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And, as I hinted above, the subtitles actually identify which language is being spoken, a welcome innovation that shows the amount of care that's gone into this release.

And yes, it's 100% definitely the Yutkevich version: it was identifiable immediately from the opening white-on-red Cyrillic intertitles. From what I understand, efforts were made to include both versions, but the rights situation is very murky indeed, and it's not at all clear whether the so-called "director's cut" would be considered a separate work for copyright purposes. In other words, Second Sight might have got away with it... but they also might have been sued.

I'm pretty relaxed about it, though - as with the 185-minute Andrei Rublev, the Yutkevich version is the one I'm most familiar with, and the poor picture quality of the various "director's cut" editions (including a big-screen outing at the ICA in London) is distracting, to put it mildly. And this film above all needs the best picture you can realistically get - and I'm delighted that it's finally got it. (And if anyone wants to see the "director's cut", it's still available from Kino or Films Sans Frontières, with English subtitles in both cases).

Fingers crossed I'll have a chance to explore the extras properly over the next few days - on the basis of a quick glance they look impressively meaty and authoritative.

der_Artur wrote:So with the SecondSight website stating the language as Georgian this release is one of the so called "Director's Cut", am I right? The releases of this film confuse me.

There's an introduction sequence on the disc where Daniel Bird gives a run down of the different versions, and why it's difficult to claim one or the other is a "director's cut".

Looking forward to your thoughts on the documentary.

Perhaps all these comments should be moved to the Second Sight thread or even the Parajanov thread?

MichaelB wrote:I'm pretty relaxed about it, though - as with the 185-minute Andrei Rublev, the Yutkevich version is the one I'm most familiar with, and the poor picture quality of the various "director's cut" editions (including a big-screen outing at the ICA in London) is distracting, to put it mildly. And this film above all needs the best picture you can realistically get - and I'm delighted that it's finally got it. (And if anyone wants to see the "director's cut", it's still available from Kino or Films Sans Frontières, with English subtitles in both cases).

The Yuktevich version is definitely a viable version, though it is not ideal since Yutkevich made some unwarranted changes to the structure of the film. The so-called "director's cut" is also compromised in some ways--it is emphatically not a director's cut but the official Armenian release version of the film, the end product after Parajanov had battled extensively with the censors. One of their stipulations was that Parajanov had to remove all of the references to Sayat-Nova in the film's title and the chapter titles, since they felt it took too many liberties with Sayat-Nova's life.

Originally, Parajanov's chapter titles explained the contents of each chapter in a relatively straightforward manner. Hrant Matevosyan's Armenian-language titles for the Armenian release version express the underlying mood of each scene in a poetic manner and some Armenians really like the way they are written, but in my opinion they make the film unduly difficult to follow. The editing of the Armenian version is arguably closer to Parajanov's intentions; he may have made some editorial changes under pressure, but he ultimately signed off on the Armenian release version.

Yutkevich actually admired the film and wanted it to be more widely seen; he was a script reader behind the scenes, so he was familiar with the project from its beginning stages. Yutkevich's changes enabled the film to get distributed outside of Armenia, since at that point the authorities in Moscow didn't want to support Parajanov's work. Initially Parajanov was upset about the changes, but years later he thanked Yutkevich for "saving" the film, otherwise it might have languished in obscurity. Besides the superior image quality, the Yutkevich version has the advantage of chapter titles which make it easier to follow what is going on. Actually, Yutkevich's chapter titles are a little closer to what Parajanov originally wanted, though not identical.

To be honest, these days when I introduce the film to first time viewers I prefer to show the Yutkevich version since it's more accessible and it looks vastly better, though I can't say that it's necessarily a "better" film. Still, visual quality is so important to the film's unique form of poetic expression that you could make a case for preferring the Yutkevich cut purely on the grounds of the image alone. Second Sight certainly made the right decision based on the present circumstances.

jsteffe wrote:To be honest, these days when I introduce the film to first time viewers I prefer to show the Yutkevich version since it's more accessible and it looks vastly better, though I can't say that it's necessarily a "better" film. Still, visual quality is so important to the film's unique form of poetic expression that you could make a case for preferring the Yutkevich cut purely on the grounds of the image alone. Second Sight certainly made the right decision based on the present circumstances.

Thank you and MichaelB for your answers.

No other shots (or reviews, I think?) have appeared yet, so I'm going to post some screen grabs of something I did (which I'm very happy with): Mondo Macabro's Strip-tease (yes, I do work for other DVD labels as well... and no, they don't all have to start with "Mondo", that's a coincidence!)

Grabbed from the disc and aspect ratio corrected for PC screens using Photoshop "Bicubic Sharper" algorithm (which is basically the same as what most TVs/DVD players use).



And this shot is a perfect example for why I never encode with the lowpass filter on... check out the jacket!

You're one of the best guys out there at your job David, judging by all the caps you've posted over the years; I only wish you worked for Criterion, BFI, MoC, Second Run etc etc! Great job.

