1120 The Girl Can't Help It

[domino harvey]

This surely cannot come as a surprise to anyone, following the TT "upgrade" of Rock Hunter (not to mention a great many other Fox colour remasters, see Desk Set, Gang's All Here, et al).

Yes, this is why I highlighted when this was announced that you actually DON'T want a recent master for this title, as this looks like every other Fox movie on Blu-ray. Not surprised, just disappointed.

[Dylan]

Dylan, DVDs should not be used as color reference. Fox should, ideally, have timing notes and answer prints to reference when color grading, but who really knows what they are using.

I agree, there should be no need for those in charge of a Blu-ray restoration to use a DVD as a point of color reference, especially when - as you note - there ought to be plenty of written documentation and film materials available to use as a reference point when color grading. But looking at these screen captures, this is a case where I feel somebody on the restoration team being familiar with an accurate-looking (albeit earlier) transfer may have helped with their decision making, especially if better resources weren't available to use as a point of reference (as you note, we don't know what they were using - the pandemic or other factors may have prevented a certain level of research and investigation). I have not seen The Girl Can't Help It projected on film, but viewing the film on DVD it struck me as appearing not only accurate to the general look of 1950s color cinematography but it also seemed stylistically/aesthetically consistent with other Frank Tashlin films such as Susan Slept Here, and I don't get that same feeling from these screen captures. My thinking was, the DVD seems to have been overseen by people who were familiar with how this film is supposed to look, and had somebody on the restoration team been familiar with the DVD it may have had a positive impact on the results of their work.

[dwk]

My thinking was, the DVD seems to have been overseen by people who were familiar with how this film is supposed to look, and had somebody on the restoration team been familiar with the DVD it may have had a positive impact on the results of their work.

Yes being familiar with earlier home video releases would be helpful. I still would be hesitant to make a final grading decision based on a DVD unless it was approved by the DP or director or was the only reference available.)

The Fox people clearly have decided they need to push the cyan (I think it is wrong to say teal, those blues are not green enough for me to call them that) on their masters, and I'm curious if anyone knows of any interviews with their reatoration team where they justify their color decisions.

[andyli]

These Fox CinemaScope restorations seem to be graded under the exactly same hands, dating all the way back to Bigger Than Life twelve years ago.

[Finch]

Now I'm glad I've held on to my Second Sight disc. Thing is, as someone told me on another thread, Fox don't allow boutique labels to carry out their own grading, so if that still holds, we're just shit out of luck.

[tenia]

I honestly can't imagine how the people tasked to restore The Girl Can't Help It came up with this color grading. It just makes me wonder... what did they base their decisions on? What was their research? And indeed, have they seen the film on DVD and/or other Tashlin films? But I understand even less how a transfer like this gets approved and released.

Rumor has it it's one guy in New York deciding that's how these movies will look, and clearly nobody at Fox (now Disney) challenging him. In any case, especially since it's egregiously homogeneising the looks of dozens of movies that are unlikely to be supposed to look this similar, it shows how rightholders can have a very laissez-faire attitude when it comes to QCing labs results.

I'd be curious to know who is credited as a colorist. From what I gathered when trying to compile all these, it looks like it's coming from Cineric, more specifically Daniel DeVincent.

[swo17]

I did a search for "Girl Can't Help It" on Amazon and this was one of the top hits. I assume this is the version I'm supposed to buy?

[colinr0380]

Well its got all the right words, just not necessarily in the right order!

Three Smart Girls Something In The Wind First Love It Started With Eve Can't Help Singing Lady On A Train

[therewillbeblus]

I can't help it, I like Lady on a Train!

[domino harvey]

Swo, points deducted for not using "I want ____ / Mom: We have ___ at home" meme formatting

[cdnchris]

So I'm going to be contrarian here and strongly disagree with the blowback on the colours for this presentation. Blues and grays are clearly all over in the base design of the sets, costumes, and so on. I thought the shadows in the nighttime sequences looked great (that dream sequence with Julie London) and suggest an evening setting more than the DVD. Also, how the pinks and reds "clash" with the blues is far more striking. Maybe skin tones are pasty but it's Eastmancolor.

Also, I'm shocked (though not entirely I guess) that no one references the commentary or David Cairns' essay. The commentary gets into the colour design, mentioning the brown/gray reds, and then Cairns gets into a painstaking amount of detail about the planning that went into the colours in sets and costumes to work with or counter Eastmancolor (at least when it was developed through Fox's DeLuxe) and its knack in enhancing the blues. Everything about the look of the film suggests that it's working with the expectation of a cooler colour temperature and the DVD does not fit that.

