Love Actually 4K Ultra HD

With stories revolving around several different characters it's Christmas-time in London, and something is in the air. It's the same affliction for widower Daniel (Liam Neeson), the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant), and his sister Karen (Emma Thompson), who all seem to have caught whatever it is. What could it possibly be? Why, it's "Love Actually," and it's here to stay. (Tricia Spears)

Special features include commentary with Director Richard Curtis and Actors Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy, and Thomas Sangster; 10 deleted scenes (SD 37:16) with commentary by Director Curtis; the featurettes "The Music" with introductions by Curtis (HD 12:42); "The Storytellers" (SD 09:58); the Kelly Clarkson "The Trouble With Love Is" music video (SD 03:48); the Billy Mack "Christmas Is All Around" music video (SD 04:13); and a Movies Anywhere digital copy.

The 1.85:1:1 2160p HEVC/H.265 4K Ultra HD HDR10 picture, reviewed on a VIZIO Quantum X P85QX-JI UHD/HDR display, was photographed on Kodak film stock in Super 35 using the Moviecam Compact and Moviecam SL camera systems and sourced from a 4K Digital Intermediate. Film rain is virtually non-existent as it has been scrubbed digitally but still never objectionable. Picture quality is excellent with a vivid and saturated color palette with perfectly natural hues that exhibit strong primaries. Flesh tones are perfectly natural and reveal differing tones. HDR contrast is realistically wide with natural black levels, good shadow detail and naturally brilliant white levels The imagery is pleasingly sharp and clear. Resolution is generally good but varies from incredibly sharp and detailed to softly focused. This is a bright and vibrant picture with saturated colors that work well with the light storytelling and on-screen romance and humor. Viewers will be delighted with the naturalness. (Gary Reber)

The Dolby Atmos/Dolby TrueHD 7.1-channel soundtrack is repurposed from the original sound elements. As with the previous Blu-ray soundtrack, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1-channel soundtrack this is a dialogue focused soundtrack, with a frontal soundstage presence throughout. There is a really lovely, sweet, and utterly charming quality to this soundtrack—especially in the original score by Craig Armstrong and Matt Dunkley—that really pleases and quite honestly represents what love could actually sound like. Besides the musical score, the precise sonic reproduction of the actor's very unique vocal patterns and inflections are dead-on accurate. Although a majority of audio information is spread across the front three screen channels, the LFE and surround channels work wonderful together with these three channels, to provide a very enveloping and quite effective surround sound envelope that wraps itself around the listener. There is also a wonderful balance between music and dialogue, where one never steals the spotlight from the other, but shares screen-time in perfect harmony.

The Immersive Sound element is comprised of an extension of the music and some atmospherics to the height layer. Overall, the music really elevates the spatial dimensionality. Of course, more could have been achieved but wasn't.

Overall, this is a really fantastic and thoroughly enjoyable holosonic® soundtrack with music extension to the height layer. (Gary Reber)