Paramount Presents Nashville Blu-ray review

Aug 12, 2021- Permalink

Director Robert Altman’s 1975 film Nashville has been given the Paramount Presents treatment with a new release from Paramount Home Entertainment. I was given a chance to review the disc. The movie traces the life of a large ensemble of characters over a five day period in Nashville as a music festival and presidential campaign take place in the city. The ensemble cast includes Keith Carradine, Michael Murphy, Lily Tomlin, Geraldine Chaplin, Gwen Welles, Ronee Blakley, Karen Black, Henry Gibson, Merle Kilgore, and Jeff Goldblum.

The 1080p AVC encoded transfer is in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio and is newly remastered from a 4K scan of the original film elements. It looks great, with a fine film grain. The image is sharp, with facial textures, textiles, and environmental elements full of detail. Flesh tones are accurate and some of the clothing pops with bright colours. Black levels are deep and there’s really no sign of compression artifacts or noise.

On the audio side, we get a English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack with subtitles available for English, English SDH, and French. A lot of elements and conversations take place overlapping each other — we’re here in the moment, not necessarily eavesdropping — and it’s a clear though intentionally not always comprehensible soundscape. The music is dynamic and this is a very front-heavy mix, so don’t expect your surrounds and subwoofer to break out into a sweat.

Paramount doesn’t release the Paramount Presents packaging in Canada, so as a Canadian, I just had the basic Blu-ray case. If you get your hands on the Paramount Presents packaging, you get the Paramount Presents slipcover with the fold-open poster artwork as well as a digital code. The special features include an audio commentary by Robert Altman, a new featurette that explores the story development, the script, characters, cast and other behind-the-scenes info. There are also some theatrical trailers. If you happen to have any of the previous releases from Eureka and Criterion, you might want to keep ‘em in your collection as they had much more in terms of bonus features.

Paramount Presents’ Nashville release comes to us with a newly remastered beautiful video presentation, a great audio presentation, and a new retrospective featurette. As an Altman classic, this disc is highly recommended.