This edition of 4K Slight Return highlights current releases with abundant extras. The films range from current Oscar hopefuls to classic flicks both recent and and past.
WICKED
There’s over an hour of extras on the 4K/Blu-Ray release of Wicked not to add multiple commentaries tracks. Wicked gets right down to the rewatch quotient by including a sing-along version where you can read the words to the songs, like the breath taking “Defying Gravity,” like some kind of interactive karaoke experience.
Even its most ardent supporters of Wicked will admit that the first half is slow. But when Wicked kicks into high gear at the end you lose all thoughts of what came before.
There’s two commentary tracks both spoken with honest emotional connection to the story; one from director John Chu, and the other with co-leads Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (Glinda).
The conversation between the two divas is almost like easedropping on a couple of besties conversing at happy hour. There’s a lot of dead air between tidbits even though the comments are alive in capturing their enthusiasm for the experience. Chu’s commentary is dry but not without occasional insight into the filmmaking process.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
The new 4K release from Arrow Films of Inglourious Basterds adds several newly recorded featurettes that are all replete with facts and anecdotes that add richness to the superb Ultra HD limited edition of Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 blockbuster. If anything the pulp retelling of history in Inglourious Basterds has only gotten better with time.
The bonus materials include new interviews crew and cast members, two visual essays, as well as film scholar Christine Leteux’ “Filmmaking in Occupied France,” which puts the historical reality of the era to fore with how Tarantino in some instances recreated it with amazing verisimilitude.
Editor Fred Raskin, Special Effects Supervisor Greg Nicotero, and actor Omar Doom (one of the Basterds) provide unique perspective looking back to events that unwound over fifteen-years ago. Also of interest are archival interviews and supplements, particularly one with Rod Taylor; and a commentary track by film historian Tim Ryan that explains the origin of every musical cue in the film.
PERFORMANCE
It’s interesting how Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell after co-directing the surreal gangster film Performance, released in 1970 although shot two years previously, went on to separately direct iconic Julie Christie performances in the now honored cult films Demon Seed and Don’t Look Now.
There are parts of Performance that easily rank among the best ever in British gangster cinema. Edward Fox is the member of a firm and his actions have rankled the kingpin. When a gang sent to kill him fails Fox goes underground hiding out in the cool part of London, renting the basement in the mansion of a reclusive former rock star (Mick Jagger in his first and breakthrough role).
Some of the imagery shows the equal vision of Cammell and Roeg. One balanced by light and visual perspective and the other by a unique insight into a person with multiple identities. There’s a kill shot in Performance where the bullet becomes the p.o.v. and enters the head hurtling through a vortex of brain vessel and thematic images related to the film.
Performance ends with a spectacular prototype rock video of Jagger singing “Memo To Turner” that mixes the characters in the film with yet another bit of suspended belief that defines the spine of Performance.
There’s a documentary on Cammell that examines the handful of movies he directed as well as his suicide. Another extra is a featurette on the film’s dialogue coach and technical advisor David Litvinoff who was himself a mobster whose facial cheeks were cut with a blade by the order of the Kray Brothers when they felt he betrayed them.
Any mobster in any British film released after the mid-60s is in some way a reference to the Krays.
