Blu-ray earthquake

Cinematographer Philip H. Lathrop was nominated for an Oscar for his beautiful widescreen imagery of Earthquake, a demanding task that required him to harmonize minitatures, opticals and full-scale practical effects into a convincing whole. Universal's 1080p, VC-1/encoded Blu-ray presentation of Lathrop's work is certainly watchable and, in some circles, might even be considered superior—that is, unless you are one of those finicky viewers who happens to like the look of film.

Let's start with the positives. The image is generally sharp and detailed, remarkably so for the anamorphic lenses and film stocks of this particular era. (Hold that thought for a moment.) The blacks are solid and deep, which is essential for the night scenes and the extended sequences in tunnels and underground. The colors are vivid, varied and well-saturated, which is crucial to the look of Southern California and the frequently hilarious Seventies fashions. My viewing companion remarked on the darkness of many of the fleshtones, but in this era in California, dark tans were the norm. People worried far less about sun damage than they do today. Some of the characters (e.g., Geneviève Bujold's Denise) are meant to be fair-skinned, and they look the part.

Now let's talk about that sharpness. It isn't the natural look of the original cinematography. Rather, it's an electronically induced sharpness of the subtle kind that doesn't create edge halos but does distort the film's grain pattern so that it no longer moves in a smooth and natural fashion. Instead, we get what I call (and this is not a technical term) a "dirty" image, that is, an image with a thin layer of video noise that is most easily observed in light-colored expanses such as the sky. At its most extreme, this phenomenon causes portions of the frame to shimmer in a manner similar to aliasing, but fortunately these occasions are rare. In general, though, the entire Blu-ray looks as if someone had turned up the sharpness control on your TV set. On screencaps, the noise may not be readily evident; it is sometimes even mistaken for grain. In motion, it is unmistakable.

It's unfortunate that Universal seems to be continuing their efforts to make film look like video, because they're doing everything else right. They've put Earthquake on a BD-50, allowed it a generous average bitrate of 31.61 Mbps and avoided any compression artifacts. The "dirty" video noise isn't a dealbreaker, but why add it in the first place?

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