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Saturnome wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 10:38 pm I'm intrigued by "Rare footage from unfinished features and commercials". I only know of one unfinished feature by her?

Tout(e) Varda included footage for the 1966 Christmas Carol, starring a very young Gerard Depardieu (it seems that Varda discovered him - he also appears in Nausicaa), and a couple of ads, as I recall (one for Tupperware).

As I recall, there's also material from an earlier feature (pre-Cleo), but I don't think any actual footage was shot for that.

Grand Wazoo wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 10:50 pm Does most/all color HD restorations of her films have the piss color grading? Looking at reviews from different companies (Criterion Vagabond & One Sings, Cinelicious Jane B. Par Agnès V. /Kung Fu Master set) It seems to be liberally applied. Part of me is considering keeping the Tout(e) Varda box if this is the case.

The AE One Sings... release features the same unfortunate color timing as the Criterion. That said, it’s less egregious than what has been done to much of Fassbinder’s work on Blu. It’s unfortunate that the twilight of physical media happens to coincide with the garish color timing restoration trend. Hopefully, these films will be restored and released again by someone, someday. In the mean time, I’m just happy that we’ll have all of Varda’s work in one box, even if it isn’t entirely optimal.

Question: Varda approved the restorations for her films and for Demy’s films, and I believe did the color grading, correct? Or at least ONE SINGS says that she did the grading, which I assume she did for all her films since Cine Tamaris restored all the films.

Many many restorations (in general) have been approved by someone from the movie team, yet bear a color signature much more consistent with the laboratory's habit than the DoP, director or whatever.

This has been especially the case with Ritrovata (yellow), Eclair (cold blue) and Digimages (yellow) when they're given not only the scan and restoration to perform but also the grading. There are also that crazy person at Fox who turned their color movies all blue (Wild River, Desk Set, etc) and Paramount have a certain recognizable way to want their movies graded. When you can tell where the movie was restored before anything else, that's telling, and it's sadly the case with many of those movies (probably hundreds now).

I still have no idea about what those reference people are approving exactly and when they are called in during the color grading workflow.

EDIT : I found some restoration cards from the AE set, which are likely to be the restorations used by Criterion (a given for One Sings) :
Jacquot de Nantes : 4K scan/2K restoration, Digimages, 2013, OCN, grading supervised by Varda
Sans toit ni loi : 2K, Eclair, 2014, OCN, grading supervised by Varda & Patrick Blossier
L'une chante l'autre pas : 2K, Eclair, 2014, OCN, grading supervised by Varda & DP Charlie Van Damme
Le bonheur : 2K, Eclair, 2014, OCN, grading supervised by Varda
Cléo de 5 à 7 : 2K, Digimages, 2012, OCN, grading supervised by Varda

I thought I may have posted this here, but I attended several films at Lincoln Center's Varda retrospective this winter - all of them were from the restorations used for this set, and while one (maybe two?) films did have that unfortunate color grading that's become too familiar, the others looked perfectly fine. Since the opening cards indicated when and where the restorations were done, it's possible that info may offer a clue for the change.

zedz wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 1:03 am

Saturnome wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 10:38 pm I'm intrigued by "Rare footage from unfinished features and commercials". I only know of one unfinished feature by her?

Tout(e) Varda included footage for the 1966 Christmas Carol, starring a very young Gerard Depardieu (it seems that Varda discovered him - he also appears in Nausicaa), and a couple of ads, as I recall (one for Tupperware)

That's the one! Her other unfinished projects never went to the shooting stage, but I may be wrong. And yes, if I remember right, Depardieu simply used to babysit her children!

I'm absolutely kicking myself for dropping $70-odd dollars on the "Varda in California" Eclipse set just a week ago! This set looks amazing, and I'm particularly enraptured with the special features (an area in which the Bergman set, for instance, disappointed).

A poster over at the Blu-ray.com forum said that emailed Criterion to ask if this is going to be region free and they told him yes.

Gary has updated the review to confirm that it's region free.

Vagabo...ooze?

It's less noticeable on Cleo, but for the pixel pickers amongst us, seems like Criterion bested AE on these encodes. AE seems to have gone a little heavy on the DNR for Vagabond... Compare Bonnaire's sweater in the first captures, the flattened hair at the neckline on Bonnaire's left in the third set, and the macro-blocking on the policeman's back in the fourth set.

