7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A powerful story of a terrorist group attempting to blow up a blimp hovering over the Super Bowl stadium with 80,000 people in attendance.
Starring: Robert Shaw (I), Bruce Dern, Marthe Keller, Fritz Weaver, Steven KeatsThriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: LPCM Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Commentator Josh Nelson mentions that at the time of the releases of first the original novel and then the film adaptation of Black Sunday, the plot seemed preposterous to the point of being absolutely ludicrous, but that now, given the "20/20 hindsight" afforded by intervening decades, it may seem at least a little prophetic. Trivia fans may know that Black Sunday was the first book by Thomas Harris, who would go on to a certain literary immortality courtesy of his series which includes (links are to the film versions, of course) Hannibal Rising, Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. Harris has been a somewhat reclusive character, perhaps not to J.D. Salinger levels, but close, and so some may not know that he actually began his writing career as a true crime reporter for the Associated Press, which is where he evidently got the idea to tie then "current events", or at least relatively recent occurrences like the hostage crisis during the 1972 Olympics (which kind of ironically later became fodder for such films as Munich), into a story about large scale terrorism on the United States' own home soil. Harris' book wasn't initially a huge success, though it did make the New York Times vaunted bestseller list, but Paramount's legendary Robert Evans, always a prescient diviner of the cultural zeitgeist, decided it would make a great film if certain agreements could be forged, considering the book went into almost clinical detail about both a Super Bowl football championship as well as a certain flying dirigible whose branding is permanently ensconced in the American Marketing Hall of Fame (if there is such a thing).
Black Sunday is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains the following information on the transfer:
Black Sunday is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 wit 1.0 mono, 2.0 stereo and 5.1 sound. The high definition master was supplied by Paramount, with additional color grading and picture restoration completed by Arrow Films and R3Store Studios.Judging solely by screenshot comparisons, this looks very similar if not absolutely identical to the Austrailian Blu-ray release from Imprint that Svet reviewed some time ago. The overall palette strikes me as just a bit more suffused looking also a bit warmer than the Imprint release, while detail levels and grain structure are more interchangeable. There are definitely variations in color temperature throughout the presentation, and some of the interior scenes in particular can look a little brown, drab and dowdy. Outdoor material pops with considerable authority and also perhaps understandably offers better clarity and fine detail. As is discussed in some of the supplements, the old style composited special effects can be rather effective at times, and then kind of laughably inept at others, and the increased resolution of the Blu-ray can certainly make some of the "seams" like on traveling mattes more noticeable. The supplements get into Frankenheimer's use of split diopter lenses, something that allows for some penetrating deep focus even in scenes like the nighttime boat sequence fairly early in the film, and some of that work is especially notable for consistent detail levels.
Black Sunday features LPCM Mono, LPCM 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 options. There's an almost comical upgrade from the mono to the stereo track, with a much wider and better accounting of ambient environmental effects and John Williams' pulsating score in particular, so much so that the next "jump up" to DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 might not be instantly as noticeable. That said, the surround track definitely provides a wider soundstage once the film really gets into its gonzo hyperbolic mode in the last act, and the game footage in particular provides near nonstop engagement of the side and rear channels. Kind of ironically, one of the supplements compares Black Sunday to the "disaster genre" popularized by Irwin Allen, and Williams' score for this film is very much in keeping with his kind of bombastic, brass and percussion laden, scores for many of Allen's classic sixties science fiction television series. Optional English subtitles are available.
I think Frankenheimer frankly might have had another classic on his hands had he simply pared down this unwieldy narrative even more than the three writers who worked on it evidently attempted to do. There are some standout sequences in this film, and the intercutting of the real Super Bowl with the dramatized events is actually kind of spectacularly effortless, but the film is probably inarguably too long and overly convoluted to sustain its ultimately absurd conceit. Technical merits are solid and the supplements very enjoyable. With caveats noted, Recommended.
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