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I'd much rather have had Il Sorpasso.

Perkins Cobb wrote:I'd much rather have had Il Sorpasso.

I have some good news for you

stevewhamola wrote:Now all this thread needs is links to blu-ray.com's review titled Midnight Cowbassoonist and DVDBeev's inevitable boobie screenshot comparisons. The circle of forum in-jokes will be complete.

You forgot about that swimminghorses cover.

The cover actually seems to have influence from swimminghorses, even if it's good.

Only il sourpusso would be disappointed by the longevity of this joke.

Blu-ray.com http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Midnight- ... 10/#Review

DVD Beaver on Midnight Cowboy
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompar ... lu-ray.htm

Things are looking a bit greenish here....

JSC wrote:DVD Beaver on Midnight Cowboy
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompar ... lu-ray.htm

Things are looking a bit greenish here....

a bit to radical alteration (the cook in the kitchen, Hoffmann looking up comparisons)
Honestly, when this teal era is going to end, i wonder..

Do we know how did the restoration here?

I'll reserve judgement until I see it, but a lot of the bottom pictures look great, especially that close-up of Voigt. I've seen vintage prints recently which definitely had scenes that could be mistaken for a little green leaning. That color timing isn't necessarily wrong, and there's a world of difference between these Cowboy caps and what we see in say, Ran or Color Of Pomegranates.

Gross. At least Indicator is doing what they can, based on their de-tealed St Valentine's Day Massacre caps

At least, it looks like a shot-by-shot change, not a blanket change but the brighter shots look indeed very... modern looking.

domino harvey wrote:Gross. At least Indicator is doing what they can, based on their de-tealed St Valentine's Day Massacre caps

I'd suppose (though I might be wrong) Indicator hasn't done anything here, but it's Sony who is to praise for the newer color timing.

I’m no expert on the color timing of this film but I seem to remember people saying here and elsewhere that the MGM edition wasn’t green enough (particularly noticeable in the shade of Voight’s green shirt) compared to what prints looked like, so maybe it’s closer to the source to just be teal?

tenia wrote:

domino harvey wrote:Gross. At least Indicator is doing what they can, based on their de-tealed St Valentine's Day Massacre caps

I'd suppose (though I might be wrong) Indicator hasn't done anything here, but it's Sony who is to praise for the newer color timing.

It's Fox, not Sony, and they have the world's biggest hardon for blue/green biases, so no way did Indicator get it handed to them like this

domino harvey wrote:

tenia wrote:

domino harvey wrote:Gross. At least Indicator is doing what they can, based on their de-tealed St Valentine's Day Massacre caps

I'd suppose (though I might be wrong) Indicator hasn't done anything here, but it's Sony who is to praise for the newer color timing.

It's Fox, not Sony, and they have the world's biggest hardon for blue/green biases, so no way did Indicator get it handed to them like this

My bad then, I thought it was Sony.
Is Massacre a Deluxe title though ? It always seemed to me that the Fox heavy blue restorations were Deluxe titles.
It would also mean that Indicator is now doing additionnal exclusive technical work for their releases, which so far isn't what I understood they have the resources for.

Every Fox movie TT's been given has looked bluer than the DVDs. See the differences in Pretty Poison, a film I doubt Fox did anything deluxe for. Perhaps this has been a choice by TT/Fox after the fact and not inherent in their masters, but I doubt it

I thought this phenomemon was less widespread than this within the Fox catalogue, hence my question. This is worrying.

domino harvey wrote:Gross. At least Indicator is doing what they can, based on their de-tealed St Valentine's Day Massacre caps

Indicator didnt do anything, the same master was also used on the previously released german blu ray.

Generally, I thought it looked great, but screenshot 10 in this comparison, well, NOT GOOD: http://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=12010& ... =9&l=1&a=1

Red completely blown out and details are lost.

The texture on this cap bothers me too. I can't say about whether it's supposed to be blown or not, but aside from the details lost because of that, the texture seems partially absent too, while some grain should have remained anyway, but in the foreground, it's very hard to find it.

I read the conversation at bluray.com, but I don't think anyone mentioned this

Isn't the film supposed to be black and white in that scene, making the earlier bluray correct?

