Werner Herzog's Encounters In the Natural World

If you've been following my coverage of Werner Herzog's films on blu, you've seen me me bring up Revolver's Encounters In the Natural World set a few times now.  So, no more beating around the bush, here it is!  And a couple relevant DVDs for comparison, and a "bonus" DVD review, which will make sense when we get to it.  Three of the films in this set have already been covered on other pages, so you can click through to their respective pages for complete coverage of The White Diamond and La Soufrière & The Flying Doctors of East Africa, which I've just updated.  Real quick though, I'll just briefly summarize that White Diamond is interlaced, and looks almost exactly the same as the German BD, but it has a unique 'making of' doc.  And the two short films are standard def upscales, though they at least eliminate the interlacing problems from the DVD box set, making them at least minor upgrades.  Happily, however, the other two films in the set are not similarly compromised.

Update 1/24/20: Added the US Image blu-ray of Encounters.  Turns out it's not as close to the UK BD as I would've guessed...

Update 6/23/22: The Wild Blue Yonder finally hits HD as part of Shout Factory's new Herzog: The Collection, Volume 2 blu-ray set, but it's not a 100% net positive.

So let's begin with 2005's Grizzly Man, probably the best known of the films in this collection, if not one of Herzog's more famous works period.  That's largely because it takes an intimate look at the heavily publicized and grisly (you can accuse me of making a pun, but I wonder if Herzog wasn't making it first) death of environmentalist Timothy Treadwell.  He spent well over a decade documenting his time camping in Alaska to live with grizzly bears until one of them ultimately killed and ate him.  If you're even remotely familiar with Herzog, you don't need me to tell you that he treks out to the same Alaskan wilderness to examine the locations and interview those who knew him.  But we're able to go so much deeper thanks to the hundreds of hours of recovered footage Treadwell had shot of himself out there, capturing everything from dangerously unique nature footage to shockingly personal emotional breakdowns and rants.  He even managed to record his violent, final moments, which we don't hear directly, but the descriptions are graphic enough.

I first saw this when it was brand new and purchased the DVD day one on its release date.  But feeling like "now that I know what happened," I never actually revisited that DVD until it was time to write this article.  And I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised by how well it held up and reinforced by initial impressions of the film.  Grizzly Man is so much more than its lurid details.  All the interviewees' perspectives paint such a vivid picture, many of whom I'd completely forgotten but who add so much heart to the story.  And Herzog certainly doesn't disappoint in regards to flexing his talents to match robust musical performances with exotic footage.  As a true crime-type documentary, this is one of the best, and as a "natural encounter" film, it's pretty stunning, too.

Lions Gate released this film on DVD in the US in 2005, and put out nearly identical discs in nearly every territory, throughout the next year.  In 2009, Revolver brought it to blu-ray in the UK, both as a solo disc and packaged in this 'Natural World' boxed set.  It's pretty much the only blu-ray release of this film anywhere in the world, although Lions Gate has reissued it in the UK in 2015.  But yeah, as of this writing, it's British BDs or nothin' if you want this film in HD.  So I guess I should state now that Revolver's discs are region free.

2005 US Lions Gate DVD top; 2009 UK Revolver BD bottom.

Both discs are presented in 1.78:1, and seem to have been struck from the same master, but you might notice the framing isn't 100% identical.  The DVD seems to be slightly stretched vertically, which means the blu restores tiny slivers of additional picture along the top and bottom when it fixes that.  As is common with documentaries, this film is comprised of footage from various sources, with varying levels of picture quality.  But the original footage Herzog shot for this film, the highest quality stuff, was apparently shot on 16mm and blown up to 35.  So 2009 is pretty old for a blu-ray, one could probably go back to the negatives today and create a more impressive scan (for 16mm, I don't see a lot of grain here!), but this is clearly the one master the filmmakers released that everybody has to work with.  So colors and everything are otherwise the same across the US and UK releases, with just the naturally increased resolution of a higher res BD disc to add a little extra clarity to the SD compressed DVD.  In brief, you'll mostly just notice that the blu looks a little bit sharper on your TV.

Audio-wise, Revolver goes a little further.  Lions Gate's DVD has a strong Dolby stereo mix.  Revolver gives us the choice of that stereo track, now in lossless LPCM, or a new 5.1 mix in DTS-HD.  On the other hand, the DVD offered optional English and Spanish subtitles, while the blu has none.

