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separate 4k & BD releases

First DVD-R only Warner Archive title to be upgraded to Blu from a boutique label?

My write up from the Noir List

domino harvey wrote: Thu May 18, 2017 5:22 am Marlowe (Paul Bogart 1969) James Garner is Marlowe in the land of hippies and gangsters and starlets, oh my. Garner plays the role like he’s in a sitcom, which occasionally works for the part but he lacks the patheticism and charm of the best embodiers of the role. The mystery here is typically convoluted Chandler, no more, no less. On the bright side, Rita Moreno (who has some incredible wigs in this film) does a ridiculous climactic striptease in full-on pasties and g-string. So, if that’s on your bucket list, here you go.

Thank you Finch!

I can thoroughly recommend the novel, but I already had a copy so the LE didn't appeal overmuch to me.

So I'm very glad I waited!

I mean, this one is really most famous for Bruce Lee's single scene as a thug brought in to systematically destroy Garner's sterotypical Private Eye office with his kung fu skills, one of those small bit-part stereotypical roles that along with his Kato sidekick in The Green Hornet (and losing out on the lead role in the Kung Fu series to David Carradine) probably showed that if he stayed trying to make a career in Hollywood he was never going to get cast in the leading man roles that he was aiming for, suggesting that the Hong Kong industry was the logical path to take.

This used to be a frequent player on UK TCM.

colinr0380 wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2026 8:51 pm I mean, this one is really most famous for Bruce Lee's single scene as a thug brought in to systematically destroy Garner's sterotypical Private Eye office with his kung fu skills, one of those small bit-part stereotypical roles that along with his Kato sidekick in The Green Hornet probably showed that if he stayed trying to make a career in Hollywood he was never going to get cast in the leading man roles that he was aiming for, suggesting that the Hong Kong industry was the logical path to take.

Bruce actually has two scenes, but the second one is a bigger humiliation to him then that cardboard cut-out in Game of Death!

I think I had wiped all memory of the second scene from my mind Orlac! I mostly just see the Bruce Lee scene here as in a similar vein to that bizarre non-sequitur moment in Cruising where Al Pacino is slapped around in the interrogation cell!

Apparently, there's a claim that the existing audio track might be "too low"?
https://blah-ray.blogspot.com/search/la ... %281971%29

Is Arrow able to look into that?

@ChunkyLover

I believe that it was a typo, he likely meant to say that the Umbrella release was pitched HIGHER than the old BD. The pitch of the Umbrella release matches the US trailer so I'm more inclined to believe that it's correct on their release and the old BD is what was too low. It honestly sounds like that Umbrella's release had newly restored audio so I hope that Arrow uses that track for their release.

DahError404 wrote: Sat Mar 28, 2026 5:16 amIt honestly sounds like that Umbrella's release had newly restored audio so I hope that Arrow uses that track for their release.

An Arrow spokesman has already confirmed in this thread that their disc will feature the exact same encode as the Umbrella one—by which I mean Fidelity in Motion's David Mackenzie is literally cutting and pasting the final encoded video file from the Umbrella disc build to the Arrow disc build. So the main feature will look and sound absolutely identical, right down to the individual pixel.

(The same will be true of the upcoming Indicator and Vinegar Syndrome releases of Macabre—although menus and navigation will be in the respective label's regular house style, the feature and extras will be the exact same video files, as there's absolutely no point in duplicating that effort unnecessarily.)

In a densely overpopulated, starving New York City of the future, NYPD detective Robert Thorn investigates the murder of an executive at rations manufacturer Soylent Corporation. With the help of elderly academic Solomon "Sol" Roth, Thorn begins to make real progress -- until the governor mysteriously pulls the plug. Obsessed with the mystery, Thorn steps out from behind the badge and launches his own investigation into the murder.

