Import Week 2025, Day 2: The Painted Veil

Today for Import Week, we turn our attentions to Germany.  And as promised, it's a title that's DVD-only here in the US, so if you want this film at all in HD, you have to import it.  I'm talking about Der Bunte Schleier, better known as 2006's The Painted Veil.

The Painted Veil is, of course, an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel of the same name.  This is actually the third time it's been brought to the silver screen, after 1957's The Seventh Sin starring George Sanders, and probably the most famous Painted Veil, the 1937 version starring Greta Garbo.  Both of those films took a bunch of liberties though, especially The Seventh Sin, which changes the period, setting and everything; while the '37 totally cops out on the novel's poignant ending.  So this latest adaptation is the go-to choice for a vibrant, fleshed-out telling of the original story.

It's also the only one not studio bound, shot on exotic - both beautiful and disturbing - location rather than flat Hollywood sets.  With its fluid camera and naturalistic performances, this is the first to marry some reality to the author's vision.  When a young London doctor finds his high society wife cheating on him, he decides to drag her along with him into an expedition into a small Chinese village suffering from a deadly Cholera epidemic, out of spite.  So if you're expecting your usual breathy period melodrama, be prepared for how bleak and hard this story goes.  They definitely do not dial down the cruelty and smallness that run through Ed Norton's character like most movies would.  Besides him and Naomi Watts, who you see on the cover there, this stars Liev Schreiber, Toby Jones and The Avengers' Diana Rigg, all of whom are bringing their A game to this project.  Also, fun fact: Sally Hawkins (Bring Her Back, The Shape of Water) appears in the closing credits, but not the film itself.  She must've gotten cut.  If we ever do get a US blu-ray release of this film, let's hope it includes deleted scenes.

But I'm not holding my breath.  So until such a time, let's look at the options we actually do have.  Warner Bros released this as a barebones new release DVD in 2007 and... that's the whole story, at least here in the US.  But Germany came to the rescue in 2009 with a proper blu-ray release from Ascot Elite Home Entertainment.  It even has a little something by way of special features.

2007 US Warner Bros DVD top; 2009 DE Ascot Elite BD bottom.

2007 US Warner Bros DVD left; 2009 DE Ascot Elite BD right.

Warner presents The Painted Veil in 2.39:1, which Ascot tweaks to 2.41:1.  There's no extra picture either way; the image is just a pinch wider on the BD.  Honestly, I'm not sure which is correct, and wouldn't be surprised if the ideal is actually 2.40:1.  And unsurprisingly, this appears to be the same master used for both transfers.  The color timing, framing, contrast levels etc are all identical.  But the jump from SD to HD alone counts for a lot of clarity, as you can see in our 600% close-ups above.  It's like removing a sheet of wax paper off the picture to see the clear image underneath.  Of course, the difference is a lot more subtle when you're not zoomed in, but it's still enough to notice on a good sized set.  Obviously, a fresh scan would be ideal; we really don't see any film grain on either disc.  But the Ascot is still a worthwhile upgrade.

Another benefit of the blu, naturally is the lossless audio.  Warner Bros and Ascot Elite share the same 5.1 mix, but it's in DTS-HD on the blu.  The blu also includes a 5.1 German dub in DTS-HD, which is pretty immaterial, but it does lead to its one shortcoming.  The DVD includes optional English subtitles, as well as Spanish and French.  But the BD only has German subs.  Fortunately, the film does have burnt-in English subtitles for the rare bits of Chinese dialogue on both discs.

And did I mention extras?  Yes, Warner Bros has nothing but the trailer and some bonus trailers.  Ascot also has the trailer, albeit dubbed into German, and some bonus trailers.  But it also has a collection of cast and crew interviews. The four leads and the director all provide your typical EPK Q&As on location, and then there's another brief chat with Norton and Watts together at a press junket.  It's all brief, somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes total; but it's a lot nicer to have than nothing.  But that's it, though.  Ascot's release also comes with reversible artwork so you can hide the big, mandated ratings logo, which is appreciated.

So there you have it: a maybe not spectacular, but still essential foreign release of an under-appreciated American film.  Settle in for several more of those as Import Week continues...

Whither Amadeus? Hither Amadeus!

There have been rumors of a 4k Ultra HD release of Amadeus for several years now.  It's been said to be coming from Warner Bros and Criterion at different times.  I even fell for one of those shady Twitter accounts that announced it as if they had real insider information, before I found they were just posting best guesses are scoops for clicks.  I still feel a little bad for perpetuating it by posting the artwork they created on a forum and sharing a link to the fake news.  I guess you could say that this post is my penance for that.  What can I say?  I was naive!  But that naughty account has since vanished, and we're just left with the false hope.  As far as I know, there's no further reason to expect an Amadeus 4k outside of the "it's always possible" realm.  I mean, it is a high-profile Academy Award winning "Best Picture," and there have been rumors of a restoration possibly being "in the works."  But nothing's been legitimately announced.

