Import Week 2025, Day 3: Bright Star

Angel At My Table and The Piano may be her most famous films, but Bright Star is probably my favorite Jane Campion (to really call it, I'd have to go back and rewatch Portrait Of a Lady).  At the most basic level could be described as a John Keats biopic, but it's so much deeper than that.  It's also actually the story of Keats' fiancee rather than the poet himself.  It's also a rich exploration of Keats' work, poetry in general and a tragic romance, while still being quite sharp and witty.  There's a debate in-film about whether poetry should spark the head or the heart, this film does both.  I wasn't particularly familiar with any of the cast, but they're all pitch perfect, even the kids.  And as beautifully shot as this movie is, it's really the strikingly original soundtrack, which has some nice strings and stuff, but most notably features a full vocal choir performing these gently lyrical pieces of Mozart.

So like yesterday's post, this is another DVD-only release from Sony, who released this as a new release in 2010, and at least it's not entirely featureless (more on that below).  But it did come out on blu that same year in different parts of the world, including Australia, Germany and Norway.  I went with the Pathe disc from France because they gave it the fullest special edition.  They released it as both a BD and BD/ DVD combo-pack, plus a stand-alone DVD version and a single disc BD reissue in 2015.  I went with the combo-pack, so we can look at three versions today.

1) 2010 US Sony DVD; 2) 2010 FR Pathe DVD; 3) 2010 FR Pathe BD.

As is the norm for Import Week, these discs are using the same master for their transfers, so the biggest distinction between the two DVDs is just that the French one is PAL.  It's not the only distinction, though, as the Sony disc is 1.84:1, which Pathe corrects to 1.85:1 (the Sony has a basically imperceptible vertical stretch, which you'd only catch in a direct screenshot comparison like this).  But PQ-wise, the only real pertinent difference is the BD bumping the image up to HD.  It sharpens the picture and gives the edges cleaner lines.  This film sometimes has a softer look, which can disguise the benefits, but there are also a number of gorgeous, richly detailed wide shots that significantly benefit from the additional clarity.

The blu also bumps the 5.1 track up to DTS-HD, and the French discs both include a French dub in 5.1, also in DTS-HD on the blu.  The one downside is that Sony included optional English and English HoH subtitles, while the Pathe only has optional French ones.  French discs often have a bad (and deserved) rep for forced subs, but they're perfectly removable here; they don't even default to on.

Working With Jane

So again, the Sony isn't entirely bereft.  It has one deleted scene and three very short featurettes (ranging from two to three minutes each) which interview Campion.  Stitched together, that's a 7-minute interview with the director, which is better than nothing.  It also has a whole bunch of bonus trailers, but none for Bright Star itself.

Pathe, on the other hand, has a whole bunch more.  It has the same deleted scene as the Sony, plus another one.  And it has a really nicely-crafted half hour behind-the-scenes documentary entitled Working With Jane.  And it has three of Campion's early short films: A Girl's Own Story (1984), Passionless Moments (1983) and An Exercise in Discipline (1982), making this a bit of a treasure trove for Campion fans.  It also includes a photo gallery and the film's French-language trailer.  Plus it comes in a cool, purple case.  I think some also came in a slipcover, but AmazonFR didn't send one with mine.

Pathe doesn't include the three featurettes from the Sony, though.  So if you want to be a hardcore completist, you can pick up the US disc and pair 'em together for a fuller special edition.  But honestly, they're awfully short, so I'd only consider it if it was a cheap used copy.  Or if, like me, you already had the DVD and are just double-dipping to the blu as an upgrade.

Ian McKellen's Re-Revamped Richard III

Maybe it's not entirely proper to call the 1995 film of Richard III, "Ian McKellen's Richard III," since it was actually directed by Richard Loncraine. But besides starring as our titular Richard, McKellen does share a producer and writing credit (along with Loncraine) for this particular adaptation, so it's hard not to think of him as the driving force behind this film. But maybe that's just the influence of the story itself, William Shakespeare's famous play where the villain breaks the fourth wall and guides you by the hand through his fiendish plot. At any rate, it shows McKellen has surely succeeded in capturing the role in that we now often picture him when we think of Richard, Duke of Gloucester. And BFI's smashing new edition is only going to further cement that.

Update 5/7/12: To really do this comparison right, we've got to bring in the US blu-ray from Twilight Time, right? Right! DVDExotica needs more Twilight Time anyway.

