779 Mulholland Dr.

[yoloswegmaster]

I would assume UHD only, as the blu-ray is using the older 4K master.

[Finch]

comparison caps between Criterion and SC

Unsurprisingly, the Criterion looks absolutely fine on its own but the grain looks appreciably better to me on the Studio Canal thanks to David McKenzie's compression skills. Who knows why Studio Canal dropped a lot of the bonus features for their release but honestly, who watches any extra as regularly as the film in question? Still, you could call it a tie: SC for the superior image and the superior Blu-Ray included with the UHD (SC's Blu-Ray is sourced from the latest 4k master as well as being properly encoded while Criterion just included their 2015 flop), Criterion for the bonus stuff.

[dadaistnun]

(SC's Blu-Ray is sourced from the latest 4k master as well as being properly encoded while Criterion just included their 2015 flop)

This right here is why I went with the SC. Who knows when I'll have a 4K set up, so having the better Blu-ray was top priority for me. And I have the old Criterion for the extras. My copy of the SC arrived today, hoping to check it out this weekend.

[omegadirective]

Has anyone noticed weird artifacting in the black bars at the top and bottom of the 4K?

I just got mine in the mail today and noticed it when I was scanning through the disc.

I can’t figure out how to upload an image from my iPad here.

[omegadirective]

It’s amazing how artificially bright the blu ray is.

I popped the 4K disc in and was scanning through it to see how it looked and got to the sex scene.
When Laura Harding takes her clothes off, I thought, “wow that seems very dark” as I just watched the blu ray about a month ago.
That scene sticks out, obviously, so I noticed lots of detail on the blu ray.

Seeing how dark the 4K is, I popped the blu ray in (I have a blu ray player and a 4K player hooked up through my Denon amp to my 4 k tv)

Swapping inputs on the amp from the blu ray to the 4K, the sex scene now looks like it was filmed during the day time on the blu ray, it’s that much brighter.

I think the 4K may be a bit too dark, but it certainly does look sharper and have less artifacting.

However, this was also the scene where I noticed the artifacting in the black bars of the 4K disc that i mentioned above.

[tenia]

I've started comparing the 2 SC BDs (2017 and 2021) and they seem actually quite different in grading (the new BD looking darker), so I'm not sure if the difference you're seeing comes from the discs' technologies or from the gradings at the sources.
From what I compared so far, the older disc look warmer and brighter, and on the few comparison caps I did so far, there's also noticeable differences in the framing.
I certainly didn't expect this based on the detailed workflow of this restoration and seeing how it was supposed to recycle so much of the 2015 work.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

So, oh, the Criterion Mulholland UHD look terrible in comparison with its UK Studio Canal counterpart. Check out the overall grain rendering and especially the red light in this shot: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=1&x=71 ... 0&i=7&go=1

The SC has the lesser filesize so it must come down to compression procedure. Does anyone know who did SC the encode? Have they finally learned how to do it properly?

Now it will certainly be interesting to see how the Warner Kane UHD compares to the Criterion when it arrives next week.

Criterion's entry into UHD land has certainly been a bumpy one...

[yoloswegmaster]

Saying that it looks "terrible" is just BR.com levels of hyperbole.

[swo17]

David Mackenzie did the SC encode, just as he has for a handful of their other releases

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Saying that it looks "terrible" is just BR.com levels of hyperbole.

It looks great, I have it myself. But in comparison with the SC, I think the compression looks terrible. And it shouldn't, as it even has a larger filesize than the SC.

David Mackenzie did the SC encode, just as he has for a handful of their other releases

Thank you. Great job on this one. Don't know if he worked on the SC's that I found to look questionable (maybe it was titles that didn't look good without Dolby Vision, though). But the Italien UHD's of the Carpenters certainly has better compression than the UK's.

[tenia]

Saying that it looks "terrible" is just BR.com levels of hyperbole.

