Great shorts in HD, sharper than the DVDs, but could still use some restoration.
The films = *****
The Blu-ray Disc = ****
First off- this is grade A+ Keaton material here. If there is just one Buster Keaton set you want to get, this is it! The king of physical technical humor is at his prime here, and houses are one of his main characters in many of these movies.
Kino claims "Newly Mastered in HD from 35mm archival elements" and four titles have been digitally enhanced, but the enhancement didn't go far enough in restoration. In THE BOAT you still see frame shifts (a basic video stabilization process would fix this), contrast flicker and nitrate deterioration. Kino does make the statement that too much restoration alters the original film too much. CONVICT 13 appears to be 50% 16mm film source.
With that said, i decided to cue up the old ART OF BUSTER KEATON DVD set from Kino to do a true comparison to this Blu-ray release and not rely on my memory. The first thing I noticed was how much softer the old DVDs were to this...
AMAZING SET!!!!!!
I am going to get the negatives out of the way first...yes the footage that has been found over recent years from Hard Luck, Day Dreams, Convict 13 and The Love Nest are not present on this edition. But that aside there is new footage on The Haunted House (When Buster is running away from the cops in the woods and is shot at...there is extra footage here that I have not seen before) and there are some really beautiful-newly presented prints e.g One Week and Cops.
I have the Masters Of Cinema collection of Keatons short films so if I ever fancy having a gander at the final gag at the end of Hard Luck I will do but I get the same, if not more enjoyment out of watching the blu-ray edition.
This set visually is far far far far... better than any set out there the quality of the prints is astonishing, whether the print is from a good source or not, they still look brilliant. The music accompanying the films are brilliant, I really like the new organ scores by Ben...
Buster Keaton shorts - 5 Stars
Five stars for Buster Keaton's shorts presented together in one 3-DVD set and in chronological order. It's nice to have a quick reference to Buster's shorts as the Art of Buster Keaton scattered the films over 10 DVDs so that you could not just pop in a DVD and watch the shorts in succession. However, Kino does leave a bit to be desired as you're led to believe that there is no available ending to Hard Luck. The Art of Buster Keaton, "Keaton Plus" DVD includes the ending of Hard Luck (explained in Mr. Mular's review). I had hoped that films like The Electric House, Day Dreams and Convict 13 would be improved, but no improvements to these films, although the enhanced films are nice. Everything here, other than the "visual essays" is available on The Art of Buster Keaton (shorts), Industrial Strength Keaton (Seeing Stars, Character Studies) and Lost Keaton (Why They Call Him Buster). The new material here, the visual essays, gives interesting details of the films and many of the other...
Click to Editorial Reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment