Released at the back end of last year, I received the Japanese BD of
The Osterman Weekend today:
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I’ve not had time to watch it through all the way, but I’ve sampled a few scenes and compared them with the Region A Anchor Bay BD.
The good:
- We have some grain in the image! The Anchor Bay was scrubbed unnaturally clean.
- The colours are a lot more natural. This is immediately apparent in the skin tones, which were pushed heavily toward the red in the AB release. Also, the curtains on the four-poster bed now appear white instead of purple.
- Better extras, most significantly Peckinpah’s original cut of the film, which was on the old AB DVD, but didn’t make the transition to BD until now.
- 16-page booklet included.
The bad:
- Some speckles remain in the image, as well as slight instability in the same places as the AB. I’d say this is from the same basic transfer, just not manipulated with as heavy a hand.
- The bit rate is significantly lower than the AB, due to the amount of extras on the disc. I can’t give you an exact average, but somewhere around 22-24 Mbps, at a guess. Personally, I could do without the 4:3 version of the film, which is a pointless inclusion, IMO.
So, still not the definitive version, but a definite upgrade over the Anchor Bay BD.