It’s an interesting subplot (which appears in the novelization apparently) though I can’t say it’s missed. The scenes in question mostly take place in Des’ (Eigeman) apartment and center around a subplot involving Mackenzie Astin’s Jimmy and his feelings towards Sevigny’s Alice. Next up are four deleted scenes running a little over 8-minutes and accompanied by an optional commentary again by Stillman, Eigeman, and Sevigny. (As a little tidbit, the track was recorded after the opening weekend of 17 Again, only mentioned in the track because Burr Steers, who plays Van in this film, directed that film.) Still a surprisingly entertaining and informative commentary track. He also questions them on whether they prefer bigger shoots to smaller ones like this film (to which Eigeman states bigger productions usually have more food.) There are laughs to be found and it’s certainly informative but I sort of wished the other two had more to share other than information on Sevigny’s hair and clothes and Eigeman complementing Sevigny on her work in Zodiac. While the other two participants do ring up once in a while they mostly wait until Stillman asks them a question about the production and how it compared to others. He also confirms that, yes, he hates Lady and the Tramp. He goes into influences and talks a lot about the actual disco scene and Studio 54 (plus how he got a girl he liked to pay attention to him,) his work in publishing, and also points out aspects of the film he doesn’t like. Stillman covers his writing process, which sounds to be rather loose though this time around he forced a deadline upon himself. Though independent at heart Stillman still had to deal with studios, in this case Castle Rock Entertainment, which put some pressure on him, a big one being he had to get his film out before Miramax’s own disco film, the disastrous 54 (in all fairness, the director’s cut is supposed to be good.) By the sounds of it his biggest issue wasn’t like other indie features where he was going over budget but it sounds like the studios were upset with him because he wasn’t spending enough. The track covers a lot about its production and where it fits in Stillman’s trilogy of films, which includes Metropolitan and Barcelona, the former also having been released by Criterion. I found it a wholly interesting commentary track, though, and was actually rather surprised by it. Stillman is clearly in charge here with Eigeman and Sevigny disappointingly only acting as a sort of back up to him and only speaking up when addressed by Stillman. The first and probably best feature on here is the audio commentary featuring director Whit Stillman, and actors Chris Eigeman and Chloë Sevigny. But what it looks like is we’re getting an older high-def transfer that cut it for DVD but not exactly for Blu-ray.Ĭriterion ports everything over from their DVD edition, which I found underwhelming initially and still find to be so going through them again: they’re not all that different from the typical material you’d find on any other DVD or Blu-ray release. I was impressed with the DVD, which was released three years ago, so I did have some high expectations for this Blu-ray and that could have played into my disappointment. Despite the variance in the degree of details the picture overall is sharper than the DVD’s, yet it could certainly be far better.

Film grain is noticeable but it can come off like a blobby mess and look a bit like noise.Ĭolours do offer an improvement on the other hand, with reds, blues, and purples coming off significantly better, and blacks also look a bit deeper.

Details vary severely from scene to scene, with some decent amount of definition in the finer details during some sequences and what looks like a waxy glaze over some objects, particularly faces, in other scenes. Edge-enhancement rears its ugly head in many instances, causing slight halos around objects and can be hard to ignore on the dance floor. It worked for the DVD but I'm almost sad to say the Blu-ray’s presentation is incredibly underwhelming to say the least.Ĭompression is less of an issue here but other artifacts are noticeable, and it has a surprisingly flat and muddy look to it. It looks as though the same high-def transfer used for the DVD is the same one here (not surprising.) Even though it was downscaled for DVD it still looked great despite a few short comings that I blamed more on compression. Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco receives its Blu-ray debut from Criterion, presented in the aspect ratio of 1.78:1 on this dual-layer disc.

The last days of disco