Saw the restoration of Vagabond used for this release in the theater (DCP) and I don’t think anyone will have a complaint to speak of. Outside of the opening credits, it looks like it was filmed yesterday. Would also add, uselessly, that it’s the best Varda film I’ve seen.

Yes, the restoration itself is great. Just mentioning edition quibbles, as folks do around here, and probably trying to convince myself that the Criterion box is worth picking up eventually despite my already having the AE box, the Arbelos double feature, and the Eclipse set...

I just went through the screen caps, and from what the Beev posted, there's four where it's really noticeable:

1) The paint splattered wall (you see it in the texture of the wall, and to the left where you see the people in the out-of-focus background)
2) The older man in the cap talking with the police
3) The out-of-focus ocean in the background where she's hitchhiking at golden hour time (but it's only noticeable in the ocean)
4) The final cap comparison with that woman talking to the interviewer behind the camera, where on Criterion's set it almost looks like the woman has acne scars when it's really very coarse grain

Had it just been the other caps posted, I would have said there was no apparent difference in grain management.

Anyway, in the four cases listed above, it's probably negligible, and except maybe for #2 virtually unnoticeable if you're watching the screen from a comfortable viewpoint - if you look really close like a few inches from the screen, it's apparent, but honestly, are you going to comfortably watch a film like that?

Still no signs of La cocotte d'Azur, Les enfants du musée or La petite histoire de Gwen la bretonne in this "complete" set.
La cocotte d'Azur is Varda being mean, which is quite unusual. Les enfants du musée is a cute short, only essential in order to see early Varda do late Varda.

Les fiancés du pont MacDonald look upscaled and will look better in Cleo. Some films look real bad, look at Documenteur how it's all video noise and compression. Ugh. Others are looking excellent. Simon Cinema is looking very fine (while being maybe her worst film).

Daguerrotype is very, very yellow...

Wow, it looks like nearly every non-video color film has been Eclaired/Ritrovataed to some degree.

Saturnome wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2020 5:50 am Daguerrotype is very, very yellow...

That's very surprising because I saw this at the Varda retrospective at Lincoln Center, and it did NOT look like that - it was a natural and neutral color palette.

It is a great film by the way, an astonishing display of Varda's enormous and deceptively modest gift to see so much in humanity while making a film that was more or less an attempt to keep working when she couldn't leave her own block due to Mathieu's recent birth. It's very disappointing that we're fortunate enough to get an HD presentation for home viewing, only to have this done to it.

All of the supplements on the set are now indexed here.

Grand Wazoo wrote:Wow, it looks like nearly every non-video color film has been Eclaired/Ritrovataed to some degree.

Not suprising, sadly, considering who performed most of those restorations and when.

So basically, this sucks then.

How about the book, anyone?

I believe it has not been affected by Ritrovata’s color grading.

Ritrovata also restored the WKW films....

black&huge wrote: Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:48 am Ritrovata also restored the WKW films....

I wonder when exactly, though. They have dialed back a bit on their heavily yellow LUT usage, but that's quite recent. Older work can be OK too : Uncle Yanco doesn't seem to have this issue and was restored in 2013 (though blu-ray.com renamed the lab "L'Immagine Tirtovata"). Black Panthers seems almost OK too, but not Lions Love (and Lies). They're all from 2013. Mur Murs (2013) & Documenteur (2011) also seem to have this issue.
Les dites cariatides looks like a nightmare in terms of grading.

Daguerrotypes looks more like an Eclair job, though. It's not just a tad yellow but blues look cold and more typical of many other Eclair gradings than anything else (EDIT : just saw it's indeed from Eclair). Ulysse, Les cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma, 7 p., cuis., s. de b., ... (à saisir), Réponse de femmes & L'une chante, l'autre pas all seem to have the same issues, but Vagabond & Plaisir d'amour en Iran don't.
Interestingly, La pointe courte has also been restored and graded by Ritrovata, and sure enough, it has that typical velvety aspect of their B&W works.


Looking back into it, what I'm most surprised by is that despite the Criterion being the first BD set about Varda to be that exhaustive, most restorations aren't very recent. They've been mostly performed between 2012 and 2015, some being even from 2011. The only recent restoration is Les créatures, and it's really recent since it's from 2020.

black&huge wrote: Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:48 am Ritrovata also restored the WKW films....

They did the restorations but WKW supervised the color gradings.