Dogville (2003)
Crime, Drama, Thriller • 2h 57m
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Paul Bettany, John Hurt, Stellan Skarsgård, Philip Baker Hall, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Gazzara, Chloë Sevigny, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, James Caan, Blair Brown, Zeljko Ivanek, Jeremy Davies, Lauren Bacall, Harriet Andersson, Thom Hoffman, Jean-Marc Barr, John Randolph Jones, Udo Kier, Cleo King, Miles Purinton, Bill Raymond, Shauna Shim, Evelina Brinkemo, Anna Brobeck, Tilde Lindgren, Evelina Lundqvist, Helga Olofsson, Ulf Andersson, Jan Coster, Mattias Fredriksson, Andreas Galle, Barry Grant, László Hágó, Niklas Henriksson, Mikael Johansson, Hans Karlsson, Lee R. King, Oskar Kirkbakk, Ingvar Örner, Erich Silva, Kent Vikmo, Eric Voge, Ove Wolf
Best English-friendly & video release · updated 9 months ago
(needs gamma correction)
The movie was shot in HD and France Potemkine Blu-ray (needs gamma correction) has slightly stronger encoding than Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray. Curzon Blu-ray is the worst of all three (not by much) see caps.
UHD tiers
Italian Import, slightly stronger encoding on France Potemkine Blu-ray
Overview
When beautiful young Grace arrives in the isolated township of Dogville, the small community agrees to hide her from a gang of ruthless gangsters, and, in return, Grace agrees to do odd jobs for the townspeople.
Director: Lars von Trier
4K Restoration: Curzon 4K Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Lars von Trier
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
No disc has correct frame rate (25fps) and English subtitles
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Director: Lars von Trier
Director: Lars von Trier
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
Director: Lars von Trier
Director: Sian Heder
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Has full and forced English subtitles
Apple TV 4K Blu-ray with Atmos
(Eagle Pictures is 5.1)
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
251 min cut (Extended): Fox Blu-ray. Eagle Pictures has forced Italian subs in some parts
Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray, caps
The 4K includes both theatrical and extended cuts. It's overall a solid upgrade over previous discs, but some will strongly dislike the color grading.
There are some issues with encoding and grain management.
Nic's review:
Some definitely messed with it as there’s grain management going on that resulted in magnetic, squishy grain movement. Both cuts (4K discs) are affected and it doesn’t look like an encoding issue to me as the bitrates don’t drop down to single digits á la Paramount or StudioCanal. During opticals, the lowest I’ve noted on the Extended 4K was around 30 MB/s vs. ~5 MB/s more for the theatrical cut.
Darker scenes are mostly (but not always) better but when it gets brighter, particularly in exteriors or scenes like the Jennifer Connelly dance scene at minute 38, I can’t unsee the digital tinkering as it does some damage texturally.
I compared it with the Eagle Pictures and Warner Bros Fox Blu-ray of the extended cut and they all look fine without grain management like that. Eagle Pictures’s Blu-ray is an older one if anyone’s curious and credited to another authoring house than 64Biz, which did the 4K.
Other than that, except for some encoding-related chroma noise that peeks through in the DV layer, Eagle Pictures did everything right. They corrected the framing to 1.85, kept the original English titles, the English restoration note, subtitles, HDR/DV is gentle and respectful of the source black levels are better than on the Warner Bros/Fox Blu-ray. Without that grain management, this would’ve been the all-timer release we all longed for.
229 min cut: Warner Bros LaserDisc
251 min cut: Fox Blu-ray (24-bit, Eagle Pictures is 16-bit, not audible)
229 min cut: Warner Bros LaserDisc (missing 2 minutes, but original mono mix was never released on DVD/Blu-ray)
Extended edition adds scenes cut from the theatrical, but from a much lower quality source. It's intended to approximate the original cut, but to what extent that is true is debatable.
US theatrical cut is infamously bad, was panned at release and never re-released on home video.
Director: Renny Harlin
Sources: caps-a-holic (opens in a new tab)
Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray has better compression than StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray, green-ish SC master that restores some blown-out highlights compared to the Sony master, but bad HDR10 compression (details). The 2023 Sony 4K Blu-ray steelbook has different grading and Dolby Vision that some may prefer, good encoding, but heavy DNR for about 15% of the runtime.
Pick your poison between Eagle Pictures or Sony.
Director: Akira Kurosawa
>StudioCanal UK (slightly better encoding on Eagle?)
The US Criterion DVD has some unique supplements with 2.0 surround audio - this release contains Japan end titles.
The Japan 4K Restoration Blu-ray has some exclusive features with 4.0 audio (though the release is not English-friendly)- this release contains Japan end titles.
The StudioCanal releases contain France end titles - while their 4K Blu-ray releases contain identical features.
Director: Peter MacDonald
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
A new Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray with DV upcoming including with the rest of the films.
> StudioCanal UK, better compression than StudioCanal but no forced subs on non-English dialogue
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
A new Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray with DV upcoming including with the rest of the films.
> StudioCanal UK, better compression than StudioCanal
Director: Damien Chazelle
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Italy Eagle Pictures has DV, better encode, and no brightness shifts compared to Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray
Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray for the original Dolby Atmos mix
Hong Kong Panorama 4K Blu-ray has two interviews available in HD that are SD everywhere else
Video format: 4K Streaming
France/Germany StudioCanal Blu-ray has more extras
More Crime on Blu-ray
Director: Alan Clarke
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
The 88 Films 4K Blu-ray is disappointing. Indicator Blu-ray > 88 Films Blu-ray. From nicolas:
Fine master, solid HDR but very poorly encoded with strong blocking artifacts in normal areas and clipped highlights that bring Criterion’s Walkabout to mind. Their Blu-ray is slightly better overall but then again still not as good as FiM’s encode for Indicator.
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Eureka UK are considering doing a 4K and actively exploring the possibility: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24363810&postcount=264
Wonderful underlying remaster by Criterion and Resillion, but NexSpec encode has clipped highlights with the occasional blockiness. The Criterion Blu-Ray, sourced from their 4K remaster, ironically makes for a more consistent and overall pleasing experience.
Director: John Woo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
review: Disk Kino
better encoding, some shots are better on Shout! Factory, others on Arrow
Shout! Factory/Arrow 4K Blu-ray has the original mono
Director: Michael Mann
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Criterion Box Set coming October 20th with FiM encode, new restoration of mono mix which should be better than what was on the WB 4K Blu-ray and 1999 DVD and revised colour timing to make the film look more like it did in 1971.
WB 4K 5.1: a remix but has higher fidelity
Mono: 4K Blu-ray/1999 DVD
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Criterion Box Set coming October 20th with FiM encode
Director: Leos Carax
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
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