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manicsounds wrote:Lucas has the right to do whatever he wants to do with his films, including revising. That's his choice whether people like it or not.

What right? The legal right, obviously, but StudioCanal has as much legal right to do what they did as he does. Morally, I disagree- he's not even the director on Empire or Return of the Jedi, and I think the SFX technicians and actors whose work he's rewriting have as much a moral right to the accurate presentation of their work as he does, particularly as they're so heavily responsible for the success of the movies in the first place.

If people want this kind of revisionism, I don't really have a problem with that, but it should never be presented as the original work.

I love the Studio Canal bluray collection but does anyone know why individual titles are so expensive?

peerpee wrote:The George Lucas analogy is 100% what this is. Whether you think it looks better or not, you don't go dicking with it unless you have money to burn and want to include it as an extra to show how it could have looked (who'd even do that?).

The BBC have done it with some of their classic (i.e. pre-2005) Dr Who titles - but as far as I'm aware in all cases it's a supplementary viewing option: the new effects absolutely don't replace the originals.

On the Facebook Hammer claims that Fisher and others were unhappy with the final effects, and so they imply that these new effects are what Fisher and company would have wanted. Of course, there are so many holes in that argument that you wonder why they even went there in the first place.

The central fallacy here is that the whole deep-seated rational to doing this sort of thing, which is to "upgrade" the original material to make it more desirable for new viewers in a contemporary context. How does adding a wall of fire behind the Angel of Death make the film seem more contemporary and accessible? The film still moves at the pace it does, with its original editing intact (I presume). People are still wearing 60s clothing, and their dialogue is formal and of their period. No one suffers from any modern angst in the picture (except maybe the young man who falls under the sway of black magic), and there is no extreme gore or scenes where scary things leap out right in front of us. The music is lush and romantic. Any viewer new to the movie will look at maybe the first 2 scenes and know it's not a contemporary film--and those new viewers will probably almost instantly feel that it's not just a modern "period" film, but rather a film made in another age, under the sign of a very different aesthetic that is far from the contemporary mode of filmmaking. Any issue of accessibility for modern audiences will come up long before they see even the first special effect. And if the audience can reconcile a lightning bolt that looks non-CGI, how will they reconcile Christopher Lee's upright, noble bearing, the genteel nature of so many of the characters, and the way the level of menace in the picture almost never runs right on the surface? How will the modern viewer navigate this film without locking into at least some hint of the camp aspects of the film--aspects which have only become more visible with time? Can this strategy of sprucing up effects ever really achieve the goal of reaching a new audience and making them hip to old-school stuff? There are so few special effects in The Devil Rides Out to begin with.

MichaelB wrote:

peerpee wrote:The George Lucas analogy is 100% what this is. Whether you think it looks better or not, you don't go dicking with it unless you have money to burn and want to include it as an extra to show how it could have looked (who'd even do that?).

The BBC have done it with some of their classic (i.e. pre-2005) Dr Who titles - but as far as I'm aware in all cases it's a supplementary viewing option: the new effects absolutely don't replace the originals.

They also did the same thing with the first three seasons of Red Dwarf.

The Original Series of "Star Trek" also had special effects alterations as well on blu-ray. But was there an option to watch the original versions as well?

manicsounds wrote:The Original Series of "Star Trek" also had special effects alterations as well on blu-ray. But was there an option to watch the original versions as well?

Yes, Star Trek has both versions in 1080p.

eerik wrote:

manicsounds wrote:The Original Series of "Star Trek" also had special effects alterations as well on blu-ray. But was there an option to watch the original versions as well?

Yes, Star Trek has both versions in 1080p.

I suppose there's no getting around this for shows like ST:TNG where the F/X were created and applied in standard def and HAVE to be recreated in order for the original film elements to be upgraded to HD.

Well, they could've been upscaled, but they didn't do that. On the TNG Blus it's the new effects or nothing. They deliberately didn't go as far as they did with TOS -- the redone effects are largely faithful to the old ones and use the original materials whenever possible -- though there's still some big differences.

As reported Friday, Hammer and Lionsgate / Icon have also managed to bugger up Curse of Frankenstein: http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/vie ... 65#p406765" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Screwing with the legacy; not good.

Port of Shadows on the Beev.

Correct me if I'm wrong, which is admittedly very possible, but does this seem a bit disappointing to anyone else? The second to last blu ray close-up shot looks a bit washed out/de-grained. I usually rely on the knowledgeable folks here to help me discern what looks good/bad...just wondering what others think/if anyone else has this...

I thought the Studio Canal transfer conveyed the film's sfumato well for the most part. The dark, low contrast look is quite natural and atmospheric, but there were times when, as Nick would have it, it looked like the DNR was fighting the grain. I wonder if some finer detail has been lost as a result. I've never owned the Criterion disc but it appears typically boosted to me - Lucien's blown-out face in particular seems completely off.

