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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > WWII > Western > Italy > France > Spaghetti Western > Melodrama > Wealth > Romance > Suburbs > Racism > Fury (2014/Sony 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray)/Gone Are The Days (2018/Lionsgate Blu-ray w/DVD)/The Great Silence (1968/Film Movement Blu-ray)/A Lost Lady (1934/First National/Warner Archive DVD)/No D

Fury (2014/Sony 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray)/Gone Are The Days (2018/Lionsgate Blu-ray w/DVD)/The Great Silence (1968/Film Movement Blu-ray)/A Lost Lady (1934/First National/Warner Archive DVD)/No Down Payment (1957/Fox/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)



4K Ultra HD Picture: B+ Picture: B/B+ & C+/B/C+/B Sound: B+ & B/B & C+/B-/C/B- Extras: C+/C+/B-/D/C Films: C+/C/B-/C+/C+



PLEASE NOTE: The No Down Payment Blu-ray is now only available from our friends at Twilight Time, is limited to only 3,000 copies and can be ordered while supplies last, while A Lost Lady is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series. All can be ordered from the links below.



Here are some dramas crossing into various genres that deal with serious issues and situations...



David Ayers' Fury (2014) was a mixed critical and commercial success at best, but Sony rightly believes it is a high quality production and has made it one of their early back catalog 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray set releases. You can read our coverage of the film on DVD at this link...


http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13278/Bird+People+(2014/MPI/Sundance+Selects+DVD


My opinion of the film has not changed, but it looks more ambitious to me now and especially in 4K, you can see how all involved were going all out to make this work. There is a larger audience for this one, even if it has its issues and the 4K version in particular shows what a serious piece of filmmaking it is. If you have not seen the film, outside of a solid 35mm print, see it in 4K if you can.


Extras (much more than the DVD) include Digital HD Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and other cyber capable devices, while the Blu-ray adds over 50 minutes of deleted footage that I still say shows the film was not cut optimally, a Photo Gallery, Director's Combat Journal and three Making Of featurettes: Blood Brothers, Armored Warriors and Taming The Best. In an unusual case, the Ultra HD Blu-ray adds extras, including Original Theatrical Trailers and Behind The Scenes pieces Tiger 131, Heart Of Fury, Clash Of Armor, No Guts No Glory: The Horror of Combat and documentary Tanks Of Fury.



Next are back-to-back Westerns, new and old. First, this new Western from Lionsgate, Gone Are The Days (2018), features a great cast which includes Lance Henriksen, Tom Berenger, Meg Steedle, and (a very fun) Danny Trejo but is a slow burn that hits on many of the Western story beats that we come to expect in such a romp. While not as heavy hitting as Hostiles, Gone isn't badly shot or produced even if it isn't entirely original.


Famed Gunman Taylon Flynn (Henriksen) has led a life made of the stuff of legends. But even such a man is mortal and soon finds himself the victim of illness. Deciding to go on one last romp he returns to a mining town, where his abandoned daughter lives, in hopes of making things right... and saving her from the brothel she works in. Along his journey he encounters several interesting characters and ultimately hatches a brilliant rescue mission.


Special Features include...


Behind the Scenes featurettes


Cast and Crew Interviews


Gone are the Days Trailer


and a Trailer Gallery.



The other, older Western is Sergio Corbucci's The Great Silence (1968), one of the better Spaghetti Westerns of the time, now reissued by Film Movement on Blu-ray in a very well-restored edition whose playback quality renders the older DVD from the underrated Fantoma label very hard to watch. You can read our coverage of the film and that DVD at this link...


http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5426/The+Great+Silence+(1968/Fantoma


Since we last looked at the film, a forgettable new wave of would-be Spaghetti Westerns have been made, but most of them were weak and seeing this restored, you can seed it really is one of the best Sergio Leone did not direct, as odd as it gets. Jean-Louis Trintignant is very convincing as the title character and Klaus Kinski excellent as his counterpoint opposite. Corbucci directed the original Django (reviewed elsewhere on this site) and can just about claim second place to Leone for these films. Seeing it restored makes it more memorable, effective and serious film fans should seek this one out.


Extras repeat the previous DVD content for the most part, including an alternate ending created for distribution in foreign markets, a theatrical trailer and video introduction by Alex Cox (director of the '80s cult favorite Repo Man, et al with Cox On Corbucci) and he also contributes a brief commentary over the otherwise silent alternate ending. However, his liner notes were not carried over, but we get in their place a new illustrated booklet with new Simon Abrams essay, a second Alternate Ending and the vintage 1968 documentary on the film: Western, Italian Style, that is very well done.



