Kino Lorber Silent Avant-Garde Blu-ray
Best English-friendly & video release · updated 1 year ago
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slow.pics (opens in a new tab)Overview
A spiral design spins. It's replaced by a spinning disk. These two continue in perfect alternation until the end: a spiral design, a disk. Each disk is labelled and can be read as it rotates. The messages, in French, feature puns and whimsical rhymes and alliteration. The final message comments on the spiral motif itself.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Criterion Box Set coming October 20th with FiM encode
Director: Paul Leni
Theatrical/Original A negative: MoC Blu-ray
European C/D negative but better picture quality: Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
From DVDBeaver: The MoC Blu-ray is scanned from the American A negative, as opposed to the European C or D negatives used by Photoplay and others (Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray), so it is identical with the film US audiences saw in 1927
See caps for comparison
In addition, the Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has sepia tinting throughout while the MoC Blu-ray has yellow for normal scenes, blue for night scenes, and some even green tintings.
Director: Lewis Teague
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray disappointing
R1 DVD
R1 DVD sounds best and has the original mono and a Dolby Stereo remix
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has excellent master in SDR and a good encode. BD caps here.
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has poor audio: The 2.0 is fine but unremarkable, the 5.1 is presumably an upmix with a botched, strongly raised LFE channel which makes the entire track unlistenable on well-tuned equipment. Audio graphs here.
Kino Lorber Blu-ray or Germany Blu-ray but no comparison available
Germany Blu-ray doesn’t have good encoding, with visible blocking and banding etc.
Germany Blu-ray lacks English subtitles. Kino Lorber Blu-ray has English subtitles but is OOP
Kino Lorber Blu-ray retains both the French and German dialogue in their native languages.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Criterion Box Set
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray worse than Blu-ray with poor encoding (review)
Sources: YouTube (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
More Drama on Blu-ray
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
(same as all tracks since the DVD)
Criterion 4K Blu-ray see caps
Phenomenal disc, and perhaps the single greatest testament to NexSpec's positive 180 this year. Highlights are beautifully handled and grain structure is fully intact in areas where NexSpec's (and Pixelogic's) encodes would frequently fall apart in 2025 and before then. Criterion BD encode also looks to be robust from linked caps, save for this one frame: https://slow.pics/c/cMjMefmi
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Criterion Box Set coming October 20th with FiM encode, new restoration/remastering of the mono mix which should be better than the 1999 WB DVD, revised colour timing to make the film look more like it did in 1987 and for the first time ever on physical media, the film will be in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Criterion Box Set coming on October 20th with FiM encode
DTS:X mix most closely approximates original surround mix
Criterion DVD has additional features not found on the 4K Blu-ray
Kino BD has original stereo mix.
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Flicker Alley 4K confirmed for 2027 https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24404584&postcount=1
MoC audio is better https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=225532&page=3
Directors: Emeric Pressburger & Michael Powell
Imprint 4K Blu-ray
Sources: filmalert101.blogspot.com (opens in a new tab)
FiM encode and none of the low-pass filtering present on the Criterion 4K, resulting in more detail and better handling of highlights on Imprint https://filmalert101.blogspot.com/2026/09/on-4k-uhd-david-hare-rhapsodizes-over.html?m=1
Director: Yasujirō Ozu
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