7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A group of college-age buddies struggle with their imminent passage into adulthood in 1959 Baltimore.
Starring: Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Tim DalyDrama | Insignificant |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
German: Dolby Digital Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
Portuguese: Dolby Digital Mono
Japanese: Dolby Digital Mono
Spanish=Latin & Castilian; Japanese is hidden
English SDH, French, German SDH, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
MGM didn't want to release Barry Levinson's debut film, Diner, because, as one executive said, "It's no Porky's!" The exec was right about the nature of the film, but when a flood of favorable reviews, including a rave from The New Yorker's Pauline Kael, shamed the studio into putting the film before the public, the marketing department did their best to make the film look like another sexy teenage romp. The trailer included on this Blu-ray release labors to disguise the diner of the title as a perpetual party, with music, strippers and non-stop dancing. Diner, of course, is something else entirely, which is why it succeeded at the box office in 1982 and has retained a loyal following ever since. An episodic period piece set in 1959, it captures a group of young men and their relationships so vividly that male viewers routinely identify with one character or another. Women may not identify with the characters, but they've dated or married them, and they can appreciate the accuracy of the portrayals. Levinson, who also wrote the script, cast Diner with largely unknown actors, all of whom went on to greater success. He made the cast spend time together in Baltimore before filming so that they would develop a familiarity that carried over to the screen. When tempers flared during filming, he ordered them to inhabit what was christened "the Camaraderie Camper" until they'd ironed out their differences. Even though Diner was Levinson's first film, he already understood that casting was the most important part of his job. Especially for a film where so much of the action occurs in subtext, in the sense of shared history that informs otherwise mundane exchanges about simple things like finishing a sandwich, it's the looks, the pauses, the indefinable atmosphere that make Diner a unique experience.
Diner was shot by Peter Sova, who would go on to shoot Tin Men and Good Morning, Vietnam for Levinson and more recently shot The Strangers. The film is part of the MGM library now owned by Warner. I cannot say whether Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was derived from a new transfer, but I suspect it will be controversial, because Diner has a soft, period look and much of the film has pronounced grain, especially in darker sequences. If one understands that this is the nature of the source, then the Blu-ray image is satisfyingly film-like and nicely reproduces the style of Sova's photography. Within the glow of nostalgia cast over everything, substantial detail of Fifties clothing, decor and automobiles is readily discernible, and the colors have a rich warmth that often suggests old photographs, although some sequences (e.g., in the strip club) feature intensely saturated hues. Significant portions of Diner are set at night, and the blacks and shades of black are well-differentiated. The film grain moves in natural patterns, and no artificial sharpening appears to have been applied. The real question is whether Diner could look even better. In what may be the most egregious demonstration of Warner Home Video's bizarre approach to compression, the studio has placed Diner on a BD-50, of which only 24 GB have been used. The average bitrate of 24.47 Mbps falls in the usually modest range where WHV typically aims, but why should it do so? In order to hit that rate so reliably, compressionists often have to filter high frequencies, which means losing fine detail, but it's clearly not necessary to do so when nearly half the available space on the disc remains. We'll never know how much detail was or wasn't sacrificed in Diner's image by WHV's arbitrary compression, but the studio could take a lesson from its colleagues over at the Warner Archive Collection. They use all of the digital real estate available on a Blu-ray disc; their bitrates are routinely higher than WHV's, and there's never any doubt that WAC is delivering the best quality possible.
Diner's original mono soundtrack is encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0, and it sounds remarkably good. The dynamic range is wide, the dialogue is clear, and the wonderful soundtrack, which is dominated by period singles, has a remarkably good presence, even though it only comes from one channel. The additional underscoring is credited to Bruce Brody and Ivan Král, but let's face it—the music you remember from Diner are songs like "Ain't Got No Home", "Beyond the Sea", "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On", "Teenager in Love" and many more. You also should recall the all-important question repeatedly posed in the film, which is . . . Sinatra or Mathis?
The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2004 DVD of Diner, except that the DVD lists two trailers, while the Blu-ray has only one.
Probably the reason why WHV has decided to release Diner at this time is because of the musical version currently wending its way toward Broadway with a script by Levinson and music and lyrics by Sheryl Crow. The setting, the period and the characters are rich with possibilities, and the musical has been widely anticipated. In the meantime, Levinson's original film remains as fresh and effective today as when it first appeared. Despite WHV's parsimonious bitrate, the technical presentation is good enough to allow an enjoyable viewing experience. Highly recommended.
2011
2017
1960
2014
1974
1983
1974
Warner Archive Collection
1937
2015
1961
Battle Stripe
1950
2012
2011
1953
Warner Archive Collection
1985
1968
2016
1950
1954
1963