Yes, it doesn't look terrible, plus we need to factor in (at least from a Dolby Vision watching point of view) that since David used MEL while Pixelogic used FEL for the DV stream, it's likely the comparisons aren't totally fair texture-wise once downconverted here.
Still, this looks like there's a possibility for Pixelogic still not to yield as good an encode as possible, though not to the same extent than on BD (which would be on par with what I heard so far about their UHD encodes).

And it shouldn't, as it even has a larger filesize than the SC.

Comparing file sizes isn't really the right metric here, since the DV encodes don't have the same strategy, that the 5.1 tracks don't have the same bitrate at all by quite a margin (since both are 48/24, I wonder what happened here), and that the European disc has 2 dubs on top of this.
Comparing AVBs (and, since we have them, instant video bitrates) is a better metric, and in the present case, I wouldn't say the Criterion is higher than the SC, but rather equivalent : the Criterion HDR10 stream has a 70.36 Mbps AVB, the Canal a 72.32 Mbps, which is pretty much equivalent. Even when factoring in the DV streams, Criterion AVB is 77.9 Mbps, Canal 72.4 Mbps, which is only a 7% difference.

The conclusion is the same though : this likely is down to the encoder settings rather than pure bitrate, but still, as it is, I'd say we're comparing here 2 encodes at about the same video bitrates, rather than one being higher than the other.

[swo17]

David Mackenzie did the SC encode, just as he has for a handful of their other releases

Thank you. Great job on this one. Don't know if he worked on the SC's that I found to look questionable (maybe it was titles that didn't look good without Dolby Vision, though). But the Italien UHD's of the Carpenters certainly has better compression than the UK's.

No, he didn't do the Carpenters. I'm unaware of any release he's encoded that's been received as anything less than exemplary

[EddieLarkin]

You only have to look at the Criterion Blu-ray of the film to see how vastly improved their UHD compression is for these sort of ultra fine grain sources. But that doesn't mean a bunch of humps like Pixelogic are ever going to approach David M's level of compression. As long as they keep Criterion's UHDs looking far away from some of the absolute disasters we've seen on Criterion Blu-ray, I'll be happy.

[arca]

SpoilerShow

I rewatched this film a few nights ago in light of Lynch's passing, and came up with a new interpretation of it.

Mulholland Drive is one of my favorite films, and this is just my interpretation. I'm not invalidating anyone else's interpretation. I don't know what Lynch's intentions were with this movie, and maybe he didn't consciously know himself. He channeled his unconscious into his movies, and interpreting his work is a bit like doing Freudian dream analysis on him.

I've always loved Mulholland Drive, but I've also always thought that (what seems to be) the ultimate explanation is unsatisfying. After setting up all this tantalizing mystery, the explanation is that the first 80% of the movie is a dream. Isn't the "it was all a dream" ending the laziest copout explanation ever? However, I've grown to believe that this explanation is intentionally unsatisfying, and that this is central to the point of the movie.

To understand Mulholland Drive, we need to talk about the Club Silencio scene, which is the heart of the film. What makes this scene so powerful is that the movie, up until this point, has been almost entirely lacking in humanity. The acting is stilted and uncanny. No one acts like a real person. Everything feels fake. But when Rebekah Del Rio sings, there is a beautiful moment of genuine humanity that breaks through, to the point that it drives the characters to tears, but then she falls over dead, and her performance is revealed to have been as fake as everything else.

What's interesting about Lynch's films is that you can always interpret them in opposite ways. There are countless moments in his movies that you can interpret despairingly or hopefully, and the Club Silencio sequence is no exception. You can interpret that moment in a despairing and nihilistic way, meaning you can interpret that moment as saying that even the most seemingly true and beautiful things in life are lies. Or you can interpret it positively by recognizing that even if the performance was fake, it doesn't change the fact that Camilla and Dianne shared a beautiful moment and that the emotions they were feeling (and you, the viewer, were feeling) during that moment were real.