Alfred E. Green's A Lost Lady (1934) is our oldest film here, but very interesting with an early performance by Barbara Stanwyck as a woman who quickly becomes a widow soon after marriage and goes into shock when a wealthy lawyer comes into her life and gives her the opportunity to remarry. She does, but doing so on the rebound is never a good idea, though the twist here the filmmakers could not have expected is that rich man is played by Frank Morgan, who is actually really good here holding his own in many extended scenes. Impressive. In five years, he would be immortalized in the classic Wizard Of Oz.


Of course, she still wants love and not money, an option offered by a young Ricardo Cortez. To the credit of all, this does not become a sloppy melodrama, though it still is to some extent and even then, Stanwyck's star power as obvious. Lyle Talbot also stars in a pretty good film worth seeing once, including for how good Morgan is here.


There are sadly no extras, so they couldn't even find a trailer?



Finally we have Martin Ritt's No Down Payment (1957) with its own melodrama to offer, but the twist is showing the dark side of post-WWII U.S. life as several families move into a nice, clean, fun new suburban housing community where they have money, happiness and peace.... or do they? Tony Randall plays a drunk, everyone has secrets and the 'happy' closeness is about to backfire for just about everyone involved. Joanne Woodward is great here in an early performance, Jeffrey Hunter, Sheree North, Pat Hingle, Patricia Owens, Cameron Mitchell and Barbara Rush make it all believable, though some twists in the script are still shocking and at least one would get booed by a healthy audience today.


Still, Ritt is a great director, handles the cast very well, they deliver as well and the script (by blacklisted Ben Maddox) deals with money, sex, racism and the empty side of success. Despite anything dated about it (and you'll love all the great outdoor footage, especially of al the business in the good old days of competitive, share-the-wealth capitalism) is as much a time capsule as a film with points still relevant today.


Fox has licensed this to the great Twilight Time label to be one of their highly collectible Limited Edition Blu-rays, so get it while you can.


An Isolated Music Score track and another nicely illustrated booklet on the film including informative text and yet another excellent, underrated essay by the great film scholar Julie Kirgo are the extras.



Now for the tech performance of these discs. The 2160p HEVC/H.265, HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition 2.35 X 1 image on Fury is an impressive performer shot in real anamorphic Panavision on state-of-the-art 35mm Dolby Vision 3 film negative stocks. The result is a great-looking film that holds up, has very convincing darkness, yet also has exceptional color and a solid look that impresses throughout. Of course, it is a war film, so the color scheme is not wide-ranging, but convincing. The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image still looks good, but it is not as rich and solid as the 4K version. Of course, both are much better than the old DVD. As for sound, the Dolby Atmos 11.1 (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mixdown on older systems, its original form before the 12-track upgrade here) is impressive on the 4K disc, while the regular Blu-ray settles for a respectable DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix. All this is professional through and through.


Presented on Blu-ray in 1080p high definition and its original widescreen aspect ratio of 2.39:1 and English 5.1 DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless mix, Days looks and sounds pretty good on the aging format. Color and sound are up to standards with a more naturalistic than stylistic look. The set also includes an anamorphically enhanced, standard definition DVD with similar (more compressed) specs (like lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 sound) and a digital UV copy.


The 1080p 1.66 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Great Silence can show the age of the materials used, but this restoration is far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film on home video ans those responsible for the upgrade and 2K restoration did a great job to the point that it looks better and more authentic than the recent 'upgrades' of the Leone/Eastwood Dollars film where the persons fixing them took too many liberties for all concerned. The PCM 2.0 Mono sound is also just fine and an improvement over previous compressed presentations, with this critic favoring the Italian language track.


The 1.33 X 1 black & white image on Lady comes from decent 35mm materials and though a little more restoration would help, this looks good, but the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono shows the films age, sounds a generation down and needs some more work. Be careful of high playback levels and volume switching.


Finally, the 1080p 2.35 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image transfer on Payment rarely show the age of the materials used, looking crisp and clear for the old CinemaScope format in what looks like a new HD master from the Fox vault. Great work and we get two soundtracks: DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless and DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Stereo lossless mixes based on the original 4-track magnetic soundmaster with traveling dialogue and sound effects, so that is to be expected. The music, well-recorded dialogue and sound is pretty good and I liked the 5.1 especially.



To order the No Down Payment limited edition Blu-ray, buy it and other great exclusives while supplies last at these links:


www.screenarchives.com


and


http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/


...and to order the A Lost Lady Warner Archive DVD, go to this link for it and many more great web-exclusive releases at:


http://www.wbshop.com/



- Nicholas Sheffo & James Lockhart (Gone)

https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/


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