7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
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
Music: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
The nostalgia film (for lack of a better genre name) is a staple of Hollywood, or at least it once was, connecting audiences in the present with the fading, forgotten traditions, culture and everyday life of years long past. In the case of Radio Days, a time before television begat big screen displays, 4K Ultra HD presentations of movies in personal home theaters, surround sound systems with endless speakers, and the whole of the world at one's interlinked, Wifi-bolstered fingertips. Most of us can't imagine such a world, which is why filmmakers adore transporting us across time and space to things wholly unfamiliar to the young but pure comfort food to those who remember simpler times and reminisce about a place they once called home.
I was less than impressed with the 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer featured on Sandpiper Pictures' Blu-ray release of Radio Days than my
more forgiving colleague Jeffrey Kauffman, whose review of the film's limited edition Twilight Time release was published in 2014. The two
presentations are quite similar, and quite possibly minted from the same master.
Chalk up two reviewers' divergent takes to subjectivity, or perhaps expectations being more stringent today than they were ten years ago. Either way,
Radio Days doesn't fare poorly; it simply doesn't
hit as hard as it should or grab my attention as much as I had hoped. Softness presides over much of the image, which isn't an immediate negative by
any stretch of the imagination, but is something that a proper remastering presumably could have eliminated had a studio or distributor returned to the
original negative and began from scratch. Whatever qualities Radio Days possesses in its original photography isn't revealed to us here, and
we're left to scratch our heads; my guess being a new master would indeed do the trick and revitalize the image. (But as I love to add, who can say?)
To my eye, the clarity of the picture we get is thanks to less discerning artificial sharpening and other heavier handed techniques that create more of an
illusion of restoration and improvement rather than offering a truly restored and improved picture. Grain is intact but bears the slightly over-sharpened
appearance of a film that's been subjected to a bit too much
digital tinkering. Still, without a from-the-elements remaster, it's difficult to tell whether or not this is merely the movie as it was shot by
cinematographer Carlo Di Palma. Colors are largely warm, though primaries and skintones bear the skewed brunt of a slight yellowed-newspaper tint
(possibly intentional, considering the period), and both black levels and contrast are filmic and satisfying. Detail is decent too (bearing in mind what I
mentioned before), with refined grain, some solid texturing and crisp edges. Banding and artifacting are absent. Some haloing creeps in here and there,
though nothing too serious. And technically the overall transfer strikes me as sound.
The film's DTS-HD Master Audio mono mix is perfectly suited to the 1930s and '40s setting, and brings with it nicely prioritized dialogue, narration, and music cues (many of which still infuse the story with real moxie). There are hints of crackling and popping inherent to the original sound design, making them a cinch to overlook as part of the texture of the film's tone, and effects are relatively naturalistic, even if they exhibit some of the tinniness of classic studio-born sound effects common to movies of the era. Combined, the mono track's qualities pair well with Radio Days, even aurally enhancing the impact of its throwback nostalgia. I was quite pleased.
The only extra is the same music-only track included on the Twilight Time limited edition Blu-ray. That's by no means a bad thing, but it will also only appeal to those with a fondness for movie scores and the patience to listen to the entirety of Radio Days' soundtrack, sans dialogue.
Growing up is hard to do, and even more so in the era of the Depression and a looming second World War. Allen's Radio Days tackles it with charm and pizazz, creating something that simultaneously remains fresh and nostalgic. Not the easiest two modes to balance. Fortunately, Sandpiper's Blu-ray release is a solid one, with above average video quality and a strong DTS-HD Master Audio mono offering. More extras would have been welcome (wouldn't they always?) but fans of the film will find enough value here to justify the cost of admission.
(Still not reliable for this title)
1983
Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1990
1984
1991
1971
1989
1972
The Woody Allen Collection
1973
Vi är bäst
2013
1982
1985
2019
1949
1948
Limited Edition to 3000
1943
2022
1980
2015
1975
1931