Update and Error Correction 6/8/23 - 7/3/23: First of all, a huge thanks to Kevin and Chris in the comments for helping me set this screw-up straight.  Your instincts were completely correct!  To be clear, the 2009 DVD is the theatrical cut, not the director's cut (which is a good thing, because it means fans can still access the TC without tracking out the long OOP disc from the 90s).  And the good news for everyone is that, in the business of sorting my mistake out, I got my hands on a 1997 DVD, so we've wound up with more thorough coverage as a bonus.

Update 2/26/25: The rumors have finally proven true!  Or more accurately, perhaps, enough time has passed that the initially false rumors eventually stumbled into the facts bearing themselves out.  Whatever, same difference!  We now have Amadeus restored in 4k on UHD.  Just one cut, but what did you expect?  An edition with no compromises?

You might expect a three-hour drama about an 18th century composer to be a pretty dry, homework-like affair.  But oh no, 1984's Amadeus is a vibrant, exciting picture.  The conflict between F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce runs deep.  Think There Will Be Blood, but resonating on an even more profound level.  Milos Forman adapts the original stage play with a lavish production, clearly expenses were not spared.  Hulce gives a wild performance, but surrounded by first class players like Jeffrey Jones, Abraham and The Funhouse's Elizabeth Berridge, it all works magically.  In either cut.

A controversial moment from the "Director's Cut."

Yes, I have to confess, I feel a little ambivalent on the director's cut issue.  I don't feel the longer cut hurts the pacing any - what's an extra twenty minutes when you're already pushing three hours?  You either have the attention span or you don't.  And some of the added material is pretty good, like the bit with the dogs.  It's all well done.  On one hand, I don't really disagree with critics who say it demonizes Salieri too much, with the nudity and all making him excessively lecherous.  On the other hand, that's a key moment from the play, so who are any of us to say it doesn't belong?  In the commentary, Forman says he only cut the stuff for time because Warner Bros wouldn't release a three hour film, not because he disagreed with the characterization.  So, eh... 🤷

Anyway, the movie's strengths are still at play in either version.  Idealistically, I always think studios should err on the side of providing all the options, though, so any future release really ought to include both cuts, satisfying the filmmakers and their adherents, as well as the purists looking for the original theatrical experience.

But instead it continues to be a binary issue.  Warner Bros' original 1997 DVD, now long out of print and very hard to find, was an anamorphic, widescreen but barebones presentation of the theatrical cut as a 2-sided flipper disc (you have to take the disc out and turn it over to watch the second half of the film).  That was followed by the Two-Disc Special Edition in 2002, where they switched to the director's cut.  The two-disc version is a dual-layered disc, so the whole (longer) film plays without flipping or switching discs.  It's also a special edition, with an hour-long documentary on the second disc.  In 2003, there was a limited edition 3-disc set, but it's basically just the same 2-disc set in special packaging.  That third disc is a soundtrack CD.  Then, in 2009, they re-released the old flipper disc in an amary case - meaning back to the theatrical cut and no extras.  Also in 2009, however, WB released their blu-ray edition, which brought back the extras for their HD presentation.  There was a standard edition and a mediabook which also included that soundtrack CD.  But both are the director's cut only.  And finally, in 2025, the pendulum has swung all the way back to the other side.  Amadeus has been restored in 4k on a new UHD release from Warner Bros, but it's only the theatrical cut.

1) 1997 WB DVD; 2) 2002 WB DVD; 3) 2009 WB DVD;
4) 2009 WB BD; 5) 2025 WB UHD.

1) 2002 WB DVD; 2) 2009 WB BD.
(This shot doesn't appear on the '97 or '09 theatrical cut DVDs.)

(This shot doesn't appear on the 2025 theatrical cut UHD either.)

The original (and 2009 reissue, which is the same disc), is framed at 2.29:1, which is tweaked to 2.30:1 on the 2002 disc.  But if you look at what's actually in frame, the difference is far greater than a mere .01 in geometry.  It's zoomed in, effectively cutting off parts of the image along the sides and bottom.  Then the BD widens out it out further to 2.41:1.  It doesn't reveal more; the DVDs are just slightly vertically stretched, which the BD corrects.  The flipper DVDs are also, you won't help but notice, considerably more overcast with a warm hue, giving them a much yellower look in the shots above.  The 2002 DVD and BD are clearly using the same root master, with the same corrected colors, but the boost to HD on the blu makes a nice difference, giving a clearer cleaner image with distinctly sharper detail.  With less compression, the colors manage to appear more nuanced and naturalistic, too (look at the flesh tones in the second set of pics, for instance).  That said, even on the BD, grain is light; but this was shot on 70mm, so it should be substantially finer.

