Deliverance (1972)

ok

this movie is ok i had buy because believe it or not i never seen it before. it was ok, but not too thrilling. December 26, 2008

NEEDS REMASTERING. FILM: Wonderful. Transfer: Not so much...

The transfer of this film appears to be the same MPEG transfer as the one used for the DVD version. It DOES NOT appear to be a new 1080p 4k re-mastering of the film. This is not to say that it doesn't look much better in Blu-Ray than it does on DVD. But it is not, evidently, a brand new 1080p 4k transfer made expressly for Blu-Ray release. This can cause some problems, depending on your display system and settings. You may have to select a different input palette or profile on your display, or adjust your settings.

If your system is setup to show Blu-Ray films using the "Cinema" and "Movie" profile of your display, which assumes a low contrast, subdued display of a wide range source that takes full advantage of the display's capabilities, then this film may look washed out, have milky blacks and generally be displeasing. You may have to select a "Standard" profile, with a narrower contrast band, higher gamma and so forth, to bring the film back into the range for which it was originally transferred. Doing so with this film yields remarkable results, it suddenly "snaps to" and produces the sort of effect you were after with a Blu-Ray disc.

As happened in past generations of video standards, VHS to LaserDisc, LaserDisc to DVD, standard definition 480i to "high def" 1080i, and now 480p progressive scan DVD to 1080p Blu-Ray, the studios are cutting corners and, with some titles, re-issuing transfers that were "pretty good" for the prior standard on newer media without re-mastering them for the full potential of the newer media.

Many, if not most, of the Blu-Ray discs I have seen have been remastered at the highest levels with all the capability of Blu-Ray in mind. If you have a 1080p display, and have properly adjusted and configured it, then you are probably in video and film heaven.

Sadly, some major film titles are being "shoved out there" with just their old 1080 MPEG transfers, re-issued on the new Blu-Ray format. This appears to be one of them. If you adjust your display properly, for what's on the disc, you will get very good results. But don't expect it to look great with the settings you would use for a properly made, new 4k transfer for Blu-Ray.

December 2, 2008

Only 30 years late in seeing this movie

I think I'm one of the only baby boomers who hasn't seen this movie. Not a bad movie considering the technology available at the time. October 6, 2008

Dull and overrated

New on the Fox Network: When Good Movies Go Bad!
Or, a review of John Boorman's 1972 film Deliverance, which he produced and directed, based upon James Dickey's 1970 novel of the same name. Dickey also wrote the screenplay, which explains a lot, especially if you are familiar with his `poetry.' The actual look of the film, however, is sensational. The cinematography of nature, by Vilmos Zsigmond, is still stunning after thirty-five years- especially those scenes shot in twilight, dusk, and night, and the first forty-five or so minutes sets the basis of a good tale which could have been something really special. Then, Dickey digs into his own personal bag of fetishes (his most famous poem is The Sheep Child, about bestiality) and latencies and the film becomes an almost nonstop stream of a narrative propelled by the Dumbest Possible Action theory of film.
Although the coinage of that term arrived a few years later than this film, Deliverance is as fine an example of that genre as there is. The term arrived in the early 1980s, when a spate of slasher films from the Halloween to the Nightmare On Elm Street to the Friday The 13th series, to their even cheaper knockoffs, were always dependent upon the early success of their villains stemming from the utter stupidity of their victims, to wit: big breasted cheerleader is alone in a dark house, hears a scream from down an even darker hallway, yet rushes headlong toward the scream, all the while knowing that a serial killer is lurking about. In similar fashion, this film goes from a realistic portrayal of masculine mores to a silly, unrealistic, A to B to C pointless film. The turning point comes when one of the four male leads is sodomized forcefully by a hillbilly and his toothless gun-toting crony.... the film finally founders because it lacks real situations, characters, and philosophy. After all, it's difficult to get truly philosophic after a character's been torpedoed by a hillbilly, and so a film that could have been a realistic and philosophic exploration of characters, and male character, devolves into a ridiculous melodrama of revenge, deceit, and perversion. Boorman is a noted filmmaker, but he's never been considered one of the great auteurs, and a film like Deliverance shows why. Some have accused me of gleeing in bad art. I don't. But needling the bad is a palliative over the depression bad art brings. This is especially true when a work of art could have been good, even great, but actively chooses to demean itself and its audience. This film proves that while James Dickey's body died in 1997, something far more essential died long before, or was never birthed; and in that I'm not talking about anything to do with morality. When you've figured out what that was, you'll understand Deliverance a whole lot better.
September 10, 2008

Item never received.

This item was ordered over 4 weeks ago and was never received. I have emailed the seller twice and am yet to receive the movie. September 7, 2008

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