Innholdsfortegnelse for August/September 2022 i Sound & Vision

Why on earth would Sony do such a thing? Spider-Man: No Way Home cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make and to market, and I am guessing Sony would appreciate a certain ROI (Return on Investment). Yes, the film has already grossed $1.9 billion and counting, was the highest-grossing film of 2021, and is the sixth-highest-grossing film of all time. But still—why walk away from those extra hundreds of millions? As you might guess, the reason has to do with China. As you might also guess, the reason is censorship. Receiving permission to show a movie in China is hardly a fait accompli. In this case, reportedly, Chinese authorities did not approve of the film’s finale. In particular, the final extended scene takes place on and around the Statue…

Specs Available in 101- and 121-in (diagonal) sizes, 16:9 aspect ratio…

RATINGS Batman movies keep evolving, changing and—surprisingly—getting better with each reboot, in one way or another. Director Tim Burton’s Batman relied heavily upon its extreme art deco design to sweep away the goofiness of the Adam West TV incarnation, before that film series quickly descended into its own absurdity. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy was the cure, finding ways to make believable the exploits of a vigilante dressed as a flying mouse fighting a clown and a scarecrow, owing in large part to inspired casting choices. Although he never headlined his own solo movie, Ben Affleck’s Caped Crusader was a highpoint of his recent DC Extended Universe team outings, but now Robert Pattinson has donned the cowl and armor for a more expressive, heart-on-his-cape take on the hometown hero. He’s…

THOSE SEEKING an accurate account of notorious gangster Al Capone’s downfall should continue their search elsewhere. But anyone wanting two hours of thrilling, fact-influenced entertainment need look no further. Director Brian De Palma’s artful take on Eliot Ness and his squad of incorruptible treasury agents on a quest to clean up Prohibition-era Chicago blends hard-hitting dialogue and career-best performances in an almost operatic tale of good versus evil. The heroes are brave, imperfect men making tough choices in order to take down the vilest of criminals. Kevin Costner’s Ness begins his assignment as straight-arrow as they come, but discovers along the way just how much he doesn’t know and how far he’s willing to go to get the job done. His character arc is at the heart of this gripping…

OSCAR-NOMINATED for best picture, direction, and screenplay, Licorice Pizza is a story of first love between a 15-year-old kid and a woman of 25 who’s working at his high school. From their first conversation, Gary (Cooper Hoffman) pushes for a date, which Alana (Alana Heim), resists aggressively, but having already become a minor TV and film star and successful entrepreneur, he’s soon able to charm her. Given his age, though, she just wants to be his friend; he, on the other hand, recognizes his future wife. From this conflict, an awkward romance emerges in adventures involving memorable appearances by Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, and John Michael Higgins, each playing an older absurdly macho/sexist type. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Pizza is set in the San Fernando…

THESE DAYS, you’re not likely to see a Quentin Tarantino script directed by someone else, but there was a time when the young film-maker-cum-video-store-clerk was raising funds to make his directorial debut (Reservoir Dogs) and sold True Romance, which was ultimately helmed by Top Gun’s Tony Scott. The movie took a few years to find its audience—and current cult status—but is now hard to see as anything but inspired and uniquely entertaining. Minimum-wage kid Clarence (Christian Slater) meets Alabama (Patricia Arquette), a hooker with a heart of gold, and they fall madly in love. Things get really complicated really fast as they discover hitherto untapped potential and flee Detroit for sunny L.A. with a suitcase of missing drugs and the mob on their trail. Scott’s films have a conspicuous visual…

The key to the enduring appeal of Black Sabbath’s career-making second album, September 1970’s Paranoid, doesn’t only reside within its fist-pumping, headbanging, metal-genre-establishing bonafides. Actually, the secret sauce can be found via something you may not have even considered—Black Sabbath’s inherent sense of melody. And where might that come from, you ask? Two words—The Beatles. “I wanted to be in The Beatles,” Sabbath vocalist Ozzy Osbourne told me during our in-person interview a decade ago. “They had great harmonies and great melodies, and I always got a great feeling listening to them. The Beatles did give me the gift of melody, you know. My other thing is, if a song still sounds as good now as it did when you first heard it, it’s gotta be good.” If that’s the…

Go Big or Go Home When I see a review of a projector with a screen smaller than 100 inches (diagonal), I scratch my head and say, “What’s the point?” You recently reviewed a Sony VPL-VW325ES with a 92-inch screen (April/May). I’m sure it was bright and looked great. But if you’re using a screen that small in this day and age, why buy a projector? It offers nothing that you can’t get in a flat-panel display. It’s like reviewing a Ferrari and using it to pick up groceries at the local market. It’ll get you there quickly and hold enough groceries for two, but that’s not what it was designed for. I would think the minimum screen size for a review should be 110-120 inches, especially with some of…

