Lars von Trier

[therewillbeblus]

Has anyone here reviewed The Kingdom Trilogy Blu-Ray yet? It came out on Friday I think after being delayed multiple times (The delays reminded me of those of the Oldboy 4K UHD).

I don't think anyone's reviewed the BDs, but for what it's worth, I just rewatched Exodus and thought it looked great. Can't vouch for the original series, but given the alternative materials that've been available until now, and MUBI owning the rights across the core two prosperous regions for importing, I'd say it's an easy blind-buy if you like the show

[nicolas]

Has anyone here reviewed The Kingdom Trilogy Blu-Ray yet? It came out on Friday I think after being delayed multiple times (The delays reminded me of those of the Oldboy 4K UHD).

I don't think anyone's reviewed the BDs, but for what it's worth, I just rewatched Exodus and thought it looked great. Can't vouch for the original series, but given the alternative materials that've been available until now, and MUBI owning the rights across the core two prosperous regions for importing, I'd say it's an easy blind-buy if you like the show

Sounds wonderful! Mine has just shipped and I can’t wait. MUBI really developed into a great company for physical media. By now, their BDs are excellent and beautifully curated with things like separate subtitles for regular and SDH, multiple languages etc. For The Kingdom, they also adjusted the frame rate between the UK and US versions (I don’t know which is ultimately correct) and produced different, uncut discs for the US. I also love that they didn’t cram the discs to the brim á la Criterion but allowed healthy sizes for each episode, which I’m sure was / is beneficial for great encodes.

[Captain Paranoia]

I found this review of The Kingdom Trilogy Blu-Ray:
https://www.dvdexotica.com/2015/08/the- ... y-and.html

[andyli]

... and produced different, uncut discs for the US.

Are you implying that the UK set is cut? I'd prefer to get the 25fps version but then if it's cut it's a different matter.

[Peacock]

The UK version is uncut according to the blu-ray.com thread for the UK edition of this title. There was talk of cuts for animal cruelty as the original dvd was cut by around 5 seconds but those cuts were later reinstated.

[nicolas]

... and produced different, uncut discs for the US.

Are you implying that the UK set is cut? I'd prefer to get the 25fps version but then if it's cut it's a different matter.

No, I just went off a discussion on the other forum when it wasn’t yet confirmed that MUBI reinstated the formerly censored animal cruelty shots on the UK set. I took MUBI’s effort as positive as they authored different discs for both markets when they could have ported over everything as is. When I wrote my post, it seemed that the US set is even more attractive than the UK one with the possibility of no cuts and the original speed if they shot the series in 23.976fps. Apparently 25fps is the original speed, however there’s still some discussion going on regarding the audio pitch and which one is correct.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

... and produced different, uncut discs for the US.

Are you implying that the UK set is cut? I'd prefer to get the 25fps version but then if it's cut it's a different matter.

No, I just went off a discussion on the other forum when it wasn’t yet confirmed that MUBI reinstated the formerly censored animal cruelty shots on the UK set. I took MUBI’s effort as positive as they authored different discs for both markets when they could have ported over everything as is. When I wrote my post, it seemed that the US set is even more attractive than the UK one with the possibility of no cuts and the original speed if they shot the series in 23.976fps. Apparently 25fps is the original speed, however there’s still some discussion going on regarding the audio pitch and which one is correct.

This interesting. Wasn't aware of the possibly wrong framerate. They shot it on Super16, so 23.976fps is probably what they got from the shooting. But hard to know how much the messed with the OCR? We all know that they cropped it for 16:9 viewing instead of keeping it in its original 1.66:1 ratio, even though a cinephile Blu-ray release definitely calls for a presentation in the original AR.

[Captain Paranoia]

I’ve given the respective discs another look and have some good / bad news.

The House That Jack Built has the DC included - this is the same disc as the previous Artificial Eye release. (FWIW, the booklet included with the new Curzon set lists the runtime of the 146 minute version although that cut is not on the disc).

Regarding whether any of the BDs are downgrades, I unfortunately have to say yes - all the previously released films under the former Artificial Eye banner are inferior. This affects Breaking the Waves Antichrist, Melancholia, Nymphomaniac and The House… All other BDs, the newly encoded ones are exceptional and the reason you’d buy this set for.

For Breaking the Waves, the best alternative is the new Curzon 4K (I wish they included it in this set) hands down.

