Innholdsfortegnelse for December/January 2023 i Sound & Vision

Waterboarding is a harsh interrogation technique. Most governments have disavowed and unsanctioned its use. There is a title for a Tom Cruise movie in there somewhere. In any case, waterboarding is essentially a form of torture. And a certain airline likes to waterboard its passengers. But instead of water, they use music. And musicboarding is much, much worse. Music is one of the most universal and wonderful things in life. Play music for a baby, and it will instinctively respond. Throughout our lives, music sparks joy. When we shed our mortal coils, if we are lucky, someone will play music at our funerals. Everyone loves music. Music is also one of the most personal things in life. There are 8 billion people on the planet Earth. If you have a…

Sony Pictures Classics 30th Anniversary 4K Ultra HD Collection (Sony) They had me at Lola. Don’t let the hoity-toity name fool you: For three decades now, the Sony Pictures Classics label has been serving up exceptional independent films—imports, low-budget, genre, etc.—that might not otherwise find a wide audience, and making them accessible to the masses. As evidenced by this cross-section from the hundreds in their vault, SPC has brought us plenty of Oscar bait, a bona fide global blockbuster, and lots of simply terrific entertainment plucked from potential obscurity. This thoughtfully curated Ultra HD crop is composed of the gender-bending period piece Orlando (1992), the seminal Hollywood documentary The Celluloid Closet (1995), Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s witty, often brilliant The City of Lost Children (1995, the first of several foreign-language films in…

For the control settings used here go to soundandvision.com. The measurements were made using CalMAN measurement software from Portrait Displays, together with X-Rite i1Pro3 Plus and Klein’s K-10A color meters and a Fresco 6G pattern generator from Murideo. HD/SDR FULL-ON/FULL-OFF CONTRAST RATIO: Unmeasurable In the Filmmaker Picture Mode and its out-of-the-box picture settings, the peak white level was 70 foot-Lamberts (240 nits) and the black level 0.000 foot-Lamberts, rendering the full-on/full-off contrast ratio unmeasurable. The grayscale Delta E values ranged from a low of 1.49 at 30% to a high of 2.24 at 90%. The pre-calibration color Delta E values ranged from a low of 0.76 in blue to a high of 1.91 in red. The gamma was a tight match to BT.1886 (the standard for non-high dynamic range sources).…

TECHNICALLY NOT a “non-stop thrill ride” (it’s a classy commuter vehicle so passengers need to board and disembark periodically), Bullet Train is nonetheless a rousing, violent and quite funny adventure. The story moves as fast as the locomotive itself, indulging themes of fate, luck and revenge as an errand boy (Brad Pitt) dealing with a midlife crisis runs afoul of assassins and international crime syndicates, all of them circling a high-value briefcase while the clock counts down to their ultimate destination. With that many armed and dangerous individuals together in a confined space for a few hours, there’s copious blood and gore, more often played for laughs thanks to the playful direction of Deadpool 2’s David Leitch. Once again, he dishes out the sort of stunt-filled and special effects-enhanced extravaganza…

THE INDIE video label has been killin’ it lately. Boutique label Kino Lorber Studio Classics has been coming on strong the past couple of years, and their recent Ultra HD 4K output has been second to none. With the freedom to work with a variety of studios, they’re amassing an enviable catalog of time-honored films in uncompromising video quality. We spun four of their newest, all utilizing Dolby Vision HDR and proffered on roomy triple-layer 100GB discs. All of them use pre-existing DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtracks, maintain key legacy bonus features, and also include the movie on freshly minted 1080p Blu-rays. IN BRUGES While not making a big splash theatrically, this slowest of slow-burn black comedies about hitmen-with-a-conscience remains both a critical darling and a favorite of those who’ve seen…

Kaleidescape Questions This letter is generally concerning Kris Deering’s testing of Kaleidescape’s Terra server in Sound & Vision February/March 2022, but also veers off into related ideas. Please forgive my ignorance in some areas. I am incarcerated and your magazine helps keep me updated with the goings on of home sound tech (love it!). So, on with the questions: 1. How many 4K movies—and, alternatively, 1080p titles—fit on a typical 6TB server? I can extrapolate each larger server size from there. 2. What does Kaleidescape charge to buy 4K and 1080p movies? How much for rentals? Can you then purchase the rental for a prorated price? How much? 3. How much is premium video on demand? 4. How many movies are available to purchase in the [Kaleidescape] library? 5. Are…

Let’s get right to it—The Beatles’ Revolver further solidified the creative validity of the rock album format when it was released in August 1966. For more evidence of that, see Matt Hurwitz’s excellent insider story on page 28 to see how Revolver’s recent Super Deluxe Edition LP/CD box set incarnations came to be. Concurrently, the inherently excellent Revolver Atmos mix by producer Giles Martin was made available digitally. I had to find out why I needed to get this mix into my listening life, so Martin and I got on Zoom together to discuss exactly that. (A longer version of this interview appears in my monthly Spatial Audio File column on the S&V site.) Mike Mettler: The very first Revolver track I listened to in Atmos was “Taxman,” which has…

