104 / BD 14 Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

[domino harvey]

Dana Polan commentaries are so awful that you long for the pauses of dead space-- this is no great loss

Peerpee, if you do another Tashlin release (More like WHEN, rite), you should track down the Tashlin compendium put out in the late 60s/early 70s that collects all the translated French cinema writings on Tashlin (like Preminger, he was an auteur that both the left-leaning Positif and right-leaning Cahiers liked). There's one good article from Positif regarding Tashlin's satiric take on technology that boldly proclaims Tashlin succeeds where Chaplin and Tati fail!

[Finch]

I am so gay for the blurb you gave the film.

Amen to that. Never thought you'd best the blurb for Eureka's Female Prisoner Scorpion set but you've outdone yourselves with this one.

edit: when are this and the McCarey going to be up for preorders?

[peerpee]

MAKE WAY and ROCK HUNTER will be out in October. We had to put them back a month (from September).

The transfers for both are among our best, we're very happy with them.

btw. MoC's Craig Keller was responsible for both the FEMALE PRISONER boxset and ROCK HUNTER blurbs. The boy can write!

[Svevan]

Tell him we want to marry him.

[Minkin]

Bluray.com review

[Minkin]

Beaver

[swo17]

Looks wonderful, but those caps give away

Spoiler

the Groucho cameo.

[Will Barks]

Is it me or do the Blu-ray caps look a little stretched in comparison with the DVD's? :-k

[swo17]

It's hard to tell when the BD caps are larger, so I shrunk those and compared them below. I don't see any discernible difference.

[RossyG]

Is it me or do the Blu-ray caps look a little stretched in comparison with the DVD's? :-k

I thought that as well looking at the Beaver caps. I'm not saying it is stretched, as I'm not an expert in these things, but something didn't look quite right. If anything, the caps in the post above confirm a difference between the BD and DVD. But it's been a long day and my eyes aren't what they were.

[Matt]

It is a true Cinemascope film, and those anamorphic lenses distorted everything all to hell, especially close-ups and things at the sides of the frame (the bulk of Gary's caps). This is just the way the film looks.

[zedz]

I was distracted by the same thing on MoC's A Time to Love and a Time to Die, but as I recall it was explained in the booklet. It's not consistent from shot to shot, but some closeups (or shots with actors on the side of the frame) look so distorted you want to check your aspect ratio settings.

[RossyG]

Ah, that explains it. Fairy nuff.

[Will Barks]

True! I should have remembered that lens thing from reading those booklets. :-#

[Matt]

If you want to see a really ugly example of Cinemascope lens distortion, look at the panning in the first two shots of East of Eden (1:40 to 2:00 in this video). Like looking through a fishbowl.

[Doctor Sunshine]

I think--or thought--what they were talking about was a difference between the two sets of images, not lens distortion. And there is a measurable difference. Discounting black space, the image on the DVD is about 1:2.34 and the BD's about 1:2.36. It's subtle but noticeable. I wonder if it's a player compatibility thing. A friend imported Gangster No. 1 back in the day and he didn't notice anything but the image looked slightly stretched out horizontally to me. And, while I haven't crunched any other numbers, glancing through a couple other comparisons on DVDBeaver, the Sex and Lucia R1 and R2s seem to have the same slight stretch/squish issue where other 1/2 A/B comparisons don't. It seems odd that multiple reputable companies over the course of a decade wouldn't notice something like that during authoring but maybe there's a non-PAL/NTSC compatibility issue between some UK discs and American multi-region players or the like that's slipped through.

[zedz]

.008 difference really spoils the viewing experience for you? Is it not possible that an extra couple of pixels have been added to the blurry outskirts of the frame?

[Doctor Sunshine]

No, zedz, nothing's been spoiled for me. I only chimed in as it was mentioned in passing, I'd been curious about it and I thought someone might know more. Forgive my crass gif fade technique but if anyone can't see what I'm talking about it's this (DVDBeaver's spoilerish screenshots were the only exact frame match so I used it):

Spoiler

[FerdinandGriffon]

Spoiler

I could stare at that for hours.

[swo17]

That's actually how everything normally looks whenever I look at Jayne Mansfield.

[zedz]

Well, that's certainly the trippiest spoiler I've ever seen!

I see what you mean now, but I have no idea which one, if either, is correct.

[mfunk9786]

Damn, when I saw spoiler tags, I thought I was going to find out if success spoiled Rock Hunter or not. I guess it's still a wait-and-see situation.

[TheGodfather]

I watched it tonight (first time I saw the movie) and thought it was a wonderfull film from start to finish. Right from the start, you know you`re up for something special.
I loved the transfer, it looked really good but (luckily) not too "HD-in-your-face" (as some transfers do) wich really did the film and its atmosphere justice.

[Finch]

It's definitely one of the more subtler upgrades and only really evident in motion. I was disappointed by how the visuals came across on the Beev (yes I know...) caps but am glad I took the plunge after all. Craig Keller put together a wonderful booklet as well: the David Cairns pieces were all on target I thought, and the Randall interview surprisingly and endearingly candid (he disliked the popcorn exploding in his pockets joke and wasn't all that taken by Jayne Mansfield).

[perkizitore]

On the booklet criterionforum.org gets a special thanks!