Good
Night, and Good Luck [Blu-ray]
(George Clooney, 2005)
Warner - Region FREE - Blu-ray
vs. Lions Gate - Region 'B' -
Blu-ray
Review by Leonard Norwitz
Lions Gate caps and info from Felix
Kellewald
Studio:
Theatrical: 2929 Entertainment, Section Eight & Participant
Productions
Blu-ray: Warner Home Video
Lions Gate Home Entertainment
Disc:
Region: FREE!
(as verified by the
Momitsu region FREE Blu-ray player)
Runtime: 1:32:55.236
1:32:47.270
Disc Size: 16,816,776,100 bytes
23,175,495,680 bytes
Feature Size: 15,686,922,240 bytes
21,759,873,024 bytes
Video Bitrate: 20.24 Mbps /
24.00 Mbps
Chapters: 23 /
12
Case: Standard Blu-ray cases
Release date: August 1st, 2006 /
August 3rd, 2009
Video:
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Resolution: 1080p / 23.976 fps
Video codec: MPEG-2 Video /
MPEG4 AVC Video
Audio:
Dolby Digital Audio English 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps
DTS-HD Master Audio English 3734 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 3734
kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
LPCM Audio English 1536 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1536 kbps /
16-bit
Subtitles:
English (SDH), English, French, Spanish,
none
English, English (SDH). none
Extras:
• Commentary by Director/Screenwriter George Clooney and
Producer/Screenwriter Grant Heslov
• Good Night, and Good Luck Companion Piece – in SD (15:00)
• Commentary by Director/Screenwriter George Clooney and
Producer/Screenwriter Grant Heslov
• Good Night, and Good Luck Companion Piece – in PAL SD, it
would seem
(15:28)
• Photo Gallery - in HD
The Film:
8
Good Night, and Good Luck is more distinguished than
entertaining, more well-intended than inspired. It is
nonetheless an important and well-directed and scripted
film. More important, it is a film about America's present
as well as its past, for the parallels between government
censorship and control of the media is as pervasive today as
was in the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his list of
names fifty years ago. Today, however, that control is more
insidious. The public, while it thinks of itself as
informed, is victim to a form of brainwashing that it seems
to invite, even to encourage. We are in serious trouble and,
for the most part, the media today is not doing its job.
Thus, this movie.
George Clooney made his film in black & white so as to
maintain our focus and not be distracted by pretty sets or
too much verisimilitude, not only because TV in the fifties
was in black & white. [cf. notes on Image, below.] There is
a deliberate documentary feel to the film: Dialog seems to
actually emanate from the actors instead of looped and
dubbed later. Dianne Reeves is actually singing, and what we
hear is the recorded track of what we see. That's novel. The
projected images of McCarthy and others is archival footage
from the time.
Clooney's artless direction begins at a reception in 1958 to
honor Edward R. Murrow several years after the events that
make up the drama that follows. Clooney's unselfconscious
camera observes bits of time and place as it scans the
guests in dreamy, grainy visuals in shallow depth of field –
the hairstyles, dress and jewelry fashion, the omnipresent
cigarette smoking. He eavesdrops on fleeting fragments of
conversation. Clooney himself is seen only momentarily, the
actor and his character utterly inconsequential at this
moment. The guest of honor is waiting in the wings, about to
make what has become a classic speech on the responsibility
of the news media, and especially television news.
David Strathairn's impersonation of Edward R. Murrow is
tight, reserved, restrained, ready to spring forth with a
well-placed, unassuming, but insightful phrase. Once we see
Murrow, no longer the celebrity we know from radio and
television, move from behind the podium or away from the TV
camera, we feel the authenticity of Straithairn's extension
to a "real life" creation - for you and I have no direct
knowledge of the man other than as newscaster and
interviewer: There is no glitch in the transition from the
impersonation of the man we know to the one Clooney wants us
to know and the one Straithairn becomes.
With Murrow now fixed clearly in our minds, the other, less
familiar, but still very important real-life characters come
to life in Frank Langella's William Paley, tough-minded but
sympathetic head of CBS; Jeff Daniels' Sig Mickelson, the
man responsible for developing CBS news for television,
George Clooney's understated Fred Friendly, Murrow's
associate partner in the See It Now series, the hard-hitting
investigative program that eventually led to 60 Minutes; and
Ray Wise's desperate and rapidly disintegrating Don
Hollenbeck, one of the more painfully visible casualties of
the Hearst papers' attacks on journalists that criticized
McCarthy.
Murrow and Friendly had been on the lookout for a way to
expose the tyranny of McCarthy's bogus and irresponsible
accusations. Joe Wershba, played by Robert Downey, Jr. (a
generally underappreciated actor in the hands of director
that can help contain his natural exuberance) brought to CBS
the necessary footage in the case of Lt. Milo Radulovich, a
reserve officer had been summarily retired by the Air Force
because his father and sister had been accused of being
communist sympathizers The investigation of the case by See
It Now, and subsequent attempts by the military, other news
organizations and CBS itself to censor it, is the main focus
of the movie. Wershba, by the way, went on to become one of
the original producers of 60 Minutes. Prior to and during
the events of the movie, Wershba was married secretly to the
character played by Patricia Clarkson: Shirley Wershba also
wound up eventually at 60 Minutes. The main points of the
drama of Good Night, and Good Luck is commented on and
interpreted for us in the Wershba's conversions "at the
water cooler."
The smoke, the all important cigarette smoke, serves not
only to create the time and place but to offer a screen to
protect one's innermost thought from prying eyes and ears.
Colleagues didn't necessarily speak their mind openly, even
in a newsroom meeting. Not only was there the ominous threat
of censure and the blackball, this was a time when
professional staff could and would be fired if it were
learned that they were married to each other. It seems
strange in an otherwise liberal entity such as a television
newsroom, but Clooney wants to make it clear that the evil
eye is watching everywhere and real effects follow.