But the pendulum swings back to Revolver's side again in the special features.  Lions Gate basically featured one big extra: a 50+ minute documentary about the recording of the soundtrack.  It's pretty great, filmed in-studio at the time of recording, letting us witness the performances and hear from all the players.  And we get to see Herzog's very hands-on way of working with the musicians.  Besides that, there's just the trailer and a bunch of bonus trailers.  Unfortunately, Revolver was a bit lazy and forgot the trailer, but thankfully they carried over the big doc.  The only problem with the doc is that it's entirely about the soundtrack, so it leaves you a bit thirsty with regards to the rest of the movie.  And Revolver addresses this with an additional feature not on the DVD (or Lions Gate's 2015 blu), a piece by Mark Kermode, where he gives us a little history on Herzog and then interviews the man himself.  Famously, this is the interview where Herzog gets shot and wounded(!) by someone with an air rifle mid-interview.  I'd seen a low quality video of this online years ago, but it's nice to get a proper copy of it here.  And as I said, it finally gives you at least a little insight into the other, non-soundtrack, aspects of the movie.

So okay, story time now.  One of the musicians for Grizzly Man was guitarist Henry Kaiser, and apparently during the very sessions we see in the documentary, Herzog spotted some footage on Kaiser's laptop.  Kaiser was sent to the South Pole on an artist's grant to perform and record a CD down there, and while he was there, he went diving underneath the icebergs.  He filmed it, and when Herzog saw the strange and utterly unique images Kaiser had captured, Herzog decided to do two things.  The first was to ask Kaiser if he could use this footage in a new film; and that film became 2005's The Wild Blue Yonder, a rather eccentric - even by Herzog standards - science fiction film starring Brad Dourif.

The Wild Blue Yonder is almost a documentary film, blurring the lines between docs and narrative fiction in a different but thematically similar method to the way Lessons Of Darkness did.  It's comprised of four elements: Kaiser's underwater footage, a bunch of rarely seen NASA footage shot in the 80s, new non-fiction interviews Herzog conducted with NASA scientists, and the element that transforms the film into fiction: a monologue by Dourif in the role of a space alien who's landed, and failed to rebuild his civilization, here on Earth.  It's very strange but fascinating as all of these documentary elements are forged into this alien's narrative.  It ultimately plays far more like a piece of cinematic poetry than a Star Wars romp, so mainstream audiences be warned.  If the phrase "art film" makes your head ache, this is exactly what you hate, and I feel for the poor Blockbuster customers around the world with no idea who this Werner Herzog guy was and just saw a DVD cover showing a space ship and the star of Critters 4 on their new release wall.  But for my fellow aficionados, oh what a treat this is!

2006 US Subversive DVD top; 2022 Shout Factory BD bottom.

Originally, there was no high def option for this one, just US and UK DVDs.  The US disc from Subversive had better extras, so that's what I've got.  But now that Shout Factory has released it on blu in their Herzog: The Collection, Volume 2 set, I've got that, too. The film is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen and looks alright, if a bit muddy, by which I mean soft and a bit low on contrast.  Even in HD, although now it's certainly less muddy.  But it still looks like Herzog was shooting with digital cameras of its day. The biggest issue, as you'll plainly observe above and which affects each "area" of the film (underwater, NASA old, NASA new and Dourif) equally, is that it has a nasty interlacing problem.  So even in just fixing that, the Shout update is a huge upgrade.  Of course, that's not all it does.

2006 US Subversive DVD top; 2022 Shout Factory BD bottom.

Here are some more comparisons, so we can also see some of the footage Herzog incorporated into the film, not just the stuff he shot himself.  The film grain that's soft and murky on the DVD of the NASA footage is a lot clearer on the blu, and that undersea footage is much sharper now.  That footage is where you probably appreciate the boost the best (apart, again, from that interlacing which ran through the whole movie on the DVD).  This movie was always going to have a bit of a dark, low-fi look, but it does a much better job of reaching its potential now.

Subversive's disc comes with a fairly basic but clean Dolby stereo track and no subtitle options.  Shout bumps that stereo track up to DTS-HD and adds optional English subtitles.

But I mentioned good extras, and this is where Subversive shines.  First of all, we get another documentary about the recording of the soundtrack, which is shorter than the Grizzly Man one, but otherwise plays almost like a direct sequel.  But here, they definitely don't leave you saying that's great about the music, but what about the rest of the film?  We also get an audio commentary by Herzog and Dourif; and Herzog commentaries are always pretty great.  And that's embellished further with two sizeable on-camera interviews with Herzog and Dourif.  There's also the film's trailer, plus five bonus trailers.  The insert is actually a nice, fold-out poster for the film, and this DVD even came in a slipcover.  So yeah, Subversive didn't skimp.

