The Executioner (1963)
El verdugo
Comedy, Drama • 1h 30m
Director: Luis García Berlanga
Cast: Nino Manfredi, Emma Penella, José Isbert, José Luis López Vázquez, Ángel Álvarez, Guido Alberti, Julia Caba Alba, María Luisa Ponte, María Isbert, Erasmo Pascual, Xan das Bolas, José Orjas, José María Prada, Félix Fernández, Antonio Ferrandis, Lola Gaos, Santiago Ontañón, Alfredo Landa, José «Saza» Sazatornil, Agustín González, Goyo Lebrero, Sergio Mendizábal, Vicente Llosá, Chus Lampreave, José Luis Coll, José María Cordero, Pedro Beltrán, Rafael Hernández, Dolores García, Magdalena Mora, Enrique Pelayo, Enrique Tusquets, José Antón Rodríguez, Francisco Serrano, Antonio P. Costafreda, Agustín Zaragoza, Valentín Tornos, Antonio Alfonso Vidal, Lorenzo Nogueras, Emilio Alonso, Elena Santonja, Emilio Laguna, Magda Maldonado, Gonzalo Parra, Carmen Ripoll, Javier Escobar, Manuel Alexandre, Vicente Bañó, Elvira Quintillá
Best English-friendly & video release · updated 1 year ago
Overview
An undertaker gets married to an old executioner's daughter and, although he doesn't like it, must continue the profession of his father-in-law after his retirement.
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.
More Comedy on Blu-ray
Director: Bruce Robinson
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Arrow 4K Blu-ray has stronger encode than Criterion
Director: Olivier Assayas
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Encoding is clunky on both Arrow and Criterion BDs but Arrow at least included the original stereo mix in addition to the 5.1 remix, while Criterion only included the 5.1 remix.
Director: Morton DaCosta
Warner Archive 4K Blu-ray Nov 24th
TV series
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative for all episodes
Director: Norman Taurog
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: Delbert Mann
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: Garson Kanin
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
Only Streaming has 1080p
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