Tema: Packs "Alfred Hitchcock"

Review USA:

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Alfred.../45102/#Review




Disco 1 Sabotaje - 4.5/5

Notes: Saboteur's presentation is one of the best of the bunch. Excellent contrast, deep black levels, strong detail, very few issues or blemishes, no offensive image processing, and very little worth complaining about.

Disc 2: La sombra de una duda - 4/5

Notes: Another well-executed encode, and almost as impressive as Saboteur. The film is a touch softer, but chalk that one up to the original photography. Otherwise the biggest problem, if you can even call it that, is that a bit more print damage slips through. Even so, Shadow of a Doubt has never looked better.

Disc 3: La soga - 3.5/5

Notes: One of my favorite Hitchcock films; one of the set's more hit-or-miss presentations. Detail is terrific; colors, which tend to be a touch muddy, not so much. It doesn't help that print and brightness fluctuations are apparent throughout, or that, every now and then, strange red halos haunt otherwise clean edges. Still, I was pleasantly surprised more often than I was disappointed. This one almost earned higher marks.

Disc 4: La ventana indiscreta - 3.5/5

Notes: The first of Hitchcock's crown jewels (in this collection anyway) has what may just be one of the more divisive presentations in the set. The upgrade is obvious and appreciated, but color inconsistencies, fleshtone saturation and a few too many mishaps threaten to bring it down. Thankfully, much of the film has been granted new life and to solid results. Watch for this one to receive both higher and lower scores than mine.

Disc 5: Pero ¿Quién mató a Harry? - 4.5/5

Notes: Aside from ever-so-brief ghosting in the opening minutes of the film (all attributable to the source, not the encode), The Trouble with Harry doesn't have any trouble at all. Colors are gorgeous, contrast is vibrant, detail is revealing, blemishes and artifacts are few and very far between, and this one emerges as one of the finest in the collection.

Disc 6: El hombre que sabía demasiado - 3/5

Notes: It's not digital manipulation and edge enhancement that nearly bring The Man down, although both are in play to some degree. (Some instances of ringing are so severe that it casts a glow around an object or actor.) No, the chief culprit here is color balance and saturation, which are all over the place. Murky skintones, botched primaries and crushed blacks. Be that as it may, there's still just enough to enjoy to salvage this one. For now anyway.

Disc 7: Vértigo - 4.5/5

Notes: Vertigo looks fantastic. Low lighting causes problems in a handful of scenes, sure. But this is the kind of rebirth every film in every classics or masterpiece collection should be granted. Color, detail, depth, grain structure, print integrity, encode proficiency... this one almost earned a perfect score from me. This one is first on my list to revisit once I switch off review mode.

Disc 8: Con la muerte en los talones - 4.5/5 *

Notes: Casey Broadwater writes, "The video presentation is uniformly excellent—as close to a definitive version of the film as we're going to get in 1080p." Follow the North by Northwest link to read his full review.

Disc 9: Psicosis - 4/5 **

Notes: Jeffrey Kauffman writes, "While Psycho showers its way onto Blu-ray with an at times startlingly clear and well defined image, there are unfortunately some persistent artifacting issues to report." He goes on to praise the presentation for the most part, but be sure to follow the link to read his complete impressions.

Disc 10: Los pájaros - 3/5

Notes: This is a tough one all around. Special effects sequences, of which there are many, don't look all that good, and high definition only exacerbates the inherent issues and anomalies of the bird attack scenes. I've never had much of a problem shrugging off such things, though. A restoration can't turn water into wine after all. It can, however, avoid some of the more egregious mistakes and quick fixes that make a nuisance of themselves here. The end result? With as many striking shots as unsightly shots, The Birds is chaotic and unpredictable.

Disc 11: Marnie la ladrona- 2.5/5

Notes: Ooph. Where to start? Marnie's presentation isn't uneven, it's unwieldy. Some shots and scenes are amazing. Others are terribly soft and diffuse but rightfully so, as it's true to the original photography. Still other shots -- which are unfortunately in abundance -- are a mess. Unnatural grain, manic grain, erratic grain, faux grain. And then there are the color disparities, the print and encoding blemishes, the seemingly unrestored shots that stick out like a sore thumb. This one's barely passable.

Disc 12: Cortina rasgada - 4/5

Notes: In the middle of the set's more problematic presentations comes Torn Curtain. The movie might not be the greatest, but the transfer delivers. There are some small issues, all easily overlooked, and nothing in the way of the debilitating nonsense that's yet to come. Colors and contrast are dialed in nicely, detail and grain are commendable, and noise reduction and other techniques are used judiciously and sparingly. An unexpected surprise.

Disc 13: Topaz - 3.5/5

Notes: Topaz fares pretty well. Digital manipulation is a tad problematic, but fine detail prevails on the whole, leading to a decently resolved image. Closeups are particularly satisfying, mild halos or no, and colors are warm, contrast is pleasing, black levels are deep and there aren't any major encoding issues to report.

Disc 14: Frenesí - 2/5

Notes: Frenzy hasn't been scrubbed, it's been strangled. Its original opening credits have been restored (after complaints began to circulate overseas about an altered credits sequence that had been foolishly tacked on to the film), but the rest of the presentation is in just as dire a need of a proper overhaul. Smearing, loss of detail, waxy faces, edge halos... Frenzy looks better than it ever has before, but only marginally so.

Disc 15: La trama - 1/5

Notes: Family Plot's god awful presentation almost has to be seen to be believed, it's that bad. It's much harder, in fact, to find something positive about the transfer than to simply point to everything, one scene at a time, and ask questions like, "What happened? What is that? Is this a DVD? What kind of noise was that? What am I looking at?" The unequivocal low point of the Masterpiece Collection.][/I]