Flash Gordon (1980)
Science Fiction, Adventure, Action • 1h 51m
Overview
A football player and his mates travel to the planet Mongo and find themselves fighting the tyranny of Ming the Merciless to save Earth.
Director: Mike Hodges
Cast: Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Max von Sydow, Chaim Topol, Ornella Muti, Timothy Dalton, Brian Blessed, Peter Wyngarde, Mariangela Melato, John Osborne, Richard O'Brien, John Hallam, Philip Stone, Suzanne Danielle, William Hootkins, Bobbie Brown, Ted Carroll, Adrienne Kronenberg, Stanley Lebor, John Morton, Burnell Tucker, Robbie Coltrane, Peter Duncan, Ken Sicklen, Tessa Hewitt, Venetia Spicer, Francis Mughan, Oliver MacGreevy, John Hollis, Paul Bentall, Leon Greene, Graeme Crowther, Tony Scannell, David Neal, Bogdan Kominowski, George Harris, Colin Taylor, Doretta Dunkley, Sally Nicholson, Deep Roy, Michelle Mildwater, Marie Green, Imogen Claire, Kay Zimmerman, Frederick Warder, Stephen Brigden, Lionel Guyett, Ken Robertson, Andy Bradford, Bertram Adams, Terry Forrestal, Mike Potter, John Sullivan, Eddie Stacey, John Lees, Roy Scammell, Kathy Marquis, Sophie, Kathy September, Glenna Forster-Jones, Roseanne Romine, Snehal Patel, Magda, Shaka, Lindy, Viva, Beverly Andrews, Frances Ward, Kerry-Lou Baylis, Camella, Eddie Powell, Jill Goldston, Karen Johnson
Director: Jean Vigo
Director: Jean Vigo
France Rimini 4K Blu-ray see caps vs Artificial Eye Blu-ray
France Rimini 4K Blu-ray see caps vs Artificial Eye Blu-ray
Directors: Alberto Cavalcanti & Charles Crichton & Basil Dearden & Robert Hamer
Directors: Alberto Cavalcanti & Charles Crichton & Basil Dearden & Robert Hamer
Director: Otakar Vávra
Deaf Crocodile 4K Blu-ray see nic review
Restored: Deaf Crocodile 4K Blu-ray
Unrestored: Czech PAL DVD
Preferences will vary, the restored track sounds good, but not necessarily faithful to the original elements.
Director: Otakar Vávra
Deaf Crocodile 4K Blu-ray see nic review
Restored: Deaf Crocodile 4K Blu-ray
Unrestored: Czech PAL DVD
Preferences will vary, the restored track sounds good, but not necessarily faithful to the original elements.
Director: Robert Rossen
Director: Robert Rossen
Director: Anthony Mann
Director: Anthony Mann
Director: Basil Dearden
Indicator 4K Blu-ray. Excellent 4K master and encode, except for opticals grain is very fine, grading is beautifully silvery and luminous, nice HDR re-grade by Fidelity in Motion
Director: Basil Dearden
Indicator 4K Blu-ray. Excellent 4K master and encode, except for opticals grain is very fine, grading is beautifully silvery and luminous, nice HDR re-grade by Fidelity in Motion
Director: Jacques Becker
Director: Jacques Becker
Director: Mike Hodges
Director: Mike Hodges
Director: Rob Reiner
The initial release of the Capelight 4K mediabook had some playback issues with Dolby Vision on Panasonic devices due to an encoding error, the HDR10 apparently works fine, see Capelight’s official response here.
Director: Rob Reiner
The initial release of the Capelight 4K mediabook had some playback issues with Dolby Vision on Panasonic devices due to an encoding error, the HDR10 apparently works fine, see Capelight’s official response here.
Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray > Paramount US, same black crush as the US disc but encoded by FiM and very good new supplements
Paramount US 4K Blu-ray has FEL Dolby Vision
Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray has MEL Dolby Vision
Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray > Paramount US, same black crush as the US disc but encoded by FiM and very good new supplements
Paramount US 4K Blu-ray has FEL Dolby Vision
Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray has MEL Dolby Vision
Director: John Badham
Director: John Badham
Director: Sammo Hung Kam-Bo
Director: Sammo Hung Kam-Bo
Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray (damage removed, improved color/HDR, and best audio) or Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray (best compression but no damage removal and LaserDisc audio from Arrow)
Arrow UK /Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray > Kino Lorber US 4K Blu-ray, see caps
Arrow has done additional cleanup work removing nearly all the damage in the transfer. They have massaged the color timing and HDR to try and improve what they could. The Capelight may have better encoding but it does not have these improvements. The Arrow encoding is solid and in motion there are no issues whatsoever. The Kino Lorber release has the damage and other issues plus frequent noise due to the lesser encoding.
