Step by Step (1946)
Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller • 1h 2m
Director: Phil Rosen
Cast: Lawrence Tierney, Anne Jeffreys, Lowell Gilmore, Myrna Dell, Harry Harvey, Addison Richards, Ray Walker, Jason Robards Sr., George Cleveland, Bonnie Blair, Lee Bonnell, Robert Clarke, Hal Craig, Ralph Dunn, Lee Elson, Don Evers, Pat Flaherty, James Flavin, John Hamilton, Tommy Noonan, Robert Seiter, Alan Ward, Phil Warren, Larry Wheat, William Yetter Sr.
Best English-friendly & video release · updated 11 months ago
Overview
Marine veteran Johnny Christopher meets and is immediately drawn to beautiful Evelyn Smith one day on the beach. Evelyn's new job as secretary to a U.S. senator in California soon brings unexpected intrigue and trouble for her and Johnny. The machinations of a sinister group of Nazi spies lead to mysteries and mistaken identities, and the two soon find themselves framed for murder!
Director: Morton DaCosta
Warner Archive 4K Blu-ray Nov 24th
TV series
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative for all episodes
Director: John Ford
Sources: ibb.co (opens in a new tab)
Warner Archive Blu-ray is 4K restoration from nitrate projection elements
Germany Filmjuwelen Blu-ray is AI upscaled https://ibb.co/album/mCJ7RQ
Director: Norman Taurog
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: Delbert Mann
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
More Crime on Blu-ray
Director: Michael Mann
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · thedigitalbits.com (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Arrow 4K Blu-ray is encoded by FiM and is better than Criterion, see caps https://slow.pics/c/Z2RRQAAT
Criterion 4K Blu-ray vs Blu-ray: caps colors are more different and nuanced than anticipated even in the SDR-converted caps and the usual gain in highlight detail is also apparent. Encode looks excellent except for the brightest areas as usual.
5.1/5.0 mix (essentially a 4-track mix in 5.1 and 5.0 containers respectively)-Arrow/Criterion 4K Blu-ray. Only imperceptible differences in bit-depth: 20 vs 24.
2.0 mix- Arrow 4K Blu-ray (original stereo)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Criterion 4K Blu-ray (included in the Complete Kubrick box set with FiM encode of the same master from the WB release without the filtering)
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Comparison between the Criterion and WB.
5.1: WB 4K Blu-ray, a remix but has higher fidelity
Mono: Criterion 4K Blu-ray (restored for the box set)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
US Magnolia BD
UK Entertainment One release contains directors commentary track
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Both come from a 4K scan of a 35mm film out which was made from the original 2K DI but the Lionsgate release has visible dust and damage marks while the Universal release is cleaned up more thoroughly. Both releases suffer from DNR which seems to have been baked into the DI. The colour grade is basically the same for both releases but the Lionsgate has Dolby Vision whereas the Universal is HDR10 only. The compression on the Lionsgate UHD base layer is apparently fine so the FEL doesn't make much of a difference.
The Lionsgate UHD has Dolby Atmos whereas the Universal UHD has DTS:X. Kick-ass was originally released with a 5.1 track which may be on the Universal Blu-ray.
The Lionsgate UHD is on a BD-100, the Universal UHD is on a BD-66.
The Universal UHD has no extras.
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)
Director: Iain Softley
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Both 88 Films and Germany Capelight are superior to the Shout! Factory in HDR10 but their FEL layer may even things out. Objectively, the Capelight looks best as they avoided the chroma blocking that’s visible in 88’s disc but they in turn included an Atmos mix. I have the Shout! Factory, love how it looks and the 4K transfer is spectacular. https://slow.pics/c/vPmFQSAH
Shout! Factory has the exclusive The Beauty of the Baud and the You Can't Stop Us All featurettes.
Director: John Woo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
review: Disk Kino
Both have better encoding than Disk Kino, some shots are better on Shout! Factory, others on Arrow
Shout Factory still has the best video while Arrow did a questionable regrade. Arrow definitely has less grain in most shots, has a worse encode and is cm v2.9 compared to Shout’s cm v4.0.
Shout! Factory/Arrow 4K Blu-ray has the original mono
Director: Lloyd Bacon
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
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