Unmasking The Magician (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

1959's The Magician is a strange one.  It feels a bit like it's straining under the weight of Ingmar Bergman's previous two films, the break-out successes of The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries.  Like it's struggling to be slightly abstract and exaggerated in keeping with those visionary films, coming off perhaps a bit more gratuitously artsy.  But taken on its own merits sixty(!) years later, it actually winds up working in its favor, generating its own, off-beat sensibility.  In a time where most of Bergman's 50s films can feel antiquated or stale, it gives The Magician a refreshing appeal that stands up well to more modern faire.  So it kinda makes sense that we've only gotten it on disc in these last couple years - the time has finally rolled around for its rediscovery.

The Magician was originally called Ansiktet, or The Face, which is a more fitting title.  I mean, The Magician is handy if you have trouble keeping track of Bergman's many, many films - you can just think, ah yeah, it's that one about the big, looming magician.  But in terms of reflecting the themes and substance of the film, The Face really cuts to the heart of the matter.  It's a strange, genre-shifting tale of a traveling magician and his troupe who are compelled to perform for the chief of police and other town council who are determined to prove them as frauds and criminals.  They spend the night in the home of the consul and everyone's convictions are threatened.  Like Strawberries and Seal, it's a dark existential film dealing with mortality and, in this case, the role of the artist.  But while The Seventh Seal certainly introduced some comedy with some of the secondary characters, here the film slowly shifts from cheery humor to critical terror and back without revealing the seams.  This is accomplished through Bergman's always impressive photography, by his pre-Nykvist DP, Gunnar Fischer, the tumultuous subject matter, and particularly the strengths of his perfect cast, including a great many of his regulars, including: a particularly powerful Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson, a so-young-he's-nearly-unrecognizable Erland Josephson and of course Max von Sydow in the ominous title role.

Throughout the days of DVD, The Magician was unavailable in the US.  Pretty much our only English-friendly option was to import the 2001 Tartan DVD from their extensive Bergman Collection series, which was Region Free, albeit PAL.  But in the enlightened age of HD, Criterion changed that by releasing it on DVD and blu-ray in 2010.  They've released it again in 2018 as part of their massive Ingmar Bergman's Cinema boxed set, but unlike the other films we've looked at so far (and the rest are coming... I'll probably start grouping up several of them into individual posts as we move forward), they haven't created a new master for this version.

2001 Tartan DVD top; 2010 Criterion blu mid; 2018 Criterion blu bottom.

So yes, the 2010 blu gave us a really strong 2k scan of the 35mm interpositive, and the 2018 repeats that.  They are identical transfers.  But boy, do you see the upgrade from the DVD.  Starting with the aspect ratio, the DVD is slightly thin at 1.30:1, which Criterion corrects by restoring the slivers of extra picture for a complete 1.33:1.  It also frames the image slightly lower down, which I'll assume is more accurate; it's really too slight to make a hard judgement call on either way.  But detail is so much stronger, and film grain is very distinct and natural.  That's as opposed to the DVD, which is soft even for DVD, and has blatant, ugly contrast tweaks to clarify edges and details in an otherwise lacking image, but which mostly just result in highlights flaring way out.  Look at the lines on the door in the first set of shots; it looks like they're lined with hot neon strips.

Both discs provide the original Swedish mono track, in lossless LPCM on the blu, with optional English subtitles.

The extras aren't too extensive.  The Tartan disc is completely barebones except for an insert with notes by Ronald Bergan and a couple bonus trailers.  But the 2010 blu does come up with a couple goodies.  We have two vintage Ingmar Bergman interviews, both of which only get around to The Magician by the very end.  The first is a very short, made for 60's television one, where he starts talking about Persona, but then asks a key question about The Magician at the end.  And the second is a longer, audio-only interview that talks about the very beginnings of his career, and would probably be more appropriate on a Crises disc; but then does wrap up with a bit about The Magician.  The other main extra is another excellent visual essay by Peter Cowie.  I wouldn't have minded a longer one that went a little further in depth, or even a commentary, but what we get is certainly good.  And that's it; no trailer here either; though we do get a booklet with essays by Geoff Andrew and director Olivier Ossayas, plus some further notes about Bergman.

