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A few words about...™ Lonesome Dove -- in Blu-ray
I missed Lonesome Dove when it was originally broadcast, and attempted to view it on the Artisan DVD release, but failed to get past the first half hour, as the image quality was not up to snuff.
The new Genius release makes up for past transgressions in a far higher quality with a nicely rendered 1.78 AR image that seems to miss nothing that would have been a part of the original flat version. The film appears to have been protected for 1.85.
There is little rationale to put production dollars into effects and action that will not be viewed by an audience any larger than 35", the higher end norm for the era. Those dollars have obviously been used for high impact set pieces.
Because of that, I made a decision early on that to run Lonesome Dove on a large screen would do it a disservice. At 50" a few effects begin to lose their visual currency, but as entertainment Lonesome Dove continues to work the magic that has won audiences for the past two decades, and this new Blu-ray release will undoubtedly make fans happy.
I was hopeful that there may have been some documentaries more recent than those as originally released, but we are left with what appear to be original standard definition material from old masters, which may be the only way that they exist.
Recommended.
RAH
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