vacation movies.  He's been fun in plenty of movies like The Three Amigos, Dirty Work and Spies Like Us.  But I daresay this is his greatest, defining role.  Based on the series of detective novels by Gregory McDonald, Fletch walks a satisfying line between his natural improv comedy style and a more serious mystery.  Newcomers might be a little disappointed if they're expecting more of a pure comedy (especially given Chase's silly disguises), but once you get the tone, you'll see Michael Ritchie has directed a real cracker here: the highlight of his career.  The supporting cast is spot-on with great performances from Joe Don Baker, George Wendt, M Emmet Walsh, Tim Matheson (Animal House) and a young Geena Davis.  It's got a fantastic Beverly Hills Cop-inspired synth score and a first rate theme song by Stephanie Mills.

Universal first released Fletch as a barebones DVD in 1998, which they then updated to a semi-special "Jane Doe" edition in 2007.  And naturally they reissued it a bunch over the years (we'll take a look at one, the "Triple Feature Film Set" we saw on my Mallrats page.  In 2009, they released it on blu, which they also reissued a bunch over the years.  I bought a Double Feature set because, back when I was shopping for Fletch at an FYE, the version with Uncle Buck was actually cheaper than the one without.  So, okay, I'll take a free second movie.  And now in 2024, Kino has just come out with a new special edition, restored in 2k with more features.

1) 2007 Universal DVD; 2) 2009 Universal DVD; 3) 2009 Universal BD;
4) 2013 Universal BD; 5) 2024 Kino BD.

For starters, though similar, the 2007 and 2009 DVDs are not identical, but the 2009 BD and the 2013 BDs are.  The Double Feature set is just the exact same 2009 BD in a new case with a 2011 Uncle Buck blu.  But Fletch and Happy Gilmore has been squeezed onto the same, new DVD.  They seem to be using the same master, but are clearly different encodes... and that's not the only difference, as we'll see later.  Honestly, though, none of these releases look all that different from each other.  They're all 1.85:1 with nearly identical framing.  The new Kino has a sliver extra picture along the edges, but I mean slivers.  More important is that the old BD features edge enhancement and other tinkering that detracts from the image, which Kino thankfully does away with.  At 2k, there's not really any new detail to be found, but the compression on the old blu present sparse and smudgy film grain.  The grain is still a bit light on the Kino, but it's much better than what Universal gave us.  They've also cleaned up the color timing, though those improvements are subtle.

Here's where the 2009 DVD really sets itself apart, in a bad way.  The original DVD and the 2007 Jane Doe edition include the original stereo track, but the Jane Doe also created a new 5.1 remix.  The 2009 DVD, unfortunately, keeps the 5.1 but drops the original track.  And while both previous DVDs include English and Spanish subtitles (and also French for on the 2007), the 2009 has none.  So yeah, you were definitely getting a stripped down inferior edition if you tried to save with the triple feature.  And that's not all the bad news.  The blu-ray has all three subtitle tracks, but still only the 5.1 remix track, albeit in DTS-HD.  Happily, the Kino brings back the original stereo mix, now in DTS-HD, along with the 5.1, and keeps the English subtitles, though not the Spanish and French.

Now the original DVD had nothing but the trailer, and the 2009 DVD doesn't even have that.  But the Jane Doe Edition earns its (corny) title by having cooked up some genuine special features.  Primarily, there's a half-hour retrospective featurette, which by and large is pretty great.  It features candid interviews with the screenwriter and producers, and gathers a good number of supporting cast and crew to share their memories of the filmmaking.  Unfortunately, though, the DVD producer decided to cast himself as a Fletch-like character who keeps doing skits in between all the interview footage, and that material is downright embarrassing.  It's one of the more notorious extras in DVD history.  But the interviews are really worth pushing through for.  Besides that, there's a brief but fun featurette with the effects artist and producers about Chase's disguises.  And there's a third featurette, but it's just a series of clips from the film with no original content, so you'll want to skip that one.  And that's about all you got, but it also came packaged in a fancy, holographic slipcover.

The Universal blu-ray just carries over the Jane Doe extras, but happily, the Kino takes things further.  Yes, all the Jane Doe stuff is back, but now we get an all new audio commentary by Bryan Reesman and Max Evry.  And boy, is it good.  The usual batch of slack, self-indulgent "expert" commentators we tend to get these days should take notes.  They've read the Fletch novels and have a wealth of info and insight to share, quoting articles and interviews throughout the film.  That's the primary new extra, but Kino has also tracked down an old promo interview with Chase.  It's very short, but finally adds his voice to the supplements.  They've also dug up four TV spots and thrown in some bonus trailers, including Fletch Lives.  It also comes in a much classier slipcover than the old Jane Doe one.

Fletch Lives is a distinct step down from the original, and notably not based on a McDonald novel.  But it's still a fun, Fletch caper with more emphasis on comedy.  Chase dons more silly disguises, and some of the supporting cast are playing broader characters, particularly Randall Cobb as Ben Dover.  They wouldn't have put someone like him in the original film, and even though there's some justification, Cleavon Little plays an over the top Southern stereotype in a cartoonish way that fails the original's standards.  On the other hand, other supporting players like Hal Holbrook and R. Lee Armey are consistently first class, while walk-ons from players like Richard Belzer, Dennis Burkley (Cal!) and Phil Hartman add color.  And it's great to see original supporting players Richard Libertini and George Wyner return, even if they're little more than cameos, to provide some continuity to the series.  It's the rough equivalent of Ghostbusters 2, an amusing sequel that re-captures at least some of the magic of the original, so long as you don't expect it to live up to the same standards of quality.