Watching on the projector via my laptop there were a couple of instances of terrible artifacting and grayscale banding in the darkest areas - so bad it looked like a massive bitrate drop or something stuck on the disc - but the rest was fine. I might try it with the Panasonic player next time as that seems better all round than PowerDVD.

The audio was quite remarkably good.

Rowan wrote:I thought the Studio Canal transfer conveyed the film's sfumato well for the most part. The dark, low contrast look is quite natural and atmospheric, but there were times when, as Nick would have it, it looked like the DNR was fighting the grain. I wonder if some finer detail has been lost as a result. I've never owned the Criterion disc but it appears typically boosted to me - Lucien's blown-out face in particular seems completely off.

Watching on the projector via my laptop there were a couple of instances of terrible artifacting and grayscale banding in the darkest areas - so bad it looked like a massive bitrate drop or something stuck on the disc - but the rest was fine. I might try it with the Panasonic player next time as that seems better all round than PowerDVD.

The audio was quite remarkably good.

I own the Crit and the SC is clearly superior. The Crit displays their trademark boosting.

On a 50" Panasonic Viera plasma with a Momitsu BDP-799 player, I though the grain structure was excellent - a little soft in places but nothing that screamed "DNR". I didn't notice any artifacts or banding with my combo. That's not to say it wasn't there but that it wasn't noticeable enough in motion to interfere with viewing. Plus...

David Hare, in the [i]Children of Paradise[/i] thread wrote:...even the Canal Quai which has had to rely almost entirely on second gen elements. Here however black levels remain true and the constantly cloudy, foggy image created by Schufftan is perfectly realized.

Forbidden Games (René Clément) is getting a UK Blu-Ray release on January 7th.

pro-bassoonist wrote:Peeping Tom very much looks like film. It looks gorgeous projected, with plenty of healthy grain and a type of depth which Don't Look Now clearly does not have. The former looks very good on a 120' screen; the latter looks poor. All of the talk about Peeping Tom lacking grain etc. is simply nonsense. I assume you don't have the disc.

I completely disagree with your take on the (2 year old) PEEPING TOM StudioCanal Blu-ray.

Not meaning to be overdramatic, but the rave reviews everywhere (except DVDBeaver) amount to one of the most wildly aberrant and damaging examples of dressing up a dog's dinner in the history of disc reviews.

I'll ask a general tech-related question about filters: I noticed on The Trial blu ray that there is at points (generally when actors and the picture aren't in motion) some richer textures/grain. However, as soon as someone moves (even just turning their face), that's when it seems grain goes away and the picture looks a bit...weirder. Is that the result of filtering? Anyone else have the blu ray and can comment?

That's a by-product of "grain management" ie. digital fuckery. We shouldn't be seeing that.

I wanted to love that disc, but the picture was wrestling with software the whole time. It's watchable, but it's not ideal.

So the BD's for both Peeping Tom and The Trial have DNR problems? That really sucks.

I live in a pretty narrow apartment, and I just made a sizable jump to a 55" HDTV that's sitting about five feet from the front edge of the couch, so any BD with heavy DNR looks much worse. I can't believe how wretched some of these discs look.

Not sure "DNR" is the best catch-all term for a lot of what's going on at the worst end of HD restoration work, which is why I keep reluctantly falling back on "digital fuckery". There are also different amounts of different types of these digital crimes being applied, so describing them can become a losing game without comparing them to other discs that people know well.

THE TRIAL isn't ruined by the digital work (like, for example FRENZY) but it is definitely affected.

PEEPING TOM has a huge amount of digital fuckery going on. All to do with heavy-handed digital overprocessing / ruinous 'grain management' / different types of digital filters / sharpening... the end result is that it's a digital mess.

I'm going to continue using "digital fuckery", it's the best term for it.

I've said elsewhere on this forum that the Peeping Tom BD was rubbish. Glad that finally someone else agrees with me.

DVDBeaver are the only major review site that I've seen who crapped on it. They were bang on. Pretty much everyone else gave it raves, and it's such an injustice.

Finch, manicsounds, david hare, and DVDBeaver. Any others? I've been trying to find other review sites who trounced it when it came out (circa Nov 2010).

I first saw the BD this year, so was late to the party. Any other Blu-rays that fall into this category? I'm making lists.

I haven't seen it, but Studio Canal's release of RAN left me very disappointed for almost every review I read.

peerpee wrote:Finch, manicsounds, david hare, and DVDBeaver. Any others? I've been trying to find other review sites who trounced it when it came out (circa Nov 2010).

I first saw the BD this year, so was late to the party. Any other Blu-rays that fall into this category? I'm making lists.

I don't have it, but I read that Studio Canal's "Don't Look Now" BD also has the same problematic look that Peeping Tom has.

Yet some reviewers who praised "Peeping" thought "Don't Look Now" was flawed looking, and DVDBeaver thought "Peeping Tom" sucked yet gave praise to "Don't Look Now"