Now, the UHD is a smidgen taller again, measuring in at 2.39:1, which it achieves by revealing slivers more picture along the top and bottom.  The increased resolution is nice, too.  Look at the delightfully bored girl on the lower left corner of the first set of shots.  Even on the blu, her jewelry is largely reduced to pure white pixels, which are far more nuanced and polished in the UHD.  Her bow even suggests some subtle edge enhancement on the BD, which is replaced by pure naturalism on the UHD, where we can also see deeper hints at the pattern on the surrounding fabric.  Color-wise, besides finding more depths in the highlights like the aforementioned jewelry, the UHD returns to the warmer and yellower tone of the older DVDs.  But there it's more of a wash, whereas here, differing colors are still allowed to stand out, untarnished.  That is to say, for example, the rose in the second girl's hair is bright red when it had previously been faded, and the next girl's dress pure blue, where the yellow hue on the previous DVDs managed to make it lean greenish.  Those gold columns really shine like gold now, where they never did before.  And yet we can still see areas (i.e. the sheet music) of true white.

Audio-wise, they all give us a 5.1 mix with optional English subtitles, in TrueHD on the blu.  The 2002 DVD also had a stereo mix, though, which the blu-ray again drops.  But this is a music film that famously played in theaters with a six-track mix, so the 5.1 is the one we want.  The UHD gives it to us in DTS-HD, and the back of the case actually says 5.0, but when I examine the audio on my PC, it's still split into six channels.  Honestly, it doesn't sound hugely different from what's come before it.

As far as foreign language options, the DVDs also had a French 5.1 dub and French and Spanish subs.  The blu has a French, Spanish, German and Italian dub (all 5.1) and subtitles in fifteen additional languages.  The UHD goes back to just the French and Spanish dubs, and the back of the case suggests they're in DTS-HD, but upon inspection, they're actually lossy.  And they've cut down the massive list of subtitle options to just English, French and Spanish.

Now, the 2-disc DVD and the BD have the same extras, while the 1997 and 2009 DVDs have nothing but the trailer, plus a music-only track that actually isn't on the other discs.  The 2002 DVD and the BD have the trailer, but more importantly they have an audio commentary by Forman and writer Peter Shaffer.  It's a good discussion that answers a lot of questions and does a good job filling the entire running time.  Then there's an hour-long 'making of' documentary that talks to Forman, Shaffer, the producer, Hulce, Abraham, Berridge, Jones, Vincent Schiavelli, the music director, the AD, the production designer and choreographer.  It covers some identical ground as the commentary, but otherwise it's excellent and absolutely enough.  I'm not saying I wouldn't appreciate more good extras on another release, but honestly, we've got what we really need.

And the new UHD?  Well, if you didn't mind the loss of the director's cut (seriously, two discs with 1 cut on each disc doesn't sound that unreasonable), here's where you'll be disappointed.  That Forman/ Shaffer commentary was on the director's cut, and since that's gone, so is the commentary - what a loss!  The trailer's gone missing, too.  They couldn't at least have stuck the old 2009 disc in the package as a supplement?  Maybe they're intentionally holding back for a 50th anniversary release?  At least the documentary is still here, and we do get something new: a 23 minute retrospective, where most of the stars and crew from the documentary return to reminisce about the film via webcam.  It's a step down from the first one, and often redundant, but it's fun, and nice we got something fresh.  Oh, and the new release also comes in a slipcover.

So, bottom line?  A big "yes!" to this new disc, but with a strong emphasis on the caveat to hang onto your BDs, which I'd originally described as a "decent placeholder for now."  It turns out it's going to hold onto it's relevancy in our collections for a long time to come.  But never the less, the next time you watch Amadeus, it should be on this new 4k.

Rounding Out Our Albert Brooks' Collections, Part 2: Mother

Concurrent with their 4k restoration of Real Life, Criterion has released a BD/ UHD combo-pack of Albert Brooks' Mother from 1996.  It's a film that often gets dismissed as being his schmaltzy attempt at mainstream, family-friendly light comedy... and maybe it is.  Albert Brooks was never exactly a "From the Twisted Mind of" filmmaker.  Some of the capital r Relatable humor of dealing with the elderly is a bit easy and admittedly feels like it would be equally at home in an ABC sitcom, or even a margarine commercial.  But it's consistently smart, elevated by Brooks' distinct humor, and a mile above what might be considered its peers, like say, Dad, Corrina Corrina or Stepmom.  This is what those movies dream of being.

