Source United Kingdom | Publisher : Universal Pictures | Release date 26 August 2024
Video format
2160p24 | Ratio 2.35
HDR10 | BT.2020
HEVC encoding | DI 2K
Soundtrack
English DTS:X
French (Parisian) SDR 5.1
Subtitles
English
French
Rated 2.5 out of 5
Artistic : 8.5 | Video : 4.5 | Audio : 10
It is brought to the attention of our dear readers that, in addition to the specified and used viewing equipment, the rendering may differ from one installation to another, whether or not it is calibrated, as well as personal preferences and expectations may influence notation. In addition, the images (from the Patreon account of Timo Wolters and site Slowpoke Pics) serve as an illustration and cannot be considered representative of the edition tested.
Test equipment and condition (Config. HP: 5.1.4)
Video broadcaster : Sony Bravia XR-65A95L (Professional HDR)
Sources : Oppo UDP-203 Audiocom Reference | Zappiti Reference
Pregnant : Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Max (DTS:X | DTS Neural:X), SVS SB-4000
WORK - Beauty and the Beast
Carl Denham, a filmmaker in search of fame, takes his team to film a love and adventure film on Skull Island, an unexplored land where, it is said, indigenous people love a mysterious and terrifying creature.
Faithful to the original plot, Peter Jackson radically removes the myth without losing anything of the naive charm of classic 1933. A monster work to the gratifying staging where King Kong, a natural confounding despite its all-digital nature, steals the star at an impressive casting (Naomi Watts, Adrien Brody and Jack Black). And despite the overexploitation of special effects that remain no less spectacular, this larger-than-life enlivened adventure is a monument to the romantic film whose skin-flowering sensitivity can only move.
« And now the beast looked at the beauty and the beautiful stopped her gesture... From then on, the beast was like dead. »
IMAGE - The Lost World
Captured in Super 35 and (unfortunately) finalized in 2K, this oversampled 4K source was visibly produced at the rush (to coincide with the beginnings of the support) without any artistic reflection behind. All (or almost all) sliders have been pushed to the full, going as far as to squander in places the magnificent photograph of the chief operator Andrew Lesnie (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit). And that's not all, since serious compressive problems (such as tingling and color banding) regularly invite you to travel (nothing with an average bitrate of only 46 Mbps).
The fine details and textures, far from being at the height of the format, have been drastically accentuated by a strengthening of the coarse contours (of the edge enhancement) where certain planes, with strange softness, incriminate the use of a violent noise reducer (of the DNR). The silver grain is in fact terribly heterogeneous and the images far too artificial...
This tends to prove the unthought-out integration of HDR technology (limited to HDR10), with light sources so pushed (especially on reflections) that they become cartoonesque. In addition, we often lose on the pruning side (less cottony clouds). MaxFALL was measured at 96 cd/m2 and MaxCCL at 1000 nits.
But everything is (happily) not to be thrown away, since the lush colorimetric palette gains as much in shade (a more measured overall saturation and a less pregnant yellow-green dominant) than in vibrance (for an island frame more « Paradise »), and that the blacks show an increased depth well at the moment of sacrifice on the island and at evenings at the Big Apple). There is finally only here where the natural finds his way...
SOUND - Monkey Dream
Even more scale and opening than the previous soundtrack DTS-HD MA 51 for a VO DTS:X (24-bit, 7413 kbps) titanium with maximum envelope... The addition of verticality, far from being annoyed (cf. the rush of the brachiosaurs and the pit to the giant insects), adding to a sound of every moment.
The spatialisation is even more palpable (the atmospheres of the New York jungle, the fauna and flora on Skull Island), the aggressive rear activity, the perfectly targeted effects (road traffic, the presence of the bestiary), the vehement dynamics, the crystalline dialogues, the score of James Newton Howard (between lyrical softness and tribal ferocity) particularly large and colossal bass (King Kong screams, heavy steps of reptiles, motors of the SS Venture).
Very slender at its level but necessarily less precise in its rendering, the VF DTS 5.1 (24-bit, 768 kbps) delivers whatever happens from the great acoustic spectacle even if a little more « dry » than in his 3D friend. If the dubbing is of quality, the voices are too prominent vis-à-vis the other audio components of the mixing.
CONCLUSION - The Return of the King
Even if presented in its 187-minute cinema version and in its 200-minute version (three unreleased sequences – an attack of triceratops, a murderous raft ride and a speech of motivation to soldiers in a truck – and five lengthened), a rarity on the support, this epic blockbuster that finds the spark in the eyes (sensibility fills) of a disillusioned great Kong remains unfortunately trapped in its chains in 4K Ultra HD (the section image not caressing in the direction of the hair)!
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