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James Russo

James Russo

10 films on Best Blurays4 in 4K6 in HD

James Russo photo

James Vincent Russo (born April 23, 1953) is an American film and television actor. He has starred in over 90 films in three decades. Description above from the Wikipedia article James Russo, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Biography from Wikipedia via TMDB

Leading role · Director: Abel Ferrara

Video format: 1080p Blu-ray

Best English-Friendly & Video:

French ESC Editions Blu-Ray

Leading role · Director: Gus Van Sant

Best English-Friendly & Video:

UK/Germany/Spain/Japan WB Blu-ray

Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)

Video Notes:

UK/Germany/Spain/Japan WB Blu-ray > Criterion on encoding

Supporting role · Director: Martin Brest

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly:

Paramount Spain/Italy 4K Blu-ray

Best Audio:

Paramount Home Video US LaserDisc [LV 1134-WS]

Supporting role · Director: Roman Polanski

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Lionsgate Limited 4K Blu-ray

Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)

Video Notes:

Lionsgate Limited 4K Blu-ray see caps. Much better contrast and grain exposure but the grade is a bit questionable as it skews heavily towards magenta in some caps and the encode looks low-pass filtered.

Lionsgate and the upcoming Imprint have the same discs.

Best Audio:

Atmos Remix: Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray
Original 5.1: Imprint Australia Blu-ray or StudioCanal Germany/France Blu-ray

Audio Notes:

Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray encoded the "Original 5.1" as lossy Dolby Digital, which is very different from the AC3 on the original DVD.  This new "Original 5.1" may in fact be a downmix of the Atmos track.  FWIW, the original DVD AC3 still sounds very good.

Small role · Director: Amy Heckerling

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Criterion Blu-ray

Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · caps-a-holic (opens in a new tab)

Video Notes:

Criterion Blu-ray is significantly better than Universal Blu-ray see caps

Small role · Director: Sergio Leone

Video format: UHD Blu-ray

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly:

251 min cut (Extended): Fox Blu-ray

229 min cut (Theatrical): WB Blu-ray

139 min cut (US theatrical): VHS

Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)

Video Notes:

251 min cut (Extended): Fox Blu-ray. Eagle Pictures has forced Italian subs in some parts

229 min cut (Theatrical): WB Blu-ray

139 min cut (US theatrical): VHS

Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray, caps

The 4K includes both theatrical and extended cuts. It's overall a solid upgrade over previous discs, but some will strongly dislike the color grading.
There are some issues with encoding and grain management.


Nic's review:

Some definitely messed with it as there’s grain management going on that resulted in magnetic, squishy grain movement. Both cuts (4K discs) are affected and it doesn’t look like an encoding issue to me as the bitrates don’t drop down to single digits á la Paramount or StudioCanal. During opticals, the lowest I’ve noted on the Extended 4K was around 30 MB/s vs. ~5 MB/s more for the theatrical cut.

Darker scenes are mostly (but not always) better but when it gets brighter, particularly in exteriors or scenes like the Jennifer Connelly dance scene at minute 38, I can’t unsee the digital tinkering as it does some damage texturally.

I compared it with the Eagle Pictures and Warner Bros Fox Blu-ray of the extended cut and they all look fine without grain management like that. Eagle Pictures’s Blu-ray is an older one if anyone’s curious and credited to another authoring house than 64Biz, which did the 4K.

Other than that, except for some encoding-related chroma noise that peeks through in the DV layer, Eagle Pictures did everything right. They corrected the framing to 1.85, kept the original English titles, the English restoration note, subtitles, HDR/DV is gentle and respectful of the source black levels are better than on the Warner Bros/Fox Blu-ray. Without that grain management, this would’ve been the all-timer release we all longed for.

Best Audio:

251 min cut: Fox Blu-ray

229 min cut: Warner Bros LaserDisc

Audio Notes:

251 min cut: Fox Blu-ray (24-bit, Eagle Pictures is 16-bit, not audible)
229 min cut: Warner Bros LaserDisc (missing 2 minutes, but original mono mix was never released on DVD/Blu-ray)

Additional Info:

Extended edition adds scenes cut from the theatrical, but from a much lower quality source. It's intended to approximate the original cut, but to what extent that is true is debatable.
US theatrical cut is infamously bad, was panned at release and never re-released on home video.

Small role · Director: Quentin Tarantino

Best English-Friendly & Video:

US Anchor Bay Blu-ray

Video Notes:

US Anchor Bay Blu-ray > International Sony Blu-ray

Additional Info:

Best Buy, Target, and Walmart exclusive editions all have a exclusive extra each.

Small role · Director: Michael Mann

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Universal Blu-ray

Small role · Director: Kevin Costner

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly & Video:

WB 4K Blu-ray

Small role · Director: Phil Joanou

4K · Disappointing
Best English-Friendly & Video:

UK Second Sight Blu-ray?

Video Notes:

UK Second Sight Blu-ray maybe better than all the other Blu-rays?

Australia Imprint 4K Blu-ray is disappointing with DNR and poor compression

Additional Info:

US Twilight Time and Germany NSM Blu-rays have exclusive extras

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