Evans Above

Paramount Home Entertainment has just released a South Park: Seasons 21-25 box set which assembles the previously released seasons and I had a chance to look. The set, which does not contain the Post COVID Special, has Cartman, Kyle, Stan and Kenny dealing with everything from vaping to immigration, social media and the pandemic.

The 1080p AVC encoded digital transfer is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The video presentation looks great with the 2D animation full of colour and sharpness in the lines. The colour palette is bold and bright. Though there might be some occasional colour banding, the presentation os free of digital noise and compression artifacts.

On the audio side of things, you have the choice of an English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack and English Dolby Digital 2.0 track. Subtitles are available for English SDH. It’s a nice soundtrack with dialogue mostly centred in the mix and environmental effects populating the surrounds. Music is clear and dynamic.

The eight-disc Blu-ray set does not come with a digital code. There are some extras including audio commentaries, pop-up trivia, concept art and deleted scenes.

Fans of the series will be pleased by the audio and video presentation as well as the collection of extras. If you don’t already own the individual seasons, you’ll want to add South Park: Seasons 21-25 to your collection.

Your Honor stars Bryan Cranston as Michael Desiato, a respected New Orleans judge. When his son is involved in a hit and run, it begins a series of events that reveal what lengths Desiato will go to in order to protect his family. It was originally intended to be a miniseries, but a second and final season was ordered. Paramount has released both the second season as a standalone release and a complete series set as well. I had a chance to review the Your Honor: The Complete Series DVD set.

I’ve been through this before, but here’s a refresher. You may wonder why Your Honor: The Complete Series is on DVD. Well, DVD is still the top seller and the studios are generally reluctant to release TV series that don’t have huge following or ravenous fans on the more expensive to make Blu-ray format or they use their series to lure you into subscribing to their streaming service. With that in mind, Your Honor: The Complete Series is a pretty good looking DVD. The 16:9 video presentation won’t have the excellent clarity and colour depth of a Blu-ray, but still, it looks as good as the DVD format can look.

On the audio side of things the set has an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack with subtitles for English SDH. Dialogue is clear and centred, while the surrounds do get some work with environmental ambience and sound effects.

Your Honor: The Complete Series does not come with a digital code. As for extras, there are some deleted scenes, character studies and short behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Fans of the series will find that the Your Honor: The Complete Series DVD gives them an audio and video experience that does well within the limits of the DVD format.

Warner Brothers has just released The Venture Bros. – The Complete Series on DVD. This Adult Swim animated series premiered in 2004 and ran for seven seasons. The final season of the 82 episode run ended in 2018, and it was announced that work on a eighth season ended when the show was cancelled in 2020. For the uninitiated, the show follows the lives of fraternal twins Hank and Dean Venture and their super-scientist dad Dr. Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture as they deal with their supervillain nemesis, The Monarch. The WB likes disclaimers, so here goes: Though Warner Brothers provided me with a copy of this release to review, the thoughts and opinions below are mine.

The 480p DVD release is a bit of a shame, considering the last five seasons had been released on Blu-ray and it would have been nice to have a complete Blu-ray set. A Blu-ray would have added some extra punch to the clarity and colour reproduction, but with 82 half-hour episodes, 4 specials and bonus features spread over 14 discs, the video has some room to breathe, so we’re not dealing with much in the way of compression artifacts. It’s a good looking DVD.

On the audio side of things, the first season has an English Dolby Digital 2.0 track, while the remaining seasons are Dolby Digital 5.1. English, French and Spanish subtitles are available for seasons 1 and 2, with English SDH for seasons 3-7. The 5.1 track is quite pleasing, with some nice action in the surrounds and some extra oomph in the low-end. The score is dynamic and the dialogue is clear and overall it’s a good DVD audio presentation.

As mentioned, The Venture Bros. – The Complete Series is spread over 14 DVD discs. There is no digital code. The discs are loaded with bonus features like the four specials, deleted scenes, episode commentaries, promos and other fun bits.

Though it would have been great to see a Blu-ray presentation, The Venture Bros. – The Complete Series on DVD does have very good sound and video and a nice collection of extras. If you’re a fan of the series, or of adult animation in general, this set will be up your alley.

Criminal Minds aired its fifteenth and presumably final season in 2020. The series was then revived (as opposed to rebooted) in November 2022 on the Paramount+ streaming service. It was given the subtitle Evolution, so since this is a revival, this season is actually called Criminal Minds: Evolution – Season 16. I think I need a nap after following that logic. Paramount is releasing it on Blu-ray and DVD in the US, but for some inexplicable reason, Canada is only getting a DVD release. Maybe the detectives can solve that mystery for me.

