Another new review, this time with full-size screenshots:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-r...ot_blu-ray.htm
The first 15 minutes of the movie has always looked soft and somewhat washed out, but the rest of the movie seems to look a lot better. I've heard that DVD Beaver's screenshots don't always reflect the actual picture quality as good as they should, so take them with a grain of salt. However, it looks like the devil is in the details as always. Looking at these shots, I was startled by little details like Herbert Gronemeyer's crocheted sweater, the hat and breast insignia (you can actually see the swastikas now!), every bead of sweat on the crew's faces, individual drops of condensation on the boat, Jurgen Prochnow's awesome blue eyes, and Erwin Leder's really awful teeth. Nothing really mind-blowing, but when you've seen a movie a dozen times, you start to notice these kind of things.
The old Director's Cut DVD will be 14 years old, and while it looked amazing
back then, it looks pretty dated now - check out all the blockiness and pixelation in the underwater shots, iffy black levels, and haloing around flashlight beams and lights in the boat's interior. Still, it's a dark, grainy movie from the early 80s. It's never going to look like an epic nature documentary, but I think this new blu-ray probably depicts
Das Boot the way it was meant to be see.
Oh, and a little preview for Frau Kaluen:
