I had a very difficult time taking the screen captures that you are seeing in this review. For some strange reason, there was a lot of "combing" that was visible on some of them, which I don't recall seeing on the screen captures that I took to include with our review of the French release, courtesy of M6. The Evil of Woman - researcher Heidi Laura and director Lars von Trier talk about the mythological and theological context of the film. In English, with optional Italian subtitles. (8 min). Behind the Test - a look at the pre-production work. In Danish, with optional English subtitles. (7 min).

I don't see a notable gap in quality between the Artificial Eye and M6 discs (though the M6 one is BD50 while the Artificial Eye one is BD25). The Artificial Eye disc appears to have retained the exact same qualities we noted in our review for the M6 disc - the cold color-scheme, the "dreamy" look, the unusual contrast fluctuations. Again, edge-enhancement and macrobloking are not an issue of concern. I did not notice any annoying specs, debris, scratches, stains, or cuts to report in this review. The disc's main menu can be set in Danish or English.Sound and Music presents a 13-minute interview with sound designer Kristian Eidnes Andersen. He explains how some of the sound effects were created, and I was surprised by some of the bizarre methods he used to get the sounds, which included him actually swallowing a microphone so he could record what was going on inside his own body. He gives some demonstrations on his system how he could turn some of the simple sounds, like wind blowing through grass, into some of the more unsettling sound effects I’ve come across in recent memory. We then get some footage of the Aria, which opens and closes the film, being recorded. Cannes 2009 This is another section of special features, broken down into smaller bits, that all center around the film's thunderous unveiling at last summer's Cannes Film Festival in France. "Chaos Reigns at the Cannes Film Festival" (HD, 7:22) was something that I thought was going to be both more outrageous and also more insightful than the piece that we've ended up with here. Instead, you see the director and the cast being shuttled around to different interviews and junkets. The highlight of the brief documentary is when the irate British journalist asks von Trier to defend his decision to make the movie, to which von Trier rebuffs him and then proclaims himself to be the greatest living filmmaker in the world (he isn't). Also included is "Charlotte Gainsbourg at Cannes" (HD, 6:18) and "Willem Dafoe at Cannes" (HD, 8:05), two standard interviews about the reaction to 'Antichrist' at Cannes and their experiences at the festival. Whatever one’s personal views are on the existence of The Devil, there was no doubt about his impact on movies in the early 1970s.While the execution of The Antichrist’s more fantastical aspects leaves much to be desired, there’s no denying the positives in this oblique and sometimes wild horror programmer.In short, this encounter with The Devil and all his works mostly works.

De Martino and writers Gianfranco Clerici and Vincenzo Mannino certainly took copious amounts of notes from The Exorcist for their blasphemous offering, but The Antichrist has a number of divergences that make it stand out. Of particular note is the film’s alarming opening sequence, which finds Ippolita and her father (Mel Ferrer) attending a ceremony at a creepy Catholic statue where multiple afflicted and possessed people prostrate themselves, ultimately resulting in a man plummeting to his death from a cliffside. The Antichrist makes use of a number of these disturbing sequences that invert normal Catholic practices, taking inspiration from The Exorcist but in new and intriguing ways. Lars von Trier’s psychological horror tale Antichristwas one of the most-talked about films of 2009. Extremely graphic in detail and psychologically unsettling, the film garnered an enormous amount of controversy upon its initial release, splitting critics and audiences in half like few films of recent memory. So, while Antichrist is a bad film, it is not a bad film. It is a powerful and very unsettling vision of a world where according to von Trier, a self-admitted atheist and Nietzsche admirer, only pain and evil are eternal. Confessions about Anxiety - director Lars von Trier talks about the controversial message of his film. In English, with optional Italian subtitles. (5 min).