Melancholia has a plethora of versions available worldwide - I have the US Magnolia BD, gave it a try and it‘s a vastly superior encode. You don’t immediately see any difference during the prologue as that‘s a heavily processed image but later, once the "normal" digital footage starts, there is a big difference. The Curzon BD renders the digital noise as macroblocking, which is sadly noticeable as the noise is more present throughout the film. The Magnolia doesn’t appear to have any of that. That’s a gorgeous BD. If you have it, definitely keep it.

Antichrist has a Criterion BD - notable for including the original theatrical audio without alterations! That BD (BD-50) also looks vastly superior to the Curzon disc, which is a victim of early BD-era, low-bitrate encoding. The Curzon (BD-25) also runs at 25fps, which surely is the frame rate the film was shot in, but everything looks better on the 24fps Criterion.

Nymphomaniac (both parts) is closer, although the Magnolia BDs are both better. I can see and appreciate the difference but believe that they could have squeezed a little more depth and detail out of the source. These are not reference discs but also superior to the Curzon‘s, which are heavily blocky.

The House That Jack Built looks solid on the Curzon and is surely sufficient, although I‘m wondering whether another label delivered a better encode. I don’t have any other BD besides the one in the Potemkine set (irrelevant anyway) but I may give the Shout BD a try. I haven’t seen this film yet and only noticed that the digitally shot sequences appear to have very thick and visible noise in addition to a general lack of "crispness" the modern digital cameras have. This is LvT though, so other standards apply. The inserted shot-on-film clips look fine from what I saw.

I‘m deliberately not including the German Concorde BDs as potential alternatives as that label frequently produced terrible BDs in the past, of which I had way too many.

The German release of Antichrist looks pretty similar to the Criterion to me from looking on caps-a-holic - marginally better in all but the first cap. Of course it being in 25fps is the biggest advantage there. Melancholia is also supposed to be 25fps and I believe only the Swiss BD has that correct https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Melancho ... ray/80577/

Of course, if you are ripping the discs anyway, you can change the framerate manually to 25fps without reencoding

I stand corrected - Antichrist was released by a different distributor in Germany and Switzerland. The Swiss disc looks indeed very good but I think I‘m fine with my CC version. BTW, Kyle15 mentioned on the other forum that the old Curzon BD (also the one in the set) is actually the 1080p version but encoded in 1080i.

I didn’t know that Melancholia was also 25fps and had a Swiss BD in the correct speed. As this is one of my all-time favorites, I bought a cheap copy on eBay to check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.

How does the Swiss BD of Melancholia compare to the other releases, features and A/V quality wise?

[Peacock]

Are you implying that the UK set is cut? I'd prefer to get the 25fps version but then if it's cut it's a different matter.

No, I just went off a discussion on the other forum when it wasn’t yet confirmed that MUBI reinstated the formerly censored animal cruelty shots on the UK set. I took MUBI’s effort as positive as they authored different discs for both markets when they could have ported over everything as is. When I wrote my post, it seemed that the US set is even more attractive than the UK one with the possibility of no cuts and the original speed if they shot the series in 23.976fps. Apparently 25fps is the original speed, however there’s still some discussion going on regarding the audio pitch and which one is correct.

This interesting. Wasn't aware of the possibly wrong framerate. They shot it on Super16, so 23.976fps is probably what they got from the shooting. But hard to know how much the messed with the OCR? We all know that they cropped it for 16:9 viewing instead of keeping it in its original 1.66:1 ratio, even though a cinephile Blu-ray release definitely calls for a presentation in the original AR.

Super16 has no bearing on framerate. And 23.976 isn’t a film framerate anyway. The show was shot at 25fps like other European tv shows were at the time.

[nicolas]

The German release of Antichrist looks pretty similar to the Criterion to me from looking on caps-a-holic - marginally better in all but the first cap. Of course it being in 25fps is the biggest advantage there. Melancholia is also supposed to be 25fps and I believe only the Swiss BD has that correct https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Melancho ... ray/80577/

Of course, if you are ripping the discs anyway, you can change the framerate manually to 25fps without reencoding

I stand corrected - Antichrist was released by a different distributor in Germany and Switzerland. The Swiss disc looks indeed very good but I think I‘m fine with my CC version. BTW, Kyle15 mentioned on the other forum that the old Curzon BD (also the one in the set) is actually the 1080p version but encoded in 1080i.

I didn’t know that Melancholia was also 25fps and had a Swiss BD in the correct speed. As this is one of my all-time favorites, I bought a cheap copy on eBay to check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.

How does the Swiss BD of Melancholia compare to the other releases, features and A/V quality wise?