This latest season, which is ten episodes, follows the Behavioral Analysis Unit as they deal with a network of serial killers formed at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The main cast features Joe Mantegna, AJ Cook, Kirsten Vangsness, Aisha Tyler, Adam Rodriguez and Paget Brewster.

The standard definition DVD release is presented in a 16:9 aspect ratio. Though obviously the Blu-ray version would have greater detail, colour presentation and shadow detail, the DVD that I was given for review is still quite good for a DVD presentation of a TV show.

On the audio side, there’s an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Subtitles are available for English SDH. It’s not the most immersive track, but there is some good surround usage. Dialogue is clear and centred.

The three disc DVD set does not come with a digital code. There’s about 35 minutes worth of extras that look at the revival and some production aspects.

If you’re a fan of Criminal Minds, then picking up Criminal Minds: Evolution – Season 16 is an easy decision. Obviously, if you’re in a country where the Blu-ray is available, you’ll want to get that version.

Paramount is releasing a 4K SteelBook of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Season 1 and I had a chance to take a look. (It was delayed a month in Canada, not sure about the US.) If you’re thinking it was just a few months ago that there was a standard Blu-ray release, you be right. I “reviewed”:https://www.digitalhit.com/evansabove/archives/2023/3/12/star-trek-strange-new-worlds—-season-one-blu-ray-steelbook-review that release back in March. Paramount knew the demand for a 4K presentation was there, so here we are.

To reiterate the storyline, the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a spin-off of Star Trek: Discovery that follows Captain Christopher Pike and the crew starship Enterprise in the decade before the original series. Anson Mount plays Pike, while Ethan Peck and Rebecca Romijn portray Spock and Number One. The cast is rounded out by Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun and Bruce Horak.

The 2160p HEVC / H.265 encoded native 4K digital transfer with Dolby Vision and HDR10 is presented in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio. If the earlier Blu-ray wasn’t already enough of an upgrade over the show’s streaming presentation, the 4K takes it a step further. Obviously, there’s the extra clarity and detail provided by the additional resolution, but the HDR is the real star with the expanded colour depth and contrast adding extra visual oomph to the colour palette and specular highlights. It’s a gorgeous presentation.

On the audio side of things, you have the choice of an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack and a French Dolby Digital 5.1 track. Subtitles are available for English SDH and French. The surrounds put you into the action so firmly that you’ll probably check your bank account to see if your Starfleet salary has been deposited yet. The score is bold and dynamic and dialogue is clear and centred.

The first season is spread over three discs. There is no digital code or Blu-ray copies. In one extra, Anson Mount takes us through his portrayal of Captain Pike. There’s a look at the production design, an exploration of the storylines and characters, commentary by Anson Mount and Akiva Goldsman, deleted scenes and a gag reel.

In my review of the Blu-ray, I said that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Season One combined excellent audio and video with stories that echo the style of the original series. Moving to 4K only enhances the visual presentation, so if you’re a diehard fan, or you don’t already own the Blu-ray, this is worth getting. If you already picked up the Blu-ray, it’s a personal decision between you and your wallet.

The Paramount+ series Tulsa King stars Sylvester Stallone as Dwight “The General” Manfredi, a New York mafia capo who has just been released after twenty-five years in prison. His boss sends him to watch over Tulsa, Oklahoma, which might as well be on a different planet to the New York mobster. The dramedy follows Manfredi as he builds a crew and begins to realize that maybe his mob family no longer has his best interests in mind. Over the nine episodes of the first season, he must deal with a new locale, new foes, and a world that’s changed in the quarter of a century since he was last free. Paramount has released a Tulsa King: Season One SteelBook and I had a chance to take a look.

The 1080p AVC encoded digital transfer is presented in two aspect ratios: 2.00:1 and 2.35:1. This is an artistic choice by the director to give you a different feel during changing locales. The video presentation has good detail on the usual suspects (facial features, textiles and environments) and there’s only the occasional moments of softness in some scenes. It’s a warm colour palette that brings out the dusty Oklahoma landscapes and vegetation. Black levels are quite good too, with no real loss of details in the shadows.

On the audio side of things, the disc comes with an English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack. Subtitles are available for English SDH. The surrounds put you into the landscape nicely with ambient sounds. The score is clear and dynamic, while dialogue is clear, centred and well-prioritized in the mix.

The two-disc Blu-ray set does not come with a digital code. There are small featurettes for each of the nine episodes that delve into the characters and plot points, as well as other extras that look at the story origins, Stallone and the cast, costume design, stunts and locations. The SteelBook artwork features Stallone’s Manfredi and the show title on the front, a burning plane ticket on the back, and a shot of Manfredi at a bar in the interior of the case.

