“The extraordinary is possible” – “A Beautiful Mind” 4K UHD

4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS

Russell Crowe stars as the Nobel-winning mathematician John Nash Jr. and Jennifer Connelly as his wife, Alicia. Both were nominated for Oscars, and Connelly won for Best Supporting Actress.

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4K screenshots courtesy of Universal Studios - Click for an Amazon purchase

“A BEAUTIFUL MIND: 25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION”

4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray; 2001; PG-13 for intense thematic material, sexual content, and a scene of violence; Digital copy via Amazon Prime Video (4K), Apple TV (4K), DirecTV (4K), Fandango Home (4K), Microsoft Movies (4K), Verizon (4K), Xfinity (4K)  

Best extra: “Inside A Beautiful Mind” featurette from 2002.

IT WAS A LONG way from being TV child actor Ronny Howard on “The Andy Griffith Show” during the 1960s, and a teenager playing Richie Cunningham on “Happy Days” a decade later, to becoming one of Hollywood’s most consummate director/producers.

Ron Howard left the ABC sitcom in 1980, to focus on directing crowd favorites “Splash” (1984), “Cocoon” (1985), “Willow” (1988) and “Parenthood” (1989). During the ‘90s it was “Backdraft” (1991), “The Paper” (1994), and “Apollo 13” (1995) which received nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, but Howard was snubbed for the Best Director nod.

Six years later, Howard finally snagged the director’s golden statue for the captivating “A Beautiful Mind,” starring Russell Crowe as Nobel-winning mathematician John Nash Jr. and Jennifer Connelly as his wife, Alicia. Imagine Entertainment, which Howard co-founded with his best friend Brian Grazer, received eight Oscar-nominations for the Nash story, and won four, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress for Connelly, Best Adapted Screenplay for Akiva Goldsman (“Cinderella Man”), and Howard’s award.

(1&2) Dr. Helinger (Judd Hirsch) greets the 1947 Science and Mathematics graduate students at Princeton University. Shy John Nash, a co-recipient of the Carnegie Scholarship for Mathematics, sits at the back of the room. (3&4) Nash with his Princeton roommate Charles Herman (Paul Bettany).

Based on the acclaimed 1998 biography by Sylvia Nasar, social misfit Nash arrives at Princeton University from West Virginia during the Cold War, but over time becomes a victim of schizophrenia. Through the decades working at Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nash’s theories of governing economic dynamics were hailed as one of the great breakthroughs of the 20^th century, and he won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994.

The late film critic Roger Ebert said in his four-star review, “John Forbes Nash Jr. still teaches at Princeton, and walks to campus every day. That commonplace statement nearly brought tears to my eyes, heightening the power of ‘A Beautiful Mind.’” Considered one of the greatest mathematicians, his mental illness caused him to believe that Russians were sending him code messages on the front page of the New York Times, and all but completely derailed him.

A superb supporting cast includes Paul Bettany, as the British roommate; Ed Harris playing the Defense Department operative, who recruits Nash for a special mission; Christopher Plummer, the psychiatrist, and Adam Goldberg and Anthony Rapp as former Princeton classmates and co-workers.

EXTRAS

The bonus features found on the original two-disc DVD set were ported over to the 10^th anniversary Blu-ray (2011) and carried over again onto the new 4K disc.  

• SIDENOTE: When “A Beautiful Mind” premiered on DVD in the summer of 2002, I was one of a dozen reviewers who got a chance to interview Howard during a studio teleconference. The director admitted he kept the DVD project in mind throughout the production. He considered the DVD extras as “an opportunity to sort of do what authors do, with authors’ notes and acknowledgements, a preface,” Howard said. At the time, he didn’t consider himself a DVD junkie, like his own teenagers. “I realized how great this would have been if I could have been looking at DVDs when I was 18 years old.”

  
  

• Two feature-length commentaries: one with screenwriter Goldsman and the other with Howard, who recalls shooting most of the film in sequence on or near the Princeton campus.

  
  

• “Inside A Beautiful Mind” (22 mins.) is a Universal Studios making-of featurette, with interviews from Howard, Grazer, Nasar, Crowe, Connelly, and the Nash couple. “I fell in love with it for the central character. It’s an extraordinarily painful journey. It’s unlike a lot of the other films that I’ve directed,” says Howard.

  
  

• “Scoring the film” (6 mins) highlights one of composer James Horner’s best dramatic orchestrated pieces – even though the opening has elements of his previous work from “Sneakers” and “Apollo 13.” Welsh teenager Charlotte Church provided the angelic, wordless vocals. “Charlotte has that unique quality that she’s neither child nor adult. I didn’t want a child voice, I didn’t want a boy soprano, or an adult opera diva. I wanted something that was sort of amorphous,” Horner says.

