Soon to be on UHD - David Hare rejoices at the prospect of new restorations of Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW, PSYCHO, VERTIGO and THE BIRDS

This new UHD boxset has just been Okayed for order to OZ and NZ from streetdate September 7. (Which supposes Universal Oz will not be releasing it re-packaged here as they used to do wth UHD). To order from Amazon click on this link

Same thing has happened with the UHD Spartacus  which shipped today. I have once again gone with the super expensive DHL option (including 20% GST for NZ!) but having just recently received two of the seemingly lost-for-months standard Amazon and ImportCD cd orders from Jan and Feb recently ariving here from the Covid blackhole, I suspect regular airmail is now less predictable. 

I hope this boxset flies off the shelf, and they do yet more including a rescanned and remastered Marnie  to replace the DNR'ed jagged edged sharpened horror Blu-ray from the 2012 box which looked like it was shot through mosquito gauze. 

For those who are as anal as moi (and that's all of you - admit it NOW!) I noticed recently reviewing the Criterion Notorious  BD, in two of the many bonus pieces, cinephiles Daniel Raim and in another David Bordwell who make analyses of Hitch's storyboarding and POV for sequences from The Birds  to compare with similar POV tracking shots from Notorious. Notably the scene in which Tippi goes to the school to collect Suzanne Pleshette and waits outside smoking a cigarette while hundreds of crows gather on the jungle jim behind her. 

The Birds footage in the two short extracts is eye poppingly spectacular and reveals a brand new transfer, millions of miles ahead of the waxy, soft, overly filtered mess that Universal did for the title in its big 2012 masterpiece Blu Ray box. 

Universal's work 10 years ago and now are from two parallel universes, the latter a winner. These new UHD Hitchcock discs promise to be very, very special indeed.