6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
A handsome race car driver and a beautiful swimming teacher sing, dance and fall in love in glittering Las Vegas.
Starring: Elvis Presley, Ann-Margret, Cesare Danova, William Demarest, Nicky BlairRomance | 100% |
Musical | 81% |
Comedy | 24% |
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
English: Dolby Digital Mono (192 kbps)
French: Dolby Digital Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
English, English SDH, French, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
For the fiftieth anniversary of Elvis Presley's highest grossing film, Warner Home Video is re-releasing its 2007 Blu-ray of Viva Las Vegas in a DigiBook edition. The disc itself is identical, but it still looks pretty good, even after seven years. The film itself is an Elvis classic, which means that it's short on plot, character and everything else that normally constitutes a movie, but it showcases the King and gives him a co-star worthy of his talents in Ann-Margret. Ironically, she was fresh off her breakthrough performance in Bye Bye Birdie, the musical loosely based on Elvis' own induction into military service. Elvis was so inspired by Ann-Margret that he referred to her privately as "a female Elvis". His protective manager, Col. Tom Parker, fumed that director George Sidney, who had also directed Birdie, was lavishing too much attention on "the girl" and not enough on Elvis, but the results speak for themselves.
Director George Singer brought with him his cinematographer from Bye Bye Birdie, Joseph F. Biroc, an old studio hand whose résumé dated back to It's a Wonderful Life and whom Mel Brooks would later credit for teaching him how to shoot in widescreen on Blazing Saddles. Credit Biroc for the elegant compositions of the many dance numbers, and also for the smoothly photographed auto race that concludes the film, where the tension is generated from holding shots rather than cutting away. Warner's 1080p, VC-1/encoded Blu-ray may be seven years old, but it holds up reasonably well against more recent catalog presentations. A new transfer might squeeze a touch more detail out of the source material, particularly in long shots, but the image is already quite sharp and detailed for a film shot anamorphically in 1964. The blacks of the men's formal wear are solid and deep, and the colors of Vegas are bright and saturated (though the city of that era has been entirely replaced by huge theme hotels). Both Elvis and Ann-Margret look their best in wardrobes far superior to what either of their characters would be able to afford. The racing cars flash across the screen in their various shades—Lucky's is pale blue—until they're either covered with desert dust or crash and burn beyond recognition. The occasional optical effect is underwhelming, but that reflects the limitations of the era's technology. Establishing a pattern for the future, Warner left over 6 GB of available space unused on the BD-25 and achieved a low bitrate of 20.42 Mbps. The result is occasional video noise, or what is sometimes called "mosquito noise", usually in large expanses of a similar color and texture like the sky, where a compressionist is shortchanging the image on bandwidth to conserve it for a more demanding scene. Reauthoring the same transfer for a larger disc image (preferably with AVC) would probably have eliminated the problem.
Viva Las Vegas was released in mono, but Warner has remixed it in 5.1, which is encoded on Blu-ray in a choice of either Dolby Digital (at 640 kbps) or lossless Dolby TrueHD. Important reminder: As was Warner's habit with its early Blu-rays, the disc defaults to the lossy DD track. You must manually switch to the lossless TrueHD track after playback begins. Fortunately for all of us, Warner long ago abandoned this counterintuitive approach. The 5.1 remix is conservative and front-oriented, although it greatly improves the reproduction of the studio-recorded songs, for which stereo masters were probably available. As was typically the case in films of this era (and for a long time afterward), the change in vocal quality between the actors' speaking and singing voices is extremely obvious, because the singing voices were recorded with much better quality. Some of the race car effects have decent impact, but on the whole the dynamic range is limited by the age of the soundtrack. The incidental underscoring by MGM's in-house composer, George Stoll, sounds about as good as it possibly can.
Since the disc hasn't changed since 2007, neither have its extras. The DigiBook is the only addition. Note that the disc reflects Warner's early style of mastering, in which the film begins playing immediately. The extras can be accessed from either a pop-up or the main menu that appears when you hit "top menu" on your remote.
Some people like to collect DigiBooks, and for them the new one for Viva Las Vegas should be a welcome addition to their collection. For anyone who doesn't already own the Blu-ray, the DigiBook edition is the one to get. The film itself is classic Elvis, and the Blu-ray is about as good a presentation as we're likely to see. Recommended for fans of the King's films. A blind buy isn't recommended until you have at least sampled an Elvis film or two. They're a genre unto themselves.
1957
1961
Warner Archive Collection
1960
1968
1955
Fox Studio Classics
1969
1953
1936
1945
Limited Edition to 3000
1960
Warner Archive Collection
1963
1947
+ Director's Cut on Blu-ray
1977
1970
Warner Archive Collection
1968
1949
Warner Archive Collection
1940
2020
2-Disc Shake and Shimmy Edition
2007
1953