And, as I keep saying with films in the Ingmar Bergman's Cinema set, the new 2018 blu has the exact same extras package as the 2010 blu besides, of course, for the fact that it comes packaged with all the other Bergman films, and the extras associated with those.  The set includes a bonus disc with several docs and features about Bergman in general, but nothing more Magician specific.  Heck, some of the extras on The Magician's disc were barely Magician-specific.  The Andrew essay from the previous booklet is back again, too, in the box's massive 248 page book, but interestingly, the Assayas one has been dropped.

So, again, for all intents and purposes, the blu-rays are identical.  But that's fine, as the 2010 disc was excellent, and barring the discovery of some additional cool extras, there'd be no reason to update it.  So if you haven't got this film yet, either blu will do equally, just depending if you want to throw down for the whole box or not.  If you're just hanging onto the Tartan DVD or another SD import, by all means, double-dip already.  Or, if you're like me and you already had the old blu and then got the box, go ahead and sell your old disc off.  But if you're not a mega-Bergman fan, passing on the box and just picking up the occasional highlights, consider The Magician.  It's not one of his most famous, but it's got a contemporary appeal with its unique blend of entertainment value and dramatic weight.

The Great King Cohen on Blu-ray

King Cohen, the recent documentary about the life and works of the great Larry Cohen spent the good part of last year generating a lot of buzz in the horror film community.  But disappointingly little of that coverage seems to highlight the fact that it hasn't just been bouncing around festivals and then become available on streaming; it's on blu-ray.  More than that, it's a pretty sweet special edition that adds a lot of value; but you barely hear about that.  Maybe that's because it's the first blu-ray release of an indie label that up 'till now has only released soundtrack albums on CD and vinyl, it didn't ping on anyone's radars?  After all, to be fair, I'd never heard of La-La Land Entertainment before either, and consequently, this isn't available through a lot of the traditional avenues.  Amazon has a listing for it, but they don't stock it, and they confusingly refer to it as a soundtrack on DVD with a release date of October 4, 2019.  Somebody should pre-order that just as a science experiment to see what happens.  But no, I'm happy to report that there really is a pretty must-have blu-ray release.

The big concern I had going into King Cohen, as a pretty entrenched fan of "triple threat" producer/ writer/ director Cohen, is that having most of the special edition releases of all his films, that this would be pretty redundant.  Larry's a fantastic raconteur, and even when his films don't have many other features, they tend to have commentaries or lengthy on-camera interviews with him telling all the film's wild guerilla origins and battles with the studios.  Sometimes even those DVD interviews would overlap a lot of the same anecdotes.  And surely a stand-alone documentary would have to explain a lot of the basics of what he does and what makes him interesting to the uninitiated.  So would this just be a boring retread of everything we've heard before?  Is King Cohen merely a bemusing Cohen 101 for newcomers, with little to offer the informed?

Happily, the answer is a big no.  Even as the very basics are established, it's mostly new, since few special editions start from a place of where the filmmaker was born and his other showbiz jobs before he started making movies.  And the man behind this doc, writer/ director Steve Mitchell, seems to be one of us enough to know what will actually constitute news to fans.  We get a lot of great stuff about his earlier TV days, which you rarely hear about.  Hearing the scuttle about some of his less recognized films, like The Private Files of J Edgar Hoover and Wicked Stepmother, goes a nice way towards making up for them not having quality, special editions of their own.  And even when a few key stories are so important they simply must be repeated here, the additional voices he employs to tell them add a very fresh spin.  For example, Scream Factory's It's Alive boxed set pretty thoroughly covers Larry's relationship with Bernard Herrmann, but hearing it from Martin Scorsese's perspective is additionally enlightening.

