'Eyes Wide Shut' - High-Def Digest review

[jed]

Peter's review of 'Eyes Wide Shut' is up. He says this one's probably the weakest of the Kubrick films hittingf high-def this week, held back by a bit noisy, oversaturated, washed-out transfer, and a bland soundtrack. On the bright side, at least a nice selection of fresh extras provide some welcome context.

Full review here
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/378/eyeswideshut.html

[Arkadin]

interesting. I guess I'm a little dissapointed the pq isn't better, but given that I've been waiting forever (I refused to buy the censored sd version) to see this, I'm still very psyched.

[Spideybat]

Mine arrives today. Can't wait to hear that single piano key over and over.

[Jared]

Brilliant film, looking forward to receiving my shipment from Warner. It's very odd that the disc seems to be missing the R-rated theatrical version though.

[ben1080p]

Definitly skipping this one...didnt like it that much.

[HomeTheatreFreak]

Over-saturated colors? Thats what Kubrick was after and its 100% intentional. See its really comments like that that make me have very little respect for reviews here. Marking down Eyes Wide Shut for having a very saturated palette is mind boggling.

[cash]

Originally Posted by HomeTheatreFreak

Over-saturated colors? Thats what Kubrick was after and its 100% intentional. See its really comments like that that make me have very little respect for reviews here. Marking down Eyes Wide Shut for having a very saturated palette is mind boggling.

remember though, thats just one reviewers opinion. it doesn't really matter what Kubrick was going for, but what the viewer likes to see

[ed081873]

Originally Posted by HomeTheatreFreak

Over-saturated colors? Thats what Kubrick was after and its 100% intentional. See its really comments like that that make me have very little respect for reviews here. Marking down Eyes Wide Shut for having a very saturated palette is mind boggling.

Im a huge fan of Eyes Wide Shut, and was a bit put off by this review. In your opinion, what would you give the picture quality?

[Nismo]

This is supposed to be "Unrated" correct? My copy just arrived....& much to my surprise....
box art lists: "Rated R!" Also, it lists running time of 159min., same as original Rated R DVD.

Amazon has it listed as NC-17, DVD Empire has it NR, the box says R, & Mr. Bracke has it Unrated. Any thoughts on the confusion? I haven't watched it yet to see what is actually on disc. Maybe/hopefully Warner just has a "typo" on the box art?

Anyone else??

[Devil N]

Originally Posted by Nismo

This is supposed to be "Unrated" correct? My copy just arrived....& much to my surprise....
box art lists: "Rated R!" Also, it lists running time of 159min., same as original Rated R DVD.

Amazon has it listed as NC-17, DVD Empire has it NR, the box says R, & Mr. Bracke has it Unrated. Any thoughts on the confusion? I haven't watched it yet to see what is actually on disc. Maybe/hopefully Warner just has a "typo" on the box art?

Anyone else??

From the review:

(Note: The back packaging of both the HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of 'Eyes Wide Shut' appears to contain one major gaffe. The box claims that the film's R-rated and Unrated versions are both included on the disc, each selectable before the film begins. However, so far as I've been able to determine, there's no such option anywhere on the disc. Instead, this release seems to contain only the Unrated version of the film. Given the outcry that greeted the censored R-rated version upon the film's theatrical release in the US, here's guessing few will complain about its apparent absence here.)

[Josh Z]

Originally Posted by Nismo

This is supposed to be "Unrated" correct? My copy just arrived....& much to my surprise....
box art lists: "Rated R!" Also, it lists running time of 159min., same as original Rated R DVD.

The R-rated and Unrated versions of the movie are the exact same length. The only difference is that the Unrated removes digitally-animated figures who were inserted into the orgy sequence to block the view of some of the sex.

[John32]

Originally Posted by Spideybat

Mine arrives today. Can't wait to hear that single piano key over and over.

Dude, I agree loved that weird soundtrack and even picked up a copy back when this film was released!

I am awaiting my copy from Barnes & Noble.com set to arrive by Monday. I actually enjoyed this movie and it's Kubrick so it's not going to be to everbody's taste. I do hope that the transfer is better than I'm being led to believe based on the review, though. So far, 'The Shining' HD DVD is amazing and I anxiously await '2001' probably on
Monday as well, arriving.

[Digital Man5]

Originally Posted by HomeTheatreFreak

Over-saturated colors? Thats what Kubrick was after and its 100% intentional. See its really comments like that that make me have very little respect for reviews here. Marking down Eyes Wide Shut for having a very saturated palette is mind boggling.

I don't know that that's really fair on either end. Now, granted, I'm a bit biased as I happen to enjoy the reviews here more than virtually anywhere else on the net, but I'd say you're just as right as they are, imo.

For movies like this, 300, Traffic and Miami Vice, the director has either filmed it in a way that allows for heavy "graining", or there is artificial grain added in the post process. So, you're right, with all the natural lighting in the film(EWS), it just simply allows for the grain and saturation we see, but it was the director's intent(as you mentioned).

At the same time, the reviewer is also correct in stating that the use of the method doesn't lend itself to the usual outstanding picture quality we've become accustomed to on the HD DVD medium. 300 is a great example of this: It had the potential to be one of the best looking HD DVDs of all time, but due to the director's use of an artificial grain on the film, it really drops the movie's picture quality down a few notches.

Still, I am very happy with EWS on HD DVD, if for nothing else other than the 16X9 transfer.

[HDM-GHANDI]

Esoteric EyesWideShut

Spoiler:

This film is not about the Illuminati, per se; that would be too facile for Kubrick I can assure you - they're important, but they're characters like everyone else. The average dumbshit wealthy American, Bill Harford, is equally important, as is one of the "crying women", his smart, capable trophy wife Alice.

