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Eagle Pictures

Eagle Pictures

25 films on Best Blurays

Based in ItalyFounded 1986eaglepictures.com ↗

Founded in Rome in 1986 by Ciro and Stefano Dammicco, Eagle Pictures is an independent Italian film distributor now owned by Tarak Ben Ammar's Quinta Communications. On home video it handles Paramount and Sony titles in Italy alongside its own catalogue. Its 4Kult collection, launched in September 2019, issues restored films as numbered limited 4K UHD plus Blu-ray editions, from Apocalypse Now to Terminator 2.

Aliases: eagle, eagle pictures

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Director: Sergio Leone

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray

Video Notes:

> Paramount 4K Blu-ray

Best Audio:

1994 Paramount LaserDisc

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Best English-Friendly & Video:

2023 Eagle Pictures Italy 4K Blu-ray

English-Friendly Notes:

Color is fine

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly:

Theatrical: Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray
Redux: Lionsgate vs Eagle Pictures?
Final: Lionsgate or Eagle Pictures

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

Best Video:

Theatrical Cut: Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray > US Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray
Redux Cut: Lionsgate vs Eagle Pictures?
Final Cut: Lionsgate or Eagle Pictures, both are not great (visible chroma noise)

Best Audio:

Theatrical: Germany 4K Blu-ray/US Blu-ray DD 5.1 (1979 mix)

Additional Info:

In the Lionsgate US/UK 6-disc set, there are 4 discs of the main feature. For whatever reason, the 4K discs lack the *original track. The Germany 4K Blu-ray release is different on this matter.

  1. UBD: Final Cut: Atmos, DD2.0

  2. UBD: Redux/Theatrical: Atmos

  3. BD: Final Cut: Atmos, DD2.0

  4. BD: Redux/Theatrical: Dtru5.1 (Redux mix?), DD5.1 (?), DD5.1 (Theatrical only), DD2.0 (downmix??)

    1. As a result the Theatrical Cut has 4 tracks, The Redux has 3. Differences are unclear.

  5. BD: Hearts of Darkness

  6. BD: Special Features

Director: John Carpenter

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly:

Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray

Video Notes:

> Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray > StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray (Shout! Factory has Dolby Vision while Eagle Pictures doesn't)

Best Audio:

2.0: Shout! Factory

Audio Notes:

> StudioCanal. Italy Eagle Pictures doesn't have it.

Director: Sergio Leone

Video format: UHD Blu-ray

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly:

251 min cut (Extended): Fox Blu-ray. Eagle Pictures has forced Italian subs in some parts

229 min cut (Theatrical): WB Blu-ray

139 min cut (US theatrical): VHS

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

Video Notes:

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.

Best Audio:

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)

Additional Info:

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: Akira Kurosawa

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly:

StudioCanal/Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray

Video Notes:

>StudioCanal UK (slightly better encoding on Eagle?)

Best Audio:

Japan 4K Restoration Blu-ray

Audio Notes:

Japan 4K Restoration Blu-ray has original 4.0

Additional Info:

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: George P. Cosmatos

Video format: UHD Blu-ray

4K · Solid
Upcoming Release:

A new Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray with DV upcoming including with the rest of the films.

Video Notes:

> StudioCanal UK, better compression than StudioCanal

Director: Roman Polanski

Best English-Friendly:

2023 Italy Eagle Pictures Blu-ray

Additional Info:

France steelbook is prone to rot and 2014 Italy disc is 1080i

Director: Alan Parker

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray 

Best Audio:

2010 Kinowelt Blu-ray

Additional Info:

UK release is cut.

Director: Sam Raimi

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray

Video Notes:

> Lionsgate/StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray (Lionsgate/StudioCanal has Dolby Vision while Eagle Pictures doesn't)

Director: Peter MacDonald

Video format: UHD Blu-ray

4K · Solid
Upcoming Release:

A new Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray with DV upcoming including with the rest of the films.

Video Notes:

> StudioCanal UK, better compression than StudioCanal but no forced subs on non-English dialogue

Director: Walter Hill

Video format: UHD Blu-ray

4K · Superior Imports
Video Notes:

> StudioCanal UK, better compression than StudioCanal

Director: John Carpenter

Video format: UHD Blu-ray

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly:

Pick your poison between the 3 UHDs or maybe the remastered Shout! Factory Blu-ray?

Best Video:

Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray has consistently mediocre encoding + no original audio. StudioCanal encoding is better a lot of the time, but is terrible in others. Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray has good encoding but wrong colour space

Director: John Flynn

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Eagle Pictures Italy 4K Blu-ray

English-Friendly Notes:

> StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray: better compression than StudioCanal

Director: Paul Verhoeven

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray

Best Audio:

US LaserDisc 2.0, or Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray 5.1

Director: Renny Harlin

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray

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

Video Notes:

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: Robert Rodriguez

Video format: 4K Streaming

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Italy Eagle Pictures Blu-ray

Also Streaming in 4K on Paramount+

Additional Info:

France/Germany StudioCanal Blu-ray has more extras

Director: Lars von Trier

4K · Disappointing
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray or France Potemkine Blu-ray

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

English-Friendly Notes:

(needs gamma correction)

Video Notes:

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.

Director: Terry Gilliam

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Italy Eagle Pictures Blu-ray

Video Notes:

> US Miramax Blu-ray

Director: Damien Chazelle

Video format: UHD Blu-ray

4K · Excellent
Video Notes:

Italy Eagle Pictures has DV, better encode, and no brightness shifts compared to Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray

Best Audio:

Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray for the original Dolby Atmos mix

Additional Info:

Hong Kong Panorama 4K Blu-ray has two interviews available in HD that are SD everywhere else

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