Costa wrote:

JSC wrote:DVD Beaver on Midnight Cowboy
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompar ... lu-ray.htm

Things are looking a bit greenish here....

a bit to radical alteration (the cook in the kitchen, Hoffmann looking up comparisons)
Honestly, when this teal era is going to end, i wonder..

Do we know how did the restoration here?

How do you know on that chef shot that the intent of the lighting of the scene was supposed to be neutral (the dvd ), or was the intent to have a look of oppressive fluorescent commercial lighting?

Literally thousands of films and TVs shows have portrayed a green bias to interior lighting for decades, and just because early dvd masters gave young digital colorists auto-correct tools to neutralize image colors (with playback on a 15 inch CRT monitor) does not mean the autocorrect tool being enthusiastically implemented everywhere by the “kids” who knew how to use the computer tools was the correct approach.

At the time the dvd was made the big time colorists were all still grading and timing in film, and DVDs were done in avid, with the subsequent advent of DIs, the film colorists moved to different software environments, but DVDs were still done in avid, nowadays avid has lost most of the color work as tv, film and home video have all unified under resolve software for color management.

But that also means that traditional colorists and home video colorists are finally speaking the same language. And we are seeing some big differences as a result.

The issue isn't about the movie potentially having some shots' graded in a consistent manner regarding the use of fluorescent lighting, it is about how the shift towards colder hues is affecting the whole movie and how this colder grading comes in a context where several movies are, let's say, perplexly graded this way. While there is no doubt the previous MGM master of Midnight Cowboy was too pinkish, there are now many shots in the movie, including outside ones, that show a drift toward colder hues, visible outside comparisons (so it's not just a question of finding it too cold just because it's colder).
http://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0& ... 79&i=0&l=0
http://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0& ... 71&i=8&l=0

Let's compare to that : when the first "yellow-ish" movies restored by L'immagine Ritrovata came out, people were very prompt to say "that's because we've seen these movies for years through the poorly graded magenta-pushed DVDs", and that was only fair. Except now, we see that no matter which movies they're grading, Ritrovata is grading ALL their restorations this way, and it seems dubious that they're pretty much the only lab that would get all the movies that were shot with this kind of timing in mind.
(and we now have James Steffen's double check about The Colour of Pomegranates as a factual proof that this kind of grading is plain unfaithful at least on this movie)

So it's not a question of comparing to the older DVDs that clearly were not faithfully graded, but the question of whether we've just traded an unfaithful trend for a new one (well 2, actually).


Now, of course with colors, with the lack of true absolute references, it's impossible to know if this new grading just corrects the older unfaithfulness or if it's going too far. But judging from how it registers within several recent restorations, I suppose we can (and probably should) wonder if this is more faithful or not.

As tenia has painstakingly pointed out, all of the films where color seem "off" are directionally "off" depending on the restoration house that handled the color.

While it's clear that many restorations are wildly inaccurate, from Color of Pom to so many of the French Films by (Muriel, L'Argent), not all cases are so clear. Playtime, Touch Of Zen, and Trafic are all films where people on this forum have attested that the blu-ray releases got close to 35mm prints people have seen. That doesn't mean the BDs are perfect of course, but they are likely on the right track.

One other point: this notion that TEAL/ORANGE lean is always a sign of wrongness is...wrong! I couldn't help but notice the teal/orange push of the 35mm Heartbreak Kid print I saw the other month. This doesn't mean it resembled a modern Hollywood movie color timing, but the general temperature of the color was teal/orangeish. In the second cap, for example, Jon Voigt's chair seems blue-ish...and to me it resembles color temperatures I've seen in 35mm prints of films from this era.

How about we all actually wait to watch the disc?

I would actually argue A Touch of Zen along with Dragon Inn and Legend of the mountain as a case of "Ritrovata signature grading" but otherwise, yes, we can't say for sure if it's pinpointly correct, but many movies have been graded in a similar fashion and almost now all look like they were by the same people using the same equipement and with the similar look in mind.
Which just seems vastly unlikely.
It certainly, again, doesnt mean past incarnations were better, let alone right.
But this directionality (perfect word) is perplexing to me, especially seeing how the yellow bias from Ritrovata is now closer and closer from being demonstrated as plain incorrect.