I can't help but think that the Club Silencio sequence is also a metaphor for the movie. It's no coincidence that the scene features characters in an audience watching a show, representing the viewer watching the movie. Much like the characters watching the performance in Club Silencio, we have a powerfully visceral experience when watching the film. We are overwhelmed by the sense of terror and beauty and mystery it gives us. However, when we put all the pieces together after the movie is over, the disappointing explanation causes us to experience a moment reminiscent of the characters watching the singer falling over. It's also no coincidence that the man who introduces the performance is credited as "the magician." Great magic tricks are awe-inspiring while they're happening, but the explanation of the trick destroys that sense of awe. This is a metaphor for the movie. The movie itself plays a kind of magic trick on the audience, but when the magic trick is explained, there is a feeling of disappointment.

Once again, we can view this unsatisfying explanation in opposite ways. We can interpret this sense of disappointment negatively because the ultimate explanation was a letdown, or we can appreciate that while the movie was playing, it gave us a very real and profound experience.

Another important element of the Club Silencio scene is the blue-haired woman. The color blue plays an important part in most of Lynch's films (i.e. Blue Velvet) and seems highly symbolic. The most mysterious elements in Lynch's films (i.e. the blue key and box in this movie) are often associated with the color blue. Also, in Twin Peaks, The Blue Rose Task Force investigates cosmic forces that are beyond human understanding. It's called "The Blue Rose Task Force" because they investigate the supernatural, and blue roses don't exist in nature. As Gordon Cole puts it, they investigate "the absurd mystery of the strange forces of existence." Thus, in Lynch's films, the color blue seems to be associated with mystery. It's no coincidence that the blue-haired woman utters the last line of the film: "silencio." She is telling the viewers not to talk to each other after the movie is over to try and solve the puzzle but to instead appreciate the experience and enjoy the sense of mystery.

This sentiment seems to reflect Lynch's view of life. His movies are mysterious because they're about the mysteries in our lives and how we search for answers. As Lynch often said in interviews, humans are "like detectives in life." I think he believes that if we were to find the answers to life's questions, they might be disappointing, so we should at least try to just enjoy the experience and accept the mystery.

In short, the Club Silencio sequence is a metaphor that works on three levels. On one level, it represents the fact that Betty is living an idyllic life as a young Hollywood starlet, but that life is false because it's nothing more than an escapist fantasy. On another level, it's a metaphor for the film itself. And on a third level, it's a metaphor for Lynch's whole outlook on life. For him, having all the answers to life's mysteries revealed might be like having a magic trick explained. His films are about the tension that exists between one's desire to enjoy the beauty of life and one's knowledge that it all might just be a kind of magic trick with nothing more to it (as the magician says, "There is no band! And yet, we hear a band.") In Lynch's films, this tension is never totally resolved, which is one of the reasons they're so unsettling. Overall, I think the film is a lot more than just a commentary on Hollywood. It's a deeply existential work.

I don't know how to square this analysis with his professed spiritual beliefs. I know he believed that there is a higher power and something larger beyond this life. Is it possible that doubt sometimes subconsciously crept into his head, and that's reflected in his movies? I'm not sure. But either way, that's my interpretation of the film. RIP to my favorite director ever.

[Robin Davies]

Good analysis, but I don't find the standard "dream" interpretation "unsatisfying". True, if it had ended with Diane waking up it would have been as annoying as the "it was all a dream" cliche, but we get to see her reality in detail and how it has been recast in complex ways in her dream. I recommend John Thorne's book Devious Dreams: Reimagining David Lynch's Mulholland Drive which makes a strong case for the dream interpretation being Lynch's intention.

[Roger Ryan]

Yes, this analysis is certainly in keeping with Lynch's approach to his film work. However, I don't think that "doubt" would seep into his head or work subconsciously as Lynch readily acknowledges such existentialist dilemmas throughout every film he made, more so than most filmmakers.

