In Cold Blood (Blu-Ray)

Truman Capote’s best seller, a breakthrough narrative account of real-life crime and punishment, became an equally chilling film in the hands of writer-director Richard Brooks. Cast for their unsettling resemblances to the killers they play, Robert Blake and Scott Wilson give authentic, unshowy performances as Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, who in 1959 murdered a family of four in Kansas during a botched robbery. Brooks brings a detached, documentary-like starkness to this uncompromising view of an American tragedy and its aftermath; at the same time, stylistically In Cold Blood is a filmmaking master class, with clinically precise editing, chiaroscuro black-and-white cinematography by the great Conrad Hall, and a menacing jazz score by Quincy Jones.

Special features: 
– 4K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
– Interview with cinematographer John Bailey about director of photography Conrad Hall’s work in the film
– Interview with film historian Bobbie O’Steen on the film’s editing
– Interview with film critic and jazz historian Gary Giddins about Quincy Jones’s music for the film
– Interview with writer Douglass K. Daniel on director Richard Brooks
– Interview with Brooks from a 1988 episode of the French television series Cinéma cinémas
– With Love from Truman, a short 1966 documentary featuring novelist Truman Capote, directed by Albert and David Maysles
– Two archival NBC interviews with Capote: one following the author on a 1966 visit to Holcomb, Kansas, and the other conducted by Barbara Walters in 1967
– Trailer
– PLUS: An essay by critic Chris Fujiwara