Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Comedy, Crime • 1h 58m
Director: Frank Capra
Cast: Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Raymond Massey, John Alexander, Peter Lorre, Jack Carson, Edward Everett Horton, James Gleason, Grant Mitchell, Edward McNamara, Garry Owen, John Ridgely, Vaughan Glaser, Chester Clute, Charles Lane, Edward McWade, Hank Mann, Spencer Charters, Sol Gorss, Lee Phelps, Raymond Walburn, Spec O'Donnell, Leo White
Best English-friendly release · updated 1 year ago
Overview
Mortimer Brewster, a newspaper drama critic, playwright, and author known for his diatribes against marriage, suddenly falls in love and gets married; but when he makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts, he finds out his aunts' hobby - killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar!
Director: Garson Kanin
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
Only Streaming has 1080p
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · caps-a-holic (opens in a new tab) · blah-ray.blogspot.com (opens in a new tab)
StudioCanal 4K
Director: Preston Sturges
Director: Jack Conway
Video format: HD Streaming
HBO Max HD Streaming
Warner Archive Blu-ray in Oct
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · DVDBeaver (opens in a new tab)
> Kino Lorber see DVDBeaver
Indicator is using a different restoration from earlier Kino Lorber Blu-ray and it has much better contrast and slightly better grain resolution
Director: Gregory La Cava
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Although there's a bit of aggressive grain management see https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=15853770&postcount=43
Director: Frank Capra
Director: Frank Capra
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
1986 Columbia VHS
Director: Frank Capra
1991 Republic Pictures LaserDisc
Sony Frank Capra Boxset 4K Blu-ray
Director: Steve James
Director: Joel Coen
Director's Cut: Disappointing UK StudioCanal/US Criterion 4K Blu-ray
Theatrical Cut: LaserDisc or 2001 UK Universal DVD
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=21782879#post21782879 - comparison. StudioCanal is a massive improvement to the Criterion but still flawed in some areas (chroma noise)
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Criterion 4K Blu-ray poor compression, otherwise Second Sight has best Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
> BFI 4K Blu-ray. caps Criterion presents the master as originally graded in SDR whereas FiM added HDR / Dolby Vision for the BFI.
Criterion 4K Blu-ray's audio mix has more detail than BFI’s and same applies to the subtitles, covering both English and France spoken word
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Director: Terrence Malick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Lovely underlying remaster by Criterion and Resillion but encode is sadly low-pass filtered by Pixelogic, and even then, the encode is still less than ideal. Still easily obliterates any prior disc release, but certainly wouldn't hurt to have a UK or German label take a crack at this same master.
Director: Anthony Mann
Criterion 4K Blu-ray, Universal 2008 DVD
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
2008 Universal DVD mono
The mono on the Criterion is severely filtered resulting in it sounding incredibly muffled. It is nearly as filtered as the 2003 original Universal DVD which had extreme filtering and sounds horribly thin. The 2008 DVD remaster and original Laserdisc analog mastering are mostly left alone. The original LD master is from a worn element but otherwise sounds very natural. The 2008 DVD is the highest quality version we have without the heavy filtering and the defects of the LD master. It isn't perfect but easily the best of the main four sources by a dramatic margin.
The existing 4K SDR restoration looks excellent, but the Criterion extras are limited and disappointing. The classic Stewart interview commentary from the LD is ported over but given a new mastering. Compared to past releases it has been very slightly noise reduced.
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