Shout did, though.  There are no extras on their blu, for this or any of the films included in their latest Collection.  So buy that for the films, but hang onto the DVD for the special features.

But now, back to story time, because there's more to this saga, which directly ties Wild Blue to the other films in this set (which makes it all the more shame Revolver left it out of their box).  Because Wild Blue was made quickly, managing to come out in 2005, the same year as Grizzly Man.  But Herzog still wasn't over his interest in this crazy underwater footage.  So the following year, he and Kaiser (for whom this is his sole production credit) went back to the South Pole to explore for 2007's Encounters At the End of the World.  Kaiser dives and discovers more otherworldly imagery beneath the ice, but Herzog also takes the opportunity to examine the entire settlement, talking to the eccentric people who've decided to stay down there and take in all the other sites.

So yes, this one's a "pure" documentary, and probably the more generally satisfying experience for it.  Everybody there seems to be a delightful character, from the dedicated scientists to the guy who drives the trucks.  And yes, the underwater chunk of the film can feel a bit redundant if you've just watched Wild Blue, but in a vacuum it's still breathtaking and fascinating.  But thankfully, Herzog has found just as interesting a world on top of the ice as beneath it.  Besides a tiny community of charming eccentrics, Herzog delves into beautiful ice caves, finds the anti-March Of the Penguins story of a single penguin who goes mad and determines to march hundreds of miles to his certain death, and oh yes, he winds up staring down another active and deadly volcano.  La Soufrière, Into the Inferno... this is becoming a suicidal habit for him.

Anyway, this film is one of Herzog's more broadly distributed films, thanks to some backing from the Discovery channel.  Image released pretty packed special editions on both DVD and blu-ray in 2008 here in America, and there have been similar releases in other parts of the world.  Revolver, of course, took care of the film in the UK, releasing it both as a solo disc and as part of this box in 2009.  And their release stands out as it features even more, exclusive special features.

2008 US Image DVD top; 2008 US Image BD mid;
2009 UK Revolver BD bottom.

I wrote a bit, recently, about how people often seem to be under the misapprehension that action films are the most important to see in HD, because of all the explosions and kinetic energy blasting out of the screen.  But I'd argue that a film like this is really the most important candidate.  Because explosions, car chases, airplane stunts etc are typically a mass of motion blur and detail you'll never be able to make out regardless of the resolution.  But here, where the film is slowly panning and exploring all new, complex vistas, thriving with strange, alien life and colors, reaps all of the benefits of HD and holds it up on display for you like a visit to the Louvre.  And this film was primarily shot with digital HD cameras.  In fact, we're told these were the very first ones, provided by Sony, which shot directly to blu-ray discs and were constantly malfunctioning in the extreme conditions.  So yeah, in a way, it's still not the most impressive HD.  That shot above in the tent really shows the flaws, like edge enhancement and digital flaws which were presumably, unfortunately, native to the camera.

But it's still a true boost to HD when it counts.  The underwater footage is all the more intense and organic on blu-ray, delivering the exact experience of the viewer being sucked in and journeying through an alternative universe that the filmmakers were certainly going for.  Unfortunately, I suppose, there'd be little benefit to a fresher 4k transfer, as we're presumably pushing the limits of the native footage already; but it's certainly preferable to the noticeably softer DVD.  You can really see the difference, for example, in the numbers on the cardboard box in the second set of shots.  The UK BD corrects the aspect ratio a bit, too, as the Image discs leave in a little dead space in the overscan (which I left in the first comparison shot, so you can see for yourselves), slimming the 1.78:1 ratio of the BD to 1.77.  The difference is mostly accounted for by the DVD being slightly squished horizontally, though you can see the Image BD, which isn't squished, still has a little dead space of its own.

The major difference between the two blus, though, is that Image's is interlaced - yuck!  You can see it a bit in the second set of shots, but many frames are far worse.  There's also a very slight color difference... notice in the first set of shots that the snow looks a pinch greener on the Revolver disc.  I might prefer Image's colors, but the interlacing totally invalidates it as an option.  I'd probably choose Image's DVD, even, over their blu.  Now, I've seen some listings for Revolver's blu suggest that it's also interlaced, but I'm happy to report that's not true; it's progressive.  Many of the extras are interlaced, but not the film itself.