I guess there are a couple things to know before going into this particular Richard III. First, thankfully, it keeps the original language. This isn't one of those updated Shakespeare films where they modernize the dialogue to "Hey, where's Hamlet." "He's over by that grave." "Super, thanks."  So why do McKellen and Loncraine get writing credits? Well, because it's not 100% of the complete original play being filmed here. It's abridged by, oh, almost half? Alterations have been made. So, if you're looking for a definitively faithful presentation of Shakespeare's Richard III, original language or not, you can do better. And finally, this 1995 version is part of a surprisingly long tradition of transposing Shakespeare's play into alternate timelines and settings. Here, we stay in London, but into a weird sort of alternate timeline where it's a Nazi government in the 1930s. It takes a bit of clever contrivance to make the famous "my kingdom for a horse" line now apply to a military jeep. But, given Shakespeare's cavalier attitude towards the real history of King Richard III in his work, it's hard to hold a little artistic license against the filmmakers here.

But if you're in the market for a good telling of the tale, you're going to love this film. It may not quite dethrone my personal favorite Richard III film (Olivier's, which by the way, is far from perfectly faithful itself), but it does deliver some strong elements that one does not; and it's certainly different enough that there's room in our collections for both. What has this film got? Production values! Beautiful photography, lavish costumes, a cavalcade of delicious murders, stunning locations and epic war scenes with tons of extras, explosions and people running around on fire. And most importantly, it's got great actors delivering brilliant speeches from perhaps Shakespeare's most entertaining story. McKellen was born to deliver Shakespeare (if you haven't, be sure to see his 1990 Othello and especially his 1979 Macbeth with Judi Dench), and he's far from alone. This film has a terrific supporting cast including Jim Broadbent, Robert Downey Jr., Maggie Smith, Blackadder's own Tim McInnerny, Annette Bening and Nigel Hawthorne. If that's not enough to get you to want to watch this movie, what if I told you McKellen drives a tank through an occupied castle? This movie is everything for all people!

So Richard III debuted on DVD from MGM in 2000. It was a pretty no frills flipper disc, with a widescreen presentation on one side, and full-screen on the other. It came out only a few months later in the UK from Pathe, which was also pretty light on features. Finally, in 2015, Twilight Time released it on blu-ray for the first time. But now BFI has topped them with their new blu-ray/ DVD combo pack with a brand new 2k scan of the original 35mm negative, for the first time, a noteworthy collection of special features! Well, I've got both the old DVDs, and the new BFI set, so prepare to see Richard III in many different aspect ratios:

1) MGM wide 2) MGM full 3) Pathe 4) Twilight Time 5) BFI DVD 6) BFI BD

MGM came out first but I bought the Pathe DVD because it listed a featurette the MGM didn't have. It was only when it arrived that I found out Pathe was in the incorrect aspect ratio of about 1.74:1. So then I went back and picked up the MGM, which had the correct aspect ratio and did look a lot better. I'd actually forgotten, until revisiting it for this post, that the Pathe DVD isn't even anamorphic - yikes! MGM doesn't have that problem and actually looks pretty good, except for a warmer color scheme that's so extreme it could almost be called an orange overcast. It also gives us the added bonus of the fullscreen mode, which is of course an incorrectly framed pan & scan mess, but at least gives us a lot of upper and lower open matte picture for curiosity's sake.

But of course, the newer HD presentations usurp all the standard def DVDs. Interestingly, the framing's are a bit different.  I mean, even excluding the fullscreen version and the Pathe disc, MGM is 2.31 while Twilight Time and BFI are 2.40 and 2.39. respectively. And they are framed a smidgen differently... in the top set of shots, you'll notice MGM has a sliver more along the top, and BFI has a smidgen more along the bottom. But horizontally, they're pretty identical. So why the difference in ratio? The picture is actually slightly stretched on the BFI, or more accurately, squished (to use a technical term) on the MGM.  Meanwhile, Twilight Time has a tiny bit more on the left than BFI; that's the 2.39-2.40 difference.  Otherwise, the two blus' PQ might not seem wildly different, but BFI's new scan definitely makes their grain more distinct.  Just compare the skies in the second set of shots and it's very obvious.  Also, color-wise, BFI pushes a bit more to the red.

Both DVDs had 5.1 audio and English subtitles/ captioning. MGM also has a French 2.0 dub, plus French and Spanish subtitles. Twilight Time brings the 5.1 mix to DTS-HD and also includes English subtitles, but BFI offers the best audio options of all, offering the choice of the DTS-HD 5.1 mix or, for the first time ever, the original 2.0 stereo track, which they present in uncompressed LPCM.  And yes, it has English subs, too.

Pathe's promo featurette

Extras-wise, BFI is playing to win, but there is a bit worth mentioning across the prior releases. MGM basically just had the trailer (non-anamorphic, 1.68:1 on both sides of the disc), although it also came with a nice, fold-out insert with interesting notes. Twilight Time has the trailer, a nice little 6-page booklet by Julie Kirgo and, as per their usual m.o., the isolated score on a separate audio track.  And Pathe also had the trailer, no insert, but did have an exclusive 'making of' featurette. It's only five minutes long, and heavy on clips from the film, but it does let us hear from McKellen and co. at the time of filming, and includes a voice or two not heard from on BFI's extensive extras.

