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chucktatum wrote:DVD Beaver

Maybe just me, but from the screencaps, that is one ugly looking film. Obviously intentional by the filmmakers, but the first word that came to mind was 'putrifying'.

I wouldn't say ugly. Just foggy... very foggy.

It is veryyyy soft and also extremely desaturated.

Those screen caps look exactly like it looked in the theater to me -- foggy, soft, and desaturated.

I suppose it isn't a conventionally pretty film, but that is the way it looks. I think the aesthetic fits with the tone of the film.

It's the same disgusting digitally manipulated and diffused look that has instantly dated many of the films made in the early to mid 2000s

^ I agree with that, yet at this point, I still find that I like this look for this film.

I hadn't considered how well (or how poorly) it'll hold up over the years as a result of this aesthetic choice. You're likely correct that it'll date the film rather quickly.

Capturing the Bleak NY Winter for the Coens: Behind the Cinematography of 'Inside Llewyn Davis'

American Cinematographer Magazine - Folk Implosion: Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC and colorist Peter Doyle create a unique visual tone for the Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis

Delbonnel has a predilection for soft lighting. “My signature is a source with double diffusion, and sometimes I do triple diffusion. Then, I add a little fill inside, or not. If I do, it’s very soft, and it’s usually a poly [polystyrene bounce] or something simple. I rarely use hard lighting, although I did for a couple of scenes on this film.”

Lillian notes that Delbonnel often used book lights, “with one bounce surface and another diffusion surface at 45 degrees. Usually, we aimed the light into an Ultra Bounce and then diffused it with a Light Grid Cloth.”

Doyle explains how they arrived at Inside Llewyn Davis’ unusual pastel coloring and pale flesh tones: “I got rid of the blue channel, which I do a lot these days, and remapped the colors so that the skin tones had just enough of a twist to not be realistic, to be a little romanticized, like a memory. To desaturate the skin would look unnatural, so instead we bent the RGB curves of the negative so the skin tone would be completely neutral with Bruno’s exposure. It’s a very delicate thing to do.”

“This film couldn’t be beautiful or golden — it had to be uncomfortable,” Delbonnel says. “The question was how to come up with a very sad, very dirty image without falling into the extreme of a completely blue winter, which bores me — you know, ‘yellow equals warm, blue equals cold.’ We went toward dirty magentas and cyan, two colors that oppose each other.”

Delbonnel and Doyle also applied a “bloom” to the image, suffusing the highlights with a softened texture. “The bloom was a way to smooth things out, and it was part of the sadness I wanted,” says the cinematographer. “I wanted the feeling of old lenses without coating, with a lot of flare and blooming. You sense that the whites are exploded. Peter and I went very far, and it interested the Coens a lot because the image has an old, rather strange look.”

Oh that's interesting, I've had to rebuild badly exposed blue channels for a couple recent shows shooting slog3 at high asa exposures often because the blue channel has massively more noise than the other channels, intriguing that this look was achieved by dropping the blue channel to zero and remixing it up with the other two. I've achieved something similar playing around trying to replicate two and three strip technicolor, I think the aviator took the same approach of manipulating channels to achieve their archaic process looks.

I like, if not love, the look of the film -- mostly because it perfectly conveys the setting of some endless, sunless winter in NYC. The diffusion is perfectly apt, as it makes it seem like the film is some fogged-up window you're gazing into. Still, I don't think it works nearly as well as similarly diffused and foggy films like McCabe & Mrs. Miller... and it lends a monotony to the film which already feels so tonally, emotionally one-note. I love certain things about the movie, but other things, like Carey Mulligan's waste of a character, just grate; I may find it a great work on second viewing but I doubt I'll see a "masterpiece" as Tooze and many here have. The only Coen flicks I might be inclined to grant that distinction would be A Serious Man and The Big Lebowski; but then, I'm not a big fan of theirs.

domino harvey wrote:It's the same disgusting digitally manipulated and diffused look that has instantly dated many of the films made in the early to mid 2000s

Just curious, what are some examples of films from the early-to-mid 2000s which bear this look? I think I know what you mean, but can't call any to mind off the top of my head. Is the Coens' O Brother something you're talking about, or no?

Regardless, I'm not sure I agree that the look will dramatically "date" the film per se. Or maybe it's just that I'm a little allergic to the idea of using "date" as a pejorative, as (obviously) every film is instantly dated, is clearly of a certain time and place. And the best films are often the ones that are the most egregiously "dated" or stuck in their time, aesthetically or otherwise. But I digress!

oh no wrote:

domino harvey wrote:It's the same disgusting digitally manipulated and diffused look that has instantly dated many of the films made in the early to mid 2000s

Just curious, what are some examples of films from the early-to-mid 2000s which bear this look? I think I know what you mean, but can't call any to mind off the top of my head. Is the Coens' O Brother something you're talking about, or no?