I can't speak for a lot of other Fox restorations, even though there are ones that look off (and I should also mention I haven't seen the new restoration for Rock Hunter). But I can't agree with that on this one and have to say the DVD does not look right.

[tenia]

Blues and reds might very well being all over in the base design, and Eastmancolor stock (etc) might yield some explanation as to at least part of the end results come from, but the issue isn't so much this but that, like the typical steely-blues from pretty much any single Eclair gradings or the dull yellow bias in almost every Ritrovata restoration, this just looks like a Fox restoration like * check list * Bus Stop, The Bravados, The King & I, Desk Set, The Detective, The Blue Max, Bigger Than Life, From The Terrace, The Gang’s All Here, House of Bamboo, Broken Lance, The Seven Ups, The Hot Rock, and many others.
It doesn't mean there isn't underlying surviving specific color-elements (fortunately !), but that there is a color signature over shadowing them, and that's what pointed out here.

It doesn't seem to have been detailed this time in the booklet, but I'm quite certain this was graded at Cineric, and I can guess that because the result isn't just coming from the movie, but because all these Fox stuff they did bear their mark, one so intense it's that recognizable.

[cdnchris]

Oh no, I do get that, and I'm in that boat especially when it comes to Ritrovata and Eclair and all of them (it's hard to buy that every film they each respectively work on are supposed to all have the same look), but in this case it feels like that is clouding things and is leading to the pushback that the DVD's grading should be replicated. That release looks like it's trying to bring the colours out in a neutral manner, which does not look right, especially with the shadows. This presentation really pops and the settings work incredibly well with it, which is what I was getting at about the sets, props and costumes. To have that and then hear Cairns explain the bias of Eastmancolor (or at least related to how it was developed at Fox) and the planning that went into everything through every deapartment so that it shows up correctly in the final prints pushes me to believe this presentation is closer to "correct" than previous ones.

Again, as to other Fox presentations I can't say, but for this one I'm in the camp this works far better.

[bad future]

It seems like this could be an "even a broken clock" situation where Fox's one-size-fits-all approach just happened to be more correct here than the warmer/more neutral dvd? Or is the blue bias of Eastmancolor so different from "Cineric blue" that this would just be wrong in a different way?

[tenia]

the pushback that the DVDs grading should be replicated.

Yeah, if that's where it goes, then it's silly and I understand your issue. That's pretty much NEVER my final take, which is (like with The Damned) that older DVDs' grading almost never should be taken as a reference, but that (as you phrased very well in you Girl Can't Help It review) there is something to question in the new gradings as well.

[jsteffe]

I have not seen the new Blu-ray in person yet, but based on the screen caps flesh tones look significantly better and overall there is a richer and broader color spectrum in the new restoration, as Chris notes. It's different from Ritrovata color grading practices where the strong yellowish/greenish push can obscure the overall color spectrum in the image. I'm eager to see how the new grading impacts the viewing experience on the whole.

[Max von Mayerling]

Just want to add that I'm very impressed that Criterion made the "how to create cartoons" a separate 12 page booklet that is about 6.5"x8". I hadn't looked at the packaging photos, so I was assuming this feature was just going to be a couple pages in the regular booklet. It's a great feature for fans of Tashlin & his drawing work.

[movielocke]

This is a great edition, the extras are just outstanding, as is the booklet and bonus Tashlin how to draw cartoons booklet.

By happenstance, I watched this on my calibrated plasma which is a few points warmer than our 4K tv, and it looked fine to me, not excessively teal. Looking at the beaver caps after reading this thread I’d say that exterior on the beach the new one is clearly more accurate better skin tones, more natural sky. On the beaver caps, The interior shots, the colors/lighting on the old version are more neutral, like what you’d get using an eye dropper tool to force the whites to white and blacks to black in a mid 2000s version of symphony, but even if the old version was digitally pushed and pulled to force it into neutral interior lighting, it doesn’t mean it’s more accurate. It looks like the lighting and color balance in the new version vary from scene to scene and doesn’t appear to have an overall universal bias—though there’s obviously visible shifts from the aggressive neutrality of the old version.

[Red Screamer]

I was impressed with the extras here as well, particularly the WFMU DJs, who are a delight, and David Cairns' analysis of the film's cinematography, which is as technical as one of these things can get without losing sight of its critical insights into Tashlin's and Leon Shamroy's sensibilities. This is Criterion at the top of their game.