Longtime readers of this column will recall that, back in October/November 2020, I discussed the many benefits of nugs.net, a top-shelf streaming site offering multiple-thousands of soundboard-quality streams and downloads from a horde of name artists. I admired how nugs.net had been able to bring live-show listening (and viewing!) into the hi-res arena where it rightly belongs. Don’t get me wrong—I love my bootleg collection to no end, but if I can a) get better-SQ versions of live gigs that are directly artist-approved, and b) obtain them in such a way that benefits those artists more directly financially, even better. And that’s where nugs.net shines like practically no other site can. Since that 2020 column, I’ve continued enjoying the scope of nugs.net offerings whenever I can—perhaps even more exponentially so…

ULTRA-HIGH resolution 8K is in the wings but 4K Ultra HD (UHD) is what most of us watch day in and day out, whether we’re streaming a movie over Netflix, spinning a Blu-ray Disc, or watching TV in one of its many forms. The splendor of 4K extends well beyond its 8 million-pixel resolution, offering several noticeable advancements in picture quality over standard high-definition (HD). Wide color gamut, or WCG, enables your 4K television to display a broader palette of colors, making images more vibrant and realistic. If you’re into videogames and action/adventure blockbusters or sports, 4K’s higher frame rates make fast-moving images appear smoother and more lifelike. And then there’s high dynamic range (HDR), arguably the most significant of the advancements, which brings images closer to real life by…

Full on/off contrast was measured with a Minolta T-10 meter approximately 1 meter away from the lens face. I tested the projector in various dynamic laser modes (Normal and Fast) for dynamic contrast measurements. Refer to the table for details on the contrast results and measurements at different average display levels. Native sequential contrast varied based on projector throw with the peak reading of 5,266:1 reflecting the longest throw. The table lists the contrast in the shortest throw in calibrated Cinema mode to represent the native contrast level of the projector’s LCD panels. I did not conduct ADL measurements for the different modes due to the nature of the Epson’s dimming performance. Calibration reports were captured from a workflow in Portrait Displays’ Calman 2020 calibration software. SDR calibration was measured…

SDR/HD FULL-ON/FULL-OFF CONTRAST RATIO: Unmeasurable In the Filmmaker Picture Mode, with the OLED Pixel Brightness at 80, Adjust Contrast at 85, Auto Dynamic Contrast and Peak Brightness Off, Gamma at 2.4, and Black Level at 51, the peak white level was 70.1 foot-Lamberts (240 nits) and the black level 0.000 foot-Lamberts, rendering the full-on/full-off contrast ratio unmeasurable. With no changes to the set’s out-of-the-box White Balance controls (all in their zero default settings), the Filmmaker mode’s grayscale Delta E values ranged from a low of 0.39 at 30% to a high of 1.57 at 90%. The precalibration color Fine Tune Delta E values ranged from a high of 2.2 in red to a low of 0.30 in blue. Both the White Balance and Color Fine Tune out-of-the-box numbers above were…

RATING UP UNTIL a few years ago, the heart of a JBL Synthesis installation was the brand’s Synthesis SDP-75—basically a rebadged Trinnov Altitude surround preamp-processor. But in 2017, JBL’s parent company Harman International bought British audio manufacturer Arcam, and the lights went on. Could they take the already well-regarded Arcam line of AVRs and A/V processors, alter their cosmetics, maybe add a bit of Synthesis secret sauce, and rebadge them as JBL Synthesis models at prices dramatically lower than the nosebleed-level Trinnov? In 2019, JBL Synthesis answered with the introduction of the SDP-55 preamp-processor ($6,000) and SDR-35 A/V receiver ($7,500). A couple years later, the brand released updated versions of those original products, the SDP-58 pre-pro ($6,900) and SDR-38 AVR ($8,550). The only obvious change from their predecessors is the…

THE NORTHMAN is a stylish, brutal, and satisfyingly well-made film about a Viking prince named Amleth whose uncle murders his father and kidnaps his mother. He swears vengeance against his uncle and after locating him years later, devises a plan to exact his revenge, even though all is not as it seems. Writer-director Robert Eggers’ is also the man behind the critically acclaimed psychological thriller, The Lighthouse, which can be challenging to watch at times. Though The Northman is a little less disturbing and more accessible to squeamish viewers, the film still has its fair share of gory violence and frightening imagery. In addition to an intriguing plot, the performances are excellent as you might expect from a cast that is stacked with talent. The visual style is sometimes stark…