Debbie Reynolds is a perfect comic and dramatic foil for Brooks, and Rob Morrow is bravely uncharismatic in his quasi-antagonistic role.  Lisa Kudrow and John C McGinley also have winsome cameos, and it's both impressive and bemusing that they got Paul Simon to agree to a remake of his song for an utterly indulgent homage to The Graduate.  Maybe this isn't his most bold or important work, but it's still a lasting work of art and good for a consistent run of laughs.

Anyway, Paramount first released Mother as a barebones DVD in 2001.  And that's been the whole, underwhelming story until Criterion rescued it with their impressive new 4k restoration from the original camera negative in HD, plus HDR10 for their UHD edition.

1) 2001 Paramount DVD; 2) 2024 Criterion BD; 3) 2024 Criterion UHD.

Let's start by pointing out how Criterion has corrected Paramount's aspect ratio from 1.78:1 to 1.85:1, unveiling a tiny bit more information along the sides and slightly readjusting the framing vertically.  The DVD also has a funky red hue Criterion collections, along with some messy compression, even by SD standards.  There's some edge enhancement, too, which has thankfully been left behind in the new transfer.  Grain is completely absent on the DVD, a little digitized on the BD, and perfect on the UHD.  And fine detail is greatly improved.  So much of the smaller writing on the food products in the first set of shots is illegible on the DVD but easy to read on the BD.  Not only can you can now read that the salt in Reynolds' hand is labeled "SPECIAL VALUE," but that the top of the can reads, "IODIZED," which wasn't even recognizable as text on the 2001 release!

Both discs feature the original mono audio in Dolby Digital with optional English subtitles, but Criterion kicks it up to DTS-HD.

Paramount's DVD had nothing else to offer but the trailer.  Criterion, on the other hand, has another great interview with Brooks - wait'll you hear the lengths and permutations they went to in order to cast the titular role - plus another with Rob Morrow.  It still has the trailer, too, but importantly also includes the novel teaser that pays ironic tribute to Mission Impossible.  It's not as funny as some of his others, but it's cute.  And there's another fold-out booklet, this time with notes by critic Carrie Rickey.

And as I wrote in Part 1, these Criterion releases now leave us with Brooks' entire catalog now available in HD, save one: his last film (to date), 2005's Looking For Comedy In the Muslim World.  If Mother was Brooks playing softball, this may be the one more egregious case.  The title might send up a lot of red flags for modern audiences, but this film actually sees Brooks bending over backwards to deliver wholesome messaging.

Brooks brings his career full circle here by featuring many of his early pre-Hollywood stand-up routines to the silver screen.  And watching him play another self-effacing version of himself, bombing with his own real life material, brings to mind the parody of himself he portrayed in SNL and Real Life.  For that matter, Penny Marshall's cameo as herself feels like a scene lifted from The Muse, though Fred Thompson's is more impressive and perfectly suited to this crossroads of modern politics and Hollywood fantasy here.

With so much attention devoted to the romance between his supporting characters, this is perhaps an overly sweet celebration of cultural differences, along the lines of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, but Albert brings enough of himself, and some gentle satire of American foreign policy, to again raise his film above his peers.  And come on, who wouldn't be entertained watching Albert Brooks undertake an illegal border crossing into Pakistan in the middle of the night?  That premise is like a crazy SNL short he never got to make, but he finally goes for it in his 60s.

Warner Bros released it on DVD as a new release in 2006, followed by a 2008 double-feature with Defending Your Life, and most recently reissued it as part of their Warner Archives collection in 2017. But in a massively disappointing move, that was DVD-only, too.  Oh well, at least this disc isn't too bad.

2006 Warner Bros DVD.

Typical for Warner Bros in those days, they present a 1.85:1 in 1.78:1.  God forbid we see "black bars" on our widescreen TVs.  But it's a slim distinction.  And while Warners' Looking DVD is better than Paramount's Mother, without the edge enhancement and seemingly more accurate color timing (I say with nothing to compare it to), it's easy to imagine how much better this would be in HD with clean lines and crisper detail.  Looking for Comedy was shot on 35, so there's no question Warners could easily make this look a whole lot better if they ponied up.

At least they provide the original clear, but naturally lossy, 5.1 mix with optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.

