Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Dry Wood Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 7, 2019

Note: This film is available as part of Les Blank: Always for Pleasure.

Chances are that unless you have a specialized interest in some of the indigenous folk music(s) of the United States, your recognition of the name Les Blank, if indeed you recognize it at all, may well come courtesy of Burden of Dreams (note that the link points to a DVD, not a Blu-ray), Blank’s fascinating documentary about the filming of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. That piece was actually kind of an outlier in Blank’s oeuvre, a large body of work that otherwise tended to focus primarily on musicians (though there are a couple of exceptions in this set). Criterion’s collection of fourteen Blank documentaries may understandably be thought of as a niche product, but for those interested in this subject, it’s a virtual smorgasbord of great performances and at least some biographical data.

Dry Wood might be thought of as a companion piece to Spend It All, since it also deals with a Southern Louisiana community, in this case the Creoles. This is another Blank offering that certainly provides wonderfully energetic music, but it's more of a broad portrait of a community that is steeped in what almost be called mysticism, especially when a huge event like Mardi Gras is around the corner. There are some enjoyable performances of traditional music here, but also a real "feel" for what the entire community is like.

Dry Wood Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Dry Wood is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of the Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1.

Criterion's insert booklet has the following information on the transfers in this set:

All fourteen films are presented in their original aspect ratio of 1.33:1. On widescreen televisions, black bars will appear on the left and right side of the image to maintain the proper screen format. These new digital transfers were created in 2K resolution on a Scanity film scanner from internegatives at Technicolor Los Angeles. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, warps, jitter, and flicker were manually removed using MTI's DRS and Pixel Farm's PFClean, while Digital Vision's Phoenix was used for small dirt, grain, and noise management.

While not hugely problematic, this transfer does exhibit some kind of strange variances. There's some understandable roughness in the grain field during the many text overlay opticals, but the oddest thing to my eyes was a kind of blanched, almost desaturated appearance in several (but not all) of the outdoor moments, where the skies look weirdly white and none of the colors pop very well. There's also a late night scene where crush is fairly evidently. On the whole, though, this is certainly more than watchable, and detail levels are at least acceptable throughout most of the presentation. As with several other films in the set, the Janus masthead wiggles noticeably, and there are occasional anomalies like hairs stuck in the gate (one particularly unfortunate example is shown in screenshot 2).

Dry Wood Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Criterion's insert booklet has the following information on the soundtracks:

The original monaural soundtracks for The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins; A Well Spent Life; Dry Wood; Always for Pleasure; Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers; Sprout Wings and Fly; In Heaven There is No Beer?; Gap-Toothed Women; Yum, Yum, Yum! A Taste of Creole and Cajun Cooking; and The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists were remastered at 24-bit from 35 mm full-coat magnetic tracks. The original monaural soundtrack for Hot Pepper was remastered at 24-bit from the original 16 mm full-coat magnetic track. The original monaural soundtrack for God Respects Us When We Work, but Loves Us When We Dance was remastered at 24-bit from a restored DA-98 tape and the restored 35 mm full-coat magnetic track. The original monaural soundtrack for Spend It All was remastered at 24-bit from a restored WAV file. And the original stereo soundtrack for Sworn to the Drum: A Tribute to Francisco Aguabella was remastered at 24-bit from the original 16 mm full-coat magnetic track. Clicks, thumps, hiss, hum, and crackle were manually removed using Pro Tools HD, AudioCube's integrated workstation, and iZotope RX3.

Dry Wood features a full sounding LPCM Mono track which supports the film's enjoyable music and spoken elements without any major problems.

Dry Wood Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• A Cultural Celebration (1080p; 18:29) is a 2014 piece featuring Blank's collaborator Maureen Gosling, Blank's son Beau, and Taylor Hackford discussing Dry Wood and Hot Pepper.

Dry Wood Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Dry Wood is a really enjoyable example of Blank's ability to offer portraits of not just fascinating individuals, but an entire culture. This film has one of the rougher appearances in the set, but it's certainly watchable. Audio is fine, and the supplement interesting as well.