Tess

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MichaelB
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Tess

#1 Post by MichaelB » Fri Oct 26, 2012 11:52 am

Roman Polanski’s definitive, Academy Award-winning, 1979 adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel – starring Nastassia Kinski – has been beautifully restored for release in High Definition for the first time worldwide, in a Dual Format Edition.
To be released in the first quarter of 2013 - date tbc.

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antnield
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Re: Tess

#2 Post by antnield » Fri Oct 26, 2012 12:22 pm

Image

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GaryC
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Re: Tess

#3 Post by GaryC » Fri Oct 26, 2012 3:31 pm

Though that certificate will be wrong - the BBFC have just passed this 12A for cinema reissue.

peerpee
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Re: Tess

#4 Post by peerpee » Fri Oct 26, 2012 5:55 pm

GaryC wrote:Though that certificate will be wrong - the BBFC have just passed this 12A for cinema reissue.
For "a discreet scene of sexual violence" apparently.

I think now that the BBFC are 100 years old it's time for them to append all their consumer information with "(but it's not as bad as what you can see on the internet)".

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andyli
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Re: Tess

#5 Post by andyli » Fri Oct 26, 2012 5:59 pm

This is one of the Pathé restorations, right? We'll see how beautiful is this one.

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charulata
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Re: Tess

#6 Post by charulata » Fri Oct 26, 2012 9:00 pm

Just saw the new restoration at the London Film Festival and it was splendid indeed.

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swo17
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Re: Tess

#7 Post by swo17 » Fri Oct 26, 2012 9:01 pm

That's what people said about Children of Paradise too...

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manicsounds
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Re: Tess

#8 Post by manicsounds » Fri Dec 14, 2012 6:59 am

bluray.com on the French Bluray, gets very high marks.

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Re: Tess

#9 Post by Saimo » Fri Dec 14, 2012 8:07 am

charulata wrote:Just saw the new restoration at the London Film Festival and it was splendid indeed.
I have seen this restoration at Bologna "Il Cinema Ritrovato" and I think they made an amazing job. Reportedly Polanski enjoyed it.

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antnield
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Re: Tess

#10 Post by antnield » Mon Jan 21, 2013 10:06 am

Special features, according to Amazon...
- Stunning new 4K digital restoration
- Presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition
- Tess: From Novel to Screen (Laurent Bouzereau, 2004, 29 mins, DVD only): Polanski on the adaptation of Hardy's classic novel, with contributions from Hardy scholars and cast and crew
- Filming Tess (Laurent Bouzereau, 2004, 26 mins, DVD only): cast and crew discuss the technical challenges they faced
- Tess: The Experience (Laurent Bouzereau, 2004, 20 mins, DVD only): those who worked on Tess discuss their experiences
- Costume Designs (2013, 2 mins): Anthony Powell's award-winning designs
- Original theatrical trailer
- Fully illustrated booklet with essays and credits

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manicsounds
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Re: Tess

#11 Post by manicsounds » Tue Jan 22, 2013 2:45 am

Looks like they're including the Sony DVD extras, which are also on the French BD, but the French set has 2 lengthy making of documentaries exclusively.

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Jeff
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Re: Tess

#12 Post by Jeff » Tue Jan 22, 2013 7:12 pm

manicsounds wrote:the French set has 2 lengthy making of documentaries exclusively.
English subs?

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MichaelB
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Re: Tess

#13 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jan 23, 2013 12:06 pm

Jeff wrote:
manicsounds wrote:the French set has 2 lengthy making of documentaries exclusively.
English subs?
Definitely not for one of them, not sure about the other - but the fact that it has burned-in French subtitles on the English bits suggests not.

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MichaelB
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Re: Tess

#14 Post by MichaelB » Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:46 am

Confirmed as Region B.

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MichaelB
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Re: Tess

#15 Post by MichaelB » Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:44 am

Full specs announced:
Tess
A film by Roman Polanski
Nastassia Kinski, Peter Firth, Leigh Lawson

Roman Polanski's critically acclaimed and triple Oscar-winning 1979 adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles stars Nastassia Kinski as the ill-fated peasant girl of noble origin, whose beauty is both her fortune and her undoing. Mastered from a stunning new 4K ultra high resolution digital restoration, it is presented in a Dual Format Edition (DVD and Blu-ray discs) with extensive special features including three documentaries covering the adaptation, the technical challenges and the filming experience.

This faithful screen rendering of the classic Victorian-era romantic novel, by Academy Award-winning director Roman Polanski (Chinatown, The Pianist), captures with compassion the painful cruelty of love. Unavailable in the UK for several years, the BFI is proud to release Tess for the first time on Blu-ray, in a stunning new restoration (premiered at last year's Cannes Film Festival) that is the best the film has ever looked.