The DVD and Revolver blu both offer both stereo and 5.1 mixes, but the blu bumps the 5.1 up to lossless DTS-HD (their stereo is still PCM).  Image's blu actually has three tracks, the lossless 5.1, the lossy 2.0 and another lossy 5.1.  Strange, but okay.  Image, like Lions Gate, did throw in English and Spanish subtitle options (on the DVD and blu), though, which Revolver again neglects.

So now onto the extras.  Like I said, Revolver has more, but Image - on both their DVD and blu - already had quite a lot.  They provide another excellent Herzog commentary, this time accompanied by Kaiser and cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger.  We also get Kaiser's original deep sea that he originally showed Herzog during the scoring of Grizzly Man, which yes, we do see parts of in Wild Blue Yonder.  Here, it's all compiled as a roughly half-hour short film, scored and edited by Kaiser.  And we get a similar but shorter compilation of images he captured above ground at the South Pole in his earlier trips, too.  In fact, apart from the trailer and one extended interview with Herzog and the diving team, all the other extras are essentially the collected works of Henry Kaiser.  We get an entertaining short where he plays his music "around the world," and then witnesses an exorcism of some local construction equipment by the scientists.  And we get some extra footage he shot of some seals, where the lines between content made for public consumption and self-indulgent home movies begins to blur.

But that's where Image ends.  Revolver has everything listed above, even the trailer, but also some more stuff.  Unfortunately, it's basically all more of Kaiser's "home movie" stuff.  There's a twenty minute video where he talks about each one of his guitars and shows us him playing each one in different parts of the South Pole (I suspect this is the video he created to satisfy his initial grant), and two more short films' worth of the underwater diving footage, which by this point just feels like "more of the same."  Finally, there's a very silly mockumentary Kaiser made about a seal-loving environmentalist gone mad with the other scientists on location, which consists of 90% landscape shots and 10% jokey narrative.  Look, I'll always choose more over less; it's better to have the option to watch content you may or may not be interested in than no opportunity at all.  But if you have the US blu-ray, I promise that you don't need to run out and import the UK to replace it just for these additional extras.

Revolver's box is a very pleasing, thick box with a lid that lifts up to reveal the three blu-rays each in their own amaray case.  Revolver has released all three of the features separately, with mostly identical discs.  But there's one key exception.  The White Diamond blu only has the two short films (Flying Doctors and La Soufrière) on the same disc in the box set.  The solo release is The White Diamond by itself.  Both versions also include the same 'making of' doc for The White Diamond ...and yes, I've looked into it, both are interlaced.  But the shorts are unique to the box set.  I'd recommend it, even if you'd still prefer to track down the Australian blu of White Diamond (apparently it's not interlaced) from Shock because the set isn't particularly expensive, and the other discs are worth the price on their own.  Plus you'd still need the Revolver Diamond for the 'making of' doc.  So you might as well get yourself the shorts and attractive packaging as a bonus.

M.I.A.: Lamberto Bava's Prince of Terror

I've been adding so many films to my on-going list of DVD & blu-ray titles I want to cover on this site, that I've been neglecting those that are still desperately in need of any kind of disc release at all.  And man,  am I tired of waiting for this one!  Lamberto Bava's Il Maestro del Terrore, or The Prince of Terror, was made for Italian television in 1989 as part of their Alta Tensione quadrilogy, along with School of Fear, Eyewitness (a remake of a previous Dario Argento television production) and The Man Who Wouldn't Die.  But The Prince of Terror didn't air until 1999 because it was deemed to be just too much for television audiences at the time.  And oh boy, is it!   If you're looking for the kind of obscure movie with scenes so outrageous they can make you break out into applause even when you're just watching the film at home by yourself, this is it.  Sure, as a whole, the movie's a bit clunky, but prepare for an inflating zombie, chainsaw attacks, deadly golf balls marked 666, twisted mind games, lethal booby traps, multiple madmen, a dog named Demon, fake deaths, toilets overflowing with blood, diegetic special effects and one of the great, absurdist endings of all time.  There's even a robot!

Now, when I call this clunky, I think I mostly mean the typical Italian post-sync dubbing, which makes all the performances feel stagey and ridiculous.  In this case, though, that adds almost as much as it subtracts; and beyond that, screenwriter extraordinaire Dardano Sacchetti certainly knows how to keep the plot twists coming.  Production values are high and Bava's scenes are atmospheric and well lit, with that 80s neon tone and plenty of blue night filters.  Simon Boswell's score is reliably effective but feels a little low effort compared to his other work.  Typical suspense riffs play through scenes of our protagonists slowly creeping around the house, helped by the fact that our protagonist is a horror director himself, so while for the most part it plays like any other thriller, you'll notice he's suddenly walking past a giant glowing eyeball or a portrait of Frankenstein's monster.