For me, "Club Silencio" is not just a metaphor for the movie you're watching but for the cinema itself: where else do a group of people congregate but are expected to remain silent? All image and sound presented in the cinema is "prerecorded"; it's not a live event happening in the moment. In fact, what we're watching never really happened at all (in total) as a film is made up of many discreet elements that need to be assembled (like a puzzle?) to create the illusion of a whole. Throughout the first two thirds of the film, as Betty attempts to construct an alternate reality in her dream to assuage her anxiety over the deadly consequence of her selfish actions, that alternate reality is continually being interrupted by oblique reminders of the truth. "Club Silencio" is one of these moments where she is shown that the artifice of the movies is the same as the artifice of a dream, her dream in particular which appears to be the breaking point that will wake her. Although Lynch claimed not to know what the blue box and key represented, it appears that the box contains the knowledge that the constructed alternate reality is an illusion; once the box is opened, Betty/Diane cannot remain in the dream state.

[Walter Kurtz]

Yup. [hands clapping]

[Walter Kurtz]

Ms. Watts is not one of my favorite actors but she gave my favorite female performance of all time. Going from idyllic bliss - and everywhere in between - to almost violently masturbating her unfulfilled dreams into reality. The arc of her performance and the arc of the film is almost a metaphor for her career up to that point. Almost unknown wannabe giving it her all at her best, and possibly, last shot at 'it'.

She didn't need The Method. She was living it.

[arca]

Yes, this analysis is certainly in keeping with Lynch's approach to his film work. However, I don't think that "doubt" would seep into his head or work subconsciously as Lynch readily acknowledges such existentialist dilemmas throughout every film he made, more so than most filmmakers.

This is a good point. I was recently rewatching the movie "Waking Life," which is a kind of documentary where various people are interviewed about their varying world views (coincidentally, it's also a movie that's all about dreams). At one point, a Buddhist interviewee says, "Yes, it is empty, but empty with such fullness." And sure, that's the kind of enigmatic Zen-sounding statement we expect from spiritual gurus. But it was a line that was running through my mind when thinking about Mulholland Drive. Perhaps that's an idea that Lynch was getting at in his films, which would square his Eastern-influenced spirituality with my interpretation (assuming my interpretation has any truth to it).

For me, "Club Silencio" is not just a metaphor for the movie you're watching but for the cinema itself: where else do a group of people congregate but are expected to remain silent? All image and sound presented in the cinema is "prerecorded"; it's not a live event happening in the moment. In fact, what we're watching never really happened at all (in total) as a film is made up of many discreet elements that need to be assembled (like a puzzle?) to create the illusion of a whole. Throughout the first two thirds of the film, as Betty attempts to construct an alternate reality in her dream to assuage her anxiety over the deadly consequence of her selfish actions, that alternate reality is continually being interrupted by oblique reminders of the truth. "Club Silencio" is one of these moments where she is shown that the artifice of the movies is the same as the artifice of a dream, her dream in particular which appears to be the breaking point that will wake her. Although Lynch claimed not to know what the blue box and key represented, it appears that the box contains the knowledge that the constructed alternate reality is an illusion; once the box is opened, Betty/Diane cannot remain in the dream state.

I agree with all of this. The great thing about Lynch's movies is that they are open to many interpretations, all of which are correct, because symbols in his movies never mean any one thing. In fact, it's probably wrong to even call them symbols, because they don't involve any straightforward reference > referent relationships. Instead, they are images that have many different associations, much like images in a dream. The Club Silencio sequence can represent Betty's escapist fantasy; it can represent the movie itself; it can represent movies in general; it can represent the way Hollywood lures actresses in with the Hollywood dream, uses them, and spits them out; it can be a metaphor for human existence; and on and on.

[soundchaser]

A brief thought: the blue-haired woman in Club Silencio is the biggest mystery left to me in the film. Not surprisingly, she was probably my favorite part on a recent rewatch.

[Finch]

I think she is played by Cori Glazer, Lynch's script supervisor. I like how he found bit parts for his behind-the-camera team in his films, same with Sabrina Sutherland, his Return EP, who plays a casino staff member in the part where Dougie turns into Mr Jackpot.

[Never Cursed]

His then-wife and her sister were both in The Return, right?

[Finch]

Yes, they played Roadhouse patrons.