Not to mention, it's just impressive they got Martin Scorsese to sit down and dig in with them in the first place.  In fact, the roster they've assembled for this documentary is very impressive: from critics and ex-wives to fellow filmmakers like Joe Dante and John Landis, stars like Eric Roberts and Yaphet Kotto and of course the essential Cohen staples like Michael Moriarity and James Dixon.  I mean, if those two weren't in this, I would've kicked a garbage can over!  So many players were bought in, they almost wind up getting short shrift - they managed to bring in Eric Bogosian, and then only feature a couple of sentences from him, because the King Cohen train has too much ground left to traverse to slow down.  Of course, Cohen himself sits in front of the camera for a series of carefully re-edited interviews, and then you've got Fred Williamson boldly contradicting every story he tells.  It's all super satisfying, with the sole exception of JJ Abrams, who's obviously one of the most famous parties involved and who gets top billing on the cover and poster, but only contributes a brief introduction.  You keep waiting for him to come back and say something about anything, but he never does.

Besides that though, the only criticism I have - if you can even call it a criticism - is that there's so much to Larry's career left to tell.  So many films go completely unmentioned, like Uncle Sam, Invasion of Privacy, Full Moon High, Messages Deleted, etc. that you wish this could be one of those ultra-comprehensive, multi-hour documentaries like Never Sleep Again, that just goes on until it covers everything, regardless of length.  Here, I still had questions.  But if the worst I can say about a movie is that it left me wanting more, I don't think the filmmakers should feel too crushed.

2018 US La-La Land Entertainment blu-ray.

And it looks great on blu.  It's a very high quality, HD production, not to be confused with some of those fan-made docs you see pop up on EBay as BDRs or anything.  This is an official pressed, all-region dual-layer disc  The film is presented in 1.78:1 in consistently strong HD, with the natural exception of some vintage footage, which is reliant on its source.  You can tell immediately which film clips come from nice, 4k restorations and which had to be ripped from cheaper DVDR releases.  The main documentary footage itself seems to have been shot digitally, so there's no real concerns of accurate scanning or capturing film grain.  It looks like a proper DCP presented plopped straight on the disc, with no interlacing or other issues in the new or film clip footage.  The audio's a crisp DTS-HD track and they've created optional English subtitles.  Many of Larry's major studio films have yet to be presented so well.

And then we've still got the extras to explore!  The bulk of it can be broken down into two main, roughly 45 minute chunks.  One is additional interview footage of Larry, where he tells a bajillion more showbiz anecdotes (again, only a few of which you'll recognize from other discs), and the second is from all the other actors and collaborators.  So yes, here we get a bit more from Eric Bogosian, along with the rest of the gang.

I wouldn't go quite so far as to say, like with His Name Was Jason or Popatopolis, that if you haven't seen the extras then you haven't really seen the film.  But this definitely comes close to You're So Cool, Brewster or Crystal Lake Memories, where they're a big deal and seeing the film + extras is a decidedly fuller, more rewarding experience than just having watched the movie.  I mean, it's no small thing that the combined running of the special features is roughly the same as the film, effectively doubling the length.  And they don't cheat like The Death of Superman Lives by repeating the same film clips over and over in order to misleadingly advertise the number of hours of bonus footage.  Every minute is a worthwhile minute.

Then there's also a series of festival introductions Larry filmed to play before this doc when he couldn't attend in person, a brief look at some of the famous monsters Larry still has living with him in his home, and the trailer.  And, no doubt part of why Amazon listed this as a soundtrack on their page, is because it also comes with a bonus soundtrack CD of the documentary music by Joe Kraemer.  Now, this is a limited edition release (although it's a healthy 5000 copies, so don't panic), and each copy also comes with a personalized inner cover, signed by Mitchell, Kraemer and Cohen himself.  And it also ships with a regular cover, if for some reason you object to the signatures.  Personally, I reversed the unsigned version and slipped it underneath the signed one, so it works as interior art.  😎   Oh, and there's an insert with the CD's tracklisting in there, too.  So, as you've no doubt gathered, I recommend this release pretty highly... even if you already watched the movie streaming last year.

