A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Mummy (1999) -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

No one can ever accuse Universal Home Video of not being savvy, and their selection of The Mummy as an initial Blu-ray release, with all of its digital attributes reinforces that fact that they are securely on their game.

The Mummy (1999) was a gorgeous HD release, and now on Blu-ray via a BD-50, it remains a consummate beauty.

Between the perfect image quality and the upgraded DTS-HD Master audio, The Mummy is a treat for the eye as well as the ear, and represents Blu-ray as perfectly as any film could.

I don't have to relate that this is a fun film. I merely need to make it known that the quality of the release is outstanding.

A home run for Universal their first time at bat on Blu-ray.

Highly Recommended.

RAH

Thanks, Robert. This is definately one of my favorite popcorn flicks from the 90's. I have the HD DVD and a perfectly working HD-A2 and HD-A3. Is there enough difference in PQ or AQ to justify a Blu upgrade?

Unless one is making a consolidation move, your HD will do nicely for you.

Waaah my review copies havent gotten here yet! =)

Mr. Harris, I know this isnt really your area of focus, but any opinions on the U-control implementation on Blu? Kris Deering from Home Theater Mag seems to think its much improved, calling it the best PiP on BD yet!

I've never tried U-control. Just don't have the time to play with it.

i dont know sam it seems the same to me.

you can press the red button to turn it on or off anytime you want but the
mechanism of it still works the same as far as i can tell.

the u-c utton pops up and you have to hit enter for it to do anything.
most of the time as before you catch it late so you always miss the very beginning of the featurette.

this is another problem with the u-c is that it doesnt start the show when you hit enter but it is actually running along with the movie in the backround.

as for scorpion king, alex, if you saw the movie before then you already know the movie.
i havent had a chance to sample the dts-ma track yet or so know idea on how good the BR is.

Thanks again, Robert.

for pic quality your probaly right.

i have an xa1 so it only outputs 1080i, can I really tell the difference on a 73"
screen, who knows.
the sound is another story.
the dts-ma track is great.
and is well worth an upgrade from the hd dvd.

Does anyone know if this is a new transfer or encode (rather than a direct port of the HD-DVD)? I ask as someone who is slightly disappointed in the Batman Begins BD transfer.

I will still buy it as I never owned HD-DVD, but I just want to temper my enthusiasm if this one may fall in the same category as Batman Begins BD.

Thanks!

looks great to me.

i dont think there will be dissapointment.

he also gave the Mummy pq 3.75/5.

looked better then that to me.

This is a Blu-ray re-encode, but appears to be from the same source material. Kris Deering also reported the BD has slightly less edge enhancement than the HD DVD.

I remember this movie had several DVD releases. How much of the extra material from the DVDs were ported over?

the iso score has only appeared on the first dvd

Looks like everything but the trailers, the isolated score Easter egg, various text-based information on ancient Egypt, the making of the film and the cast and crew, as well as assorted DVD-ROM material (the most important being a script-to-screen comparison for the first film). If they'd have kept the trailers, I might have sold off my SD-DVDs but now it looks like I'll have a healthy row of various home video incarnations of the first two MUMMY films...

There is a TON of bonus info on the disk, including what may be one of my top five featurettes, 'Building a better mummy'. Great stuff there. Sadly, cause I moved my PS3 to the office in the house and the Panasonic into the theater, I was only getting stereo out of the DTS MA track, so I guess I have to chose to either figure out how to get that deck to play the Core Audio only or bring the PS3 back to the living room, but when I sat down to watch it last night that wasnt an option, so I tried out the UControl and the Extras instead.

The UControl still sucks, but at least there's a fire and forget mode now which just automatically pops up every segment. This is like watching a full length directors commentary, you are forced to watch the whole thing a second time to get all the BTS stuff. Its improved but I still wont use it.

The extras are mostly from versions I've already seen, and collectively they are excellent. I can personally live without the extras that are missing but it is a shame about them being gone. I havent done an extensive head to head to prior versions yet but I was impressed with the list when I first saw it.

I finally got around to watching about half of the movie last night. I thought it looked good, but did have a very slight "digital" look to the image. It just didn't look quite as natural as some of the better transfers, but all in all it was fine. The DTS-MA track was very impressive (watching at 1080p/24 on Pioneer 51FD to Pioneer Elite VSX-91TXH to ISF calibrated Sony SXRD 60A3000).

Watched the Blu-ray last night. Hadn't seen it for probably 20 years, and that was on DVD. I had forgotten most of this film. Fun pacing, and swashbuckling story. Great acting from everyone, good fighting, and zingy bits of clever humor all over was a kick. Interesting that the film retained some horror aspects.

The Blu-ray was wonderful. Rich color palette, and inky blacks....many scenes had ravishing detail with easy to discern textures, clothing fibers, hair, and extra make up on some actors. Other scenes unfortunately looked zoomed-in, cropped and, therefore, soft (even if they were done in post). Special effects, yes, some looked dated and trying too hard, but others were convincing and fantastic. (ILM - world-class at the time.)

Audio was solid, but honestly not as open spacious as I'd hoped. A 5.1 mix and I was running it through a 7.1 set up: the most impressive audio was near the beginning (then repeated at the end), when that cloudy, black-ish death/life spirit thing floated out of the water, then onto the person or mummy. Lots of swirling, creepy supernatual sounds there. Bass was very good and frequent. Goldsmith's score (though not as memorable as his others) was full, but not as defined as I'd hoped. This was a very fun film to revisit after all these years - what a blast! I kept thinking about it the following day. .....Looking forward to part 2 next week!

love it when cats display their power:

JimJasper said:

Watched the Blu-ray last night. Hadn't seen it for probably 20 years, and that was on DVD. I had forgotten most of this film. Fun pacing, and swashbuckling story. Great acting from everyone, good fighting, and zingy bits of clever humor all over was a kick. Interesting that the film retained some horror aspects.

The Blu-ray was wonderful. Rich color palette, and inky blacks....many scenes had ravishing detail with easy to discern textures, clothing fibers, hair, and extra make up on some actors. Other scenes unfortunately looked zoomed-in, cropped and, therefore, soft (even if they were done in post). Special effects, yes, some looked dated and trying too hard, but others were convincing and fantastic. (ILM - world-class at the time.)

Audio was solid, but honestly not as open spacious as I'd hoped. A 5.1 mix and I was running it through a 7.1 set up: the most impressive audio was near the beginning (then repeated at the end), when that cloudy, black-ish death/life spirit thing floated out of the water, then onto the person or mummy. Lots of swirling, creepy supernatual sounds there. Bass was very good and frequent. Goldsmith's score (though not as memorable as his others) was full, but not as defined as I'd hoped. This was a very fun film to revisit after all these years - what a blast! I kept thinking about it the following day. .....Looking forward to part 2 next week!

love it when cats display their power:

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Jim,

The UHD BD is a big improvement if you get the chance!