The Swiss BD is good. The encode is often solid but it has occasionally trouble with the highlights when it’s more noisy, particularly in darker scenes but also establishing shots like the one of the limousine right after the prologue. I haven’t imported the disc to check bitrates etc. and only looked at the stats in my player menu but the Magnolia US is higher for both picture and audio. If I had to guess, I’d say the Swiss BD compressed the 5.1 to 16-bit, which may have resulted in minor loss of overall dynamic.
Bonus features are the same making of featurettes on the Magnolia plus the Cannes press conference and the LvT audio commentary from the Curzon disc.

Edit: Just wanted to add that I A/B’d the Magnolia and the Swiss BDs to refresh my memory and what’s striking is that the infamous banding of the prologue’s fade in is much, much better on the Swiss BD in 25fps. I’m no expert when it comes to frame rates and conversions though, so can’t really comment further.
And another thing about black levels: The Magnolia has lighter black levels but no raised gamma levels throughout as the text cards of the film’s acts are purely black (I didn’t remember this as it’s been a while since I watched the film). Due to noticing this, I’ll give both discs a detailed look and import them in my computer. The audio on the Magnolia is stronger to my ears though. The best of both worlds is probably in the middle of both of these discs. I’ll have more to say here in a few days.

[nicolas]

I stand corrected - Antichrist was released by a different distributor in Germany and Switzerland. The Swiss disc looks indeed very good but I think I‘m fine with my CC version. BTW, Kyle15 mentioned on the other forum that the old Curzon BD (also the one in the set) is actually the 1080p version but encoded in 1080i.

I didn’t know that Melancholia was also 25fps and had a Swiss BD in the correct speed. As this is one of my all-time favorites, I bought a cheap copy on eBay to check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.

How does the Swiss BD of Melancholia compare to the other releases, features and A/V quality wise?

The Swiss BD is good. The encode is often solid but it has occasionally trouble with the highlights when it’s more noisy, particularly in darker scenes but also establishing shots like the one of the limousine right after the prologue. I haven’t imported the disc to check bitrates etc. and only looked at the stats in my player menu but the Magnolia US is higher for both picture and audio. If I had to guess, I’d say the Swiss BD compressed the 5.1 to 16-bit, which may have resulted in minor loss of overall dynamic.
Bonus features are the same making of featurettes on the Magnolia plus the Cannes press conference and the LvT audio commentary from the Curzon disc.

Edit: Just wanted to add that I A/B’d the Magnolia and the Swiss BDs to refresh my memory and what’s striking is that the infamous banding of the prologue’s fade in is much, much better on the Swiss BD in 25fps. I’m no expert when it comes to frame rates and conversions though, so can’t really comment further.
And another thing about black levels: The Magnolia has lighter black levels but no raised gamma levels throughout as the text cards of the film’s acts are purely black (I didn’t remember this as it’s been a while since I watched the film). Due to noticing this, I’ll give both discs a detailed look and import them in my computer. The audio on the Magnolia is stronger to my ears though. The best of both worlds is probably in the middle of both of these discs. I’ll have more to say here in a few days.

I've now imported both BDs and compared them. As suspected, the audio on the Swiss BD is 16-bit and the file is half the size compared to the gorgeous 24-bit track on the Magnolia. For those with high-end audio setups, this may be a dealbreaker. For PQ, the Swiss BD is clearly superior. I'm sorry for praising the Magnolia so highly but I had no comparison until looking at the BDs side-by-side. I thought the rather milky blacks on the Magnolia were part of LvT's intended look but it appears that this is not the case. To put it this way, I wouldn't ever rule anything out when it comes to him and his Dogma past, hence me blindly "accepting" the Magnolia look. Colors on the Swiss BD are richer, deeper and more beautiful - definitely appropriate for this most gorgeous film - likely the result of properly set gamma values on that disc. The unfortunate downside is that the Swiss BD is OOP. As mentioned, I bought a used copy on eBay for around 10 euros but upon a quick search just now, there isn't a single copy listed for sale. Maybe there are other equally solid or even better alternatives available around the world, such as from Japan or Korea. Korea's Plain Archive did a magnificent set of (expensive!) collector's editions for example but I'm yet to discover anything of merit about the discs themselves beyond the packaging.