And their disc isn't entirely barebones.  Besides the trailer, they include five minutes of deleted scenes, which are nearly on par with the rest of the movie, albeit non-anamorphic.  It's enough to make us serious Brooks heads need to own the DVD, even though it's not the disc we, or this film, deserve.  Maybe some day we'll get it.  I could see a label like Kino releasing Looking, but Warners don't usually like to license out their titles.  But that could change.  And then what would we need?  A better Muse?  Hey, at least we have it on blu, with the featurette.  And even this DVD more or less does the job.  If you don't already have it, pick one up cheap and round out your Brooks collection.

Rounding Out Our Albert Brooks' Collections, Part 1: Real Life

Thanks to two recent Criterion 4ks, we now have almost every Albert Brooks film in HD.  ...At least the films he wrote and directed.  If you're looking to complete a collection of every film he's acted in, that's a much more formidable project.  But for his proper directorial work, yeah, we've got Real Life and Mother restored on BD and UHD in semi-special editions.  And then that just leaves Looking For Comedy In the Muslim World, which is still DVD-only; and with that title, there's a good chance it'll stay that way.

1979's Real Life is Brooks' first film outside of the shorts he made for the first year of SNL.  And the way he plays this cynical, satirical take on himself - filmmaker become truly mad scientist - it feels like a direct extension of those.  The experiment he undertakes here is just the next step from that one where he decides to perform open heart surgery for television.  In this case, he's doing a play on the infamous PBS documentary series, An American Family, that purported to document the real, every day life of a suburban family, though it apparently had a destructive effect (they ended up getting divorced by episode 9).  It only ran for one season.

Here, Brooks plays himself as a filmmaker looking to expand on the idea, and find a greater truth, by also including the filmmakers in the movie they're making.  But far more important than truth is the possibility of winning an Academy Award, getting written up in The Journal of American Psychology and who knows, maybe even a Nobel.  Charles Grodin is perfect as the head of the psycho-scrutinized household; but really the whole cast is spot on.  So is every line of dialogue and every moment in this ingenious comedy that is so much more than a send up of any old program (although, honestly, I recommend going back and catching American Family, too, even all these decades later).

Real Life has had a pretty nice DVD from Paramount since 2001: anamorphic widescreen, not exactly a special edition, but a few nice extras.  But we've been waiting for an HD option for a while now, and Criterion is really looking out for us Brooks heads.  If you missed it, they've already given us top shelf releases of Lost In America, Defending Your Life and Broadcast News.  And now they've hitting us up with these new 4k editions.

1) 2001 Paramount DVD; 2) 2024 Criterion BD; 3) 2024 Criterion UHD.

Paramount's DVD is ever so slightly pillarboxed to 1.75:1, which admittedly, we always knew couldn't be exactly right.  Criterion's new restoration puts it in its proper 1.85:1 aspect ratio, though comparing the framing, we see the difference is really very subtle.  Again, Paramount's DVD was already quite good.  But Criterion's new 4k scan from the original 35mm negative (with HDR10 on the UHD) is obviously in a whole new league.  The 2001 SDR transfer was never equipped to capture and render actual film grain, but it's here and glorious on the UHD (and to a lesser extent on the BD).  The colors aren't vastly different, but the contrast has been normalized and we can certainly see detail, like on James Brooks' lab coat above, that's washed out in the DVD's whites, returned to the picture on the new discs, giving the film a much more complete, lifelike image.  Now it really feels like we're watching an honest to gosh movie.

And while both discs feature the original mono audio in Dolby Digital with optional English subtitles, Criterion naturally bumps it up to a lossless track (LPCM).

2001 interview

So, like I said, Paramount's DVD wasn't quite a special edition, but it had some important features.  It included the original teaser trailer, which is actually a wholly distinct short comedy film by Brooks... in 3D!  And then there's a new (at the time) on-camera interview with Brooks, detailing the story behind the project.

Disappointingly, Criterion doesn't retain Paramount's interview with Brooks (though yes, they have the trailer), but that's no big deal, since they conduct their own, brand new interview with him.  He says much of the same stuff in both, and this new one runs longer, but there are a few bits in the old one.  So both would have been ideally, but the new one is the better of the two.  We also get an interview with co-star Frances Lee McCain, who is kind of an unsung hero of this project.  And where the old DVD came with a basic insert listing the chapter stops, Criterion includes a fold-out booklet with an essay by critic A.S. Hamrah.

2024 interview

A little more would've been sweet (how about a chat with co-writer Harry Shearer?), but I can't be mad at this being the final, definitive edition of Real Life.  The DVD wasn't enough, but this is.  And besides, Criterion had their hands full with another Brooks restoration this month.  So come back soon for Part 2.