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personally, it looks great to me. I cannot wait soon enough to see it for myself

zedz wrote:

alvareo wrote:Bummed about how ugly the grain looks with Criterion's usual lousy compression. Hopefully Arrow/MoC/BFI will pick it up? Great restoration otherwise, anyway, so this'll do for the time being.

As I predicted a few months back, people are going to complain and complain about the look of this film, which is the look of this film.

In the present case, Alvareo doesn't complain about the look of the film itself, but the encode / the compression, which isn't the same thing.

And which he presumably hasn't even seen yet.

I would expect this film being released by Criterion in UK, not from other studios..

swo17 wrote:And which he presumably hasn't even seen yet.

If you have reliable screen captures (indeed, it's not the case with Beaver), that wouldn't be so much of an issue.

Even on Beaver captures, I can tell zoomed up when an image shows compression artifacts. I cannot for the life of me find any on this.

Since last December compression artifacts haven't been much of a problem with their releases; other than I think Emigrants/New Land I'm hard pressed to think of another title. Even Dekalog, which I've been making my way through (slowly), isn't showcasing what titles like Mulholland Drive were and it has close to 5 hours of material on the first two discs. I haven't looked at Gary's grabs but I'd be stunned if they actually dropped the ball on this one, especially considering how grainy the film is and how I'm sure people will be all over it because of that.

I suspect, like most color timing issues, it will only be distracting when directly paired against another version of the film via comparative captures. Besides, I already sold my WB disc when this was announced, so anything to convince myself I made the right decision is my present course of action

With ~29 Mbps at this aspect ratio, there shouldn't be any issues.

2.40:1 is quite forgiving when it comes to compression.

It's such a grainy film, it would be easy to mistake the grain for bad compression in a still.

I love McCabe & Mrs. Miller, but you guys are being delusional and nitpickey. I've seen it on 35mm twice (the second time was a few months ago) and can say it looks closer to the Criterion Blu-Ray than the previous release. As much as I love it, it's a strange, often (objectively) bad looking movie that has a really terrible audio mix to boot. The color timing is all over the place and the film is beyond grainy and muddy looking. I always thought it was more indicative of Altman's style and the overall production of the film than a DVD issue and the print and Blu-Ray proved it right. This is as good as it's going to look because this is what the film looks like.

I have also seen it on 35mm twice, and am very happy to endorse this. It is what it is.

Yeah... but, green!

Two 35mm screenings for me also, and agree with others that this is the look of the film.

I've seen two 35mm prints, but I don't remember either of them looking this green.

Well, I feel better about the legitimacy of the transfer after most of these posts now... but also, as dom said, I already sold my old copy -- I'm gonna be buying this one no matter what! I'm sure it will look wonderful. Looking forward to Short Cuts even more

tojoed wrote:I've seen two 35mm prints, but I don't remember either of them looking this green.

Famously, no two prints of this film ever looked entirely alike, so memory isn't much help here.

MichaelB wrote:

tojoed wrote:I've seen two 35mm prints, but I don't remember either of them looking this green.

Famously, no two prints of this film ever looked entirely alike, so memory isn't much help here.

Like it or not, the DCP and its derivatives are probably the closest this film has ever been to definitive (or at least standardized) in terms of its colour timing and overall look, and if this was based on a specific print personally overseen by Vilmos Zsigmond, that's good enough for me.

Taken on their own (ie., when not juxtaposed with the DVD captures) I think the bluray captures look rather good. I also feel more confident in Criterion's encoding of late - I think they've eliminated the pixel glitches from recent transfers. Some of these captures look pretty fuzzy at full size, but I think that's the way this film is. Looking forward to owning this disc.

Seeing the screen captures, I wonder if that's what Heaven's Gate could have looked like had Vilmos Zsigmond been involved with the transfer in some way. (To me, the Cimino-led restoration makes it look too picture-postcard. But this is just my opinion.)

MichaelB wrote:

tojoed wrote:I've seen two 35mm prints, but I don't remember either of them looking this green.

Famously, no two prints of this film ever looked entirely alike, so memory isn't much help here.

You're right. In any case, of the two I saw one was in 1972 and one in the mid eighties, both a long time ago.

The opium den really sets the atmosphere here, this film is a muddy mess. I love it.

Does everybody here who is opining on the colour timing have their monitors calibrated?

It's 2016, I would assume most people aren't spending time calibrating their monitors.

Criterion posted a web exclusive essay by Robert Christgau: Stranger Songs: The Music of Leonard Cohen in McCabe & Mrs. Miller