  
  

• “Creating the Special Effects” (10 mins.) Howard and Grazer talk about their relationship with Digital Domain, which previously handled the VFX for “Apollo 13” and “The Grinch.”  Effects supervisor Kevin Mack and Howard began brainstorming possible effects to show “Nash’s way of thinking” – even before the script was finished

  
  

• “A Beautiful Partnership: Ron Howard & Brian Grazer” (5 mins.) Grazer first found the synthesis of Nasar’s book in Vanity Fair Magazine before it became available for Hollywood. “I paid, and begged, and ended up getting it,” he said. Originally, Howard wasn’t available, so every A-list director in town wanted it. Grazer zeroed in on a director, but their schedule ended up matching Howard’s, and the opportunity fell into his partner’s lap.

  
  

• “Developing the Script” (8 mins.) Akiva Goldsman, “wanted to do it so badly,” merging the screenplay with an alternate reality, putting viewers inside the mind of mental illness.

  
  

• “Meeting John Nash” (8 mins.) Howard videotaped a meeting with Nash, having him explain his equilibrium and the bargaining theories. “He was much less guarded and really vibrant,” Howard says.

  
  

• “Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize” (2 mins) A video clip of Nash receiving the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences from His Majesty, the King of Sweden, in December of 1994.

  
  

• “Casting Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly” (6 mins.) Howard considers casting a “period of real nail-biting. Mistakes made in casting can almost never be rectified.” He and Grazer narrowed on Crowe, who had just received an Oscar for “Gladiator.” The duo considered hundreds for the role of Alicia Nash, but it was Connelly’s performance in “Requiem for a Dream” that won them over.    

  
  

• “The Process of Aging” (7 mins.) details the Oscar-nominated makeup that aged Crowe and Connelly by four decades.

VIDEO

Universal Studios must be commended for this anniversary 4K restoration, matching the work on last year’s “Out of Africa: 40^th Anniversary Edition,” which we selected in our annual Top 10 4K mastered discs of the year.

Strangely, the studio didn’t send 4K review copies, and really hasn’t promoted the excellent remaster. Obviously, they scanned the original 35mm camera negative in 4K, with the results night and day compared to the old Blu-ray, which looks soft from start to finish on a larger screen. Resolution is superb from facial closeups to distant buildings, where you can actually count the number of bricks on the side of the Wheeler Laboratory at MIT. But you’ll notice a slight decrease in resolution with the VFX shots.

Film grain is tighter and consistent, and the HDR10 and Dolby Vision grading is well balanced from controlled highlights to deeper blacks during the nighttime scenes captured by cinematographer Roger Deakins. The color grading is dialed more neutral and less overtly on the warm side, which dominated the Blu-ray.

AUDIO

Also, the original six-channel DTS-HD soundtrack gets a Dolby Atmos upgrade. The bass response is much deeper, while the environmental sound effects establish a much wider soundstage. Plus, Horner’s Oscar-nominated score is elevated through this enhancement.

Universal should be shouting from the mountaintops with this 4K restoration of “A Beautiful Mind.” It joins the recent 4K Ultra HD 20^th Anniversary release of Howard’s “Cinderella Man” (2005), which also starred Crowe as boxer Jim Braddock, who defies the odds with a miraculous comeback in the ring. Plus, Universal upgraded “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” for its 25th anniversary.

— Bill Kelley III, High-Def Watch producer

SPECS:

• 100 GB disc

• TRUE 4K mastering

• Captured on 35mm film stock with spherical lens, and framed at the theatrical 1.85:1 aspect.

• Video bitrate: Varies from the upper 20 Megabits per second to 90 plus Mbps, averaging 69 Mbps, with a running time of 135 minutes.

• HDR10 maximum light level: 267 nits

• Max frame average light level: 68 nits

• Box office: Domestic $171 million, and worldwide $317 million, with an estimated production budget of $58 million.

• Rotten Tomatoes: Top Critics’ 67 percent, Moviegoers 93 percent.

• Metacritic: Critics 72 percent, User score 8.1

• Awards: Academy Awards – eight nominations and winner of four golden statues.

• Critics Choice Awards – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress

• Directors Guild of America – Outstanding Directorial Achievement

• Golden Globes – Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Screenplay

• BAFTA Awards – Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress

A new beginning at Princeton University

(1&2) Dr. Nash gets a second chance to teach at Princeton University. (3) Nash accepted his Nobel Sveriges Riksbank Prize in December of 1994.