Lucky me! I just moved to Madison on August 1st. Anyone else in the area might want to check out my Avant-Garde screening series that will be happening in my apartment all throughout the fall semester. All Avant-Garde, all free, all the time! Seeya there, folks! WAKKA WAKKA!
It'll probably be a rather narrow box, considering the fact that the booklet's only 18 pages.
Eh, this is the nail in the coffin for these Criterion Ophuls releases. Lesser image quality, lesser extras, barely any exclusive content... what a waste of a release month and what significant bungling of the rights to a major director's work.
the remastered LOLA MONTES screened at the Telluride Film Festival but I wasn't able to see it. I was told that it will be playing a week in Los Angeles at some point.
I am anxious to see the introductions by PTA and Haynes. If I could go through a fim analysis with any major American director other than Scorsese, it would be one of those two or Soderbergh. I am especially interested to see what angle PTA takes on Ophuls; at first glance, he seems like somewhat of a left field choice for the material.
Tom Hagen wrote:I am especially interested to see what angle PTA takes on Ophuls; at first glance, he seems like somewhat of a left field choice for the material.
Not according to his IMDb bio:
Like Jean Renoir and Max Ophüls, Paul Thomas Anderson's films are characterized by a constantly moving camera. Like François Truffaut and Martin Scorsese, his films are the work of a true "cineaste", someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of film and film technique, who is able to make tried-and-true techniques as fresh and as vibrant as when D.W. Griffith first started to discover them. Like Robert Altman, Anderson thrives on working with large ensembles of actors. Like Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton, his films often depict suburban America as a place of alienation, and his characters are often alienated people who must in some way or another learn to assimilate themselves into some kind of family environment.
All of this comparison to past directors might make one assume that P.T. Anderson is unoriginal. That could not be further from the truth. He is one of those great joys for filmgoers: a master director who seems to have come out of nowhere. Like Spielberg in the 1970s and Spike Lee in the 1980s, Anderson went from being a grip to auteur in seemingly no time.
I would have put more of the bio here, but any more name dropping and I think my computer might have crashed.
Tom Hagen wrote:I am especially interested to see what angle PTA takes on Ophuls; at first glance, he seems like somewhat of a left field choice for the material.
Not according to his IMDb bio:
Like Jean Renoir and Max Ophüls, Paul Thomas Anderson's films are characterized by a constantly moving camera. Like François Truffaut and Martin Scorsese, his films are the work of a true "cineaste", someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of film and film technique, who is able to make tried-and-true techniques as fresh and as vibrant as when D.W. Griffith first started to discover them. Like Robert Altman, Anderson thrives on working with large ensembles of actors. Like Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton, his films often depict suburban America as a place of alienation, and his characters are often alienated people who must in some way or another learn to assimilate themselves into some kind of family environment.
All of this comparison to past directors might make one assume that P.T. Anderson is unoriginal. That could not be further from the truth. He is one of those great joys for filmgoers: a master director who seems to have come out of nowhere. Like Spielberg in the 1970s and Spike Lee in the 1980s, Anderson went from being a grip to auteur in seemingly no time.
I would have put more of the bio here, but any more name dropping and I think my computer might have crashed.
That reads like an Armond White review - right down to the SS reference.
When I heard that Criterion was releasing Le Plaisir, I quickly sold my Second Sight, which cost next to nothing. I'm buying it back again now.
I have faith that the other two discs; which are definite improvements insofar as supplements to their Second Sight versions, will have superior or equal picture quality. But I'm not buying that Le Plaisir, Criterion. Please get smacked in the mouth soon.
What A Disgrace wrote:When I heard that Criterion was releasing Le Plaisir, I quickly sold my Second Sight, which cost next to nothing. I'm buying it back again now.
Same here. In fact, Le Plaisir is now available for £5.89 at sendit.com and £7.97 at amazon.co.uk -- cheaper than Criterion.
Wow! I was really looking forward to owning all the films. But now I will wait for a few more reviews. To say this is a disappointment would be an understatement.
Regarding Morgan Creek's post, in the first picture you can see more detail in the SS. Look at the stack of letters. You can make out some of the words. In the Criterion it is not as detailed/sharp. And on the second one I would have to go with the chair. It just looks more sharp.
I'm not sure what to make of these caps ("Plaisir"). While it's obvious that the SS has better detail, I find its brightness boosting, especially in Cap#1 and #4, very obvious and rather unpleasant. Question is how apparent it is once you get used to it and don't have the darker CC picture for a comparison. The absence of that 54min. documentary on the CC is its greatest shortcoming, and probably will make my decision to go for the SS, unless some other review comes up which indicates the CC is better than it appears here. It wouldn't be the first time that the Beaver caps somehow misrepresent the actual product (remember "Nosferatu" and "Vie de Jesus"?), but somehow I have the feeling that everything is okay here, dunno why...
Glad I held on to my SS copy of Le Plaisir and frankly stunned CC didn't hit this one out of the park. I'll still be getting their edition of La Ronde over the Second Sight unless CC's transfer turns out to be inferior again.
swo17 wrote:Does it only look better because it's not being directly compared to anything?
I'm comparing it to the caps of the other Criterion discs and arriving at the judgment that it looks better than them. No, it's not being compared directly to caps of the Second Sight release of the film, but the caps are good enough for me to not regret purchasing the Criterion.
They look better to me too, but I wonder if putting them right up against Second Sight caps would bring up details that are lacking.
By that same measure, I wonder, if I were only looking at, say, the CC Madame caps, with nothing to compare them to, I might not think they looked that bad. The brightness boosting on the SS version might be clouding my judgment. I think I will hold out on forming an opinion until I see the Criterions for myself.
I think we can be sure that these Criterion discs will be free of any motion problems, and that's a huge bonus, considering the one Second Sight Ophuls (I forget which offhand) which I ditched as unwatchable due to awful motion problems.
Furthermore, all these Criterion caps posted in this thread are only 640 pixels wide, instead of 720. The Second Sight grabs are native 768 PAL, so the Criterion might look a tad better at 720. I was expecting a much more noticeable improvement though, maybe there was a problem obtaining elements?
davidhare wrote: I've been talking to someone offline about this who is comprehensively knowledgeable about the print sources available and I think almost certainly the higher native rez and the brightness and/or contrast boosting on the SS are accounting for the perceptually "better" image. In some instances the SS discs are burdened by the boosting - in Madame de for instance (and this on top of the intractable motion problem) the walk by the seaside has been so contrast boosted the scene which should look almost monochromatic is way too dark.
The SS discs' being "burdened by the boosting" can also be seen in the loss of detail - notice the pattern on the jewel chest in the first comparison, or in the second, the tartan lap robe or the baseboard of the bed.