Nastassia Kinski gives a career-defining performance as Hardy's heroine, with strong support from Peter Firth (Equus, The Hunt for Red October, Spooks) as Angel Clare and Leigh Lawson (Being Julia, Casanova, Silent Witness) as Alec d'Urberville. Geoffrey Unsworth and Ghislain Cloquet's exquisite Oscar-winning photography brings the author's Wessex setting vividly to life. Although filmed in France, Wessex was painstakingly re-created.

The film was nominated for five Oscars and three BAFTAs, eventually winning Oscars for Art Direction, Cinematography and Costume Design (the latter won by Anthony Powell, whose original designs are seen here in a short film), a BAFTA for Cinematography and also a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.

Hardy's enduring 1891 novel continues to sell strongly and last year booksellers reported a huge spike in sales after its appearance and significance in the 4 million-selling erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James.

Special Features
• New 4K digital restoration;
• Presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition;
Tess: From Novel to Screen (Laurent Bouzereau, 2004, 29 minutes, DVD only): Polanski on the adaptation of Hardy's classic novel with contributions from Hardy scholars and cast and crew;
Filming Tess (Laurent Bouzereau, 2004, 26 mins, DVD only): cast and crew discuss the technical challenges they faced;
• Tess: The Experience (Laurent Bouzereau, 2004, 20 mins, DVD only): those who worked on Tess discuss their experiences;
• Costume Designs (2013, 2 mins): Anthony Powell's award-winning designs;
• Original theatrical trailer;
• Illustrated booklet with essays and credits.

Product Details
RRP £19.99 / cat. no. BFIVD951 / Cert 12
UK, France / 1979 / colour / English, with optional hard-of-hearing subtitles / 172 mins / Original aspect ratio 2.35:1
Disc 1: BD50 / 1080p / 24fps / Dolby Digital 5.1 (640kbps) and PCM 2.0 stereo
Disc 2: DVD9 / PAL / Dolby Digital 5.1 (448kbps) and 2.0 stereo (224kbps)

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jamie_atp
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Re: Tess

#16 Post by jamie_atp » Sun Feb 03, 2013 7:42 pm

yes also saw this on saturday at the BFI and the restoration is just stunningly beautiful. a must buy.

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MichaelB
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Re: Tess

#17 Post by MichaelB » Tue Feb 26, 2013 5:13 pm


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antnield
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Re: Tess

#18 Post by antnield » Thu Feb 28, 2013 4:16 pm


j99
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Re: Tess

#19 Post by j99 » Sun Mar 03, 2013 8:51 am

Nice one. Always wondered whether it would get a BD release. Did the BFI get involved because the
original company showed little interest?

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JPJ
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Re: Tess

#20 Post by JPJ » Tue Mar 05, 2013 12:51 am

antnield wrote:Mondo Digital.
That Philippe Sarde soundtrack he links to is truly an essential purchase.Love the theme for The Tenant,what a fantastic,haunting piece of music!

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Re: Tess

#21 Post by bdlover » Fri Mar 08, 2013 1:37 am

Woah... a bit soft and no film grain suggests some heavy DNR! Might cancel and order the Spanish disc instead, anyone have caps?

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MichaelB
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Re: Tess

#22 Post by MichaelB » Fri Mar 08, 2013 4:23 am

bdlover wrote:Woah... a bit soft and no film grain suggests some heavy DNR!
I'm playing a final production version right now, and it looks magnificent - I can't see the slightest sign of DNR smoothing. The slight softness to the image looks like a deliberate artistic choice, an impression that has been supported by the Beaver, Mondo Digital and Blu-ray.com verdicts (the last concerning the French BD, but it's the same transfer - and the idea that the BFI would have applied "heavy DNR" to what Pathé did is too ludicrous to be worth discussing).
Might cancel and order the Spanish disc instead, anyone have caps?
The Spanish version came out in April 2012, and according to the box the picture is in 1080i. The Mondo Digital review that I linked to above says that it's from "a pretty decent 35mm print", but it's not the new restoration.

(Full disclosure: I contributed to the booklet of the BFI edition, which is why I have an advance copy, but I wasn't involved with the production of the disc in any way.)

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RossyG
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Re: Tess

#23 Post by RossyG » Fri Mar 08, 2013 6:46 am

MichaelB wrote:The slight softness to the image looks like a deliberate artistic choice...
Almost certainly. It's lighting cameraman Geoffrey Unsworth's signature style.

