What A Disgrace wrote:
Does anybody know if the upcoming Chinatown has the same specs as the old one?
And is it even that big of a jump in quality to be worth trading in the most recent 2-disc DVD edition (with the Fincher commentary etc)? Seriously, I've just heard it's a really mediocre transfer... but is it that disappointing? Or just disappointing because it could/should have been stunning but is simply competent instead? I remember hearing about DNR problems, though, which makes me skeptical about it. Opinions?
As an aside, I was lucky enough to see the film in 35mm several years ago. Oddly, it wasn't actually that impressive, visually - not that it didn't look great, but that aspect didn't knock me out, despite it being a pretty pristine print. Actually the vivid, somewhat underrated sound mix was more compelling, I think, like a lot of Polanski, it makes very effective use of textured and realistic ambient sound and these various ostensibly innocuous things (e.g. a car engine starting, a baby crying, the bustle of a city street, this whistling sound that recurs throughout in downtown scenes, etc) - with the end result being to somehow build a sense of dread out of them. For example, near the end when Gittes gets the cops off his tail by using Curly and his car as a getaway, I remember at the screening a really affecting bit of sound design. As I recall, we watch Gittes and Curly drive off out of frame in a fairly wide shot, which then holds on the empty yard for a beat longer than probably any average Hollywood film would. As they drive off and during the end of that shot, there's the unnerving sound of a baby crying loudly somewhere. Simple, and doesn't sound like much at all, but it's little details like those... somehow the fatalistic dread of the film is enhanced by unsettling aural touches like that. Similarly, those whistling sounds heard from the city streets below whenever we're in a downtown building help create an almost subliminally tense, on-edge feeling.