John Savage

6 films on Best Blurays4 in 4K2 in HD

John Savage (born John Youngs; August 25, 1949) is an American film actor, producer, production manager, and composer. Savage has appeared in more than 200 feature films, short films, recurring roles in television series and guest appearances in episodes of television series. One of Savage's first notable roles is as Claude Bukowski in the 1979 film Hair. His first major film role was as Steven Pushkov in the multiple Oscar-winning 1978 film The Deer Hunter. He also had a lead role in the 1979 film The Onion Field. In the late 1970s, he performed in the Broadway production of David Mamet's play American Buffalo. In 1991, he starred in Italian director Lucio Fulci's final film Door to Silence. He then had a brief role in the 1998 war film The Thin Red Line, portrayed Captain Ransom in the two part episode Equinox of the television series Star Trek: Voyager in 1999, and appeared in the recurring role of Donald Lydecker in the first and second seasons of the 2000 television series Dark Angel. Savage starred in the 2015 horror film Tales of Halloween, the 2017 film In Dubious Battle, and on the 2017 continuation of the television show Twin Peaks. In 2018, he appeared on the television show Goliath. In 2018, Savage lent his voice to a monologue on the title track of the album This Town by Steve Smith of Dirty Vegas. In 2019, Savage played the role of The Narrator in upcoming fantasy crime drama Karma from award-winning filmmaker Bizhan Tong, having collaborated with him earlier that year.

Biography from TMDB

By format

List

The Deer Hunter (1978)

Supporting role · Director: Michael Cimino

4K · Solid

Best English-Friendly:

StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray

Best Video:

2020 Shout! Factory 4K

Video Notes:

2020 Shout! Factory 4K slightly better than StudioCanal in HDR10. Similar in DV

Best Audio:

35mm mix: 1991 Universal LaserDisc

70mm mix: StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray

Audio Notes:

35mm mix: 1991 Universal LaserDisc marginally better than StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray. Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray is downmix.

70mm mix: StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray. Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray is remix.

4.2

Salvador (1986)

Supporting role · Director: Oliver Stone

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray

Sources: lddb.com (opens in a new tab)

Best Audio:

Twilight Time Blu-ray or MGM NTSC DVD

Audio Notes:

Twilight Time Blu-ray or MGM NTSC DVD for the original mono mix

Shout! Factory 4K only has a stereo downmix (which sounds muffled, as do the surround tracks)
Twilight Time Blu-ray has the mono track with seemingly the best fidelity, but its dynamic range has been heavily compressed
MoC UK Blu-ray has a proper dynamics and good fidelity, but bizzarely, everything is repeated after a few miliseconds, rendering echoey and metallic
MGM NTSC DVD has been denoised and has had a strong EQ applied and sounds muffled as a result, but it retains proper dynamics
Koch Media DE BD had poor dynamics and wrong pitch
Analog 1986 US LaserDisc sounds poor

Perhaps the digital JP LD would be better.

3.7

Do the Right Thing (1989)

Small role · Director: Spike Lee

4K · Solid

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Universal 4K Blu-ray

Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)

Best Audio:

Criterion DVD for the original Dolby Stereo

Audio Notes:

Criterion DVD for the original Dolby Stereo (lossless). 5.1 upmix on BDs is fine, DTS:X is revisionistic

Additional Info:

Criterion Blu-ray has extras not found on the Universal 4K Blu-ray

4.4

The Godfather Part III (1990)

Small role · Director: Francis Ford Coppola

4K · Worse Than BD

Best English-Friendly & Video:

1991 Home Video Cut: Paramount 2008 Blu-ray

Theatrical Cut: Paramount 4K Blu-ray, but it has problems described below in the additional info section, and worse encoding than the Coda cut.

Coda Cut: Paramount 4K Blu-ray, but it has problems described below in the additional info section, and also has slightly better encoding than the Theatrical/1991 Home Video cuts on 4K.

Sources: YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Best Audio:

LaserDisc for original mix

Additional Info:

The Paramount 4K "restoration" is a desecration. It has completely revisionist color timing, harsh HDR, treatment of stock footage, bad encoding, selective DNR and grain management so bad that the entire screen frequently freezes up with only characters moving around in grain soup. It is so bad that the film's restorer Robert Harris publicly washed his hands of it saying essentially the 2007 restoration (with Willis and Coppola supervising) is how the film was intended and made. This is Paramount's modern version done their way. The new 1080p SDR Blu-rays in print are the crap 4K desecration master with the same problems still there just harder to spot and with crap encodes. Part III fares best of the three and these issues are at their most minimal-but they're still there. The new Coda version is given prominence with lesser encodes for the other two versions. The original mix was remixed into 5.1 decades ago and we have yet another version of this instead of the original Dolby Stereo SR as heard on the LaserDisc release.
The 2008 Blu-ray of the 2007 restoration, while an imperfect outdated disc, is LIGHT YEARS better than this 4K desecration. The only truly major issue is that it is very slightly redder than the 2007 finished master as seen on DCPs.
DFIC review of the hideous crap 4K Blu-rays: https://youtu.be/0uw6-Kcy_UA?si=ob1nDg0wTCvemjH0

Despite being restored alongside the Coppola Restorations of The Godfather: Parts I and II, the Part III restoration is not officially labelled a Coppola Restoration.