4K ULTRA HD LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
• Brand new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative by Arrow Films
• 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
• Original lossless mono audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Archive audio commentary with director Richard Fleischer and star Leigh Taylor-Young
• Brand new audio commentary with film historian Michael Brooke and author Johnny Mains
• Charlton Heston at the BFI, an archive on-stage interview with the star of Soylent Green
• Richard Fleisher at the BFl, an archive onstage interview with the director of Soylent Green
• A Look at the World of Soylent Green, a vintage featurette
• MGM’s Tribute to Edward G. Robinson’s 101st Film, a vintage featurette
• Theatrical trailer
• Image galleries
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Nathanael Marsh
• Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing by Frank Collins and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas”

A TALE OF URBAN REALITY

In 1993, director Joel Schumacher (Flatliners) delivered one of the most provocative studio thrillers of the decade with Falling Down, a darkly comic, razor-sharp portrait of modern urban frustration starring Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall at their very best. On a sweltering Los Angeles morning, a man known only as "D-Fens" (Douglas) abandons his car in a gridlocked traffic jam and sets off across the city on foot. He just wants to go home, but his path is marred by increasing everyday irritations that escalate into explosive confrontations, leaving a trail of violence in his wake. Trying to piece together these events is veteran cop Prendergast (Duvall), whose quiet final day before retirement becomes a chaotic hunt for a dangerous man on the edge. As the paths of these two very different men converge, the question of whether D-Fens is a victim of an oppressive society, or a man showing his true colors becomes unavoidable. Shocking, darkly funny, and eerily prescient, Falling Down remains one of the most unforgettable portraits of rage in modern American cinema. Now restored in stunning 4K, this controversial cult classic looks sharper and hits harder than ever before.


4K ULTRA HD LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

• Brand new 4K restoration by Arrow Films approved by cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak
• 4K UHD (2160p) Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
• Newly restored original lossless stereo 2.0 and DTS-HD MA 4.0 surround audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Archival audio commentary by director Joel Schumacher, editor Paul Hirsch, screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith, LA Times writer Shawn Hubler, and actors Michael Douglas, Michael Paul Chan, Vondie Curtis-Hall, and Frederic Forrest
• Man on the Edge, a brand new interview with screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith
• At War with the World, a brand new interview with composer James Newton Howard
• Going Home, a brand new location featurette revisiting the real-life Los Angeles sites used in Falling Down
• Deconstructing D-Fens, an archival interview with Michael Douglas
• Original trailer
• Image gallery
• Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by film critics Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Simon Ward

One of the WB library titles I most wanted Arrow to have a crack at, in all honesty. Glad we finally got there.

Great fun, probably Joel Schumacher's finest hour (though I do have a soft spot for The Client) and one of Michael Douglas' best too. More stuff like this please, Arrow. Big month for Robert Duvall heads.

Mainly because of the Robert Duvall character seeming very similar to Spencer Tracy's (i.e. always on the phone to his wife, and watching the rampage from a 'safe distance' until the finale), I now like thinking of this as the "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" of sociopolitical films!

(I guess that makes Michael Douglas the Jonathan Winters equivalent? Probably not Ethel Merman. )

TWO DESPERADOS... ONE HELLCAT... AND A SAMURAI... THE GREATEST FIGHTING FORCE THE WEST HAS EVER KNOWN!

Cultures collide in Terence Young's 'East Meets West' classic Red Sun. Shot in Almería, Spain, and starring four intercontinental superstars - America's Charles Bronson (The Great Escape), Japan's Toshiro Mifune (Yojimbo), Switzerland's Ursula Andress (Dr. No), and France's Alain Delon (Le Samouraï) - Red Sun is a Western with a global flair like no other! A ceremonial Samurai sword intended as a gift to the U.S. President from the Japanese ambassador is stolen by the devilish rogue, Gauche (Delon). To restore their honor and return the sword to its rightful owner, disgraced samurai Kuroda Jubei (Mifune), double-crossed bandit Link Stuart (Bronson), and femme fatale Christina (Andress) must set aside their differences and hunt down the merciless Gauche across the beautiful vistas of the American west. Red Sun has something for everyone: samurai swords, revolvers, grandiose set pieces, and an exquisite score from Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia). Uncover this hidden gem of a western in this astonishing 4K UHD presentation.

