It’s been an interesting time in the world of 4K Blu-ray. There has been recent news that several critically acclaimed, award nominated movies will not be getting a 4K Blu-ray release, or even any type of physical release in some cases. But, there are also instances where movies being decimated by critics and audiences alike are somehow getting the 4K Blu-ray treatment.
Take, for instance, All of Us Strangers and Madame Web.
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All of Us Strangers received universal critical acclaim for its powerful story and incredible acting, particularly from Scott. It has been nominated for a slew of awards, including several BAFTAs. Madame Web, on the other hand, is being savaged by critics and audience members alike. It currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 15% and 59% from critics and audiences respectively, with many citing the poor writing, bad effects and overall dull feel.
Yet, only one of these movies is getting a 4K Blu-ray release: Madame Web. All of Us Strangers, on the other hand, isn’t getting a physical release at all (as reported by World of Reel). I admittedly have not seen either of these movies, but from what I’ve read and what I’ve been told by people who’ve seen it, All of Us Strangers belongs on 4K Blu-ray and it’s a crime that it’s not.
I don’t want to speak for anyone, but from what I read in several comment sections and forums such as Reddit, home theater fans and cinephiles are not okay with the fact that this is the state of 4K Blu-ray and physical media releases at the moment. So just what is going on?
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This isn’t the first time this has happened in recent memory. It was announced that Best Picture Oscar-nominated movies Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, and The Holdovers, starring Paul Giamatti, will only be getting standard Blu-ray releases, not 4K. These movies are both generating a lot of buzz in the awards scene, with both Stone and Giamatti already having won best actor Golden Globes, and yet movie fans won’t get to enjoy them at home in their best possible quality.
Barbarian, starring Bill Skarsgård, is another movie that has been seemingly denied a physical release (as a press release mentioned a streaming date only). And Barbarian is a cult horror movie – a genre that particularly suits 4K Blu-ray and physical media – that has enjoyed great success. Understandably, fans in forums far and wide have cried out for a physical copy.
These are the kind of movies the best 4K Blu-ray players were made for. Home theater fans, in general, are movie-goers, and they will be wanting to add these movies to their collections, but can’t as it stands. What connects three of these four movies? You guessed it, they’re all owned by Disney. (The Holdovers is from Focus Features).
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Great thanks for that.
I did a quick Google and it seems like that system never really got off the ground but I did find this thread where they discuss similar set-ups that are available: Bel Air Cinema and Red Carpet Cinema, but that last link isn't working so...
Ahhh good old “reference quality”hard to beat but impossible to define ;-) And I can’t see what I’m writing anymore because beta app, so…
Yes, I was nosing around the Kaleidescope website and stumbled across that. Those systems will set you back 10s of thousands of dollars, so they'd better be of the highest quality.
Streaming is a pretty low bar, plus most studios weren’t even doing real 4K transfers for years ;-)
And 4k streams really aren't.
How so?
It came up in a previous discussion on here but the actual "4k" streaming bitrates are well below that of a 4k disc (they're more like a Blu-ray) but they can get away the name by using a UHD source file.
Here:
Oh yeah… that’s been pretty obvious, Amazon being the worst offender in my book. I thought there were a few smaller services that promised to focus on quality… I saw Vidu is functionally no more, but I thought the criterion collection had a streaming service?
They do but make no great claims about speed or quality.
A 2020 review did contact them about it:
I’ll have to dig into that dci standards site, but ultimately I figure as long as they are doing cinema releases someones making a 4K file. And since were talking about the 1% here… someone is making the gear the theaters use, so folks can just buy that and skip the “full time concierge” or whatever is putting these folks out of business one after the other.
If they are working in digital there will likely be a UHD quality master (depending on how it's filmed) but the resolution of a scan isn't everything that makes a 4k release - that includes special audio and premium HDR and, I believe, it's the latter which can be especially time-consuming.
That was my thinking, if they've spent six figures on a home cinema system they could just get themselves signed up as a small, albeit private, cinema and get the film sent to them that way. It may be these fancy services also make this available on billionaires' yachts and planes, I suppose, so perhaps they are paying the big bucks for convenience. If a member of staff has to tell a billionaire "sorry you can't have that right now" they are either getting the sack or being asked if throwing a zero on the end will grease the wheels.
It may simply be that these companies that provide this service are being circumvented by the 1% knowing a guy who knows a guy at the studios and there are ways. Back in the day, they might just have paid for an extra print to be made of the film.
I’ve really been wanting to check out one of those boutique Bluerays, I just haven’t had a chance. I was always an impulse buyer and and ended up grabbing the shittiest DVDs somehow… best thing I got was that monster prosthetic test from Boogie Nights which was delightfully subversive in execution, but not the cinephile content I was promised :-S
There's probably a releaser for every taste but folks like Arrow and Vinegar Syndrome focus on the quality of their products with a few extras to make them special but rarely fill them with tat.
It's often the big studios (that JW4 set is direct from Lionsgate) or the very small companies that try and polish a turd (the condom is from Visual Vengeance who focus on shot-on-video films that are never going to have the beat quality picture) or the reboxers (like Nova Media) who can throw in all sorts of things you wouldn't buy separately.
If you are just interested in sampling the image quality then they usually have a standard release. Keep an eye out for sales.
That's definitely a thing that happened!
I need to invest a bit of energy and cash in it… I was planning on being a slightly different kind of hipster, but a good record player is way to expensive these days :-)
Some early experience with Hollywood left me with an axe to grind. Long story short; Fox expertly torpedoed the first and last movie I worked on… but I need to be supporting these efforts that treat the work with the respect it deserves. I don’t think most folks could even imagine how hard it is to make a movie. Even a crappy movie :-)
I've definitely gone for a more quality not quantity approach recently - I went through a stage when DVDs first appeared of trying to buy every zombie movie but the output kept ramping up and hit about 1 a day. So I threw in the hat.
I've got an audiophile friend who has about half a dozen. That's drunk eBaying for you.
Ouch. A friend was in negotiations to join the big push to get the special effects on Bargirl finished right at the moment they decided to write it all of against tax. He got a good story out it at least, although he was looking forward to the experience of working on a big superhero movie.
And the great thing is there's enough people out there interested in even a pretty poor shot-on-video film to justify a fancy release (unless folks like Visual Vengeance have messed up their business model). There are even releases of what could be called "outsider" films that is really just some guy beavering away with his friends knocking out films made round their neighbourhood.