COLUMBO Coming on Blu-Ray From Kino

[Eric Paddon]

I'd note that we had the Mystery Movie intro in the DVD releases of "McMillan And Wife". It was admittedly a case where they used one opening and then "branched" into the episode but at least we got to see it there.

It is true that in recent years, with the publication of David Koenig's book on the series, a lot more dirty laundry about Falk's relationship with Universal and NBC has come to light, especially on the matter of how Falk was constantly causing production overruns which culminated with the disaster in the episode "Old Fashioned Murder" when he allowed Elaine May to wield excessive power to the point where things were running over by weeks. It doesn't paint a flattering picture of him, and it's certainly possible that with commentaries on every episode, we were going to keep hearing this on a recurring basis because relatively few episodes over the course of the run went off without a hitch.

It's probably the fact that I am too much of a Columbo "specialist" as opposed to a casual fan that has made this hard to accept. When it is one of your favorite shows, you want to see it get the kind of bonus treatment that admittedly you'd ignore for a show or movie that isn't one of your big favorites. The people who were recruited for these commentaries, unlike the ones they've hired for some truly AWFUL movie commentaries, are people I'm familiar with who know their stuff and always keep the focus on informing us rather than going off on soapboxes or boring auteurism. So the expectations were very high going into this.

BTW, as I've watched more I've noticed that the sound mixing in "Dead Weight" is REALLY off in some scenes where F/X are drowning out dialogue at ridiculous levels. I almost felt compelled to engage the subtitles at one point. I'd have to go back to the DVD and see if it was true there but I don't recall it being that way (BTW when you watch "Dead Weight" play close attention to the final tag scene of Columbo and Suzanne Pleshette walking out. The reason why Columbo is only seen from behind is because that's Falk's stand-in. Falk refused to show up claiming illness and Jack Smight the director finally got fed up with his antics he shot the scene without him and when Falk came back later to finally do it, Smight told him that he was done with the scene and wasn't going to waste time any longer. Pleshette later said she never spoke to Falk for years afterwards).

[Eric Paddon]

Well I have just finished "Blueprint For Murder" the last episode of Season 1 and there is no question that Kino's remastering REALLY screwed up in the sound mixing. Like in "Dead Weight" there are scenes where what should be background noise is literally drowning out the dialogue. At the 51 minute mark, Columbo is walking down a noisy construction site talking to a foreman and you can barely make out what they're saying above the cacophony. I then pulled out my old DVD and this dialogue is quite distinct and the sound mixing what it should be. So this isn't a case of complaining about the missing extras, it's a clear case of shoddy workmanship on their part.

I was planning to give away my old DVDs to a friend but not after this.

[AndyDursin]

Nobody remixed the sound though. Its not like anyone sat there and raised the level of sound effects and drowned out the dialogue. If it's like you say I don't know what could account for that unless the sound element was damaged or taken from another source. In either case they release whatever Universal provides to them, they're not making tweaks to the source.

[Eric Paddon]

I hope someone can explain it, because in all the years I watched this show multiple times I never had a problem with these scenes and that's why I made sure to go back and check the DVD to make sure it wasn't my imagination. Believe me, I'm not looking for another excuse to complain about this set.

[AndyDursin]

I don't have the DVD, but I checked that scene and the audio definitely does seem to be a little lower. If it was clearer on the DVD, it might be that the source degraded over time. It's also live location audio so it could be possible someone at Universal "finessed" the levels previously to address the discrepancy which was not done when they prepped this master, since ordinarily you WANT a wider dynamic range from the sound. My guess is it's probably the latter that happened. When they produced the DVD, they may have added a dynamic range filter on it to even out the levels, which you can address at home with your sound bar or TV...or just turn up the volume for that scene.

[Eric Paddon]

Someone on HTF suggested that maybe what happened is that the presence of the isolated music/FX tracks might be bleeding over into the regular mono channel. He said that on the Trek Blu-Ray there were instances of new sound/FX bleeding into the original audio channel so that might be the explanation.

It isn't a case where originally no looping was done on outdoor scenes because Columbo episodes frequently resorted to looping because of location shoots and also because of Falk's bad behavior in "Dead Weight" where he had to loop lines for the scenes he walked out of and that his stand-in had to do.

[Eric Paddon]

I've had a chance to sample more episodes from later seasons and that problem that was clear in the Season 1 episodes isn't coming up so whatever the cause it's unique to that Season only.

I also got around to ripping the music/FX tracks from the four Gil Melle scored episodes of S1 (one of which was recycled cues) and been creating some stand-alone snippets to listen to at last. Even those that get marred by a sound effect here and there sound really good for the first time. Melle really captured the character in a way no other composer did and I wish they'd kept using his theme for Columbo in the seasons beyond (Kino I would note uses Melle's theme for the menu screen on all discs for the whole run so they too know its strength)