The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo
Western • 2h 41m
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Aldo Giuffrè, Luigi Pistilli, Rada Rassimov, Enzo Petito, Claudio Scarchilli, Antonio Casale, Livio Lorenzon, Sandro Scarchilli, Benito Stefanelli, Angelo Novi, Antonio Casas, Aldo Sambrell, Al Mulock, Sergio Mendizábal, Antonio Molino Rojo, Lorenzo Robledo, Mario Brega, Chelo Alonso, Fortunato Arena, Román Ariznavarreta, Silvana Bacci, Joseph Bradley, Frank Braña, Amerigo Castrighella, Saturno Cerra, William Conroy, Axel Darna, Tony Di Mitri, Gianni Di Segni, Alberigo Donadeo, Attilio Dottesio, Luis Fernández de Eribe, Veriano Ginesi, Jesús Guzmán, Víctor Israel, Nazzareno Natale, Ricardo Palacios, Antonio Palombi, Romano Puppo, Antoñito Ruiz, Aysanoa Runachagua, Enrique Santiago, José Terrón, Franco Tocci, Antonio Montoya
Arrow 4K Blu-ray
Best English-friendly release · updated 4 months ago
UHD tiers
Overview
While the Civil War rages on between the Union and the Confederacy, three men – a quiet loner, a ruthless hitman, and a Mexican bandit – comb the American Southwest in search of a strongbox containing $200,000 in stolen gold.
Director: Sergio Leone
Arrow's English mono is from the soundtrack negatives, with light noise reduction but still the highest quality anywhere. The main title is restored from the 1985 LaserDisc analog mono.
The 1985 CBS/Fox LaserDisc for untouched English mono despite element defects and an incomplete print used. The main title on this LaserDisc is the highest quality version known to exist.
The Arrow 5.1 is a careful upmix from their mono restoration to create a purist multichannel mix.
The Italy mono exists in lesser quality but Arrow performed additional restoration work to improve what they could.
Arrow 4K Blu-ray > Kino Lorber, see caps
1984 Key Video Hi-Fi VHS
Director: David Lynch
UK Arrow 4K Blu-ray in December
Criterion 4K Blu-ray or Germany Plaion 4K Blu-ray - subtle difference in encoding to the Criterion in encoding, trading blows in different shots, with Plaion taking a slight edge with less highlight blocking
1993 MGM LaserDisc/2000 Region 1 MGM DVD
Criterion's 2.0 sounds muffled due to noise reduction and EQ.
Plaion's 2.0 lacks bass and has a very bright EQ, more resembling the 5.1 remix. Plaion’s 2.0 doesn't have any filtering unlike the Criterion, see https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=23831289&postcount=110
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
2014 "Hayao Miyazaki Collection" Studio Ghibli Japan Blu-ray or US Disney Blu-ray
2014 "Hayao Miyazaki Collection" Studio Ghibli Japan Blu-ray
Comparisons: https://slow.pics/c/6JWnlfit
All sources are within margin of error. Comparisons: Japanese, English
Alternate Streamline English dub is available only on 1994 Fox LD.
Director: Carol Reed
StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray or Lionsgate Limited 4K Blu-ray
StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray/Lionsgate Limited 4K Blu-ray (shared encode); slight improvement over the 2015 StudioCanal Blu-ray
StudioCanal/LG UHDs port the 1999 Criterion DVD, considered the best source
StudioCanal has a remastered Blu-ray, Lionsgate only a 4K Blu-ray
Director: John Carpenter
Universal 4K Blu-ray. Maybe Turbine Blu-ray instead for better audio?
1997? Signature Collection LD
Good: 2017 Arrow and 2016 Shout! Factory Blu-ray have the original audio options.
the only track on Universal 4K, which is in DTS:X, has a mixing error of around 6dB too low on side channels, otherwise very similar to other 5.1 mixes.
Director: Martin Scorsese
2024 Sony 4K Blu-ray Steelbook
2024 Sony 4K Blu-ray Steelbook fixes duplicate shot seen on the previous Columbia Classics release and has better encoding
Original mono mix: 1990 Criterion LaserDisc/1991 Columbia LaserDisc
The 4K Blu-ray mono is only minimally worse (see blah-ray).
5.1 remix: Sony 4K Blu-ray
Director: Ridley Scott
Theatrical Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray
2003 Directors Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray
Theatrical Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray
2003 Directors Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray (additional scenes appear to be upscaled)
Original Theatrical 70mm 6-Track Stereo: Fox 4K Blu-ray (DTS-HD MA 4.1)
Original Theatrical 35mm Matrixed Dolby Stereo: 1999 DVD? (2.0 mix on the UHD is a downmix)
2003 Directors Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray, Fox Blu-ray (DTS-HD MA 5.1)
Director: Dario Argento
US Synapse 4K Blu-ray or UK Shameless 4K Blu-ray (some may prefer Synapse's grading, while some prefer Shameless's grading)
US Synapse 4K Blu-ray or UK Shameless 4K Blu-ray (some may prefer Synapse's grading, while some prefer Shameless's grading)
4.0 track on the Synapse 4K Blu-ray
Director: Billy Wilder
Paramount 4K Blu-ray. See caps
HDR/grading: nice, but some blown out
Encoding: inconsistent, smeared motion
DNR: inconsistent, frozen
Old Paramount Blu-ray is arguably a solid alternative choice
Paramount 4K Blu-ray mono is different version of the Blu-ray mono from the same old 2000 DVD transfer.
The 5.1 remix on the 4K Blu-ray is an appalling remix done by going wild with artificially generated stems from Park Road Post who were given the surviving mono to separate. The experience is jarring and fidelity to original mix in terms of level balance, directionality and impact is nonexistent. Not only does this sound painfully weird, but the Paramount mixers then did whatever they wanted in terms of LFE, sound pans and effect changes.
The original mono mix was not restored and still needs it badly. The 4K master is filled with frozen grain examples coming and going plus some HDR issues in addition to the usual Paramount problems. It is simultaneously better and worse than the Blu-ray master.
Director: David Lynch
StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray > Criterion 4K Blu-ray.
StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray is encoded by FiM and doesn’t have the low-pass filter the Criterion 4K Blu-ray has.
Criterion 4K Blu-ray is closer to the original DVDs than the 2015 Criterion release, not sure about whether the StudioCanal 4K is like the Criterion 4K/original DVD
Criterion 4K Blu-ray has FEL Dolby Vision, StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray has MEL
251 min cut (Extended): Fox Blu-ray. Eagle Pictures has forced Italian subs in some parts
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.
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)
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.
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