NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Criterion Blu-ray (April 2020): Criterion have transferred Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel to 1080P Blu-ray. It is advertised as a "2K digital transfer, supervised by director Wes Anderson". The image is a slight improvement over the 2014 Fox 1080P. Contrast and colors are richer and darker. It is technically superior with a max'ed out bitrate. We've compared some captures below - click on them and toggle between the full resolution images to see the marginal disparity.

On their Blu-ray, Criterion use a robust DTS-HD Master 5.1 surround track (24-bit) in the original English language. I couldn't tell much difference from the Fox. Aside from effects and the score by Alexandre Desplat (Moonrise Kingdom, The Ghost Writer, The King's Speech) it is filled with Anderson's usual cornucopia selections including s'Rothe-Zäuerli performed by Öse Schuppel, Concerto for Lute and Plucked Strings I. Moderato by Antonio Vivaldi, The Linden Tree written by Pavel Vasilevich Kulikov, some Straus on a Wurlitzer as well as other delightfully eclectic choices - all sounding impacting in lossless. Criterion offer optional English (SDH) subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-ray.

The Criterion Blu-ray has a new audio commentary featuring Wes Anderson, filmmaker Roman Coppola, critic Kent Jones, and actor Jeff Goldblum. After introducing them, Wes says "Now we talk about the movie". He mentions inspirations of Ernst Lubitsch, the book that was the basis for his screenplay; Stefan Zweig's "Beware of Pity" (who also wrote the novel for Letter from an Unknown Woman). Goldblum mentions that when he recently watched the film at home - he would pause to view everything in the busy frame - and that he had the subtitles on to catch all the rich dialogue. Tons of fun, revealing, deep input on the production and Anderson's unique style and process. There is also a selected-scene storyboard animatics slideshow running 26-minutes. Under the menu title "Visiting The Grand Budapest Hotel" are three production videos - the first on Special Effects and Design running a full 25-minutes, and shorter ones on "Music" and "Miniatures". “The Making of ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel,’” is a new 22-minute documentary about the film. Repeated from the Fox Blu-ray are Bill Murray Tours the Town has the actor (M. Ivan in the film) briefly visits some of the locations of the film Vignettes (Kunstermuweum Zubrowka Lecture, The Society of the Crossed Keys, Medl's Secret Recipe) offer 9-minutes of amusement associated with clandestine aspects of the story The Making of The Grand Budapest Hotel is a total of 18-minutes divided into 4 parts (The Story, The Society of the Crossed Keys, Creating the Hotel, and Creating a World), on various aspects of the production with snippets from the cast, filmmakers and director. The 'Cast' is discussing the extensive variety of actors involved in the film. As Tilda Swinton says "It's an honor to be in one frame... or just on the set!". There are two video essays - one from 2015 by critic Matt Zoller Seitz and a new one by film scholar Professor David Bordwell running about 23-minutes where he talks about the aspect ratios entitled "Wes Anderson takes the 4:3 Challenge". He uses clips from the director's previous films to give his analysis of the director's mise en scène. There is also a trailer and the package has a liner notes booklet with a 2014 essay by critic Richard Brody and a collectible poster, along with excerpts from an additional 2014 piece by Brody, an 1880 essay on European hotel portiers by Mark Twain, and other ephemerae.

Wes Anderson films are so... wonderful, fun, amusingly detailed, complex, eclectic, while the visuals are rich evoking childhood memories. All fitting comfortably into his, intricate, and civilized fantasy world. The Grand Budapest Hotel is filled with wild, almost screwball-like, adventure, endlessly amusing and peculiar but endearing characters - comfortable in their own worlds (not unlike how I presume Wes Anderson, himself, to be), subtly humorous dialogue... and questions. Namely - how do you make a film that has so much? This is close to a masterpiece, if not one deservedly outright, and the has immense revisitation value. The Criterion  Blu-ray offers a great a/v presentation, a new commentary, video essay and more. It gets a very strong recommendation!

Gary Tooze

***

ON THE Fox Blu-ray (June (2014): Firstly, Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel is mostly presented in the Academy ratio, 1.37:1 (representing the 30's) with the opening and closing presented in the 2.4:1, and sequence with the title and beginning (Tom Wilkinson) time period representing of the mid-80s to the present, all pictureboxed, in-and-around 1.85:1. So the ratio is, essentially, used to inform the viewer of the period. Wes Anderson always wanted to do a film in 1.37:1 but had not until now - although there was talk of The Royal Tenebaums being filmed in the 'Academy' ratio. Of course these are all matted to the 1.78:1 frame of the Blu-ray. The quality is excellent, beautifully colorful - kudos to the art direction - tight details - notable in the, many, close-ups. This is transferred to a dual-layered disc with a very high bitrate and looks pristine in 1080P - a real visual treat. They are frequent examples of depth. This Blu-ray has no discernable flaws and supplies a wonderful HD presentation.

Audio is transferred via a robust DTS-HD Master 5,1 track at a healthy 3312 kbps.  There is a descriptive audio track (in English) and many foreign-language DUBs and optional subtitles and my Oppo has identified it as being region FREE - playable on Blu-ray machines around the globe.

Unfortunately, no director commentary which would have been the icing on the cake for the film presentation but we still get some reasonable supplements. Bill Murray Tours the Town has the actor (M. Ivan in the film) briefly visits some of the locations of the film Vignettes (Kunstermuweum Zubrowka Lecture, The Society of the Crossed Keys, Medl's Secret Recipe) offer 9-minutes of amusement associated with clandestine aspects of the story The Making of The Grand Budapest Hotel is a total of 18-minutes divided into 4 parts, on various aspects of the production with snippets from the cast, filmmakers and director. The 'Cast' is discussing the extensive variety of actors involved in the film. As Tilda Swinton says "It's an honor to be in one frame... or just on the set!". There is about 4-minutes extolling Anderson's wonderful eccentricities and endearing qualities, a Stills Gallery, theatrical trailer and the disc offers a paper with the code for a Digital Download of the feature playable on your portable device.