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HerrSchreck wrote:Sad when you get a better transfer of a PD noir that always languished in the Roan Group no-mans' land, than a top of the line Ophuls on CC. . .

. . . that's undergone a "full restoration"!

albucat wrote:Their transfer for The Sacrifice was pretty good, but it definitely had some DNR issues. I'm still happy to own a copy, but it's far from perfect.

From what I understand, for THE SACRIFICE they had clean up a lot of dirt on the image. I suspect that this, together with the extremely dark scenes in the nighttime section of the film, pushed the limits of the tools they had to work with. I also noticed some mild compression issues, but like you I'm happy to have the film on Blu-ray, and I feel it still looks far better than anything else out there. I know they put a lot of work into the color timing in particular, which is really important for that film.

My gut instinct tells me that NOSTALGIA will be a stronger Blu-ray. I suspect (though I may be wrong) that better materials are available for it.

jsteffe wrote:From what I understand, for THE SACRIFICE they had clean up a lot of dirt on the image. I suspect that this, together with the extremely dark scenes in the nighttime section of the film, pushed the limits of the tools they had to work with. I also noticed some mild compression issues, but like you I'm happy to have the film on Blu-ray, and I feel it still looks far better than anything else out there. I know they put a lot of work into the color timing in particular, which is really important for that film.

My gut instinct tells me that NOSTALGIA will be a stronger Blu-ray. I suspect (though I may be wrong) that better materials are available for it.

As I recall, they didn't do theatrical screenings of the SACRIFICE print, the fact that they're doing screenings of the NOSTALGHIA print (and the good reports of its condition) may be a good sign.

I have to chime in along with the others here and say the print they screened over the summer looked majestic.

With regards to their print of The Sacrifice, the Swedish Film Institute did a new digital restoration this spring from a 35 mm positive (IIRC). Not sure if it was 4K or 2K (and the screening I attended was very light on technical specifications), but it was a terrific print. Nice grain structure, no noise (except for two minor, and I do mean minor occasions), no clearly visible edge-enhancement, seems to have way better colours and black levels than the Kino version (which I admittedly haven't seen so going off caps here), two instances of colour flickering but nothing major.


Would be terrific if someone could do a release of this digital restoration, but then again Swedish film outside of Bergman rarely gets good treatment in the DVD/blu-ray market.

Berzeli wrote:With regards to their print of The Sacrifice, the Swedish Film Institute did a new digital restoration this spring from a 35 mm positive (IIRC). Not sure if it was 4K or 2K (and the screening I attended was very light on technical specifications), but it was a terrific print. Nice grain structure, no noise (except for two minor, and I do mean minor occasions), no clearly visible edge-enhancement, seems to have way better colours and black levels than the Kino version (which I admittedly haven't seen so going off caps here), two instances of colour flickering but nothing major.


Would be terrific if someone could do a release of this digital restoration, but then again Swedish film outside of Bergman rarely gets good treatment in the DVD/blu-ray market.

Email Artificial Eye in London and let them know!

DVDtalk review of "Computer Chess"

Love the cover and disc artwork. Too bad they didn't go for a BD.

That special interest sticker is great.

DVDBeaver on the "Russian Ark" BD

Missing are the "Hubert Robert A Fortunate Life - Documentary film by Alexander Sokurov" and text materials from the DVD edition.

manicsounds wrote:DVDBeaver on the "Russian Ark" BD

Missing are the "Hubert Robert A Fortunate Life - Documentary film by Alexander Sokurov" and text materials from the DVD edition.

And also the Commentary and Mon Paradis interviews from the Wellspring DVD. So, in other words, keep your DVDs or wait for Artificial Eye/Curzon/bond-company to upgrade it. I always hate it when something gets downgraded like this (where only the Picture/audio improves).

The feature looks about a million times better than any of the previous DVDs, however. Sold.

manicsounds wrote:DVDBeaver on the "Russian Ark" BD

Missing are the "Hubert Robert A Fortunate Life - Documentary film by Alexander Sokurov" and text materials from the DVD edition.

I wouldn't assume that the rights for the Robert film are still available along with those of Russian Ark. In the years since the DVD came out it was released by a different company (on the now OOP Elegy of a Voyage DVD).

I'm definitely keeping my Wellspring DVD, but it shouldn't be a dealbreaker for those on the fence. The commentary and the making-of doc cover a lot of the same territory.

Beaver's review of Nosferatu ...And the winner is......

No effort to make this one look like a Criterion release:

Maybe one of their bad covers . . . but I really don't see it.

I was making reference to how their cover for The Sacrifice was clearly aping Criterion:

If they'd kept the typeface of the first and used the image of the second, that'd be a good cover. Now it's only a good cover if you hold each cover in either hand and keep your focus in the middle as you gradually move each towards the other

domino harvey wrote:If they'd kept the typeface of the first and used the image of the second, that'd be a good cover. Now it's only a good cover if you hold each cover in either hand and keep your focus in the middle as you gradually move each towards the other

I tried that, but all I could see was a sailboat

The typeface is a variant of the one they used on many of their Jean Rollin covers. The name of it escapes me, though.

That Nostalghia cover is astonishingly bad. Nostalghia is full of gorgeous imagery - they could screen grab any number of moments and have a winner of a cover right there, but they go for some awful photoshop crap like that? I'm still buying it, but if there's some way for me to shrink the Criterion laserdisc cover to the right dimensions to make a blu-sized printout I just might, because that was a better cover by far.

And not only is it fugly, but it's kind of a

Spoiler

spoiler.

...

I've gotta be honest ... I don't think it's that bad.

Their transfers have generally been top notch lately and are never ruined with DNR. They're also working to improve some things, like including foreign intertitles on foreign silents when available. Different strokes for different folks, but I could really care less what the cover looks like. All I ever see on my shelf is the spine anyway.

EDIT: I guess I'm just continually surprised how much discussion on this forum goes into covers, instead of the films themselves.