I suppose that Costa writes more about the industry than people like us who, technically, are mostly outside the industrial decision makers.
The only direct industry-related people I can think of who have explicitly criticized their grading method are Camera Obscura. But even so, they explained they had to re-do the grading afterwards, not that they discussed this point with Bologna in order for them to just not do the grading this way in the first place. Even Arrow went the hidden way to re-do the Olmi's grading, but without stating directly why they felt the color-grading from Bologna was so incorrect it needed to be deeply modified.
jsteffe wrote:
I've never seen a print of this film with deep blacks, and I think it would be a mistake to use conventional wisdom in judging its look.
It's not a question of using "conventional wisdom in judging its look", but a question of why despite having a seemingly very specific look, it actually looks the same than many other Bologna restorations, making it not specific at all anymore.
If Pomegranates ever had a specific look, it now simply looks very similar to the 2 Hunebelle movies I've seen from Pathé recently, some gialli Arrow released like Your Vice is a Locked Door or Argento's Deep Red, The Tree of Wooden Clogs, Dragon Inn, or 2 of the Olympic Games movies. What's the rationale for this ?
Bologna are pretty much the only ones to do this (Eclair does it, but it's visibly a different LUT table though yellow is also pushed), in a way that no matter how unique the look of the movies they're restoring, they all end up looking the same.
You can't recognize the movies' photography specificity anymore. The only visible signature is the lab's one. Are Bologna the only ones in the world to be given movies that originally looked this way ? I doubt it. Very highly.
Ribs wrote:
I can't be the only one who just really doesn't care about individual restoration houses
It’s not a question of individual restoration house, it’s a question of having faithful restorations, full stop.
Currently, I strongly believe that most (if not all) the movies graded this way by Bologna simply aren't vastly unfaithful when it comes to color gradings, and it feels important enough so that the concerned titles are pointed out for this in the same way that, say, an incorrect AR should be pointed out.
Ribs wrote:
something that will never change
It might be a naive thing, but in some ways, I refuse to overlook this because we, at our level here, are unlikely to have this changed in the very near future. However, not saying anything will certainly won't have this change at all.
But if some feels it's an issue to discuss this in each concerned disc (which is understandable), I'm happy to have my post moved in a dedicated topic and centralise the discussion there.