David M., that really looks gorgeous! Out of curiosity, when you say "lowpass filter," what does that mean specifically for video encoding?

I would love to do discs for Criterion, BFI, MoC and Second Run. Perhaps soon? Thank you.

JSteffe: in the context of video encoding, lowpass filtering is basically removing the highest frequency details in the image, in other words, blurring the picture. This became routine on DVD releases and bafflingly, became a hallmark of a professional encoder. When DVD was new and interlaced CRT was the display method, lowpass filtering the video to make it easier to compress didn't really show much damage. But as we got larger and larger screens that could resolve better detail, the damage being done became more and more clear. Good encoders and good compressionists mean that there's no need to use LPF anymore on DVD, except maybe for some very challenging content.

Here's an example of what one of those images would look like, had it been subjected to both horizontal and vertical lowpass filtering. This look is probably quite familiar to anyone who watches a lot of DVD:



And the way I do it, without LPF:



Detail is reduced and ringing artefacts appear around transitions. Especially look at the black side-bars, what was before a fairly sharp transition from black into the actual picture is now a smudge. Actually, most of what people called "Edge enhancement" on DVD actually wasn't/isn't edge enhancement at all, but ringing caused by LPF.

If that looks like a big difference to you viewing the images at DVD size on a hi-res, computer screen, just imagine the damage it does when it's scaled to fit a modern size TV or projection screen. Even although the resolution of an NTSC DVD is (usually) almost 720x480, lowpass filtering lowers the effective resolution to less. Only with a very crisp source, a good down-scaler from the datacine's resolution, and no damaging techniques such as LPF, can you make the most of those 720x480 pixels.

If you've ever watched a 2.35:1 movie on DVD (Lord of the Rings is a good example - those discs were HEAVILY filtered) and seen a sort of "wrinkle" where the picture meets the black line, that's caused by the lowpass filter.

Second Run's Red Psalm, with frames chosen to match these Beaver grabs of the Clavis version:








Two major differences: the Second Run is a fair bit darker (though this is much less obvious in motion and without running the Clavis side by side), and of course the aspect ratio is substantially different, with the Clavis being full-frame 1.37:1 and the Second Run being 1.85:1 (and anamorphic). Both Miklós Jancsó and his cinematographer János Kende assured Second Run that it was framed for 1.85:1, and while I was sceptical at first thanks to my familiarity with the 1.37:1 version, I have to admit that it looks substantially better in widescreen. I've posted direct side-by-side comparisons in the Red Psalm thread here, so you can (hopefully) see what I mean.

Caps from the recent Sinomovie box of Hou's 1995-2001 films (click on the titles to compare with the DVD Beaver caps from earlier editions ):

Good Men, Good Women

#2
#3
#4

Goodbye South, Goodbye

#2
#3
#4

Flowers of Shanghai

#2
#3
#4

Millennium Mambo

#2
#3
#4

More info, general impressions etc. here

Comparison of the UK (top) and Hungarian (bottom) editions of The Red and the White (Csillagosok, katonák):

Thanks Otis. That's a hell of a difference, notwithstanding the edge enhancement. Have you checked out the English subtitles and other features yet?

zedz wrote:Thanks Otis. That's a hell of a difference, notwithstanding the edge enhancement. Have you checked out the English subtitles and other features yet?

Not yet. I'll post a shot of Jancso in his speedos when I get a chance!

From the Crit and Medusa Il Gattopardo.

First, the Criterion:



(user capture from the thread at Blu-ray.com)

Then the Medusa:



(from the review at Blu-ray.com)

Again, the Crit:



(from the DVD Beaver review)

And the Medusa:



(again a user capture from the thread at Blu-ray.com)

Krzyzacy (1960)

2DVD (Gazeta Wyborcza PL) vs. DVD (SecondRun UK)

"Le Rouge et le Noir" (Autant-Lara, 1954) Gaumont Video BR

It's a shame to see more of (what looks like) old CRT telecine stuff make its way to BD. The glowing (afterglow) around whites isn't nice.

Second Run's Innocent Sorcerers:

Second Run's Goodbye, See You Tomorrow:

Second Run's Night Train:













(The last grab is for people who've seen one of the older DVDs - you know, the ones where you can't see what the hell's happening when they swarm off the train!)

Second Run's Eroica:

"La corruzione" (Bolognini, 1963) Medusa R2 SD

"Bubù" (Bolognini, 1971) Surf R2 SD

"La notte brava" (Bolognini, 1959) R2 SD
Mondo Home Entertainment (Top) vs Carlotta Films (Bottom)

If nobody minds a little self promotion, this is my latest for Mondo Macabro: THE GIRL IN 2A, another one done with Cinema Craft SP3 and my own "side-car" utility, "CCE Assist". I saw some screen shots of this on blogs which appear to have gone through some PC video card's grain-scrubbing process (not the bloggers' fault - they didn't claim to be accurate images). So I thought I should show what's actually on the disc.

The next MM title I did is basically NTSC DVD completely maxxed out. I'll post images after it hits shelves.

Film grain "management" filtering? No thanks!