Documentary

IMAX films are the perfect source material to show off the capabilities of the UHD Blu-ray/4K format. Most of the films we watch in theaters today have been shot around 2.8 K and mastered at just 2K. A 35mm film actually shot on film has a native resolution of 4K. The IMAX film format uses 65mm and 70mm film that increases its native resolution well beyond our 4K televisions and players. They are relatively short and have a ton of bandwidth to deliver the best possible image and audio. Shout Factory discovered this as soon as the format was launched, and Upcomingdiscs was there to check them out. The titles have slowed down in the last year, but they haven’t stopped. And just in time for Christmas, you can take a journey down under to visit with beautiful sea turtles in Shout’s new IMAX masterpiece, Turtle Odyssey.
Read More

“They have assembled here from the four corners of the earth. Fifty-five warships, among them the newest and most sophisticated ever produced. The United States is here. Great Britain, India, Japan, Canada, Australia, Germany. Twenty-six nations together; each will introduce the latest in naval technology in their arsenals.”

And this is actually the true subject and focus of the latest IMAX/4K release from Shout Factory. If you came strictly to spend 45 minutes on an aircraft carrier, you went away a little disappointed. But now that you can have it at home to watch in UHD whenever the mood strikes you, there’s less to be disappointed in here.
Read More

“Every bridge, every building grows from an engineers imagination.”

Dream Big: Engineering Our World is the second of Shout Factory’s latest collection of IMAX films to be brought into the capable arms of the UHD/4K format. And while this film doesn’t take us so much into the natural beauty of some picturesque place on our planet or deep into the darkness of space, it does deliver a rather grand look at some of the wonders of the man-made world. Both films were directed by Greg MacGillivray, which binds them together in a somewhat nice little bow.
Read More

“Wildlife and its habitat cannot speak, so we must, and we will” – Teddy Roosevelt.

Actually they do speak for themselves, and Shout Factory’s UHD/4K release of National Parks Adventure gives that wildlife plenty of grand opportunities to speak to us through the grandeur of the American National Park system. Last year Shout Factory showed us what the UHD/4K format could really deliver by releasing a series of IMAX films in the new format. It was a bold move that has really paid off. IMAX cameras utilize 65 and 70mm film, which offers source material that is actually much higher resolution than 4K.
Read More

“Welcome to one of the most fabled and mysterious places on Earth…”

Mysteries Of China appeared in many IMAX theaters across the country and was often titled Mysteries Of Ancient China. That would be a more appropriate term for this exploration into a mystery that is over 2000 years old. These IMAX features make perfect additions to any 4K library. Their short 40-minute running time allows for plenty of space on these 100 GB discs. The source material is also often 70 mm (65mm here) which is natively 8K instead of the usual 2K of most films shot digitally today.
Read More

Victor Garber appears to me a man of extremes, at least in his climate preferences. Of course, the actor was aboard James Cameron’s ill-fated Titanic when it struck an iceberg before Leonardo DiCaprio dies because he was too stupid to climb aboard a huge floating door. On television recently, Garber jumps to nuclear fire as one half of the superhero Firestorm in the DC television universe. For this release, actually filmed a few years ago he heads back to the ice, and not just any ice. This time Victor Garber narrates an IMAX documentary called Wonders Of The Arctic. Shout Factory has released the documentary as part of their impressive IMAX titles in 4K on UHD Blu-ray.
Read More

Scuba diving is the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to being on an alien world. Everything around you looks and feels totally different from what we see on land. Even our relationship to gravity changes. There’s nothing like it on this Earth. The ocean is a diverse place and quite resilient. The Last Reef makes this point rather dramatically in the opening minutes of the documentary. It begins with a newsreel that takes us to the nuclear explosion experiments that were conducted off the Bikini Islands in 1946. Yes, that’s where the swimsuit got its name. The Islands were making the newsreels because of the tests.
Read More