A trophy wife for a stupid jock moron who bumbled into good repute, whom some people think is a 'hunk' and some people think is really a gay no-talent frat boy doofus who is prone to an interest in joining mystery cabals. Do you see Kubrick's gears turning? Remember that gang that shoves Bill on the sidewalk and the hotel clerk? What religion does Tom Cruise profess? Why do you suppose Stanley picked Tom Cruise and Nicole to play these roles? Because they ARE THESE CHARACTERS IN REAL LIFE!! Perfect typecasting. Perfect. And think about the Hollywood politics of it. America simply cannot comprehend the depth of Stanley Kubrick's art.

I have been meaning to write a long essay on EWS for a long time because it is the most complex and excellent film anyone has made for many many years. I may as well give y'all a preview of it here because you sound like you'd appreciate it.

The title of my eventual essay is going to be "Minds Wide Shut: Late Capitalism and the Narcissism of the Occult".

EWS is about America and its illness. It is an audio-visual diaGnosis. Stanley is telling us that the terms of bourgeois life in America are based upon utter falsehoods promulgated with serious intent by a class of elites whose media manipulation of bourgeois narcissism allows them to keep the general populace utterly hoodwinked into providing the means and the cover to continue the sham. The cover they provide is their eyes-wide-open inability to see or understand the vast parasitic corruption that has already usurped power from their illusory republic. You're right - it's the same theme as the Matrix told a different and more complex way.

EWS is about our times and how the imperatives of late imperial capitalism - increasing competition for diminishing resources, the absurd and impossible need for "endless economic growth" - lead to an inevitable corruption as those with greater means act extralegally and antisocially to ensure their own positions. Secret cabals are anti-republican by their very nature and so they are not the friends of a republic, only of the wealth it creates.

What is the black occult all about at the bottom of it? The very bottom? It's about getting something that you want. Getting something for YOURSELF. Even if what you are getting is an 'event' and not a thing, it amounts to the same thing: getting something for yourself. This is at the bottom of all of it. It is essential MATERIALISM. All black occultists do it because they want benefit for themselves. They won't admit it, but it's true. The imperative of the Crowned and Conquering Child. The unsocialized Id taking over: "I want X"...and there's no Mommy to administer spankings so the child is free to go on a killing rampage if it so decides.

In EWS it is hollow desire and the fulfilling of it regardless of the consequences, all in an atmosphere of total corruption, falsehood, venality and crime.

I love that you noticed Bill Harford going through doors. Because what is the hoodwink here? It pivots around the fact that cabals involve inclusion a private "inner sanctum" of elites that they hint you can join if you work at it and kiss their ass and do their bidding - then they'll let you into their tomb at Yale. But the average American like Bill is far too stupid to ever come close to even that level.

Well the elites know all about this dynamic and have used it for centuries to control people who have been inculcated with just the easily controllable psyche that Bill Harford unwittingly exhibits.

EWS is about the dynamic of spending your precious life energy scrambling to be included in that next higher "inner sanctum", only to discover that this one is no closer to the top either, and that it is populated by the same kind of selfish creeps you left in the last one, only richer. It is a shorthand for the entire corrupt corporate swindle in America - nobody calls bullshit on it because everyone dreams of being included in it.

Bill is a total failure throughout the whole movie and NEVER AT ANY POINT has a handle on what is going on. He is the quintessential good looking dumbshit bimbo. He fails with the whores, his wife, the elites...he's absolutely blind to everything that is happening all the way through. Why? Look at what he eats and watches on TV: Wonder bread, Budweiser and football. He's the archetypal American chump...Tom Cruise. Did I mention that Kubrick is a genius?

This is a movie where you have to watch it a bunch of times to check out all the objects in the background in every scene. Did you notice that every sign in every window in "New York" is sexual or fantasy or occult related?


Women. They are important in EWS. Who's the hero here? F*ckin-A that's right, it's Alice. You very smartly made the connection that she was a possible Monarch girl too by relating her reaction to the mask on the pillow to her "dream" about being gangbanged by strangers. I hadn't noticed that before.

Alice is a really smart capable girl that has been cowed by a culture that, for merely chauvinistic reasons, doesn't provide a place for smart capable women. They get cowed. They become the chattel of their husbands. They have been for centuries and down inside smart women know it. They are softly broken by it as a general case and that is one of the key sources of the alienation that leads to cults and cabals and anorexia and manic-depressive psychosis and fascism in America: repression of the vitality of women. Alice USED to have an art gallery but she lost it and now has to be a trophy wife.

So look for a motif in EWS that I call "the crying woman", that is, the women in this film are all fraught by laments, some legitimate, some neurotic, some fantasical.

The tricorned master on the balcony at the occult ritual is shown in a two-shot with 'his woman'. Look at her mask. A tear. Even at the top echelon of the innermost sanctum the women are still chattel and they know it, hence the small tear that subliminally stains the conscience of every woman in the capitalist Matrix. The women know, but it is futile to say, lest they be further castigated.

To wrap up what will surely turn way too long if I don't, the Chrismas motif is part of the "materialist/narcissist/capitalist swindle" symbolism. What is Chrismas in America? Is it Christians going out and helping lepers? No. It's GETTING GOODIES FOR ME. It's greedy materialism falsely dressed up as something holy to be revered, when really it is the opposite. It's Santa selling you Wal-Mart. It's a lie like everything else in the Matrix. A sparkly alluring sexy lie that ruins your soul and makes you hollow. It's hypocrisy that, again, nobody will call bullshit on because it's part of the swindle that every one of us is complicit in.

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