Fight Club [Blu-ray] [1999]

Product Information

Pitt (Kalifornia, Meet Joe Black) plays the enigmatic Tyler with the perfect blend of energy, insanity, and hidden depression, and I feel this is his strongest work so far in his career. In fact I ended up using an enormous Sony CRT production monitor ( a HDVS system HDM-2830) to view the meager content available. Each of the characters' motivation is explained in depth and all of the scenes are given a blow by blow breakdown of what's going on. For example, there's that scene after the car crash where Tyler Durden is giving his grand view for a post-apocalyptic utopia. According to an interview with Barnes and Noble, David Fincher spent six weeks supervising this transfer, it’s hard to believe that the later editions received the same degree of directorial attention.

The scenes covered are the main titles, the sequence where the apartment becomes a 3-D catalog, the ice cave sequences, the apartment explosion, the place crash, the unique sex scene, the car wreck scene, the gun shot sequence, and the high rise collapse. The much-publicized Easter Egg of this disc is a very comical but false opening menu for Never Been Kissed , which transitions into the real menu: a 360 degree view of the apartment menu from the original DVD, but now also featuring the Paper Street house kitchen, as well. Additionally the Laserdisc has hard Japanese subtitles throughout, though these remain outside the picture area. Ultimately, there are two home video versions of Fight Club, based on either the 1999 or 2008 transfer. In saying that, there are some nice colour subtleties on show here, such as the various garish garbs which adorn Tyler and Marla.While many of the scenes exude a pleasing depth, there are not many which display that sought after “3d-pop” factor. You’ll see the scenes come together, from early computer graphic shots, to in progress work, to the finished product, very cool stuff. The featurette A Hit in the Ear: Ren Klyce and the Sound Design of Fight Club follows, which also includes the ability to tinker with the audio of four different scenes from the film. I don’t think Fincher is one of the best overall directors in the business, since his range is limited to darker films, but when it comes to his specialty, he is one of the finest. While the roles these actors played were smaller parts, they were vital to the film, and were played with skill and energy.

Each of these segments are given a brief introduction from Ken and it's actually good fun to remix theses segments in any way that you wish but the novelty wears thin pretty quickly. In the above image I’ve applied varying amount of unsharp mask (bottom row) to the 1999 transfer, and achieved an effect similar to the 2008 transfer, not the increased prominence of the ‘star’ and the stain.The online commentary available suggests it was the same as the DVD or D-VHS transfer and very disappointing. To be succinct, if this soundtrack doesn’t have your neighbors bitching and complaining, I don’t know what will.

One of the most amusing features is the “fake” introduction screen which states that this disc is 'Never Been Kissed' starring Drew Barrymore - I can't remember if this was on the regular DVD but it had me cursing the BD producers for such a heinous crime for a couple of minutes!I’m curious to wonder if we’ll ever see a release of Fight Club in 4K… I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen the movie and I know for sure seeing it in 4K would be stunning. As always, some things are lost in the move, but overall the film captures the essence of the novel quite well. But Fincher has proven himself to me and the film business with this movie, and I have to admit it now ranks as one of my all time favorites, and one of the finest directorial turns I’ve seen. While contrast is high enough to get the most out the visuals without jeopardizing them, it still tends to be a bit too dark at times. I got a small comical shock at the start when I loaded the disc: Never Been Kissed (those that have seen it know what i mean), thought the cashier had given me the wrong disc.