ALONG WITH Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Shaft helped launch the Seventies era of so-called “blaxploitation” films that would dominate the world of Black entertainment for nearly a decade. Directed by prominent Black photographer Gordon Parks with Richard Roundtree in the title role and featuring a sizzling soundtrack by Isaac Hayes, Shaft didn’t quite fit the mold of its subsequent ilk. Sure, it was a crime drama that explored the dregs of society, like pimp Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn), whose daughter is kidnapped, but there’s a key difference: Shaft himself is not a criminal. He’s not a pimp or a drug dealer like the main characters of Super Fly or Black Caesar—he’s a private detective, hired to find the Bumpy’s daughter. In 1971, Shaft was like a superhero…

When I began this series of columns earlier this year, I had no idea it would turn into a four-part, treatise on the evolution and current state of choosing a big screen TV for your media room or theater. For those who have hung with me, a sincere thank you, and I hope you found the journey worthwhile! For the rest, here’s a lightning recap of those previous columns to catch you up. Part one, “Big Screen Decisions,” dealt with the emergence of larger and more affordable big-screen displays and recent advances in performance that have resulted in 85-inch-and-larger sets being not only affordable but commonplace. Part two, “Big Screen Design,” discussed ways to incorporate these new giant flat-panel displays into your room and offered tips on how to avoid…

PORCUPINE TREE MUSIC and Dolby Atmos are nothing short of a mixing match made in heaven. To be more specific, the post-progressive British collective and the burgeoning immersive surround format are a match made in the height and side channels. Listening to Closure / Continuation (Music For Nations/Sony Music), Porcupine Tree’s first album of all-new music in over 12½ years by way of its unabashedly mind-boggling Atmos mix—a mix courtesy of Steven Wilson, the band’s leading force and the unchallenged king of 360-degree music-making and music-mixing—one can’t help but marvel at how this still-growing format now has an official milestone mix showcasing everything it can be, and more. “Everyone is doing Atmos now, but we’re all still learning about it at the moment,” allows Wilson. “What works? What doesn’t work?…

IN THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT, co-written and directed by Tom Gormican, Nicolas Cage plays “Nick Cage,” a fictionalized version of himself. Facing mounting expenses, dried-up roles, and struggling to take care of his daughter and estranged wife, the aging actor is forced to take a million-dollar gig in Mallorca, Spain to attend a birthday party for superfan Javi (Pedro Pascal). Javi turns out to be a dangerous mobster also trying to sell his screenplay and wanting to collaborate with Cage. All of which leads to the Oscar winner being enlisted by a CIA agent (Tiffany Haddish) to go undercover and spy on Javi to help the government bring down his criminal enterprise. The filmmakers created the perfect role for Cage who slides effortlessly into this hyperbolic persona, while channeling…

ON THE way to cooking up the all-time great spaghetti western, Sergio Leone began here with Rawhide star Clint Eastwood, eager to break out of his “white hat” TV persona and take his craft and career to the next level. Together they birthed an anti-hero who would become known as The Man with No Name, indelible and ultimately at the center of For a Few Dollars More (also new to 4K) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (released last year). While neither are direct sequels, rather tonally similar vehicles for their soft-spoken, steely-eyed creation, this unofficial “trilogy” is defined by its originality, brutality, and a protagonist who is ruthless yet strangely fallible. Fistful has an esteemed pedigree, essentially a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, the story about a town…

LONG BEFORE Lin-Manuel Miranda set the American Revolution to music, playwright Peter Stone and composer/lyricist Sherman Edwards gave us an entertaining history lesson of their own, set in 1776. An unpopular John Adams, poetic Thomas Jefferson, and impish Ben Franklin are focused on a future free of British oppression, despite the danger of such a declaration, but when the decision is made that such a vote must be unanimous, the challenge becomes much more difficult. While a far cry from the hip-hop beats of Hamilton, the songs here do a remarkable job of conveying facts and weaving a compelling story that’s worth telling again and again. The film was treated by some as a redheaded stepchild (reportedly Richard Nixon didn’t like its themes, which prompted producer Jack L. Warner to…

Elton John could do no wrong as the calendar came to the close of 1971. Madman Across the Water, his third album in that calendar year alone, came out in November, and it was considered to be the best entry in his Trident Studios orchestral trilogy, featuring production by Gus Dudgeon and arrangements by Paul Buckmaster. (The previous two releases in said trilogy were April 1970’s self-titled Elton John and October 1970’s Tumbleweed Connection.) Madman is the first of what surely will be many a 50th anniversary collection to be culled from the Elton John canon, and it’s a great starting point. As is the case with most historical releases these days, Madman is available in a variety of options—1LP, 2CD, 4LP, and 3CD/1BD. The copious bonus material includes outtakes,…