Yes, Tomas Arana, star of The Church and The Sect, plays Vincent Omen, a famous horror director who's so successful, people have begun to associate him with the devil himself.  "Take a good look at me," he tells a reporter on his private golf course, "do I look different?  Do I have skin like a reptile?  Are my eyes phosphorescent?  Do I have hoofed feet?"  Yeah, so with an attitude like that, it's not hard to guess that he's made some enemies in the business, including a longtime collaborative screenwriter who he fired off his most recent production and an actor he injured in a dangerous stunt.  So when his family home is invaded in the middle of the night by someone intent on sadistically toying with the Omens, it could be anybody, or seemingly even multiple murderers, out to prove just who is the true prince of terror.

They have a daughter who's character, I guess, is supposed to be 13 or so?  She's treated as being that age and plays it that way, if not even younger.  Plus Mr. Omen says he's 37, so how much older could she be?  But she's clearly played by a grown woman to allow for some sexual tension in the third act.  It's the sort of move they'd never try to pull nowadays.  Not that there's ever actually any nudity, and the sleaze factor is never allowed to rise to House On the Edge of the Park levels.  It's mostly more of a fun, one-surprise-after-another spook show, but some moments dance on that edge.

Italian horror fans will spot plenty of familiar faces, including David Brandon from Stage Fright and monstrous cameos from the actual creatures of Devil Fish and Demons 2.  There are some great, gruesome effects by the one and only Sergio Stivaletti, and even a crazy bit of stop motion animation.  The Prince of Terror might not quite add up to a masterpiece, but it's constructed out of so many great parts, that I'm sure it would accrue a healthy following if it were ever allowed to find its audiences.  I honestly believe the cult video label that started putting titles like this and Spider Labyrinth out in HD would quickly become a horror fan favorite, even in this age of stiff competition.  And I know it's silly, but I want Mask Of the Demon, too, dammit!  (Update 2/2/25: we got it!) Come on, guys, who's going to finally step up for these must-have gems?

The Great Woody Allen Anamorphic Project, Part 2

...And we're back, finishing up the project started in Part 1 to replace every non-anamorphic Woody Allen DVD by importing our little hearts out.  Anyway, I explained all that to death already in the last post, so let's just jump right back into it with our next afflicted film, 1995's Mighty Aphrodite.

This is the film where Mira Sorvino controversially won her Academy Award.  Not that she isn't great in the picture, but this and Marisa Tomei's win for My Cousin Vinny are such silly, campy performances it's hard to place them alongside the greatest dramatic turns in cinema history.  Allen was also nominated for best original screenplay for this film, which makes a lot more objective sense.  It's one of his sillier comedies, although not quite to the degree of his early work, like Bananas, with Allen back in the leading role.

Update 8/10/17 - 10/1/19:  Adding the Concorde blu-rays to Part 2, too!

Update 3/20/26: Deconstructing Harry has finally debuted on blu-ray... technically. Also, so did Sweet & Lowdown, which I've just added to Part 1 of the Anamorphic Project.

He plays a sports writer married to Helena Bonham Carter and they've adopted a son.  Peter Weller (Robocop, Naked Lunch) plays a wealthy socialite with an eye for Carter, threatening their marriage, and Allen begins to wonder about the true mother of their son.  She turns out to be a prostitute (Sorvino), but overcome by feelings of familial bond, Allen feels compelled to help her reorganize her life, which includes rescuing her from a violent pimp and setting her up with Michael Rapaport.  But can he really help, or is his meddling just going to bring everybody to ruin?  Oh, and by the way, keep your eyes open for a small, pre-fame role by Paul Giamatti.

If you don't catch the Greek tragedy elements of the plot as it develops, Allen makes it perfectly clear by including an authentic Greek chorus into the film... even going so far as to film them in the original outdoor theater of Syracuse.  Lead by F. Murray Abraham, the chorus comments on the story just as they would in their ancient theater, and they also serve to introduce multiple classic Greek characters into the film including Cassandra, Oedipus Rex and his parents (played by David Ogden Stiers and Olympia Dukakis), and Jack Warden as the oracle Tiresias.  You don't have to be familiar with the great tragedies to follow or appreciate this film, but you'll get more of the jokes if you are.  😉

Well, if you're with us since Part 1, you can already guess the entire situation.  Mighty Aphrodite has only been released once in America, all the way back in 1999, on a barebones, non-anamorphic DVD from Miramax/ Buena Vista.  even in 2017, that old disc is all we've got.  But thankfully, we've got options overseas.  The Planet Media 2013 Woody Allen Collection box set I've been leading us through provides a much nicer, anamorphic transfer from Germany, who've also included it in their blu-ray boxes.  And yes, it even has extras, too.  And several blu-rays have been released in different countries like Japan, France, and in the case of the one I've got, Sweden by way of Atlantic Film.

