Blu-ray Disc/DVD REVIEW |
 Battle of the Bulge  Studio: Warner Brothers Film Year: 1965 Film Length: 2 hours 49 minutes Genre: World War II, Action Aspect Ratio: 2.76:1 Ultra Panavision BD Resolution: 1080p BD Video Codec: VC-1 @ under 20MBPS Colour/B&W: Colour Audio: |
Release Date: May 15, 2007 Film Rating:  / Starring: Henry Fonda, Robert Shaw, Robert Ryan, Dana Andrews, Pier Angeli, Barbara Werle, George Montgomery, Ty Hardin, Charles Bronson, Hans Christian Blech, Werner Peters, James MacArthur and Telly Savalas Screenplay by: Philip Yordan, Milton Sperling, John Melson Directed by: Ken Annakin Battle of the Bulge is a solid action film, concentrating on the famous large-scale tank assault mounted by the Nazis in the waning days of World War II. Made in 1965 with a star-studded cast and filmed in the super-wide Ultra Panavision format, there is a lot of scale on display here. Full-size tank battles are the order of the day, along with the expected skulduggery on both sides of the war, as the Germans and the Americans try to outflank each other. As an exercise in historical accuracy or deep dramatic filmmaking, the movie doesn’t hold up that well: there are too many war movie clichés, too much license taken with the history. But as a look at an old-fashioned war movie with Henry Fonda and Robert Shaw, is a lot of fun. It’s big, loud, and long – and you can spend a very pleasant Sunday afternoon sitting back and enjoying the spectacle. Battle of the Bulge was released in 2005 as a standard definition DVD with the full, uncut movie, its five minute trailer, and a couple of vintage featurettes from 1965. It should be noted that the film runs 2 hours and 49 minutes in its uncut length, but this includes 8 minutes of music – an Overture (2:38), an Intermission (2:15) and following the brief end credits, Exit Music (3:07). So the true length of the film itself is closer to 2 hours and 40 minutes. For the new High Definition releases, Warner Brothers has presented a new 1080p VC-1 transfer and a new commentary by director Ken Annakin and actor James MacArthur, and coupled these with the original standard definition special features to complete the package. The same materials are available on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. This review, of course, covers the Blu-Ray release.  VIDEO QUALITY: 4/5 Battle of the Bulge gets a smooth 1080p VC-1 transfer, which accurately shows off all the colors of the spectrum and provides a fair amount of detail in the uniforms and the vehicles on display. You may notice that this is a thinner letterbox image than normal. Do not adjust your television set – this is due to the film being shot in the Ultra Panavision 70mm mode – a modification of the ultra-wide Cinerama process. The special lenses used for this process yield an aspect ratio of 2.76:1 over the usual anamorphic aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Some sequences in the film make specific use of this feature – a first-person drive down a country road at the film’s beginning, and a first-person view of a train’s passage through the hills near the middle of the film. To specifically address the picture quality – it comes out very nicely indeed. This isn’t the mind-blowing level of detail present on releases like DREAMGIRLS, but it is absolutely a step above a standard definition transfer. AUDIO QUALITY: 4/5 Battle of the Bulge is presented in a 640kbps 5.1 Surround mix in English, along with a mono track in French. This is a solid sound mix, but not one that makes a lot of use of the surround channels. Most of the activity tends to stay in the front speakers, between the dialogue and the battle sounds. There is some use of surrounds for music, but not much other than that. There is a little subwoofer activity, but not as much as you might imagine for a combat film. One interesting sidenote- the tank driving sounds are appropriately prominent in several sequences – to the point that I can’t help noting the similarity between the sound chosen for this film, and the sound used for the tank approach at the climax of Saving Private Ryan. I have a feeling that Spielberg’s sound designer may have been making an affectionate nod toward this earlier film. SPECIAL FEATURES: 3/5 The Blu-Ray presentation of Battle of the Bulge includes all of the special features to be found on the standard DVD edition, presented in standard definition. The film’s theatrical trailer is presented in anamorphic widescreen, but the two featurettes are full-screen. To these features, the new HD release adds a feature commentary by the film’s director and one of the actors.
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