Obscure Import No More! Larry Cohen's Full Moon High (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

Boy, if you're a serious Larry Cohen fan, you have to work hard for your DVDs. They're out there, but you have to be prepared to track down obscure imports from all sorts of different countries, multiple MOD discs from the various major studios and rare out of print DVDs that have been replaced on the marketplace with inferior counterparts. Today we're gonna go with one of the obscure imports.

Update 1/24/15 - 1/25/19: Obscure import no more!  Full Moon High has since been released by none other than Scream Factory as a mainstream US blu-ray release. Who'da thunk it?

Full Moon High in a way should be a crowd pleaser, as its a genre film (werewolves!), as opposed to some of his artsier dramas and thrillers like Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, The Private Files of J Edgar Hoover or Bone. But on the other hand, it'll probably drive many fans away because it's so goddamn silly. Sure, some of Cohen's most beloved films are pretty damn silly... Q, It's Alive 3, Return To Salem's Lot, The Stuff... But this is more like Zucker Brothers' silly. Except not as undeniably hilarious.

Adam Arkin - yes, Alan Arkin's son, and he pretty much plays the part like "hey, I'm Alan Arkin's son" - stars as Tony, a high school footballer who accompanies his paranoid wacko/ CIA agent father (Ed McMahon, who talks to a framed photo of Sen. Joe McCarthy on his wall) to Romania. There he gets his palm read at a restaurant and is told he carries the curse of the pentagram. "Oh, I always wanted to go to the pentagon," he says. At which point the waiter leans in to say, "pentagram, stupid!" ...That's the tone of this movie, more Young Frankenstein than Teen Wolf. Anyway, Tony naturally gets attacked by a werewolf and returns to his hometown with a taste for dog food and haunted by mysterious gypsy violin music.

Well, decades go by and the town is never able to discover the identity of the mysterious creature by girls on the butt. Tony hasn't age, so just like in the Twilight movies, he re-registers in high school. This time he's determined to win the big game like he never got to do years before. But he also has to avoid the cops, escape his stalker ex-girlfriend, and maybe break his curse.

This movie is definitely not for everyone, but if you're open-minded, this is actually a neat little movie. For every two terrible jokes, there's a smart one; and there's so many jokes, it means we get a lot of smart ones. You just have to not let the fact that the film is full of groaners spoil it for you; if you can take it all in stride, it's a good time. The roles are all (intentionally) broadly played, but there are a lot of enjoyable character parts, including Kenneth Mars, Louis Nye, Sanford & Son's Demond Wilson, center square Jim J Bullock, a young Bob Saget, Cohen favorite Laurene Landon, Alan Arkin himself, and even young Adam is actually quite affable in the lead. Production values are relatively, surprisingly high, and it helps to finally see this film on a good looking DVD to appreciate it. It's also full of Larry Cohen's signature touches including, yes, James Dixon. And I actually wind up enjoying this film more with each rewatch.

2010 Aus Shock DVD top; 2018 US Scream Factory blu bottom.

Here's a nice surprise!  Given that we already had a pretty solid, anamorphic widescreen transfer on the DVD that far exceeded what I'd find on a random import (i.e. something ripped from the VHS), I assumed that's what we'd be getting from SF, too, just in HD on the blu.  In fact, the only real selling point for me to double-dip was the commentary.  But no, they've gone and made a whole new master, which looks even better.  I mean, the first thing you're all probably noticing is how much nicer the colors look.  But there's more to it than that.  While the aspect ratio itself just received a tiny correction from 1.86:1 to 1.85, You can see Scream's new scan pulls in more info on all four sides, particularly the left and right.  How is that possible if the AR stays almost the same?  Well, it also turns out the DVD was slightly horizontally stretched, which Scream fixes, and thus is able to reveal the extra horizontal picture.  And naturally all that ugly SD compression is gone, but not only is SF's blu in clearer HD, but even by blu-ray standards, this has a really natural film grain base.