With an enjoyable performance from Stallone, good video and audio, and a nice selection of extras that you don’t usually see on TV releases, the Tulsa King: Season One SteelBook is a good addition to your collection.

Bonanza was a TV juggernaut second only to Gunsmoke as the longest-running Western series. It first broadcast on September 12, 1959, and ran until January 16, 1973. It was the first TV Western to air in colour and NBC’s parent at the time, RCA, used its popularity to drive the sales of colour TVs. Now Paramount has released Bonanza: The Official Complete Series on DVD. All 431 episodes and 14 seasons in one hefty set. If you’re new to the show, it follows Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene) and his three sons, Adam (Pernell Roberts), Hoss (Dan Blocker) and Little Joe (Michael Landon). The quartet run the Ponderosa ranch in Nevada. Seeing a piece of TV history like this available on physical media is amazing.

The series was restored and remastered from the original 35mm film elements. Seeing as film elements were available, it would have been nice to see this on Blu-ray, but that’s just a wish not a complaint. The scenery and other elements look great here and show that a well done DVD can still look great with good detail and a pleasing colour palette. The series is in a 4:3 aspect ratio.

On the audio side, all seasons come with an English Dolby Digital Mono soundtrack and season nine to fourteen also feature a Spanish Dolby Digital Mono track. It sounds really clean and each full-length episode has its original music.

This DVD set is spread over 112 discs and yes that’s one hundred and twelve discs. This includes a bonus disc that includes over two and a half hours of rarely seen interviews, promos, photos and other footage and bloopers. Just the bonus disc alone is a treasure trove of rare TV.

If you love the show or you’re a completist who wants to own a piece of TV history, then Bonanza: The Official Complete Series DVD set is highly recommended.

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released Elizabeth Banks’ Cocaine Bear in the US in April, but we’re just getting it now in Canada. I had a chance to review the disc which is loosely — LOOSELY — based on a true story. In reality, smugglers ditched 75 kilos of coke in Tennessee back in 1985 and a black bear ingested it and promptly died. In this movie, the aforementioned bear lives and goes on a bloody limb-ripping killing spree. The horror comedy stars stars Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Margo Martindale, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Ray Liotta in one of his last roles.

The 1080p AVC encoded digital transfer is presented in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio. It’s an excellent transfer with great clarity in all the usual places: facial textures, textiles, and environments. The colour palette is broad and ranges from the rich reds of copious amounts of blood to the deep greens of the forest. There’s not any digital noise to speak of and no evidence of compression artifacts. In drug dealer parlance, this is “the good stuff.”

On the audio side of things, you have the choice of English and Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 tracks and a French (Canadian) DTS 5.1 track. Subtitles are available for English SDH, French, and Spanish. The surrounds put you into the forest with great ambient sounds and the action is giving some extra power with the low frequency channel. Dialogue is clear and centred.

In the US, Cocaine Bear comes with the Blu-ray disc, a DVD and a digital code. For some reason, Universal decided to skip the digital code for its Canadian release. Special features include an alternate ending, a gag reel, deleted and extended scenes, a short making-of featurette, a closer look at some of the bear’s kills, a script reading obviously called “Doing Lines”, and an audio commentary by director/producer Banks and producer Max Handelman.

Cocaine Bear is not a family film, unless you have older teens. It’s unapologetically gory and crazy and over-the-top. On the technical side, this goofy gore Blu-ray comes with great audio and video and nice collection of extras.

With Transformers: Rise of the Beasts coming out in early June 2023, it’s a good time for Paramount to release the Transformers 6-Movie SteelBook Collection 4K. The set contains Transformers, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Transformers: The Last Knight and the prequel film Bumblebee. The film series, which started back in 2007, traces the story of the warring alien robot factions called the Autobots and the Decipticons. The franchise has brought in over $4.8 billion dollars.

With a collection like this let’s go through some basic stats:

• Transformers: Upscaled 4K, Dolby Vision, HDR10, aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: Upscaled 4K, Dolby Vision, HDR10, aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon: Upscaled 4K, Dolby Vision, HDR10, aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Transformers: Age of Extinction: Upscaled 4K, Dolby Vision, HDR10, aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Transformers: The Last Knight: Upscaled 4K, Dolby Vision, HDR10, aspect ratio: 2.39:1 and 1.90:1
• Bumblebee: Upscaled 4K, Dolby Vision, HDR10, aspect ratio: 1.78:1

The new thing here is the collection’s case and the SteelBook artwork on the case of each film. The 4K discs themselves are identical to the previously released versions. Across the board, the discs provide excellent detail to both humans and robots alike. The HDR boosts the colours, contrast and specular highlights. These are great video presentations.

