BFI (British Film Institute)

[tenia]

The older masters weren't just "a touch off", they were blatantly dull, flat and in at least one case clearly magenta-pushed.

The newer ones clearly are different but they're not blanket-tinted nor ostensibly signed. Stolen Kisses is a bit agressively saturated at times but retains a clear scene-by-scene grading, and the other two are even more balanced than that.

[hearthesilence]

The older masters weren't just "a touch off", they were blatantly dull, flat and in at least one case clearly magenta-pushed.

The newer ones clearly are different but they're not blanket-tinted nor ostensibly signed. Stolen Kisses is a bit agressively saturated at times but retains a clear scene-by-scene grading, and the other two are even more balanced than that.

The reason why I say the old ones are "a touch off" is because when I watch them, I don't feel like I'm watching something that's been graded this year. One of the big problems with the newer grading is that it looks like it was done with modern day tools with a modern day approach - not just the color choices they make but the way it's applied. It's better to just look at it than put it into words, but you can see it in the way color or light changes within the same frame.

[tenia]

The issue with the older masters here isn't so much that they haven't been graded this year, but that they've obviously been graded in a fashion that was structural from 20 years ago and which has been since been deemed unfaithful. I've seen worst offenders, but I've also seen some that looks much less typical in this regard. Bed and Board and Love on the Run in particular looked neutralised and muted to the point I thought they had a gamma or a contrast issue. The new gradings correct this but remain also actually relatively close otherwise to the color palettes of the older masters.

[hearthesilence]

I know that's the argument that's been made, that this is how the prints looked back in the day and to be fair I wasn't alive in those decades. But I've regularly attended repertory screenings for over a decade now, often with archival prints or vintage prints stored in the institution's personal collection (MoMA, Anthology, etc.) and while I don't expect Blu-rays to be indistinguishable from them, the best ones usually feel like they're in the same ballpark. With new DCP's of some of these new gradings, it immediately looks different and heavy-handed, and they have characteristics that seem more reminiscent of what I'd see from a DCP of a movie made today. I guess what's considered neutralised and muted may be a subjective thing, but it brings to mind some of the praise I hear with a lot of music remasters that I don't like - they usually gush about the detail, the clarity or the bottom and how an old mastering was lacking, but I put it on and to me it's not detail that was in the master tape, it sounds like new EQ moves with obvious spikes in the upper or lower ends. It feels like an attempt to make the music sound like it was engineered today, and that extends to brickwall compression that's commonly applied to those remasters. So that's the audio equivalent of what I experience with some of these new gradings.

[bugsy_pal]

A bit puzzling if The 400 Blows isn't 4K.

The screencaps of the Carlotta UHD of The 400 Blows on caps-a-holic look bloody terrible. There are some that look "OK", and others that are a smeary mess of bad encoding and wash out greys. I am not surprised that the BFI chose to stick with bluray.

Surely this film deserves better. But who knows when that might happen?

[Ribs]

Get Carter coming to UHD this Summer

[yoloswegmaster]

Get Carter coming to UHD this Summer

Has BFI released other titles from Warner Bros before or is this the first one?

[Ribs]

They’ve has an ongoing relationship since before even Criterion did (Revolution one such title), though it’s never been a ton of titles.

[colinr0380]

*cough* The Devils * cough*

[rapta]

Get Carter coming to UHD this Summer

Has BFI released other titles from Warner Bros before or is this the first one?

From memory, Gaslight, Revolution, and some others on DVD (The Devils, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Who's That Knocking on My Door).

But those were a while back now...this is the first in quite a while. I did ask whether they had any others from Warner Bros to which I got this response: "only one for home ent right now but perhaps if this does spectacularly well…."

To which I responded...how about Lumet's The Hill?

[Aunt Peg]

How about Ken Russell's Savage Messiah (1972) which would be a great fit for the BFI.

[Calvin]

How about Ken Russell's Savage Messiah (1972) which would be a great fit for the BFI.

Absolutely - it has never even had a DVD release in the UK.

The other Warner title I'd like to see the BFI look into is Bill Forsyth's Being Human - it seems possible to me that Forsyth's original cut survives somewhere in Warner's vaults, but they're never going to dig it out themselves.

[Beloved Aunt]

I've been dying to see Stevie, the Robert Enders-directed biopic of poet Stevie Smith that stars Glenda Jackson. I think it might have been mentioned before. It's highly acclaimed, pretty obscure, and unavailable except on VHS. Sounds like a great candidate!

[Matt]

Stevie was on the Criterion Channel for the last few months as part of a Glenda Jackson series. I didn’t notice if it was a new transfer, but perhaps it’s forthcoming from one UK label or another.

[fdm]

Won't swear to it (I can barely remember what I watched yesterday), but I think it was just dvd quality (don't think it was as bad as vhs but...). Glad I finally got a chance to see it though.

[JSC]

The print on the Criterion Channel was in the correct aspect ratio, but wasn't a new scan (even had the same reel change blip that's
on the VHS). Actually, I did suggest Stevie to Indicator at one point and they said they'd look into it.

I always find it amusing that the film was shot by Freddie Young. Imagine filming some of the biggest vistas for David Lean and then

Spoiler

shooting a film almost entirely within the confines of a small suburban house

[MichaelB]

That's pretty much what Young did when he finished Dr Zhivago - he went straight onto Sidney Lumet's The Deadly Affair, which mostly takes place in drab, suburban London houses. (Deliberately underlit, because Lumet wanted to shoot in black and white, was overruled by his Columbia paymasters, and so conspired with Young to get it to feel monochrome even though it was shot in colour.)

But I suspect a rather bigger culture clash was moving from the perfectionist Lean to the famously one-take-and-move-on Lumet. Young once asked him for a second take for safety, and when it was in the can, Lumet asked him "Well, I was happy with mine, so what are you going to do with yours?". Young won the Oscar for Dr Zhivago while shooting The Deadly Affair, but its schedule was so tight that he was unable to attend the ceremony in person.

[domino harvey]

But I suspect a rather bigger culture clash was moving from the perfectionist Lean to the famously one-take-and-move-on Lumet. Young once asked him for a second take for safety, and when it was in the can, Lumet asked him "Well, I was happy with mine, so what are you going to do with yours?".

Ha, love this! Reminds me of directors who begrudgingly indulge actors who want to ad lib, but only after they film the take they intend to use

[MichaelB]

Talking of moving from a perfectionist to a one-take merchant, Scatman Crothers had a similar experience moving from The Shining to Bronco Billy. He was naturally expecting Clint Eastwood to request dozens of takes as well, but when Eastwood said he was happy with the first one, Crothers apparently burst into tears out of sheer pathetic gratitude.

[Finch]

Great White Silence review at rewind

[andyli]

BFI announces that they will release a 40th anniversary 4k remaster of The Draughtsman's Contract.

[L.A.]

Where to begin with Mike Hodges

Hopefully The Terminal Man (1974) gets a super treatment on home video.

[beamish14]

Where to begin with Mike Hodges

Hopefully The Terminal Man (1974) gets a super treatment on home video.

No mention of Squaring the Circle, his incredible 1984 television film written by Tom Stoppard

[L.A.]

South & The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration on Film Blu-ray

The British Film Institute plans to release on Blu-ray Frank Hurley's South & The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration on Film (1919). The three-disc set will be available for purchase on February 21.

DVD Compare.

[Orlac]

https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/central ... ils-future

The newly launched Reviews of Public Bodies programme will examine the operations of all arm’s length bodies in England, including the Arts Council, the BFI, the National Lottery Community Fund and Historic England, to assess whether "they should be abolished or retained"