The audio sounds more robust on the blu, too, not just from the boost to DTS-HD, but it sounds like they genuinely went back and restored the original mono track.  Plus, as Scream routinely does, they've added optional English subs.  Honestly, I'm not so sure it was even a smart business decision for MGM to sink that money into this particular film, but I appreciate it!

Both discs include the theatrical trailer (which you should check out for the nutty narration), but that was it for the DVD.  The blu, however, secures a all new audio commentary by Larry Cohen and moderated by the guy who directed the King Cohen documentary.  If you've heard any Larry Cohen commentary, or watched any of his interviews, you know he's great at these.  He has a lot to say, and as we learn, he takes a little time to bone up with James Dixon before recording, which definitely insures a quality that you can't always rely on from commentaries by other filmmakers.  One downside, though, there are long and distinct pauses throughout.  Considering how energized Cohen is, and the fact that he's got a moderator sitting right with him, I suspect parts of the commentary were edited out, leaving us with disappointing patches of dead air.  But the 85% of the commentary that remains is pretty awesome, so don't let that deter you.  Especially since this is a film we hear so much less about... like, after a while, anecdotes about It's Alive or Maniac Cop start to double up and repeat; but Full Moon High is an untapped well!

Herzog/ Kinski, Part 2 (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

And we're back, continuing on from Part 1.  Feel free to use the above image as a checklist as we slide into the fourth of Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski's films together, 1982's Fitzcarraldo.  And again, we get a very different Kinski - he's actually smiling!  He laughs, happily married (to none other than Claudia Cardinale) and cheerful.  Who knew he even had that in him?  haha  But what we did know he had in him was a mad drive, which he lets lead him into an impossible mission.  As an aspiring rubber baron in the early 20th century, he decides he can open a new route by dragging a massive steamship up over a jungle mountain, all in the name of bringing opera to the Amazon.  But what really sells this movie is the physical production.  If the authentically captured adventure of Aguirre's journey through the jungle blew your mind, this aims to top it.  A cast of hundreds hauls this steamboat up an actual mountain only to then ride it through very real, deadly rapids.  The story behind the film might be more compelling than the one in front of the cameras, but the complete absence of special effects of any kind keeps the line between the two fascinatingly thin.

1) 2004 AB DVD; 2) 2014 SF blu; 3) 2014 BFI blu.

Once again, stepping up to blu gives us a big jump in clarity.  Anchor Bay's 1.81:1 aspect ratio gets corrected to 1.85:1, with some additional framing adjustments.  Just looking at the two sets of shots I picked here, you can see the first set is quite close, but the second set pans noticeably to the right (and a bit more on the Shout than the BFI).  This time, happily, black crush is not an issue.  In fact, ironically, you can make out a hair more in Shout's shadows than BFI's.  On the other hand, though, grain is much more natural on the BFI blu, whereas it looks like Shout's been DNR'd, rather reminiscent of what we just saw on Blue Underground's Living Dead In Manchester Morgue blu.

SF blu left; BFI blu right.

See what I mean?  So BFI still wins out between the two, but by a different set of standards.

Audio-wise, we're sort of back to our earlier examples, with 5.1 and mono mixes of the German audio, but this time Anchor Bay also came up with a 5.1 mix of the English track, in addition to the mono.  But the Shout Factory drops that one, just giving us the two German mixes and English mono in 5.1.  BFI brings back all four mixes, though, with the 5.1s in DTS-HD and monos in PCM.  So the original mono mixes are what's really important, and they're on every version.  But if you care about the 5.1s, that's another point lost for Shout.  Oh, and yes, all three discs have optional English subtitles.

In terms of extras, things start out predictably.  Anchor Bay just has the Herzog/ Hill commentary, which is as rewarding as ever, plus the trailer and a photo gallery.  Both blus carry all of that over, but only Shout has the second audio commentary with Herzog and Straub.  However, Shout doesn't win this round, as BFI has two big aces up their sleeve.  The first is an exclusive, hour-long, previously unreleased British documentary filmed during the making of Fitzcarraldo called The South Bank Show: Werner Herzog.  It's a bit more generally about Herzog than this film in particular.  But that's okay, because they've got that angle thoroughly covered with their second ace, Burden of Dreams.