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

Wow, what a difference!  The original DVD looks like literal garbage compared to the newer discs, as if the print had been scraped up out of the inside of a dumpster.  First of all, it's non-anamorphic: a tiny picture swimming in a sea of wasted space, which is what this pair of posts is all about, after all.  But it's not just that.  The picture is flat and dark, with muted colors.  Flipping between the shots of the chorus in Italy, there, it looks like someone's turning a light switch on and off.  Framing-wise, the three newer discs are open to 1.78:1, which is probably technically inaccurate, and in a perfect world would be slightly matted to 1.85:1.  But the 1999 DVD is just as off at 1.82:1, and missing not just vertical slivers, but along the sides as well.  Detail is missing on the old disc as well, but it's hard to tell if it's due to black crush or just low resolution.  I mean, the difference is so obvious in the pictures, it feels absurd spelling out all the ways the newer versions have improved upon it.  And while they all share the same master, with matching color timing etc; the BDs are naturally clearer than even the German DVD, with the German BD looking better compressed.

Audio-wise, the Buena Vista gives us a mono track in 2.0, while Planet Media gives us the stereo mix in Dolby Digital 2.0, and the Finnish blu is lossless but goes back to the mono.  Concorde nails it best with both the English and German stereo mixes in DTS-HD.  About the only thing the US disc has going for it is that it also includes optional, English subtitles, while Planet Media and Concorde just have German and Atlantic has Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Norwegian.

What I really enjoy about these Planet Media and Concorde boxes are the special features.  The US DVD has nothing, not even an unrelated bonus trailer.  And the same goes for the Atlantic blu-ray.  But the German discs have the trailer - albeit in German, other German-language bonus trailers, and most excitingly, an interview with Mira Sorvino.  And yes, it's entirely English-friendly.  In fact, strangely, it doesn't even have German subtitles on the Planet Media - it's not German-friendly!  (Concorde fixes that on their blu with optional German subs.)  But for us, it's a nicely edited interview that runs for just over twelve minutes, talking about her Oscar win, shooting with Allen, and even demonstrating how and why she created the character's infamous voice.

Now, these next two films are anamorphic on their original US DVDs.  But they're in the Planet Media box, I've got both discs to compare against each other  (New Line's 1998 DVD is still completely barebones, but a double-sided disc with a fullscreen side on the flip), so I've decided to be thorough and cover everything.  1997's Deconstructing Harry, in fact, is basically in the same situation as Sweet and Lowdown.  There hadn't been blus of it anywhere in the world up 'till now, possibly because the old DVD master was anamorphic, so there was less pressure to strike up a new one that could then be released in HD.  But in 2026, "anamorphic" just ain't enough anymore, which really cuts into the premise of this entire two-part post.  Progress has finally progressed too far, and to demonstrate that, Cecchi Gori has released DH on BD.

And for the record, Deconstructing Harry's great.  Allen plays a writer going through a midlife crisis.  His family life's been steadily apart, but suddenly made worse by the fact that his new novel airs everybody's dirty laundry.  During the course of this drama, we also sporadically cut to his writings brought to life as insight into his character.  It practically turns into an anthology, telling us one little story after another, each of which ultimately comment on the Harry, but could almost stand alone as short films.  And this gives Allen the opportunity to pack this film with movie stars, even moreso than Everyone Says I Love You, because the individual segments rate their own separate casts.  So for just a few minutes we have Robin Williams star as an actor who can no longer work because he's physically, personally gone out of focus, and he's married to Julie Kavner, and it's a whole film-within-a-film.  We wind up with an amazing cast including Tobey Maguire, Judy Davis, Richard Benjamin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Elisabeth Shue, Stanley Tucci, Eric Bogosian, Bob Balaban, Kirstie Alley, Mariel Hemingway, Demi Moore, Amy Irving, oh and Paul Giamatti again.  There's even a scene where Harry goes to Hell to confront the devil (played by Billy Crystal) with a depiction of the fiery underworld straight out of This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse.  It's delightful!