Third, Satan, the Creator, the One who started it all. All four chapters in von Trier's film make it perfectly clear that it was Satan that created us; hence the reason why we suffer, kill and die. According to von Trier, God gave up on us and left. In Antichrist, He and She come to realize precisely that. Of course, everything goes to hell. The movie devolves, particularly in the last act, into a kind of ragged, go-for-broke horror movie, complete with talking animals, malevolent forces, and Gainsbourg being turned (quite unfairly, in this reviewer's opinion) into a kind of demonic witch who takes her aggression out on her husband and herself, including some gag-worthy scenes of genital mutilation that oscillate between extreme realism and phony, rubber prosthetic fakeness. This new restoration of the movie looks very nice, with a clean and polished image that doesn’t pop too much in the colour department, although the curse of the Blu-ray is upon it as the lines around the latex make-up are clearly visible and so forth, but considering its age and how it was originally shot it still looks good without being spectacular. Extras come in the shape of a couple of featurettes containing interviews with director Alberto De Martino and composer Ennio Morricone, an audio interview with Alberto De Martino, an audio commentary with critics Lee Gambin and Sally Christie plus a selection of art cards. Paralyzed Ippolita (Carla Gravina, The Violent Four) has lived an isolated life within the confines of her father’s lavish Italian home after a car accident killed the family’s matriarch. Seeking cures for her disability, the depressed young woman seeks help from the Virgin Mary. When she isn’t granted the power of her legs by a heralded statue in the village, Ippolita loses her faith. She begins to hear voices and sees blasphemous images around her. After undergoing hypnotic regression therapy Ippolita sees her past life as a witch burned at the stake for challenging the Church. Soon after Satan impregnates her in an infamous dream sequence which turns the invalid woman into a foul-mouthed bile-spewing lust machine out to kill everyone and bring about the child of Satan. When father Massimo (Mel Ferrara, The Longest Day) calls for an exorcism all hell breaks loose. We then get two interview segments with Dafoe and Gainsbourg from the film festival. Charlotte Gainsbourg’s interview runs about 6-minutes and the actor talks a little about the harder aspects of the film, which were the more emotional scenes. Willem Dafoe’s interview runs about 8-minutes, with Willem talking again about how he got involved with the film, and what he found most difficult about the film. He also defends von Trier’s answer to the question about “justifying” the film at the press conference we saw in the first segment of Cannes section. Both interviews are great, fairly insightful interviews.

The Antichrist (not to be confused with Lars von Trier’s Antichrist from 2009) is the creation of writer/director Alberto De Martino ( 100.000 dollari per Ringo) and writers Gianfranco Clerici ( Cannibal Holocaust) and Vincenzo Mannino ( The New York Ripper). Records the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie. The film was shot in 4K resolution with the RED One Digital Camera; in addition, the Phantom HD camera was used for the high-speed sequences. The entire production was completed in a fully digital workflow. Postproduction and color timing were done using Assimilate's SCRATCH and Nucoda's Film Master systems. The final color-corrected DPX files were output to Rec. 709 high-definition color space for Blu-ray and DVD release.Antichrist' was shot using the digital RED camera (the same camera that captured ' District 9' and 'The Social Network') and it looks like this MPEG-4 AVC 1080p transfer (aspect ratio: 2.35:1) is a direct-from-digital transfer, so pure is its presentation. Overall, The Antichrist is a fun ride that borrows liberally from several sources but does just about enough with it so it doesn’t feel totally recycled. Yes, it isn’t very original but entertainment value trumps originality, and this being an Italian production it has plenty of competition from dozens of other Exorcist/ Rosemary’s Baby clones that aren’t half as much of a good time as this is. Granted, given how cheap and grimy this is you won’t see it double-billed with the movies it wants to be in the same company as, but apart from the admirably sleazy Amityville II: The Possession (of which we still don’t have a decent Blu-ray release), The Antichrist is probably the best Exorcist wannabe there is, and given it is nearly 50 years old itself, that clearly tells you something. Cinematographer Joe D’Amato (credited here as Aristide Massaccessi) gives the production plenty of dynamic colors, textures, and excellent locations to bask in the decadence of Roman life. Bruno Nicolai and Ennio Morricone score the feature with layers of screeching strings and bizarre textures evoking a holy intent at conflict with an undercurrent of chaos. It isn't Morricone's best score but it's very effective at complimenting the utterly bizarre happenings on screen. Ennio’s infernal violins render the music unsettling, keeping you parked on the edge of your seat. A few years later Ennio would provide an operatic score The Exorcist II: The Heretic with outstanding results. BRAND NEW SACRED AND PROFANE: The Audio Recollections of Alberto De Martino. This short feature gives some good insight into the creative process of De Martino, who passed away in 2015. It won’t make you see the film in a new light, but for fans of the film it’s a good chance to hear from the man who made it.

A car accident caused by her father leaves the young Ippolita paralyzed and her mother dead. Following her uncle’s advice she undergoes a hypnotic session with the intent to heal her, but it actually awakens the spirit of her ancestress who was condemned for witchcraft. Cannes 2009 - footage from the film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. The focus of attention is on the the film's reception by the critics and the press. In French, Danish and English, with optional English subtitles where necessary. Those that write it off as exploitation trash are clearly giving the movie too little credit: they're fixating on the artifice and forgetting about the art (not to mention the fine performances by the two leads). And those that claim it's some masterwork of modern cinema are clearly turning a blind eye to the more troubling narrative and thematic elements of the movie. Next there are interviews with the two characters. Charlotte Gainsbourg (6.18) is articulate in a mousy kind of a way, discussing how Trier made her feel comfortable with physically demanding and explicit scenes. Willem Dafoe (8.04) is a true gentleman, humbly expressing his delight in how he got the role and peppers the interview in admiration for Trier as a director and a writer, yet sympathetic to his mental trials of the time.

This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. To celebrate the release of The Antichrist available now on Blu-Ray, DVD & Digital, we have 2 Blu-Rays to give away!