Burden of Dreams is a feature-length documentary by Les Blank filmed on the set of Fitzcarraldo.  Like I said, the story behind that film is more important than the actual plot, so this is an important and extensive look at the absurd lengths they went into capturing these images on film.  In fact, at least for myself, moments from the doc are indelibly married into my memory and appreciation of Fitzcarraldo itself.  From the wild footage of Herzog, Kinski and their cameraman being thrashed around on the rapids to the surviving footage of Mick Jagger and Jason Robards in the original, lost version of the film.  They essentially make one ultimate, double-film, each of which feels incomplete now when I just watch one or the other on their own.  It's such a compelling documentary that Criterion released it as its own separate and distinct DVD entry for their collection in 2005.  It's probably because Criterion has it, actually, that Shout couldn't include it.  But even though Criterion reissued Burden in 2016, they still made it DVD-only, though BFI has it on blu in their set.

1) 2005 Criterion DVD; 2) 2014 BFI blu.

It's a fullscreen film, presented in 1.33:1 on both discs, though as you can see above, it sometimes shifts to non-anamorphic widescreen when presenting shots from the feature.  Burden was shot in 16mm, so it naturally looks pretty low-fi, and BFI seem to be using the same master Criterion made ten years earlier.  So, it's not an upconvert.  The increased resolution of the BD does give you a little extra sharpness and clarity; but the movie is light enough on detail that you probably won't notice the difference without doing a direct screenshot comparison like this.  And even then, I had to zoom in and look pretty closely to confirm for me that it was boosted.

Criterion's exclusive interview.

And both discs just feature the original mono track (in LPCM on the blu) with optional English subtitles.  But there is an important distinction: Criterion's release is packed with special features.  BFI's blu is, for all intents and purposes, barebones, because for them Burden is itself pretty much an extra.  But Criterion cooked up an audio commentary with Blank, Herzog and sound recordist Maureen Gosling.  It's pretty good, not quite as interesting as the ones on Fitzcarraldo, but that may be because - after the film, its commentaries, and this doc - a lot of anecdotes start to repeat.  But there's more, too, including two deleted scenes and a lengthy on-camera interview with Herzog.  They also throw in the trailer, a stills gallery and the short film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, that Blank also directed, and which actually is included on the BFI set, as well.  That short has nothing to do with Fitzcarraldo or Burden, though, and makes more sense paired up with Gates of Heaven, which Criterion also packaged it with (see that review for more).  Criterion's DVD also comes in a nice slip box and includes an 80-page reproduction of Blank's filming journals.

In short, Burden is a nice selling point for BFI's box over the Anchor Bay and Shout Factory ones; but you still may well feel the need to cop the Criterion edition anyway, which would render it much less of a big deal.

We jump ahead five more years to Herzog and Kinski's final film together, Cobra Verde.  Here Verde is a hardened, merciless bandit, an antihero straight out of a Western.  But lest you think anything in their body of work is predictable or cliche, we soon find our protagonist's journey taking a strange turn to Africa, where he's sent to take over the post of a murdered slave trader.  Herzog really leans into spectacle here, where actual local kings play themselves and have their people dance and perform for the camera.  Cobra Verde is an interesting blend of two distinct Herzog styles, where he's exploring with one eye, shooting exotic customs as he finds them, yet staging massive, epic-scale productions for the other.  The film dances between authenticity rival film makers could never hope to capture and fantastic, fabricated ballyhoo.  The plot and characters are a little threadbare - I have a feeling I wouldn't be too impressed with the novel it's based on; not to mention that it's not always easy to maintain empathy with a racist slave monger.  So in that sense it's a bit like watching Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra, where you're on board more to be impressed by the show being put on for you than to really sink into the story being told.

1) 2004 AB DVD; 2) 2014 SF blu; 3) 2014 BFI blu.