Queen’s 13th studio album, May 1989’s The Miracle, has been long overdue for a proper reassessment, and a new eight-disc box set from Hollywood Records dubbed The Miracle Collector’s Edition enables our finely attuned ears to do just that. (See sidebar for a full review.) Content supervisors Kris Fredriksson and Justin Shirley-Smith, along with their Miracle Sessions co-producer Joshua J. Macrae, recently all got on the line with me from across the pond to exclusively confirm how The Miracle box set came to be, and why it clearly lives up to its name. If I could only reach you/That would really be a breakthru… Mike Mettler: Why was The Miracle chosen as the follow-up box set to [October 1977’s] News of the World that came out in 2017 as opposed…

FOR MANY BEATLES FANS, Revolver is their favorite album. A balance of great songwriting and first dips into experimentation and change even place the group’s 1966 LP above Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road for some. Revolver was a clear step forward into new kinds of music and new kinds of recording. Following in line with Special Edition packages of Pepper, Abbey Road, The Beatles (aka The White Album) and Let It Be, Apple Corps, Ltd./Capitol Records/UMe on October 28, 2022, issued Revolver with a new stereo remix by engineer Sam Okell and Giles Martin, son of original producer Sir George Martin. The Super Deluxe Special Edition sets also include two discs full of studio outtakes, an EP featuring the singles “Paperback Writer” and ”Rain”—which were recorded during…

IF YOU were not aware that Warner has been producing feature-length direct-to-video films based upon DC Comics characters for 15 years and counting, you’re really missing out. Often closely based upon specific storylines, they bring to life compelling explorations of some of our heroes’ most popular exploits. Each has a unique visual esthetic that honors the various artists, and most feature different voice actors to suit the writers’ distinct interpretations of these enduring icons. One of the darkest tales is Batman: The Long Halloween, adapting Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s 13-issue series of the same name. We get to meet The Caped Crusader in his early days, when ally Captain Gordon of the GCPD introduces him to district attorney Harvey Dent, forming a justice-seeking triad of sorts. In short order,…

After repeatedly encountering the same issues working with customers at my CI firm, I decided a series of columns on working with an installer might help. While this is written through the lens of working on an A/V project, many of these tips are applicable when hiring any trade to do work in your home. And I dare say that following these suggestions will make the project – and your relationship with the installation team – go smoother for everyone. In part one of this series, I covered what you should plan for leading up to the day of the installation. These include things like being there, emailing pictures of the work area, understanding the scope of what is expected, checking over any gear you are providing, clearing out the…

8-disc box set (1LP/5CD/1DVD/1BD) Hollywood Records OVERALL RATING Queen was still on fire as the 1980s came to a close. After taking a three-year break following the crest of their Live Aid/A Kind of Magic combo carpet ride, Queen dropped album No. 13, May 1989’s The Miracle—a vibrant 10-track collection that fused the best of the four-piece British band’s inherently anthemic nature (“I Want It All”) alongside of-era production elements, albeit sometimes with a feisty twist (“Scandal”). And now, a new 13 x 1.5 x 13-inch shiny black-hued multidisc box set, The Miracle Collector’s Edition, properly fetes an album that might be less celebrated stateside than internationally, but is no less an impactful entry in the band’s ever-impressive oeuvre. The 180-gram single LP, sourced from a March 1989 master tape…

SOMEONE ONCE posited that the way to gauge the quality of a sequel is to plot the delta—better or worse—from the movie that spawned it. Employing that metric, Top Gun: Maverick might be the best damned sequel that I’ve ever seen. My immediate dislike of the original Top Gun isolated me from many a gung-ho fan in 1986, put off as I was by the obnoxious, smirky smugness of it all. Jump ahead thirty-six years and now-legendary jet fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is staring down the twilight of an illustrious, notorious career, and with it the pathos born of the choices he’s made along the way. He’s still haunted by the death of his best bud Goose, and now Goose’s son Rooster (Miles Teller) is among his…

THE WAR of the Worlds was a huge movie hit in 1953, based loosely on H.G. Wells 1898 classic novel of an invasion from Mars. We’re at the center of the action during our military’s initial encounter with the Martians’ unstoppable machines (the latter very different from Wells’ tripod conception). Later we’re trapped in a trashed farmhouse and get a frightening glimpse of a live Martian. In a gripping conclusion, the Martians appear on the verge of total victory. How they’re stopped is totally unexpected, unless of course, you’ve read Wells’ novel or have seen Steven Spielberg’s otherwise very different and technically far more advanced remake (2005). In the ‘50s there was no CGI; it was all models, miniatures, matte paintings, and creativity. Nevertheless, the 1953 filmmakers made brilliant use of…

In the early-1970s, two new VIP members of The Beach Boys not sporting the surnames Wilson, Love, or Jardine came to the forefront of the band—namely, guitarist/vocalist Blondie Chaplin and guitarist/drummer Ricky Fataar. Though their tenure in The Beach Boys was short-lived, the energy and creative verve these two artists of South African descent injected into this consummate California band’s era-transitional gambits were noticeably palpable for a decade, often overshadowed by the sheer magnitude of their groundbreaking 1960s recordings. The proof can be found within Sail On Sailor – 1972, a 105-track, 6CD box set that includes 80 unreleased outtakes, live recordings, demos, alternate versions, alternate mixes, instrumentals, and a cappella tracks alike, not to mention the remastered pair of Chaplin/Fataar-fueled studio releases: May 1972’s Carl And The Passions –…