1) New Line 1998 US DVD (wide); 2) New Line 1998 US DVD (full);
3) 2013 Planet Media DVD; 4) Cecchi Gori 2026 BD.

Yup, unsurprisingly, the 1998 and 2013 DVDs look virtually identical.  There's not even a Sweet and Lowdown difference with the colors or anything.  And the fullscreen is interesting to look at, but it is the wrong aspect ratio, so nothing desirous.  It's pan and scan (see how the second set of shots crops both sides evenly, but the top set pans more of the left, to keep the kids on the right completely in shot), adding a little at the top and bottom but cropping a bunch off the sides, going from about 1.81:1 (you'll notice an odd window-boxing around the widescreen versions, common in really old DVDs, presumably to not waste the overscan areas of old TVs) to 1.32:1.  It's not a bad transfer, so you can see why they felt they could reuse it in 2013; but you can also see why they couldn't just slap that onto a blu, which is why it's still a DVD-only title all around the world.

Whelp, they've slapped it onto a blu!  Now, it would be pretty naive to expect an all new master to have been whipped up for this, and unsurprisingly, no, it hasn't been.  That would explain why, like with their Sweet & Lowdown blu, this plays at 25fps +4% PAL speed.  The only question is if this release is at least a slim upgrade over the previous discs, and... yeah, I'd say it is.  The framing is a little tighter, finally framing the image to precisely 1.85:1.  And the colors seem slightly more separated.  Detail and edges are ever so slightly clearer thanks to the loss of SD compression.  It's a very minor victory, but CG's blu is the best edition on the market.

We haven't had a New Line DVD in this pair of posts yet, but they behave just like Buena Vista and Columbia Tri-Star.  In this case: English mono in 2.0 with a French dub, plus English, French and Spanish subs.  And again, Planet Media gives us both the English and German in 2.0 with optional English subs.  This time, unfortunately, Planet Media has no special features for us apart from the German language trailers... though, again, that's still more than we got in America.  And finally in Italy, we've got both the English and Italian dub in DTS-HD lossy Dolby Digital... the menu and packaging says the DTS-HD track is 5.1; but every track on this disc is two channels.  And it includes optional Italian subtitles (the menu tries to force them on the English track, but you can just hit your Audio or Subtitle buttons during playback to nix that).  The only extra is the trailer, this time in English.

Small Time Crooks is just a funny film.  It's definitely a crowd pleaser, in fact one that won him back some of his mainstream audience that he'd lost for a long time between his personal scandals and stretch of "artsier" films.  It takes it's starting premise from an old Edward G. Robinson film called Larceny, Inc, where a small group of criminals (in this case Woody Allen, Jon Lovitz, Michael Rapaport and Tony Darrow) buy a store next to a bank so they can tunnel into the vault, but are taken by surprise when their cover business becomes a huge success.  Soon they've got three quarters of a tunnel dug, but they're making more money through their store, which winds up becoming a chain!  But where Larceny focuses on this fun conflict for the entire film, Crooks just uses that to launch off into a whole second act where these low class criminals and their wives now try to fit into upscale society.  Allen's wife, Tracy Ullman hires Hugh Grant to teach them how to be aristocratic, and Allen becomes disillusioned with their new lives and wants to go back to thieving.  Larry Pine, Elaine Stritch and a particularly funny Elaine May also co-star.

The reason Small Times Crooks is anamorphic is probably because its the newest of these films, hitting DVD from Universal in 2000.  And that's still the only US release, but besides being in the Planet Media box, unlike Deconstructing Harry and Sweet and Lowdown, it's also available on blu in different parts of the world, including Japan, France, Norway and Germany.  But those blus can't be using a 2000 master, can they?  Surely, there must be a difference between the 2000 and 2013 DVDs, right?  Well, let's have a look-see.

1) Universal 2000 US DVD; 2) Planet Media 2013 German DVD;
3) Concorde 2018 German BD.

Universal DVD left; Planet Media DVD mid; Concorde BD right.

Ee-yup.  While the DVDs are not worlds apart - if you don't bother to click and view these shots fullscreen, you might not even notice the difference - there is a noticeable upgrade in the newer disc.  Both are framed at 1.78:1, but the Planet Media DVD includes a sliver more around all four sides.  The colors are reasonably similar, but when you get in close, you can see all that ugly artifacting all over the shop, which is cleaned up on the newer disc.  There's also some edge enhancement on the old transfer that the new one thankfully doesn't employ.  So the improvement is there, and it's even clearer and sharper still on the blu, which gets a very attractive bump in resolution.  Just look how much cleaner that close-up is.

