BASIC INSTINCT 4K Restoration Headed To Home Entertainment This July!
StudioCanal have just announced that they will release an all-new 4K Restoration of Paul Verhoeven‘s neo-noir masterpiece BASIC INSTINCT to home entertainment via Universal Sony Pictures Home Entertainment locally on July 7th.
What’s more fans of this erotic thriller will be treated to a feature-laden edition on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray & DVD that includes the brand new 52 minute documentary ‘BASIC INSTINCT: SEX, DEATH & STONE’ with exclusive interviews with Paul Verhoeven, Sharon Stone, Michael Douglas, editor Frank J. Urioste, writer Joe Eszterhas and cinematographer Jan de Bont.
Special Features
• NEW: Basic Instinct: Sex, Death & Stone
• NEW: An Unending Story – Scoring Basic Instinct
• NEW: New Trailer
• Blonde Poison – The Making-of
• Cast & Crew Interview Featurette
• Storyboard Comparisons
• Screen Tests (Sharon Stone & Jeanne Tripplehorn)
• Audio commentary by Paul Verhoeven & Jan de Bont
• Audio commentary by Camille Paglia
About the Restoration:
The aim was to create an image just as crisp as audiences had enjoyed in 1992. The first step was to scan the 35MM image negative of the film in 4K DPX LOG 16 bits on Scanity – but the restoration team at Hiventy Laboratory in Joinville-le-Pont noticed a problem with the negative. STUDIOCANAL project manager, Sophie Boyer, explains – “we quickly realized that the negatives corresponded to the short version of the film. In addition, some shots from the most erotic scenes were censored in the United States. We went looking for these cuts: their negatives had disappeared, but we found them in the internegative. Thanks to this, we were able to restore the full-length version of the film, the only version that Paul Verhoeven wanted to have restored.” All damages on the negatives were identified: stains, scratches, dusty shots and instabilities. DIAMANT film software was used to remove these defects. The laboratory undertook over 100 hours of manual removal of the dark stains. Light filtering was applied to remove the superficial defects, with particular care taken to retain the grain and the texture of the original image. The film was colour graded for theatrical, home entertainment and 4K HDR release using previous digital releases and 35MM prints as a reference. The colour-grading required a painstaking homogenization between the different versions (the director’s cut vs. censored versions). The sound was similarly restored – the dynamic of the mixes was improved, and the sync checked throughout, with corrections made using Protools plug-ins for a 5.1 + 2.0 version, from sources 3324.
About the film:
Michael Douglas stars as San Francisco detective Nick Curran, a troubled cop with a history of trigger-happy shootings. The death of a former rock star sends him into the orbit of the victim’s lover, novelist Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), who immediately becomes prime suspect in the murder. But Nick’s lust for danger draws him further and further into Catherine’s orbit as he becomes dangerously obsessed with her. Can he prove her innocence and free her of suspicion? Or is she involved in the murder after all? The film also stars Jeanne Tripplehorn as police psychologist Dr Beth Garner, George Dzundas as Nick’s partner Gus, Denis Arndt as Lieutenant Phillip Walker and Leilani Sarelle as Roxy Hardy. The cast is rounded out by great character actors like Bruce A. Young, Stephen Tobolowsky, Wayne Knight and Chelcie Ross.