Brief screenshot comparison: https://slow.pics/c/xLC7OiJg

[M-A]

The only difference between 16-bit and 24-bit audio is dynamic range. It's similar to the difference between putting an HDR grade in a 4,000nit or 10,000nit container, as in the content probably doesn't demand the difference between 16 and 24, and even if it did, you wouldn't want your setup that loud anyway (16bit is capable of 96dB of dynamic range, very loud), so the difference between 16bit and 24bit is largely arbitrary

[nicolas]

The only difference between 16-bit and 24-bit audio is dynamic range. It's similar to the difference between putting an HDR grade in a 4,000nit or 10,000nit container, as in the content probably doesn't demand the difference between 16 and 24, and even if it did, you wouldn't want your setup that loud anyway (16bit is capable of 96dB of dynamic range, very loud), so the difference between 16bit and 24bit is largely arbitrary

Thanks for letting me know - as always very interesting. What about the difference in file size? The Swiss’ 16-bit track is at around 1.5 GB and the Magnolia 24-bit slightly above 3 GB. When comparing them, the latter is louder and more dynamic. In this case, the switch from 24-bit to 16-bit and the resulting compression of the file size appears to have taken at least some audible information away. Compared to something like the Eagle UHD of The Conformist where it doesn’t matter at all if the audio is encoded in DD or PCM as the audio‘s range is very limited, Melancholia is stunning when Mahler plays. FWIW, I immediately heard a significant difference during the prologue once I played the Swiss BD.

[M-A]

Thanks for letting me know - as always very interesting. What about the difference in file size? The Swiss’ 16-bit track is at around 1.5 GB and the Magnolia 24-bit slightly above 3 GB. When comparing them, the latter is louder and more dynamic. In this case, the switch from 24-bit to 16-bit and the resulting compression of the file size appears to have taken at least some audible information away. Compared to something like the Eagle UHD of The Conformist where it doesn’t matter at all if the audio is encoded in DD or PCM as the audio‘s range is very limited, Melancholia is stunning when Mahler plays. FWIW, I immediately heard a significant difference during the prologue once I played the Swiss BD.

The track on the Magnolia is probably just set a bit louder (not due to the 16bit vs 24bit difference, but because they applied a positive gain on the audio). Lossless compression is less efficient on louder audio tracks, so this probably explains the larger file size difference than one would expect. When one track is played quieter and another identical track is played louder, the louder one will naturally sound better, even if they are the exact same.

So I think the difference you are noticing is due to one of three things:

• The Magnolia is set at a higher volume, and the difference would disappear if they were volume matched
• The two tracks are actually mastered completely differently, not just the bit depth
• Placebo because of the expectation that the 24bit track would sound better

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

No, I just went off a discussion on the other forum when it wasn’t yet confirmed that MUBI reinstated the formerly censored animal cruelty shots on the UK set. I took MUBI’s effort as positive as they authored different discs for both markets when they could have ported over everything as is. When I wrote my post, it seemed that the US set is even more attractive than the UK one with the possibility of no cuts and the original speed if they shot the series in 23.976fps. Apparently 25fps is the original speed, however there’s still some discussion going on regarding the audio pitch and which one is correct.

This interesting. Wasn't aware of the possibly wrong framerate. They shot it on Super16, so 23.976fps is probably what they got from the shooting. But hard to know how much the messed with the OCR? We all know that they cropped it for 16:9 viewing instead of keeping it in its original 1.66:1 ratio, even though a cinephile Blu-ray release definitely calls for a presentation in the original AR.

Super16 has no bearing on framerate. And 23.976 isn’t a film framerate anyway. The show was shot at 25fps like other European tv shows were at the time.

Do you have a source for this? I was also mainly referring to the post production where Trier certainly worked a lot with the negatives.

Another thing: Do we know anything about the 2.0 track that's included on the Mubi? Is that a fold-down or is it the original stereo track used for the tv airing? The Plaion set that I have only includes the DTS-HD MA 5.1.

[tenia]

The difference in size comes solely from calculatory aspects in such cases.
LPCM 5.1 tracks would be 6912 kbps in 48/24, but 4608 kbps in 48/16. In my experience, once encoded in DTS HD MA and depending on the content, 5.1 tracks will usually end up around 4 Mbps at 48/24, 2.2 Mbps at 48/16, ie a compression rate of around 45% for 48/24 and around 53% for 48/16, so pretty much hovering around 50% in both cases.
That's NOT taking into account anything else than a core at 1509 kbps, though. Encoding DTS HD MA at smaller cores (1304, 1152 or 768) will further more decreasing the average bitrates and thus the soundtracks sizes.

[Peacock]

This interesting. Wasn't aware of the possibly wrong framerate. They shot it on Super16, so 23.976fps is probably what they got from the shooting. But hard to know how much the messed with the OCR? We all know that they cropped it for 16:9 viewing instead of keeping it in its original 1.66:1 ratio, even though a cinephile Blu-ray release definitely calls for a presentation in the original AR.

Super16 has no bearing on framerate. And 23.976 isn’t a film framerate anyway. The show was shot at 25fps like other European tv shows were at the time.

Do you have a source for this? I was also mainly referring to the post production where Trier certainly worked a lot with the negatives.

Source for which part? You’ll have to Google the difference between 23.98 and 24 to learn it but 23.98 is not possible with film cameras, it’s an NTSC framerate for television. Film cameras can only record whole numbers. There has never been an analogue film or tv show recorded at 23.98fps anywhere in the world.

As for the original frame rate of the show - you can find various people stating the original frame rate on various forums online including in the comments of this review . Denmark shoots television shows at 25fps. It did then and it still does now. I work in television in Europe and this is still mostly the standard here, and certainly always was before. There’s no reason why The Kingdom would be the sole outlier at the time of shooting in 24fps unless it was an English language show being produced primarily for the American market. And why would Mubi release it additionally in 25fps on Blu-ray if it was originally a 24fps show? That’s a waste of money and time. There’s just no logical reason why the show would have been allowed to have been shot at 24 and no one involved has ever come forward saying it was anything other than 25fps so the question is sort of pointless.

[blueyes]

What an odd explanation…
Isn’t 24fps the result of using film and 25 of using video?
In which case using super 16 would likely result in 24 fps?

[tenia]

What an odd explanation…
Isn’t 24fps the result of using film and 25 of using video?
In which case using super 16 would likely result in 24 fps?

Perfectly feasible to shoot at 25fps on film, that's what routinely happened in Europe to match PAL TV showings because of 50 Hz (see the known case of Berlin Alexanderplatz).
It can be a certain rule of thumb that film shoots usually are 24fps (I mean, past silent movies), but it's not because of a technical constraint, just because most shoots were integrated in an ecosystem made for 24fps. However, when you're not, shooting at 25fps is a technically very possible option.

[andyli]

What an odd explanation…
Isn’t 24fps the result of using film and 25 of using video?
In which case using super 16 would likely result in 24 fps?

A film camera does not have to run at 24 frames per second, does it? I don't know exactly how it works, but there must be some mechanism with the device that can change shooting frame rate, like about any film production during the silent era?

[blueyes]

Oh, absolutely
And slow motion is shot at different accelerated rates, for example
I just meant what I always understood to be the main explanation for having stuff in 25, but I may be totally wrong

[blueyes]

What an odd explanation…
Isn’t 24fps the result of using film and 25 of using video?
In which case using super 16 would likely result in 24 fps?

Perfectly feasible to shoot at 25fps on film, that's what routinely happened in Europe to match PAL TV showings because of 50 Hz (see the known case of Berlin Alexanderplatz).
It can be a certain rule of thumb that film shoots usually are 24fps (I mean, past silent movies), but it's not because of a technical constraint, just because most shoots were integrated in an ecosystem made for 24fps. However, when you're not, shooting at 25fps is a technically very possible option.

I see. So a director would shoot on film to have certain characteristics to the visuals, but in 25fps because they know it will be shown in that rate? Makes sense!

[Peacock]

Video can be any framerate. Sometimes I shoot 23.98 sometimes 24 sometimes 25. Other times even random frame rates such as 32. And of course silent frame rates were all over the place when it came to film - 11fps, 16, 18 etc. Things became standardised for shooting 24fps due to the advent of sound and needing a uniform projection speed so the sound played back at the correct speed.

25fps began being used for filming television broadcast in 50hz zones. I can’t tell you who came up with it or what issue they had with 24fps footage being broadcast, I imagine some kind of ghosting or juddering. But yeah until the digital era television in Europe was strictly 25 or 50fps.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Thanks for the link and thanks for the clarification, Peacock! So my Plaion has all the extras and the set runs at the correct rate of 25fps. However, it still only contains the 5.1 soundtracks and excludes the original 2.0's which the Mubis retain... This kind of ruins it a bit for me because the 5.1, no matter how expertly done, is revisionist work, no? Is there any information on the surround track anywhere? It was not included on the DVDs, and I'm not even sure if the 35mm theatrical cut that I saw not many years ago had surround sound.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

...and of course there's still the cropping issue which is a missed opportunity. But I still think it's better than the old 4:3 presentation which was not only severely cropped in the sides, but also suffered from a bit of horizontal squeezing making way for long faces.