Image:
9/9
NOTE:
The below
Blu-ray
captures were taken directly from the
Blu-ray
disc.
The first number indicates a relative level of excellence
compared to other Blu-ray video discs on a ten-point scale.
The second number places this image along the full range of
DVD and Blu-ray discs.
Despite its modest bit rate, limited feature disc size and
MPEG-2 encode, Warner's transfer of Good
Night, and Good Luck to Blu-ray is of stellar demonstration
quality. It was the first black & white film represented in
the medium, a state of affairs bordering on irresponsible.
(The title came out in August of 2006 and up to that point
there hadn't been another black & white entry in over 350
titles.) To be accurate, Good Night, and Good Luck isn't
actually shot on black & film. A few years ago, Kodak
introduced Vision2 500T 5218, a color negative film with
exceptional color contrast. (Syriana, Spiderman-3,
Ray,
Vanity Fair, and Notes on a Scandal are some of the other
assignments it has been asked to take on.) Clooney used this
it for starters to achieve maximum continuous tone so that
when converted to a monochrome it would retain a knockout
grayscale.
There is a luster to the flesh tones that isn't present in
color films in high definition – none that I've encountered
as yet, anyhow. Still, there is cutting-edge sharpness and
resolution, perhaps best exemplified in the scene where
Friendly takes on the military - Glenn Morshower, an actor
who has made a career of portraying government agents and
military personnel, in another totally credible
representation of military loyalty. Feast your eyes on those
fabrics and campaign ribbons, ladies and gentlemen.
More than most color films on hi-def, even good ones, there
is a 3-dimensional quality to this presentation that drops
the jaw. It is carefully lit to keep the background at arm's
length, and our seeing it in black & white helps focus our
attention on what is important. The magical, wispy, lighter
than air quality of the cigarette smoke that pervades so
many scenes in Good Night, and Good Luck is captured
perfectly in this BD release. The SD version was very good
indeed - so much so that an upgrade is really not necessary.
It misses only the refinements of texture and the
3-dimensional effect that high definition can bring, which
is no small thing, I assure you. There are no motion
challenges to speak of in the film, so the DVD version is
adequate in that respect as well. Of course, the smoke is
too thick and heavy and, well, thick and heavy. I felt
restless watching the DVD, but with the Blu-ray, no doubt
largely due to the tangibility of the image, I remain glued
to the screen. For those of us that want to show off what
this medium can do, you could hardly have found a better
Blu-ray title to do it with.
Despite the different encode - the
image quality of the two doesn't vary as much as we were
anticipating. In fact the disparity is so small we began to
question our method of obtaining the captures. Contrast
appears marginally improved (richer black levels) on the UK
release but it is probably not a deal-breaker depending on
what type of system you are viewing it on. Those who are
more discerning should probably get the Lions Gate release
which may also be minutely more detailed.
CLICK EACH
BLU-RAY
CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION
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Audio & Music:
7/8
No uncompressed audio – aye, there's the rub. Good Night,
and Good Luck was one of the early titles transferred to
high definition, and Warner seems not to have gotten the
word that this applies to audio as well. Thus we have only a
single English language audio track in simple Dolby Digital
5.1. As it happens this works well enough: the dialogue,
even when overlapping, is clear and properly staged. What we
want and, to a modest extent get, is a sense of the varied
spaces of the CBS newsrooms, offices, and studios. This is
where an uncompressed audio mix would have been just the
ticket. That said, the dialogue is exquisitely realized.
Close your eyes, and Murrow is the same room with you –
person to person, you might say.
The film doesn't have any real aggression as an action film
would but the UK edition gives us a lossless track that can
easily handle all that "Good Night and Good Luck" dishes
out. Agaion, those more sensitive to the audio - should go
the way of the UK Lions Gate release.
Operations:
5
The movie starts almost immediately after loading - always a
mercy. Menu functions are unremarkable, getting the job done
without bringing attention to themselves. While there are
chapters – 23 of them – there is no scene selection menu.
Curious.
Extras:
4
Front and center is an enjoyable, casually informative
Commentary with Director/Screenwriter George Clooney and
Producer/Screenwriter Grant Heslov. Also included is a
15-minute featurette "Good Night, and Good Luck Companion
Piece" in respectable 4:3 SD that offers interviews with a
few of the filmmakers and some of the surviving newsroom
employees. No footage of Murrow, though. What is lacking is
a serious background piece on Murrow, McCarthy and perhaps a
complete TV segment from See It Now and Person to Person.
Extras appear to duplicate but the UK edition does tack on a
Photo gallery.
Bottom line:
8
A must-see movie, not only for the sake of the political
issues (in the largest sense) raised and dealt with coolly
and relentlessly - though not without detachment - but also
for the excellence of Clooney's direction of actors and his
seamless interweaving of documentary footage and his
memorable cinematic replica of a certain milieu, a rampant
insanity, in post-war America.
When this movie made its appearance on Blu-ray, Warner was
still many months away from embracing high bit rate dual
layer discs or default uncompressed audio regardless of
content. The studio still doesn't do this in every case, but
it's a direction they are moving toward. Given the
relatively limited audience for this title, we may not see
an updated edition, perhaps with more substantial extra
features, anytime soon. Even so, Good Night, and Good Luck
looks terrific in high def and is a worthy addition to your
library. At this writing, Amazon offers it at a sizable
discount.
The film has classic overtones and
it's great to have a true HD version out. The Lions Gate
superiority may only seem moderate to most but we can now
definitely state that it is the best transfer
presentably available - and that is our preference.
Leonard Norwitz
June 19th, 2007 /
Gary Tooze,
Felix Kellewald
January 2010
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