Car
Men/Kylian (1993 -
2006/ArtHaus Blu-ray)/Dance!
(2005 - 2013/EuroArts Blu-ray Box w/Chaplin,
Poppea Poppea 3D
& Great Mass)/Der
Ring des Nibelungen (Ring Cycle)/D. Barenboim/Wagner
(2010 - 2013/Teatro Alla Scala/ArtHaus Blu-ray)/Great
Ballets From The Bolshoi
(2010 - 2011/Bel Air Blu-ray Set)/Song
One (2014/Cinedigm DVD)
3D
Picture: B- Picture: C+/B-/B-/B-/C+ Sound: C+/B/B/B/C+
Extras: C/C/C/C-/C Main Programs: C+/B-/B/B/C+
Here's
more music releases, with some revisits and a new drama that has its
moments...
Car
Men
is a single Blu-ray from Jiri Kylian that features three works taped
from 1993 to 2006 and
was featured on the larger (and pricier) 10-Blu-ray Edition box set
we reviewed at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13177/The+Boy+Friend+(1971/MGM/Warner+Archive+DV
I
liked this one enough that I would recommend it as a preview of what
the choreographer achieved, though you could go all out for the
larger set.
Dance!
(2005 - 2013) features three very interesting ballet releases on
EuroArts Blu-ray in Chaplin,
Poppea Poppea 3D
& The Great Mass,
but we happened to have already reviewed two of them at these
links...
Chaplin
ballet
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12775/Chaplin/Schroder+ballet/Delibes'+Cop
Poppea
Poppea 3D
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13038/Conductors:+Collector's+Edition+(194
The
Great Mass is by Uwe
Scholz, runs 130 minutes, is based on an unfinished Mozart work and
also adds Gregorian Chant and pieces by Gyorgy Kurtag, Thomas Jahn
and Arvo Part for an interesting and always entertaining post-modern,
neoclassical program with a requiem and more ins and outs with the
Leipzig Ballet. Not all of this is my kind of thing, but I liked its
ambition and if it interests you and you like the other titles, this
box set is the way to go.
Now
for the latest version of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des
Nibelungen, the famed 14-hour
Ring Cycle, this time
in four programs (2010 - 2013), this time conducted by the
great Daniel Barenboim with the Teatro Alla Scala. Our previous
coverage of the classic work is as follows:
Gotterdammerung
only in a superior Blu-ray presentation
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9111/Thais
This
Das Rheingold/Die Walkure combo Blu-ray is almost as
good...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9503/Robert+Schumann
This
DVD box of the whole 14 hours looks and sounds as good, but the
overall shows are better...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9762/Richard+Wagner
There
is this sampler of the work by Zubin Mehta on Blu-ray is not bad...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10615/Der+Zwerg/Der+zerbrochene+Krug
and
most recently, with
conductor Lothar
Zagrosek...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13200/Martha+Argerich:+Evening+Talks+(2002/Ideale+A
I
like Barenboim very much and cannot find fault in the music and even
the look of the four parts are dark and consistently effective as
such, but it is still a long production and at times, the overall
results of Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried
and Gotterdammerung don't totally gel or take off as I had
hoped. I was not having outrageous expectations for this and don't
think the several years in between hurt it, yet it is as good as any
version we have covered to date.
Great
Ballets From The Bolshoi
(2010 - 2011) has four ballets in all, including Giselle,
which we covered at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11677/Ali+Isabella:+Say+You%E2%80%99ll
Also
in this DigiPak book are a really decent version of The Nutcracker
conducted by Pavel Klinichev that is one of the best and least phony
I have seen of the work to date, Sleeping Beauty conducted by
Vassily Sinaisky is also well done and both fare better combined than
the two versions of those classics by the Dutch National Ballet as
covered at this link (repeating one above):
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13200/Martha+Argerich:+Evening+Talks+(2002/Ideale+A
Finally
we have The Flames Of Paris conducted by Pavel Sorokin, which
is new to us about the French Revolution by Boris Asafiev which works
pretty well and deserves more analysis in essay form and if we could
see a few more versions, but it is welcome and may have more politics
involved in it than one might consider. That makes this a solid set
worth your time.
Extras
in all the above classical release include multi-lingual, illustrated
booklets on each respective program, save the Bolshoi
set which sacrifices the booklets (which may have been included in
the single Blu-ray versions of all four ballets. Poppea
in the Dance!
set retains its 5-minutes bonus clip and Paris has 21 minutes of
bonus footage on the Bolshoi
set. Trailers show up on
some discs too, but not as often as you might think.
Kate
Barker-Froyland's Song One
(2014) is a decent drama about a young woman named Franny (Anne
Hathaway) who has to rush back home when her musician brother (Ben
Rosenfield from Boardwalk
Empire) hit by a moving
vehicle when he crosses the street at night without looking. They
were not talking since he chose music over college and finds out the
bad news from her mom (Mary Steenburgen), both by his side in
intensive care. As Franny looks into his life, having a tough time
dealing with the loss, she discovers a British singer/songwriter
(Johnny Flynn) he liked and decides to contact him. Then they get
involved!
Some
of this is predictable, but Hathaway is really good here in this
Jonathan Demme-co-produced indie and the cast is solid all around.
There are some good moments and this is very watchable and involving,
but the last 15 minutes shows the makers did not know how to end this
one and I was very disappointed by the conclusion which, when you
think about it, does not add up or seem honest versus the best
earlier scenes. See it for yourself!
Extras
include some brief Deleted Scenes running just over 4 minutes, an
Original Theatrical Trailer and 16+ minutes look at the making of the
music for the film.
The
1080i 1.78 X 1 MVC-encoded 3-D - Full Resolution digital High
Definition image on Poppea still has some of its ghosting and
alignment, but looks as good as its 2D version just about. The rest
of the 2D presentations on the rest of the Blu-rays are also 1080i
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer with their share of
minor detail issues, black crush, slight break-up and even some
staircasing. The 1080i 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image
transfer on Car are all upscales and the two bonus programs
(which we do not count as bonus works) are 1.33 X 1.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on the Song DVD looks
just as good as Car with its own softness and detail issues,
but it has a consistent look and I bet would look better on Blu-ray.
As
for sound, all the classical Blu-rays (except Car
Men,
only with PCM 2.0 Stereo that shows the age of the recordings along
with their image quality) offer DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless
mixes that all tend to be well recorded, top rate and though none are
standouts, they are clean and have solid soundfields. They all also
come with PCM 2.0 Stereo counterparts that are not as good, but are
fine for such limited mixes. The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Songs
sounds best when the music kicks in, but is on the quiet side, yet I
bet the lossy nature of the codec is having something lost in the
sound as presented here.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