4K ULTRA HD LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

• 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
• Original lossless English mono audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Brand new audio commentary by critics C. Courtney Joyner and Henry Parke
• A Global Western, a brand new appreciation of the film by scholar Jose Arroyo
• The Ghosts of the Samurai, a brand new visual essay by Daisuke Miyao
• The Man with the Gold Tooth, a new appreciation of Alain Delon by Mark Gallagher
• Pour le Cinéma, an archival behind-the scenes look at the film
• Un Journal du Cinéma, an archival television interview with Terence Young and Toshiro Mifune
• Theatrical trailer
• Image gallery
• Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing by Paul Talbot and Moya Luckett
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned art by Robert Sammelin

Is it embarrassing to admit that I thought that Radiance were releasing this when they announced they were releasing a film called Red Sun? I watched that version and was confused for the first 30 minutes as to why Alain Delon, Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune, or Ursula Andress hadn't appeared yet.

Quick question for James F, since I see he's executing producing this release : while there is (IMO) a clear legitimacy at regrading such restorations, what references were used in this case and for Red Sun's ? Is this a matter of solely removing the lab's color-signature, or to match physical references (and in this case, which ones ?) ?

Good question! I’d like to add The House with Laughing Windows to the list. Arrow‘s grade is noticeably different to the original grade and the Shameless re-grade that looks a lot more film-like to me.

The scene where he’s in the car and the traffic is getting to him, with James Newton Howard’s music amplifying the tension is so unbearably tense it clearly sets the tone for everything after it.

I wonder if that opening incident in Falling Down had a strange influence on adverts in the following years, or if things like the Carlsberg ad and the Prudential one were just tapping in to the same idea in the zeitgeist of traffic jams as the modern equivalent of purgatory!

(I suppose that this all came to a climax with Cronenberg's adaptation of Crash! Don DeLillo's novel Cosmopolis probably also put the cap on traffic jams as metaphors for a while)

And I suppose The Doom Generation (NSFW) did Falling Down's convenience store scene from the opposite way around!

This came out when my formerly chainsmoking boss was trying to give up, although he made the Michael Douglas character seem like the epitome of conciliatory reasonableness.

(I've rarely been more thrilled to see someone lighting up again, even though we shared an office.)

4K ULTRA HD BLU--RAY LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

• 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
• Original lossless stereo audio
• Optional remixed DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary by actor Alex Winter and producer Scoot Kroopf
• Audio commentary by co-writers/co-producers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon
• Bill and Ted Go to Hell, a 2016 retrospective documentary, featuring interviews with Reeves, Winter, Kroopf, Matheson, production designer David L. Snyder, production illustrator Simon Murton, and actors William Sadler, Amy Stock-Poynton and Hal Landon Jr.
• The Most Triumphant Making Of, a 2005 retrospective making-of featurette, featuring interviews with Winter, Kroopf, Matheson, Solomon, Hewitt, and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure director Stephen Herek and production designer Roy Forge Smith
• Score!, a 2005 interview with guitarist Steve Vai
• Air Guitar Tutorial
• Vintage behind-the-scenes EPK from 1991
• The Linguistic Stylings of Bill & Ted, a 2005 decoding our heroes’ distinctive verbal quirks
• Theatrical trailer
• Image gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options
• Collectors’ booklet featuring original production notes and a Bill & Ted Speak glossary

Brand new 4K remasters of both the Director's Cut and Theatrical Cut of the film from the original 35mm camera negative by Arrow Films
Collectors' booklet featuring new writing on the film by Priscilla Page and Laurie Maguire and an excerpt from the original production notes
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Strain
DISC 1: THEATRICAL CUT

High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation of the Theatrical Cut
Original lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio plus stereo audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
DISC 2: DIRECTOR'S CUT

High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation of the Director's Cut
Original lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio plus stereo audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Troy Revisited, an archival introduction by director Wolfgang Petersen
DISC 3: EXTRAS

In Movie Experience, an archive picture-in-picture commentary of the film
Troy in Focus, a series of archival behind-the scenes featurettes
In the Thick of Battle, an archival behind-the-scenes featurette
From Ruins to Reality, an archival behind-the-scenes featurette
Troy: An Effects Odyssey, an archival behind-the-scenes featurette
Attacking Troy, an archival behind-the-scenes featurette
Gallery of the Gods, an archival introduction to the Greek Gods
Easter egg
Trailer
Image galleries

TBC