Universal first released it on DVD in 2010.  Universal released it on blu in 2017, but for reasons I can't remember, I went with the Fabulous Films blu-ray that came out the same year in the UK instead.  There's no particular advantage, I think I just came across a cheap used copy.  At any rate, they've both been rendered obsolete now by Kino's new 2k special edition... although, maybe not very obsolete.

1) 2010 Universal DVD; 2) 2017 Fabulous BD; 3) 2024 Kino BD.

All three editions of Fletch Lives are also presented in 1.85:1, though the Fabulous blu is closer to 1.84; and as with the original film, Kino's edition also features slim additions of picture information along all four sides.  It's almost the exact same case here as with the first Fletch, except to be fair, Universal's Fletch Lives blu-ray is a little less tinkered with.  But the Kino is still clearly the superior disc, with a more natural filmic look, slightly richer colors and more natural contrast.  For example, look at the white board behind Fletch in the first set of shots.  The detail is flared out on the DVD and first BD, but you can make it out now on the Kino.  Casual viewers might not appreciate the gains, but Kino's discs really are improved.

All three tracks include the original English stereo mix, in DTS-HD on the blus.  The US releases include optional English subtitles as well, but they're lacking on Fabulous's UK disc.  The DVD also includes both French and Spanish dubs and subs.  And again, Kino has also included a new 5.1 remix, also in DTS-HD.

No Fletch Lives disc has ever had any extras beyond the theatrical trailer on the DVD.  But Kino has rectified this unfortunate situation with another excellent commentary by Reesman and Evry.  They've also thrown in the original promo featurette and two very brief actor promos for Chase and leading lady Julianne Phillips.  The trailer's here, too, along with several TV spots and a handful of bonus trailers, including the original Fletch.

Like most O.G. fans, I assume, I approached the new Fletch with crossed arms.  It certainly didn't help that this was following an entire legacy of mediocre at best remakes of classic 80s films from Robocop to the Ed Helms Vacation.  But Jon Hamm does a great job of capturing the spirit Chase brought to the role without doing an imitation, and Greg Mottola directs a more faithful Fletch, without the silly costumes and once again adapting a mystery from one of the novels.  I went in ready to reject this completely, but came out hoping this could be the first in a complete series of Fletch films.  Bu unfortunately, I think the aforementioned legacy has kept too many people from giving this one the chance it needed to succeed on that commercial level.

So I suppose we're lucky to have physical media copies available at all.  Paramount released separate DVD and BD editions mid-2023 in the US, and few other parts of the world.

1) 2023 Paramount DVD; 2) 2023 Paramount BD.

Confess, Fletch is even faithful to the original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, although the DVD is more like 1.86.  The blu-ray is naturally sharper and clearer than the DVD.  If you look at the sign by Fletch's head, it's an unreadable blur on the DVD, but can be made out to read "(Area Code) + Number ONLY" on the blu.  That's a level of gain even the Kino upgrades didn't provide.  Otherwise, of course, they're concurrent releases using the same master with identical color-timing, etc.  The advantages are all in the natural benefits of the format.  We get the proper 5.1 audio, in TrueHD on the blu, with an additional audio descriptive track, optional English subtitles, a Spanish dub as well as French and Spanish subs.

Unfortunately, there aren't any special features, not even a trailer.  That's a real shame; I would've loved a commentary by Mottola, or even just a brief promotional chat with Hamm giving a few comments on taking on the Fletch legacy.

I suppose you're curious about Uncle Buck, too?  Well, why not?  I'm not a huge fan of the film.  John Candy's great and it has its moments, but John Hughes has created too preachy and sappy a family film for my tastes.  However I did find something interesting about its history on disc, and I do happen to have a couple editions, including the original 2005 Universal DVD, the 'John Candy: The Comedy Favorites Collection: The Franchise Collection' DVD set from 2009, and obviously the Double Feature BD with Fletch.  But I should tell you Kino has already announced a 4k UHD, and I don't plan to upgrade, so don't expect an update here anytime soon.  So anyway, let's take a look.

1) 2005 Universal DVD; 2) 2008 Universal DVD; 3) 2013 Universal BD.

So, it's all ancient history now, of course.  But what was interesting is that the 2008 John Candy collection quietly included a rather substantial upgrade over initial DVD that had been released just three years earlier.  As you can see, it's the same master they'd eventually use for the blu with cleaner, more naturalistic colors and substantially more picture along all four sides.  Now that we have HD editions, of course it doesn't matter, as the blu-ray is more focused and clear than any DVD.  But it was a pretty neat surprise in 2008.

One big downside to the blu, though, is that it features a crappy lossy stereo track (even by lossy standards, it's underwhelming).  All three discs at least feature optional English subs and no remixes.  The original DVD also threw in Spanish subs and French and Spanish dubs.  The 2008 DVD dumped all the Spanish stuff, but kept the French dub.  And the blu-ray just has the English.  None of the releases have any extras except for the trailer on the DVDs.  The blu doesn't even have that.  Kino will hopefully help with all of that.  They certainly did with Fletch 1 and 2, and those weren't even UHDs.  But they're still highly recommended for any serious Fletch fans, and so is Paramount's Confess.