BFI has a ton of stuff with McKellen and Loncraine, but nobody else. I suspect some of this might've been made for British television; but anyway, you really can't say we don't get enough from these two. They do an audio commentary, a brief retrospective featurette, and a substantial live Q&A together. Then there's a 79 minute special of McKellen lecturing on Shakespeare. It kind of reminds me of his Acting Shakespeare DVD, which was interesting but a bit dry; however, this is definitely brand new. Still a bit dry, though. Finally, there's a new 2016 trailer, which advertises the reunion of McKellen and Loncraine as well as the movie. BFI's set also comes with a weighty 34-page booklet, which definitely surpasses MGM's old insert and even Twilight Time's booklet.

I highly recommend the film and in particular BFI's new blu. I confess to being a little bit disappointed that they didn't include the original making of featurette (and even the original trailer), but it's certainly nothing to hold out for or double-dip on. The extras could've been a little more well-rounded, i.e. interviewing any of the slew of other highly talented people involved in making this film, but they certainly plumbed the depths of its two key players. How many special editions seem to get everybody except the film's big star? Well, contrary to that, we have to be grateful for McKellen's thorough involvement here. He even wrote the booklet for gosh sake. So definitely pick this one up; but if you're like me, hang onto your grubby little Pathe disc as well.

Branagh's Shakespeare Far Superior In the UK: Love's Labour's Lost

In 2000, when Kenneth Branagh's latest (at the time) Shakespeare adaptation, the underrated Love's Labour's Lost, came out on DVD, the UK didn't just get it a couple months earlier, they also got it better. I've never seen anyone compare the US and UK releases before (except dvdcompare's look at the fundamental specs), and I've never really bothered to myself until now. But having just borrowed a copy of Miramax's US DVD and really delving into the differences between that and the Pathe edition, I'm surprised what a clear winner of them is. And it makes me extra happy that I was impatient and imported rather than waiting the extra months for a local disc.  (=

One of the appeals of all of Branagh's Shakespeares is that, unlike most Hollywood adaptations, he doesn't dumb down or modernize the language. He uses the the original writing and uses the immense talents of himself and his cast to make them still effective for contemporary audiences. Mind you, he's not the only filmmaker to have done this, there are some amazing Shakespeare films out there by the likes of Trevor Nunn, Laurence Olivier and others (another hint of future posts you can probably expect). But Branagh's gotta be one of the most consistently at the top of the list.

And that's not to say his films are dry or scholarly. Indeed, while the bard's words are all original, he's updated the setting to a 1930s musical, and great songs by the likes of Cole Porter and George Gershwin have been inserted into the play. They're big, glorious musical numbers on broad, theatrical sets with a fitting sense of unreality. that somehow manage to match the tone of Shakespeare's lesser known comedy perfectly. Branagh knows how to succeed on the entertainment end of the spectrum just as well as the academic. I mean, he's got the one and only Nathan Lane as Costard the fool. And admittedly, it can look from the outside that maybe Kenneth leaned a little too heavily towards the entertainment side this time around, casting American movie stars like Drew Barrymore and Matthew Lillard rather than some of the RSC heavyweights he's used in the past. But he understands just how to use their strengths, I'd clever casting is one of Branagh's more hidden talents; and frankly, he doesn't give Lillard much of the dramatic lifting.

Miramax's US DVD on top; Pathe's UK disc underneath.

This film is beautifully shot in vividly colorful 'scope. Although the colors are pretty faded and muted on the US disc. It's also less 'scope, coming in at 2.30:1 as opposed to the UK's 2.40:1. This results in considerable amount lost on the sides, and even a bit along the bottom of Miramax's DVD. You can hardly blame US audiences for failing to appreciate this film as keenly as European viewers when this is what they were given. The magically blue, softly hued lake is just grim and grey in the shot above.

Extras-wise, too, the UK comes out well ahead. They start out with some good features in common: five deleted scenes, a light 'making of' featurette (it's only about 8 minutes, but at least it's not made up of lots of clips from the movie we've just seen), and an amusing outtake reel. But then the US DVD misses out on the most important feature of them all: an audio commentary by Kenneth Branagh. And it's a good one, too; he's interested and has a lot to share. But for whatever reason, you don't get to hear it in the US. And just for a little extra salt, only Pathe's disc has the trailer.

So the UK is clearly the one to own, it wins by a large margin. Of course, looking at these screenshots, I can't help but notice how much they would benefit from a fresh HD scan. Even the superior shots are clearly compressed, soft and lacking detail. And considering how this was shot, I think seeing it treated on blu-ray could be a huge revelation. But that may well be a long way off, if it comes along at all, so you might want to snag that Pathe disc in the meantime. But hopefully it will get the release it deserves someday, and if that release is state-side, it had better remember to include the commentary.