Should I also remind you of the campfire scene and the baked beans? I thought not.
Yes, there are more than few memorable lines: "Excuse me while I whip this out," says Sheriff Bart to the townsfolk. "Why don't you loosen your bullets?" says Lili to the Sheriff. "Head 'em off at the pass? I hate that cliché," says Lamarr to Taggart. "You are about to embark on a great crusade," Lamarr says to his henchmen, "to stamp out runaway decency in the West."
Should I also remind you of the campfire scene and the baked beans? I thought not.
The ending is pure Brooks as the entire cast of "Blazing Saddles" in a moment of cinematic reflexivity overflows into the soundstage of another film production, and the sheriff has to follow Lamarr to the movie's own première for the final shoot-out. Harrumph, harrumph!
Video:
Warner Bros.' first DVD edition of "Blazing Saddles" had a picture and sound quality less than commendable, which was happily rectified in the high-bit-rate, anamorphic transfer of the 30th Anniversary Special Edition. Now, the video has been improved even further in 1080 high definition. I spent the first twenty or thirty minutes of my reviewing session simply switching back and forth between the previous SD special edition and this new HD-DVD one as they played in separate machines, choosing about two dozen spots and pausing them for comparison. In a couple of instances I confess I could see little or no difference in picture quality, but in the vast majority of cases, there was a marked improvement in detail and object delineation from the HD-DVD.
The screen ratio of the new version remains as before, measuring about 2.18:1 across my widescreen television, and its HD image is sharp and clear, with colors deep and bright . Unlike on the previous edition, I noticed no moments of even the slightest minor fading, and the only grain I saw was in the outdoor footage, where vast expanses of sky are always a problem. I've owned this movie in Beta and VHS tape copies, two DVD editions, and now on HD-DVD, and I must say I've appreciated the improvement I've seen with each new rendering. Lastly, let me assure those several readers who have written in to mention the HD picture freezing up from time to time that I encountered no such problem. After my initial comparison tests, I played the disc from beginning to end in a single run, and it performed flawlessly. In fact, in the first eleven HD-DVDs I've watched, only once has the picture momentarily hesitated before continuing, an error I could not repeat and which I can only attribute to a speck of dust.
Audio:
I was also impressed by the sound of the movie's Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio track as delivered to my receiver via the HD-DVD player's 5.1 analogue outputs. Again, I initially kept the SD edition of the movie playing simultaneously and in sync with the HD movie and spent about fifteen or twenty minutes switching the audio inputs on my receiver from DD+/5.1 analogue to regular Dolby Digital 5.1. As I found with the picture quality, I observed a pronounced improvement in the clarity of the DD+ over the standard DD 5.1.
The audio displays a reasonably wide front stereo spread, with strong dynamic impact, but the rear channels are still not fed much in the way of a signal, and there is still very little deep bass to speak of. This is undoubtedly as it should be if the remastered soundtrack is reproducing the original audio signals. The surround speakers are used for modest musical ambiance enhancement and the occasional ricochetting gunshot. I also continued to hear in the DD+ soundtrack the same slight tendency toward nasality in voices that I heard in the DD 5.1 track, but it didn't seem quite as noticeable to me in the new edition.
Meanwhile, in DD+ I found the front-channel sound more alive than ever, the improvement most apparent during the brief session with Count Basie and his band, who now sounded as if they were in the same room with me. Needless to say, how much of an improvement in picture and sound you'll find with this HD-DVD will depend on your playback equipment and your expectations. If you're anticipating a night-and-day difference in quality, you may be disappointed. The high-def picture and sound are assuredly better in almost every way than on the SD Special Edition, but the contrasts come in small increments, not vast changes. As I said in the beginning, if you love this movie, this is the best form Warner Bros. have ever made it available for home viewing.
Extras:
For the HD-DVD release of the film, WB give us the same assortment of bonus materials they provided for their 30th Anniversary Edition. As before, though, the extras are in standard definition, 480, not high-def. I suspect there are several reasons for this. The studio probably wants to save time and money by recycling as much of its old product as possible, rather than having to remaster too much stuff; the studio probably wants to save space on the disc; and the studio probably figures most buyers are only going to watch the extras once or twice, while they will be watching the movie over and over again. It seems like a reasonable compromise.
The first bonus item is a scene-specific commentary by Mel Brooks. The next is a twenty-eight-minute cast-and-crew reunion documentary, "Back in the Saddle," made in 2001. In it, cowriter Andrew Bergman says he wanted the movie to reveal a hip, 1974 sensibility in an 1874 setting. Reminiscences come from Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Burton Gilliam, and others. Then, there's a brief, three-minute tribute excerpt, "Intimate Portrait: Madeline Kahn"; followed by twenty-four minutes of "Black Bart," a 1975 TV pilot inspired by the movie; and about nine minutes of additional scenes, many of which were later edited into a longer, television version of the movie. Finally, there are twenty-six scene selections; and English, French, and Spanish spoken languages and subtitles.
Warner Bros. package the disc in an Elite Red HD case, which because of its smaller size serves the function of making the HD-DVD more conspicuous on one's shelf, making it more conspicuous in the video store, and conserving space in both places. In addition, the disc continues to offer among its pop-up menu options a zoom-and-pan feature, which allows the user to zoom in by 2x, 4x, or 8x on any scene and then maneuver around the screen. I'm not sure why they include this feature, but it's sort of fun for a minute or two. However, WB provide no chapter insert within the Elite case, which still seems an odd thing for them to be skimping on.
Parting Thoughts:
So, how can you not like a Western where the heroes ride off into the sunset in a Cadillac El Dorado? I mean, it's so...Hollywood. And so funny. Much of "Blazing Saddles" may seem less than inspired because its style has been so often imitated, but the parts that work continue to provoke strong laughs no matter how often you've seen them. Face it, it's a landmark film from a funnyman who continues to remain commercially strong and vibrant to this day. Harrumph, harrumph for high definition!
