7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A vignette-packed memory piece about growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s, obsessed with the music, entertainment, and news of the wide world brought into every household via the magic of radio. A young Allen surrogate lives with his parents and extended family in the wind-swept Rockaway neighborhood, their daily routines spiced by the glamor, excitement, thrills and even occasional doses of grim reality coming to them over the airwaves.
Starring: Mia Farrow, Julie Kavner, Michael Tucker, Seth Green, Dianne WiestMusic | 100% |
Coming of age | Insignificant |
Period | Insignificant |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
Music: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Many Baby Boomers probably have distinct memories of being curled up in front of the family television watching their favorite show, only to have either a parent or grandparent walk in and say something like, “Back in my day, we had to use our imaginations when we listened to the radio.” There was an undeniably active component to radio listening in the heyday of the medium, when serials and other fiction programs spooled out stories with nothing but sound to guide the audience. But despite that salient difference, in other ways, listening to radio was very much in line with other media, both past and present, as is depicted hilariously in a small moment in Woody Allen’s Radio Days where a Rabbi (the wonderful Kenneth Mars) laments all the “dangers” that radio presents to the youth of America, in a rant that sounds suspiciously contemporary, other than the medium being pilloried. Those who are old enough to remember analog radios may recall the kind of surreal joy of fiddling with the dial, exploring the entire continuum of frequencies available over the air, and often being able to seamlessly segue from station to station. There’s something quite similar going on in Allen’s film, for it zings between stories—some of them more like vignettes, actually—like some kid fiddling madly with a radio dial, landing on a variety of partial anecdotes that remarkably add up to one of Allen’s most fully realized entertainments. Allen himself narrates the film, as an adult looking back on his own childhood set initially in the late 1930s in Rockaway Beach. Joe (Seth Green) is a somewhat mischievous young boy who escapes from the rigors of everyday Depression life by listening to such fodder as The Masked Avenger, a superhero of sorts whose voice may sound commanding over the airwaves, but whose actual real life physical presence (as embodied by one Wallace Shawn) is somewhat less intimidating. Here and throughout the film, Allen gently pokes and prods the dialectic between illusion and reality. Joe’s family, a motley crew forced to live together due to the hard times of the era, are, like Joe himself, trying to look away from the problems of their own lives by gazing at their radios and, yes, imagining the grand and glorious people who are emanating from the speaker. Except, it turns out that those people are often just as tawdry and mundane as the listening public.
Radio Days is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is a nice looking transfer, though it's rather soft looking quite a bit of the time, especially in midrange and wide shots, where detail is somewhat middling. Colors are nicely suffused, though Carlo di Palma's kind of autumnal looking lensing tends to offer a palette that is awash in rusts and browns rather than extremely bright primaries. Close-ups reveal very good fine detail. Grain structure is intact, though it's quite heavy at times, especially in some of the outdoor scenes (most notably those at the beach, where the sky is almost overrun with grain at times). Contrast and black levels are both strong and consistent. Elements are in very good condition, with only very minimal, almost negligible, age related issues occasionally cropping up.
Radio Days offers one of the most ubiquitous sets of source cues in any Woody Allen film, and they come through very well in the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track offered on this Blu-ray. Most of the cues have been sourced from archival recordings, and so the occasional pop and crack are apparent, though these are obviously inherent elements. Dialogue is always cleanly presented and well prioritized.
Radio Days is at once simple and complex, as befits its subject. The film wends its way through countless vignettes like one of the squalls that blow in off the Atlantic to hit Rockaway Beach. The film is made up of a number of sweet and often hilarious little moments, bolstered by a large and very colorful cast. Buoyed by an evocative production design and filled with both real and ersatz broadcast material, Radio Days does in fact take us back to those "thrilling days of yesteryear". Technical merits are strong on this release, and despite the lack of copious supplements, Radio Days comes Highly recommended.
1983
Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
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1984
1991
1971
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1989
The Woody Allen Collection
1973
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1982
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2019
1949
1948
Limited Edition to 3000
1943
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2016