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Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) poster

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)

Drama, Comedy • 2h

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Fox Blu-ray

Best English-friendly & video release · updated 1 year ago

Overview

A fading actor best known for his portrayal of a popular superhero attempts to mount a comeback by appearing in a Broadway play. As opening night approaches, his attempts to become more altruistic, rebuild his career, and reconnect with friends and family prove more difficult than expected.

Release details

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Length
120 mins
Type
Movie

Featured in Oscar Best Pictures

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Director: Sian Heder

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray

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

Video Notes:

Has full and forced English subtitles

See caps comparing Italy vs US release

Best Audio:

Apple TV 4K Blu-ray with Atmos

Audio Notes:

(Eagle Pictures is 5.1)

Director: Miloš Forman

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly, Video & Audio:

Theatrical: WB 4K Blu-ray
Extended: Warner Bros Blu-ray

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

Video Notes:

Warner Bros 4K Blu-ray: Huge improvement in colors and detail. The restoration was done by the Academy instead of WB MPI which explains that there’s no grain management or issues with colors. They also accessed the original credit optical and scanned that one instead of recreating them digitally

Audio Notes:

Theatrical: WB 4K Blu-ray, according to Saentz, the 5.0 is a recreation of the original and subsequently 70mm mix from original elements.

Director: John Schlesinger

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Imprint 4K Blu-ray

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

Additional Info:

Included Imprint Blu-Ray also has markedly better image compression than the Criterion Blu-Ray, though do note the Imprint has some adjusted color grading within roughly the first five minutes of the film

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=16775595&postcount=450

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24237074&postcount=73

Director: Anthony Minghella

Best English-Friendly & Video:

US Lionsgate Blu-ray

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

Upcoming Release:

Criterion 4K Blu-ray scheduled for Dec 2026 release

Video Notes:

US Lionsgate Blu-ray looks very different from either Italy Eagle Pictures or Germany Kinowelt Blu-ray: https://caps-a-holic.com/c_list.php?c=502 but other than color grading looks better

Director: George Roy Hill

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Universal 4K Blu-ray

Best Audio:

1998 R1 Universal DVD

Director: Robert Wise

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly, Video & Audio:

Disney 4K Blu-ray

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

Audio Notes:

Disney 4K Atmos is great, a reference quality track. It's a very slight remix (music seems to be from a better source), but it's completely seamless and faithful to the original, better fidelity than anything since the 1994 30th Anniversary Edition LaserDisc.

All DVDs (and 2010 Blu-ray) sound far worse than the 4K Blu-ray/LaserDisc and have various missing sound cues.

Director: Jonathan Demme

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Arrow 4K Blu-ray

Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)

Upcoming Release:

Criterion 4K Blu-ray scheduled for October 2026 release

Video Notes:

> Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray

Best Audio:

1991 Orion LaserDisc vs 2024 Arrow 4K Blu-ray

Additional Info:

Criterion Blu-ray has exclusive extras

Directors: Jerome Robbins & Robert Wise

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly, Video & Audio:

Germany Capelight 4K Blu-ray

Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab) · in70mm.com (opens in a new tab)

Video Notes:

Comparison, caps

Audio Notes:

Capelight's 5.1 is sourced from the original 6-track. The fidelity is comparable to the 4.0 from the 4-track available on previous BDs.
An alternate 5.1 mix was created for the 1999 MGM DVD / LaserDisc, It boasts better high end detail throughout, but the trade off is reduced bass.

See additional info for more detail.

Additional Info:

West Side Story was produced as a 70mm Todd-AO presentation, with an accompanying 6-track audio mix in the following channel configuration: see diagram. 35mm presentations used a 4-track or a mono mixdown instead.

The original 6-track elements were thought to have been lost until they were recovered and restored in 2010. In 1981, for the film's 20th anniversary, a new 6-track mix was created by upmixing the available 4-track elements.

Capelight's release is sourced from original 6-track elements uncovered in 2010, but unfortunately it's not as detailed as it should be, owing to unnecessary noise reduction. It's by no means bad, but it could be better. As the Lc/Rc channels are mixed into into L/C/R, it's also essentially no different to a 4-track fold-down. This isn't exactly an issue as left/right center channels mix down to L/C/R very well, but a better way of handling this would be to use Atmos objects to position those channels where they should be, as Disney did on The Sound of Music.

The 4-track mix was included in a discrete form on MGM's previous BD, it trades blows with Capelight's 6-track-derived 5.1.

