New to Blu: May 15 – 21

They Shall Not Grow Old

➢ “It’s possibly the most stunning large-scale effort to restore vintage footage, and, sure, the results are still mixed – with some sequences having uncanny valley-like effects on facial movements and speech, whilst others, in particular shots which involve slightly less movement (or reduced down to slow-motion), looking absolutely like genuine colour footage … Perhaps it’s never going to be reference, or demo, but it’s a leading example of the genuine power that modern film restoration can have upon preserving history in a way that nobody could have ever expected.” — AVS Forum.

➢ “The first 25 minutes and final 13 minutes of the film present the footage as it was originally shot, in black-and-white, presented in a 1.37:1 window. If nothing else, these two sections help showcase the meticulous restoration work that underlies this bold cinematic experiment. As well as being re-coloured, the rest of the movie zooms in on the footage to fill the widescreen frame. New hues aren’t what you’d call vivid, looking flat in the way that colourised footage always does.” — Home Cinema Choice.

River Runs Red

➢ “The imagery here has obviously been intentionally tweaked to give things a more ‘filmic’ appearance with the addition of digital grain. For the most part it’s a pleasing gambit, with a subtly textured appearance that doesn’t significantly distract due to looking inorganic, and with detail levels remaining high throughout most of the presentation … The palette doesn’t really look like it was graded much if at all, and as such things have a natural if not especially vivid appearance.” — Blu-ray.com.

● Also new are re-issues of Written on the Wind and Death Warmed Up.