Universal gives us a mono track with optional English subtitles, while Planet Media gives us the same audio, plus a German dub, and the optional German subtitles.  Concorde gives us DTS-HD of both stereo mixes, with optional German subs.

Where Germany really comes through, once again, is the extras.  Universal did give us the trailer this time, and both Planet Media and Concorde have it, too - in both English and German (plus a couple German bonus trailers).  But the much bigger deal is a 20-minute on-camera interview with Woody.  It's 100% in English, with removable German subtitles.  As you know, it's pretty rare to get an interview from him, and at twenty minutes, he gets to go pretty in-depth, telling us all sorts of interesting things, like how he'd first cast Tracy Ullman in Bullets Over Broadway, but then cut her out of it.

Finally, we come to Wild Man Blues.  This isn't a film by Woody Allen, but a documentary about him.  And was this not released anamorphically in the USA?  It sure wasn't - it's never been released here at all!  So yes, it's in the Planet Media Woody Allen Collection I've been featuring so prominently in these posts.  But I've also picked up another import version of it to compare it to.  And you'll see, it shows a pretty interesting distinction.

Admittedly, Wild Man Blues isn't the most compelling film.  Many mainstream viewers were probably hoping for a tawdry expose of the scandals in his personal life, or at least some kind of legal drama on the subject.  And fans would've just been happy with a look at his lifetime of work.  We eventually did get something like that with a much more recent documentary in 2011, but at the time, Allen wasn't interested in participating in a project of either type.  So all we could get was a documentary about his jazz music, following him around as he toured Europe with his clarinet.  It's not a bad doc as far as that goes, celebrity gossip fiends did at least get a dose of Soon-Yi, and there's a charming scene at the end with Allen and his parents.  But by and large it's a fairly standard tour documentary (every band and comic has one these days), where the main question of appeal will just lie in how interested you are in footage of him playing various jazz concerts.

So, like I said, this film's never been released on DVD in the USA at all.  But it did enjoy a brief run in Canada from Alliance Atlantis in 2005.  That disc's long out of print, though, and goes for over $200 on Amazon.  But I've got it for us today for our comparison.  And also I've got it in Planet Media's 2013 box set.  It's been released a couple of other times overseas, but never in HD (and it's not in the Concorde box).  There's a French blu-ray box set which includes it, but it's just standard def on there, too.  So you might assume, okay, all those import DVDs are probably identical, then, but no.  Have a look.

1) Alliance 2005 Canadian DVD; 2) Planet Media 2013 German DVD.

First of all, the Canadian DVD is non-anamorphic!  Thought I'd end this Anamorphic Project without a film that didn't have an anamorphic problem?  Not on your life; I'm a pro!  On top of that, the two discs are in completely different aspect ratios.  The Canadian disc is 1.66:1, and the US disc is 1.32:1.  Looking at them, I'd say the 1.66 is correct (or at least more correct) of the two, though it's essentially a trade between losing vertical or horizontal information.  Also, look, the German DVD is interlaced!  Boo.  This is the only disc in the set with an interlacing problem; in fact, it's the only disc we've looked at across this series of posts with an interlacing problem.  So that's disappointing.  So basically, the two discs are very different, and both suck, with a unique set of problems.  I guess I'd recommend the German disc as the lesser evil, unless you're still rocking an old school 4x3 TV.

Both discs feature the same audio track in Dolby Digital 2.0.  The Alliance Atlantis disc has optional English and French subtitles, while the Planet Media disc has German subs.  The German disc has no special features except for the German language trailers, and a trailer for Wild Man Blues is not among them.  The Canadian DVD is also completely barebones without even a trailer.  So pick your loser, pretty much.  Or maybe try rolling the dice on another international DVD.  The UK has a DVD box set with Wild Man Blues in it, and that French blu-ray set I mentioned.  Good luck.  It's probably not a film you'll revisit much anyway.

So there you go!  Follow along with the discs covered in this project, and you will have successfully expunged every non-anamorphic Woody Allen DVD from your collection.  You could track down that one German Woody Allen Collection like I did, and take care of it all in one quick and affordable swoop (I found that option tempting mainly for the extras, personally), but if you really want the best available, you'll want to collect the blu-rays from around the world.  However you go about it though, now every serious Woody Allen fan can finally stop foot out of the 20th century.  Every other film of Woody Allen's, from What's Up, Tiger Lily to Melinda and Melinda is already available here in the US at least anamorphically, if not in HD.  These were the hold-outs; and imports have finally rendered them obsolete.