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North By Northwest on blu-ray - skip it!

Posted by Dalton on November 8, 2009 at 12:56:08

As great as the movie itself is, this is truly a movie that hasn't benefited from high resolution treatment. The awful special effects (even for 1959) stand out more on blu-ray and make the movie less enjoyable overall. The matte paintings, rear projection, and the entire Mount Rushmore sequence look laughably awful when they had been tolerable on standard DVD. And the coarse grain and generally soft focus of the film image is surprising for a VistaVision production. There is some improved detail in a few scenes (such as poatterns in fabric) but the color pallette does not appear to be appreciably more subtle than on DVD.

The last movie I saw that was actually a worse viewing experience in high definition than on standard DVD was Forbidden Planet, where the HD DVD laid bare the deficiencies of the "stunning" (for 1956) special effects. Seeing the flaws so clearly took you out of the movie.

Like a badly-produced CD that sounds more tolerable in a cheap car stereo than at home in a highly-resolving audiophile system, sometimes higher resolution in video can be less enjoyable too. Skip North By Northwest on blu-ray. Even if you don't already own the movie, buy it on standard DVD and save the cash!

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