A commercial hit during the 1960’s for Paramount , Edward Dmytryk’s The Carpetbaggers finally has arrived on Blu ray
ill keep it short (Ha ha)
AUDIO: recently I found many of fox’s CinemaScope titles released on Blu ray had the audio mastered very low ( or it may be that they didn’t brick wall it ?)
Elmer Bernstein’s score sounds fantastic here !
its available as a 5.1 DTS - HD master audio 48khz track
as well as original stereo in 2 channel PCM
both sound excellent . The sound is not strident . Vocals are very clear. I have a very resolving audio system and the sound brought a smile to my face (confession I like this film very much )
it hasn’t been mastered low so people with low output amps will not suffer
VIDEO: I cringed as I pressed play fearing the worst - the disc menu picture quality looks very DVD
I rejoiced when the movie started ! Film grain has been preserved !
no edge enhancement.
colours are excellent, as is to be expected from technicolor which can endure the ravages of time it seems
compression: well you can see David Mackenzie wasn’t handed this one because it seems a little blocky when you pause it, but in motion it looks quite superb .The compression is similar to War of the Worlds.
if I had to guess , to me this doesn’t look like a 4 k scan of the OCN.
overall I would rate the picture quality as excellent . In some ways it reminded me of Twilight Times‘ Sayonara which was from a 35 mm Interpositive but still destroyed the DVD
strangely, by comparison, the compression on A Place in The Sun was very very impressive . Which implies to me VIAVISION is not doing their own compression but rather files are being handed to them by Paramount.
overall, The Carpetbaggers is a screaming buy for fans of the film. In many ways George Peppards most impressive role , (at least for me)
if youre an Alan Ladd or Marty Balsam fan and have never seen this , do yourself a favour.