Some scenes in the Arrow transfer are better, some are better in the Capelight.
Original matrixed Dolby Stereo: Arrow 4K Blu-ray or Image Entertainment LaserDisc
(Arrow is a port of the LaserDisc track, see spectrograms) This track has the best fidelity of any release but does have some channel bleeding baked in. The 2017 2.0 on the Arrow and Shout! Factory Blu-rays was the Dolby Stereo original mix without channel bleeding but that had heavy noise reduction resulting in a very flat and underwhelming presentation. The surround winds up being lessened as well due to the processing. It's a tough choice between the two but the Image LaserDisc audio wins out because it hasn't been messed with and the impact is so unrestrained that no other version hits in the same way.
Capelight and old Arrow Blu-ray included the original stereo mix, but with excessive noise reduction rendering it much less detailed. Kino Lorber only included a painfully defective 2.0 track sourced from somewhere with limited fidelity, volume spikes and screechy high end which frequently ruins the music. The 5.1 remix on most modern release is a processed version that does not sound as good as it once did.
The best and most accurate of the 5.1 mixes is the original version from the 2003 Special Edition DVD in lossy AC3 form.
The best source for the commentaries are from the 2003 Special Edition DVD.
Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray (damage removed, improved color/HDR, and best audio) or Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray (best compression but no damage removal and LaserDisc audio from Arrow)
Arrow UK /Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray > Kino Lorber US 4K Blu-ray, see caps
Arrow has done additional cleanup work removing nearly all the damage in the transfer. They have massaged the color timing and HDR to try and improve what they could. The Capelight may have better encoding but it does not have these improvements. The Arrow encoding is solid and in motion there are no issues whatsoever. The Kino Lorber release has the damage and other issues plus frequent noise due to the lesser encoding.
Some scenes in the Arrow transfer are better, some are better in the Capelight.
Original matrixed Dolby Stereo: Arrow 4K Blu-ray or Image Entertainment LaserDisc
(Arrow is a port of the LaserDisc track, see spectrograms) This track has the best fidelity of any release but does have some channel bleeding baked in. The 2017 2.0 on the Arrow and Shout! Factory Blu-rays was the Dolby Stereo original mix without channel bleeding but that had heavy noise reduction resulting in a very flat and underwhelming presentation. The surround winds up being lessened as well due to the processing. It's a tough choice between the two but the Image LaserDisc audio wins out because it hasn't been messed with and the impact is so unrestrained that no other version hits in the same way.
Capelight and old Arrow Blu-ray included the original stereo mix, but with excessive noise reduction rendering it much less detailed. Kino Lorber only included a painfully defective 2.0 track sourced from somewhere with limited fidelity, volume spikes and screechy high end which frequently ruins the music. The 5.1 remix on most modern release is a processed version that does not sound as good as it once did.
The best and most accurate of the 5.1 mixes is the original version from the 2003 Special Edition DVD in lossy AC3 form.
The best source for the commentaries are from the 2003 Special Edition DVD.
Director: Mitchell Leisen
Director: Mitchell Leisen
Criterion 4K Blu-ray scheduled for October 2026 release
1991 Orion LaserDisc vs 2024 Arrow 4K Blu-ray
Criterion 4K Blu-ray scheduled for October 2026 release
1991 Orion LaserDisc vs 2024 Arrow 4K Blu-ray
Director: Robert Towne
Arrow includes the original Dolby Stereo mix in a matrixed stereo form, as well as a discrete 4.0 track.
Director: Robert Towne
Arrow includes the original Dolby Stereo mix in a matrixed stereo form, as well as a discrete 4.0 track.
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Arrow 4K Blu-ray Both cuts are excellent in 4K. See caps
Director's cut: 2007 WB Blu-ray; Arrow is a lossy transcode with dynamics compression.
2007 BD's AC-3 track with dynamic range compression enabled is nearly identical to Arrow's, see comparison
Theatrical cut is fine.
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Arrow 4K Blu-ray Both cuts are excellent in 4K. See caps
Director's cut: 2007 WB Blu-ray; Arrow is a lossy transcode with dynamics compression.
2007 BD's AC-3 track with dynamic range compression enabled is nearly identical to Arrow's, see comparison
Theatrical cut is fine.
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