Should I also remind you of the campfire scene and the baked beans? I thought not.
The ending is pure Brooks as the entire cast of "Blazing Saddles" in a moment of cinematic reflexivity overflows into the soundstage of another film production, and the sheriff has to follow Lamarr to the movie's own première for the final shoot-out. Harrumph, harrumph!
Video:
Warner Bros.' first DVD edition of "Blazing Saddles" had a picture and sound quality less than commendable, which was happily rectified in the high-bit-rate, anamorphic transfer of the 30th Anniversary Special Edition. Now, the video has been improved even further in 1080 high definition. I spent the first twenty or thirty minutes of my reviewing session simply switching back and forth between the previous SD special edition and this new HD-DVD one as they played in separate machines, choosing about two dozen spots and pausing them for comparison. In a couple of instances I confess I could see little or no difference in picture quality, but in the vast majority of cases, there was a marked improvement in detail and object delineation from the HD-DVD.
The screen ratio of the new version remains as before, measuring about 2.18:1 across my widescreen television, and its HD image is sharp and clear, with colors deep and bright . Unlike on the previous edition, I noticed no moments of even the slightest minor fading, and the only grain I saw was in the outdoor footage, where vast expanses of sky are always a problem. I've owned this movie in Beta and VHS tape copies, two DVD editions, and now on HD-DVD, and I must say I've appreciated the improvement I've seen with each new rendering. Lastly, let me assure those several readers who have written in to mention the HD picture freezing up from time to time that I encountered no such problem. After my initial comparison tests, I played the disc from beginning to end in a single run, and it performed flawlessly. In fact, in the first eleven HD-DVDs I've watched, only once has the picture momentarily hesitated before continuing, an error I could not repeat and which I can only attribute to a speck of dust.
Audio:
I was also impressed by the sound of the movie's Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio track as delivered to my receiver via the HD-DVD player's 5.1 analogue outputs. Again, I initially kept the SD edition of the movie playing simultaneously and in sync with the HD movie and spent about fifteen or twenty minutes switching the audio inputs on my receiver from DD+/5.1 analogue to regular Dolby Digital 5.1. As I found with the picture quality, I observed a pronounced improvement in the clarity of the DD+ over the standard DD 5.1.
The audio displays a reasonably wide front stereo spread, with strong dynamic impact, but the rear channels are still not fed much in the way of a signal, and there is still very little deep bass to speak of. This is undoubtedly as it should be if the remastered soundtrack is reproducing the original audio signals. The surround speakers are used for modest musical ambiance enhancement and the occasional ricochetting gunshot. I also continued to hear in the DD+ soundtrack the same slight tendency toward nasality in voices that I heard in the DD 5.1 track, but it didn't seem quite as noticeable to me in the new edition.
Meanwhile, in DD+ I found the front-channel sound more alive than ever, the improvement most apparent during the brief session with Count Basie and his band, who now sounded as if they were in the same room with me. Needless to say, how much of an improvement in picture and sound you'll find with this HD-DVD will depend on your playback equipment and your expectations. If you're anticipating a night-and-day difference in quality, you may be disappointed. The high-def picture and sound are assuredly better in almost every way than on the SD Special Edition, but the contrasts come in small increments, not vast changes. As I said in the beginning, if you love this movie, this is the best form Warner Bros. have ever made it available for home viewing.
Extras:
For the HD-DVD release of the film, WB give us the same assortment of bonus materials they provided for their 30th Anniversary Edition. As before, though, the extras are in standard definition, 480, not high-def. I suspect there are several reasons for this. The studio probably wants to save time and money by recycling as much of its old product as possible, rather than having to remaster too much stuff; the studio probably wants to save space on the disc; and the studio probably figures most buyers are only going to watch the extras once or twice, while they will be watching the movie over and over again. It seems like a reasonable compromise.
The first bonus item is a scene-specific commentary by Mel Brooks. The next is a twenty-eight-minute cast-and-crew reunion documentary, "Back in the Saddle," made in 2001. In it, cowriter Andrew Bergman says he wanted the movie to reveal a hip, 1974 sensibility in an 1874 setting. Reminiscences come from Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Burton Gilliam, and others. Then, there's a brief, three-minute tribute excerpt, "Intimate Portrait: Madeline Kahn"; followed by twenty-four minutes of "Black Bart," a 1975 TV pilot inspired by the movie; and about nine minutes of additional scenes, many of which were later edited into a longer, television version of the movie. Finally, there are twenty-six scene selections; and English, French, and Spanish spoken languages and subtitles.
Warner Bros. package the disc in an Elite Red HD case, which because of its smaller size serves the function of making the HD-DVD more conspicuous on one's shelf, making it more conspicuous in the video store, and conserving space in both places. In addition, the disc continues to offer among its pop-up menu options a zoom-and-pan feature, which allows the user to zoom in by 2x, 4x, or 8x on any scene and then maneuver around the screen. I'm not sure why they include this feature, but it's sort of fun for a minute or two. However, WB provide no chapter insert within the Elite case, which still seems an odd thing for them to be skimping on.
Parting Thoughts:
So, how can you not like a Western where the heroes ride off into the sunset in a Cadillac El Dorado? I mean, it's so...Hollywood. And so funny. Much of "Blazing Saddles" may seem less than inspired because its style has been so often imitated, but the parts that work continue to provoke strong laughs no matter how often you've seen them. Face it, it's a landmark film from a funnyman who continues to remain commercially strong and vibrant to this day. Harrumph, harrumph for high definition!
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]19038[/release]