Interestingly, the 1999 MGM LaserDisc/DVD release includes a different 5.1 mix, which sounds a bit more detailed than the two other tracks. It's sound signature is on the brighter side, with a slight emphasis on the treble instead of bass like other releases. Although that accounts for some of the perceived detail, even after matching EQ there are spots where Capelight loses out. It's a slight upmix, with split surrounds and LFE. Whether it was derived from 4-track or 6-track elements is not clear, though it matters little, as the end result would have been very similar in either case. There are no booklet notes stating the source used, but it sounds very similar to the matrixed 1992 LD, which was attributed to the 6-track. Still, given that the original elements were thought to have been lost, I would assume that this refers to the 1981 mix.

Previous LaserDisc releases are similar to the discrete 1999 track. All LD releases are missing the intermission music and a brief whistling sequence.

The 7.1 upmix on MGM's Blu-ray offers little of value.

Director: John G. Avildsen

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Warner Bros 2024 Ultimate Knockout Collection 4K Blu-ray/ Warner Bros 2023 Knockout Collection 4K Blu-ray (replacement disc)

Upcoming Release:

Capelight 4K Blu-ray

Best Audio:

Original Mono: Ultimate Knockout Collection/Knockout Collection replacement disc

Audio Notes:

> Knockout collection original.

The Mono mix on the initial release of the Knockout Collection is a fold-down of the 5.1, the replacement disc and the ultimate knockout version fixed the error. 

Additional Info:

The Steelbook and UK standard edition is the same disc as the 2023 knockout collection.

Director: Norman Jewison

4K · Excellent

More from Alejandro González Iñárritu

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Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Video format: UHD Blu-ray

Best English-Friendly:

Criterion Blu-ray

Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)

Best Video:

France Metropolitan 4K Blu-ray

Best Audio:

Lionsgate DVD for the original 5.1

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Fox 4K Blu-ray

More from Fox

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Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Criterion Blu-ray/BFI Blu-ray

Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)

Video Notes:

Criterion and BFI very similar

Best Audio:

Fox Lorber DVD

Director: Chris Columbus

Video format: 4K Streaming

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Disney+ has Streaming in 4K

Video Notes:

Fox has Blu-ray

Best Audio:

1995 Fox LaserDisc

Director: Terence Young

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly:

WB 4K Blu-ray

Best Video:

WB 4K Blu-ray despite frozen grain

Best Audio:

UK mix: 1984 CBS Fox VHS Hifi but missing one scene
International mix: WB 4K Blu-ray though source origin is unknown

1995 MGM stereo remix: 1998 LaserDisc and 2000 DVD fix gunbarrel dropout

Director: David Butler

Video format: Only Unofficial Sources

Sources: archive.org (opens in a new tab)

Best Video:

The DVD isn't an official one, and according to a user review on Amazon:

This DVD comes from Archive.org, where the movie can be viewed for free. The original source, comes from the Fox Movie Channel

Director: James Cameron

4K · Disappointing
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Fox Blu-ray

Sources: movie-censorship.com (opens in a new tab)

Video Notes:

Fox Blu-ray for original cuts without the extra scene added in the re-release and AI upscaling

Newer Blu-ray/4K has the extra scene, but is poor and has excessive AI upscaling

Additional Info:

An additional scene was added to the ending of the movie in the 2022 re-release: https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=493908

Director: Peter Faiman

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Australia Cut: Australia Fox DVD

International Cut: Paramount Blu-ray

Encore Cut: Germany Winkler Film 4K Blu-ray, censored but good encoding

Sources: movie-censorship.com (opens in a new tab)

Upcoming Release:

US Paramount 4K Blu-ray, is the International US Cut and not the Encore Cut

Best Audio:

Australia Cut: Laserdisc

Additional Info:

The film exists in three versions:
- the original Australian cut (~104 minutes at 24fps/~100 minutes at 25fps);
- the American/international version (~98 minutes at 24fps/~94 minutes at 25fps) trimming some exposition in the Outback first half of the film and some shorter extensions of a few seconds in the New York section, altering some of the dialogue – including censoring a "fuck" to "screw" – but featuring one additional dialogue extension not in the Australian version (a comparison of the two cuts can be found at Movie Censorship);
- the Australian Encore Cut (~95 minutes at 24fps/~91 minutes at 25fps) which uses the international version source so it already has those alterations but also removes approximately three minutes consisting of parts of two scenes featuring Mick grabbing the crotch of a cross-dressing prostitute and a later sequence when he does the same thing at a party to a woman with a deep voice (a comparison of the international version and the Encore Cut can be found at Movie Censorship).

Director: Ridley Scott

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Theatrical Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray 

2003 Directors Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray 

Video Notes:

(additional scenes appear to be upscaled)

Best Audio:

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: Matthew Vaughn

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Fox 4K Blu-ray

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Fox 4K Blu-ray

Director: David O. Russell

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Fox 4K Blu-ray

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Researched and maintained by

vanshady

· last reviewed 1 year ago

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