There's a bigger shift in aspect ratios on this one, going from 1.76:1 to a wider 1.85:1 (or even 1.86 in the case of Shout) on the blus.  I'm sure you don't need me to point out the significant gains in picture in the 2014 editions.  The blu-rays both also lean to a cooler blue tone, which I'm not honestly sure I prefer, but I couldn't actually recommend sticking with the DVDs when you see how drastically over-compressed it is compared to the HD versions.  Between the two blus, Shout's a hair too bright.  Grain is a bit lacking in both cases, but again I'd give the edge to BFI.  It's a slight edge, though.  In this case, the two blus are very close.

It's another familiar story in the audio department, with Anchor Bay offering 5.1 and mono versions of the German track, the English only in mono and optional English subs.  This time around, Shout drops the German 5.1, presenting just the two mono tracks in DTS-HD, while BFI keeps all three tracks, in DTS-HD for the 5.1 and LPCM for the monos.

Extras are the same old story with the Anchor Bay set: a Herzog/ Hill commentary and the trailer.  But things get more interesting with the blus.  Shout once again keeps the AB stuff and adds an hour-long audio track with Herzog and Straub, plus a photo gallery.  Even more exciting, they introduce a great little documentary to the table, aptly titled Herzog in Africa, which allows ride along, for 45 minutes, for the filming of Cobra Verde, and considering the utterly unique production, is an absolute must see.  Unfortunately, BFI keeps the AB stuff but gets none of the new Shout stuff.  Instead, though, they have their own exclusive: a very good, 90 minute Q&A with Herzog after a 1988 screening of Cobra Verde.  They also had a second, German language trailer.  So Shout has the best stuff, but BFI's exclusive is nothing to sneeze at.

And that's it for the films they created together.  Herzog has over 70 films to his credit now, and Kinski has over 130.  But these five stand out in both of their catalogs, and Herzog would reflect on their creative period and volatile relationship in his 1999 documentary, My Best Fiend, included in the Anchor Bay and Shout sets, but not BFI's.  He revisits filming locations (yes, even those deep in the Amazon) and interviews fellow cast members to reminisce over Kinski.  He showcases some great vintage footage (most noteworthy from Kinski's crazy tour as Christ) and returns to his childhood home.  Kinski was a dynamic figure to the point of near insanity, and Herzog doesn't shy away from exploiting that here.  By the way, I think it's worth noting that both deleted scenes from Blank's Burden of Dreams documentary are incorporated into this film in whole.  Overall, it's a very compelling little doc, but it does feel a bit brisk, like it would be even richer if he'd've dug a little deeper.  But you sure can't say what we've got isn't interesting as-is.

1) 2004 AB DVD; 2) 2014 SF blu.

The film quality naturally bounces around as this film uses footage from multiple sources, including some pretty dodgy videotape.  But in the higher quality stuff, either shot new for this documentary or  taken from the feature films, you can't miss the benefits of the restoration and uptick to HD.  It's 1.76:1 in both cases, but has clearly been re-scanned (from the 35mm interpositive) for much better image quality and improved framing.  All that ugly compression of the DVD is washed away, the colors are more naturalistic... there's a slight bit of black crush, I suppose, but it's not too invasive.  Overall, I was expecting a very minimal jump up from the DVD to blu, much like we just saw with Burden of Dreams.  But no, I'm happy to report that it's actually a real overhaul.

Both discs include both the English and German mono tracks (in DTS-HD on the blu) with optional English subtitles.  The only extra in both cases is the theatrical trailer.

So these are a brilliant collection of films, and absolutely worth upgrading if you've still got the DVDs.  Even for DVDs, they really don't hold up so well.  Overall, I tend to prefer the BFI transfers, but they both have so much unique content, including plenty of Herzog films and features not related to the Kinski collaborations, that you can't just declare a winner.  Honestly, despite the overlap, I'd recommend both sets if you can afford it.  And I'll be covering the remaining films in both sets down the road. But yeah, these bad boys ain't cheap, and many (most?) of these films aren't available on blu-ray individually; so you'll have to work out your own plays.  But for my part, I can't say I regret any of the double(or additional)-dips I've done for these films.