Off the top of my head: Big Fish, the Da Vinci Code, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and to a lesser extent, films like Babel, Letters From Iwo Jima, and Munich

Didn't this trend really begin with Saving Private Ryan?

domino harvey wrote:

oh no wrote:

domino harvey wrote:It's the same disgusting digitally manipulated and diffused look that has instantly dated many of the films made in the early to mid 2000s

Just curious, what are some examples of films from the early-to-mid 2000s which bear this look? I think I know what you mean, but can't call any to mind off the top of my head. Is the Coens' O Brother something you're talking about, or no?

Off the top of my head: Big Fish, the Da Vinci Code, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and to a lesser extent, films like Babel, Letters From Iwo Jima, and Munich

Ah okay, I definitely see that. I think you could add in most or all of Burton's recent films to that list, too. My least favorite of these kinds of movies are the really de-saturated ones (like Highway 61 notes, this digital de-saturation -- especially for war movies or period films -- is sort of a trend which started with Saving Private Ryan). I hate that kind of monochromatic gray or brown look, and I hate how it's dominated the war genre (and many others) even to this day.

domino harvey wrote:

oh no wrote:

domino harvey wrote:It's the same disgusting digitally manipulated and diffused look that has instantly dated many of the films made in the early to mid 2000s

Just curious, what are some examples of films from the early-to-mid 2000s which bear this look? I think I know what you mean, but can't call any to mind off the top of my head. Is the Coens' O Brother something you're talking about, or no?

Off the top of my head: Big Fish, the Da Vinci Code, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and to a lesser extent, films like Babel, Letters From Iwo Jima, and Munich

Really all of Eastwood's films in the last 15 years.

A big detriment to Eastwood's films, though he finally seems to have passed on that look. (American Sniper didn't have it.) It was fine with the WWII films - I think together, that diptych is a masterpiece, and on second viewing, the look didn't feel derivative of Saving Private Ryan, which was my initial impression - drained of color, yes, but that's where the similarity ends. Everywhere else though it feels a bit too clichéd to really have the impact one would hope (in Gran Torino, in Million Dollar Baby…and those are two of his better films from this period, which makes it more disappointing for me.)

Anyway, I liked the look of Inside Llewyn Davis the first time I caught it, but it does look like digital mush now.

What's strange to me is why the Coens wanted that look back? It's mostly disappeared from movie screens and moved to TV (and good riddance)

I think it translated a lot better to the big screen presentation of this film, but I don't have a problem with it on Blu-ray, either, so maybe I'm a bad person to ask.

I'd say the diffusion is what makes the color manipulation really work for inside llewyn davis . Most DIs of the Era in question are flat out lazy, often using the ugly and dated color manipulations to hide continuity errors in skies and lighting. It's a way to get those Spielberg soderbergh distinctive process looks on the cheap. Out of sight did it with simple filtration, saving private Ryan fucked with lens coatings, mechanics of the camera shutter and fogging the film. Traffic added in cross processing and other techniques. O brother where art thou , was one of the first digital elaborations on these increasingly popular techniques and then moores law quickly made it available to everyone.

Munich, though was also achieved and finished photo chemically, no digital intermediate created that look.

n/a

To me the look of the film evokes the very album cover presented in the first screengrab of Beaver's review. I never even considered it further since that reasoning felt rather cut and dry to me.

oh yeah wrote:

domino harvey wrote:Off the top of my head: Big Fish, the Da Vinci Code, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and to a lesser extent, films like Babel, Letters From Iwo Jima, and Munich

Ah okay, I definitely see that. I think you could add in most or all of Burton's recent films to that list, too. ...

Then probably no surprise if I point out that Bruno Delbonnel, the DP on Llewyn Davis, has been Burton's choice for his last few non-animated features.

I don't understand how all films are not "dated" by their cinematography or process.. I don't know much about it.. So I feel like I get a range of about a decade when I watch any blu-ray. So shouldn't it be that a person in that industry could date just about any film by its looks, albeit to a range that is much smaller… maybe a year or two?

The look of the film is intensely unique and memorable to me. I can't imagine anything "wrong" with that.

The fact that they have described intention of looking like a memory simply makes me think "they nailed it". It is basically what my depressing memories "look" like. Almost exactly.

Blu-ray.com

Over 5 hours of extras all on one disc.

So then it makes sense that the concert is only in lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 (which has been confirmed), though I wish it had the DTS-HD MA track from the foreign release. I always think music based extras like concerts should have a lossless soundtrack on Blu-rays, but it doesn't always happen.

Despite the too high amount of video extras, they still managed to retain a 25Mbps AVB, which is pretty much enough for this kind of movie.
It makes me wonder how much the extras are compressed. I don't think they could have retained the bitrates Criterion was using so far (which was, IMO, too high, especially for their numerous upscaled material).