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EddieLarkin
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Re: Tess

#24 Post by EddieLarkin » Fri Mar 08, 2013 8:56 am

bdlover wrote:Woah... a bit soft and no film grain suggests some heavy DNR! Might cancel and order the Spanish disc instead, anyone have caps?
Absence of grain does not necessarily confirm the use of DNR at all. 35mm OCNs have very very fine grain, that is barely perceptible at 1080p. So it really depends on the source elements used for the transfer. If it was the OCN or something close to it, then grain will be very fine. The further you move away, the bigger the grain will appear. This sort of misunderstanding caused minor brouhaha's over the Blu-ray releases of Breakfast at Tiffany's and Grand Illusion. Both had been transferred from source elements far closer to the OCN (in GI's case, the OCN itself) than previous transfers had done, so when they were compared side by side, the DVDs were swimming in grain that was completely absent on the Blu-rays.

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MichaelB
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Re: Tess

#25 Post by MichaelB » Fri Mar 08, 2013 10:00 am

The booklet doesn't have the usual technical info, since the BFI would have worked directly from Pathé's 4K restoration and wouldn't have needed to do very much (if anything) themselves, short of encoding it in such a way as to bring out its virtues when reduced to 1080p.

However, a bit of digging turned up a very detailed account of the 4K restoration, from the Cannes press book:
The restored print was created by digitizing the negative image in 4K. Preliminary tests in 2K and 4K revealed that only 4K digitization would be able to translate the contours of the image, the refined skin tones and the light and wonderfully diffuse glow of films from the time, obtained through the filters used by the film’s two directors of photography, Geoffrey Unsworth and Ghislain Cloquet.

The restoration was carried out entirely on these raw 4K files obtained by digitizing the negative and, in line with the techniques used by the Eclair Group’s heritage department, color grading was carried out in parallel so it could be applied to the restored images at the very end of the restoration process.

Several shots and sequences, mainly involving special effects created on an internegative (lower quality than the original negative), presented several difficulties such as high instability, different stains resulting from processing the film, and grading problems involving an inconsistency between the left and right sides of the frame.

For example, the shot of Tess in the winter landscape in reel eight was damaged and replaced by a third generation internegative made from the interpositive. Imperfect definition combined with a significant increase in grain made it difficult to edit this shot into the rest of the sequence. Eclair thus started again with the interpositive – gaining one generation of the image – and used several different restoration tools to reduce the grain of the shot and increase definition. Finally, the grader applied a series of masks to balance out the left and right sides of the frame.

In another sequence, when Tess arrives in the village and changes her shoes in front of the wayside cross, it was necessary to start again, just using the interpositive, for a few damaged shots. These shots were linked together with the rest of the sequence (contrast and definition).

Major work was carried out on the sequence of the dripping cheese in the dairy, which had lost all of its density when it was accidentally exposed to X-rays during the shoot.

In terms of grading, the teams were lucky enough to have at their disposal Roman Polanski’s personal copy for reference, printed at the time of the film’s release and perfectly preserved. The aim was to respect the original grading whilst adding a few improvements here and there in terms of links (contrast and color), made possible by modern digital grading techniques.

To respect the original anamorphic widescreen, the 2.35 format of the scans was adapted to 2.39 digital projection to preserve the height of the image (on the edge of the vignetting). Just a few shots were reframed during grading to eliminate a few flares on the edge of the frame, particularly visible on the original copies.

Sound restoration was carried out by L.E. Diapason. TESS was one of the first films to use Dolby Stereo, the format that would revolutionize cinema by introducing multichannel sound to the majority of theaters. Although it is likely that the sound was mixed using equipment poorly adapted to multichannel sound, the film’s soundtrack was already exploring the possibilities offered by the format, mainly in terms of the lavish treatment of music and the extraordinary work carried out on the atmosphere which offers a rare depth and quality.

The restoration process had to respect this work and recreate it in all its detail. To do this, L.E. Diapason used 35mm four-track magnetic sources, which are unusual in that they contain a very diverse sound. It very soon became apparent that not all the reels had been mixed in the same studio.

Moreover, the magnetic elements hadn’t aged very well and some reels were noticeably deficient in high tones while others were in good condition. Aside from the usual work to alleviate the effects of ageing, the main task was to bring consistency to a source that was anything but consistent, whilst preserving the integrity of the mixing and its more delicate elements.

The advice of Hervé de Luze, Frédéric Moreau, Olivier Chiavassa, Philippe Tourret and Raymond Terrentin who worked on the photography during post-production was extremely valuable. The sound restoration also owes a great deal to the expertise of Gérard Lamps and the advice he gave to L.E. Diapason.
All of this is completely borne out by what I've seen - it appears to be absolutely faithful to the film, and Polanski was apparently thrilled by the end results.

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