Here are the stats for the audio:

• Transformers: English Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD 7.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0, French (Canada), Spanish, Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1. Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: English Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD 7.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0, French (Canada), Spanish, Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1. Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon: English Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD 7.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0, French (Canada), Spanish, Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1. Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
• Transformers: Age of Extinction: English Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD 7.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0, French (Canada), Spanish, Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1. Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
• Transformers: The Last Knight: English Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD 7.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0, French (Canada), Spanish, Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1, Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
• Bumblebee: English Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD 7.1, Czech, Spanish, French, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Thai, Turkish Dolby Digital 5.1. Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Korean, Malay, Mandarin (Simplified), Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Swedish, Thai, Turkish

These are great soundtracks with excellent surround usage and low frequency tones that add oomph to each thud and clank. The scores are powerful and the dialogue is clear and centred.

The Transformers 6-Movie SteelBook Collection 4K comes with 12 discs: six 4K discs and six Blu-ray discs. There’s a digital code for each movie. All the special features are on the Blu-ray discs, though commentaries for the movies that have them are on the 4K. The extras include the usual suspects: deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes featurettes and music videos. The set is housed in a box with a magnetic clasp that displays the symbols for the Autobots and the Decepticons. Each individual movie has SteelBook artwork displaying the various robot characters.

If you love both SteelBooks and the Transformers franchise, then the Transformers 6-Movie SteelBook Collection 4K, with its excellent audio and video, belongs in your collection.

Today I want to look at three of the films I screened during the 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival.

Joe Piscatella’s Who’s Afraid of Nathan Law? is a follow-up to his 2017 documentary Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower. This time we meet Nathan Law, a college student in Hong Kong, who teamed up with fellow pro-democracy activists Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow as they lead 2014’s Umbrella Revolution. The students shut down the busiest parts of Hong Kong to try and get China to keep it’s “one country, two systems” promise.

Law then became the youngest person elected to the Hong Kong Legislative Council, only to be kicked out on trumped up allegations. When the students once again take to the streets to protest the proposed extradition law that will allow prisoners to be sent to the mainland, the Chinese retaliation is swift and though their belief in democracy gives them the strength to survive police battles and brutal beatings by criminals hired as agitators, the huge weight of the authoritarian regime rips through the group with onerous prison sentences.

Besides the on-the-street footage of the confrontations with police, Piscatella’s camera gives us access to the group’s planning meetings and takes us inside Law’s election campaign and time as a council member. He also gives us access to Law, who was able to flee Hong Kong but now lives with one eye over his shoulder as he knows the Chinese intelligence apparatus is far-reaching.

Who’s Afraid of Nathan Law? is at times depressing, as it feels like a well-oiled, well-funded authoritarian regime knows no bounds, but at the same, the continued belief in democracy by the students in inspiring and a lesson to those citizens in the West who see the seeds of authoritarianism trying to take root in their own countries. If you can find this doc at your own local documentary cinema or keep an eye out for it on your local public television station or streaming service, I’d highly recommend it.

Razing Liberty Square, from director Katja Esson, looks at the history and current predicament of Liberty Square, a public housing development in the predominantly Black neighbourhood of Liberty City in Miami that is facing a private redevelopment by a company saying that it’s mixed-income buildings will improve the lives of the residents.

In the Jim Crow days, Miami essentially used zoning to force Blacks away from the sought after waterfront areas and forced the families inland. Despite the terrible reasons behind the community, the area had a great spirit, with the residents believing they could count on each other.

The current development promises new and improved public housing, but there’s an issue when vouchers are offered so that residents can choose to wait in their dilapidated units for new ones or take assistance to find a new apartment but with no guarantee the rent won’t skyrocket. Razing Liberty Square shows us the struggles and the decisions to be made by many who grew up in the area, from a school principal fighting for her students to an executive with the company doing the redevelopment who fights both with the perception of his role in the company and the realization of what’s actually happening within the company.

Against the backdrop of politicians doing photo ops with the developers that fund their campaigns, Razing Liberty Square, like Who’s Afraid of Nathan Law?, shows that the fight for one’s rights and just treatment has to start at the personal level. Razing Liberty Square is definitely a film to seek out.

Director Set Hernandez brought Unseen to Hot Docs. Hernandez, a co-founder of the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective, tells the story of their friend, Pedro, a blind undocumented immigrant who is studying to be a social worker. Pedro’s goals of supporting his family and providing mental health help to his community faces both practical and political challenges. It’s inspiring to see that Pedro’s spirit may occasionally bend but never breaks and this is in no small part due to his own personal strength and the love and support of his family, community and educators.

Hernandez takes us into Pedro’s world by filming some scenes in a way that shows the blurred shapes and flashes of light and colour that Pedro faces as he navigates through his world. With Unseen, Hernandez shows us the power of determination and love. Well worth seeking out.

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