UHD Titles Worth/Not Worth Upgrading [Archive]

[Finch]

Showgirls is not showing on their website anymore as of last night. (edit: never mind, I forgot it's Partner Month so it wouldn't have shown anyhow)

[therewillbeblus]

Showgirls is not showing on their website anymore as of last night.

It's partners-only month so no VS releases are showing on their website

[nicolas]

I received my French SC UHD of Contempt today. It’s a nice packaging with a digibook in a (albeit flimsy) slip case.

A few infos right away. UHD-66 with DV for the feature. The film and bonus features are on both discs.

Infos about the restoration (auto-translated from French):

This film was restored and digitized in 4K by Studiocanal from 2021 to 2023 at Hiventy, with the participation of the CNC.
To optimize the 4K restoration, the original 35mm Negative and Interpositive were used, as well as the reference print reworked in 2002 by Mr. Raoul Coutard, the film's cinematographer.
Previous digital versions showed a lack of detail in the highlights and lowlights, and colors far removed from the director's choices.
Thanks to documented references, we were able to restore the film's original contrast, detail and saturation.
This project was supervised by the Studiocanal team, Sophie Boyer and Jean-Pierre Boiget.”

I haven’t seen the entire film yet but can confirm that this is mostly true. The trailer SC posted on YouTube doesn’t give an exact impression of this restoration and the colors I see on my TV are also far from the heavily saturated yellow and green look we typically associate with Hiventy.

In many scenes, colors are surprisingly neutral and very carefully graded. In others, they lean more saturated but never to the point of total madness like La Piscine.
The colorist did their homework and probably timed the entire thing according to Coutard’s print. This film has never looked this good. The restoration is also immaculate.

And then, very very unfortunately comes the catch straight away. The encoding is atrocious. We have another Le Cercle Rouge situation with a wildly adventurous bitrate graph ranging from single digits (!) into over 100 Mbps.

It’s notable that great and horrendous moments alternate regularly but from what I saw, good and bad moments each start and end with edits in the film. For example, one long take which is part of the famous apartment dialogue between Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli looks bad for the entirety of the shot when the next one could then look gorgeous also for the entire time until the next cut.

The painful thing is that the good moments look astoundingly beautiful. Impeccable grain, remarkable detail, beautiful colors, no highlight clipping since the HDR / DV is never excessively bright in general (don’t worry, it’s far from dim - perfectly balanced). You feel like you look at a DCP in these moments as if encoded by Fidelity in Motion.

The bad moments look bad but not unwatchable. Why? Because the "grain" doesn’t become a macroblocking mess, but takes on more a consistently filtered, buzzing appearance. I obviously hate how this looks but the eye adjusts and it’s still better than the horrendous old BD. If no one else does, I’ll try and provide a bitrate graph and BDInfo scan. At the very least some screenshots.

I cannot comment that much on the sound other than it sounds slightly muffled. Not that bad, not excellent. A normal 60s soundtrack which is probably somewhat filtered.

At this time, I’d only (somewhat) recommend buying one of the European releases if you’re that big a fan of the film like I am. Lionsgate releases their edition in September. Who knows, maybe it’ll be a new encode but I believe it’ll be just the same with a different opening logo.

Edit: The short film Paparazzi by Jacques Rozier which is a bonus feature on both discs (1080p on the UHD) has also been restored (4K scan - 2K restoration) but has a consistently appealing organic appearance throughout and therefore looks better than the feature. How disappointing. The other Rozier short looks a bit worse but still comparatively better than Le Mépris overall.

[MichaelB]

It took me longer than was perhaps necessary to realise that you're talking about Le Mépris...

[nicolas]

It took me longer than was perhaps necessary to realise that you're talking about Le Mépris...

Thanks for letting me know. I copy-pasted the wrong BR.com post without the title. I’ve now edited it for clarity. Thanks again.

[Finch]

david hare said the same thing about the Le Mepris encoding on his social media feed.

[nicolas]

david hare said the same thing about the Le Mepris encoding on his social media feed.

Forgot to add to my post that I’d consider the UHD a solid upgrade although it’s technically disappointing due to the encode. The reasons being the lack of alternatives at the moment, the very dated look of the old BD and the good color grade. Unless we see a new encode from a party like Eagle in Italy, this is probably the definitive release for a while. In this case, I mourn the lack of a Criterion edition as they would have certainly given us a more consistent, if not 100% “crisp” look as well as (maybe) one or two more bonus features than the old Colin McCabe introduction and the shorts.

[AxeYou]

Forgot to add to my post that I’d consider the UHD a solid upgrade although it’s technically disappointing due to the encode. The reasons being the lack of alternatives at the moment, the very dated look of the old BD and the good color grade. Unless we see a new encode from a party like Eagle in Italy, this is probably the definitive release for a while. In this case, I mourn the lack of a Criterion edition as they would have certainly given us a more consistent, if not 100% “crisp” look as well as (maybe) one or two more bonus features than the old Colin McCabe introduction and the shorts.

Thanks nicolas as always for the review! What a pity. Sounds like you are positive that the rough looking parts aren't due to source limitations? IIRC I've read about segments of the film having its OCN either missing or in bad shape.

[rrenault]

Forgot to add to my post that I’d consider the UHD a solid upgrade although it’s technically disappointing due to the encode. The reasons being the lack of alternatives at the moment, the very dated look of the old BD and the good color grade. Unless we see a new encode from a party like Eagle in Italy, this is probably the definitive release for a while. In this case, I mourn the lack of a Criterion edition as they would have certainly given us a more consistent, if not 100% “crisp” look as well as (maybe) one or two more bonus features than the old Colin McCabe introduction and the shorts.

Thanks nicolas as always for the review! What a pity. Sounds like you are positive that the rough looking parts aren't due to source limitations? IIRC I've read about segments of the film having its OCN either missing or in bad shape.

I also have the disc and personally think it may be a combination of poor compression and source limitations. The shot in the film where Piccoli taps the metal statue with his knuckle and says "it's not the same sound all over" is one of the rough looking parts, and I definitely think that one is due to source limitations, but there's a shot about a minute later that certainly just looks like poorly encoded.

[nicolas]

I gave the disc another look and tried to see a pattern. There are many static shots with not much on-screen movement running at a very low bitrate in the single digits or hovering around 10-15 Mbps but it affects all types of shots, even those where I believe OCN footage was used, for instance in some of the exterior dolly shots in the beginning. I can’t say for certain though since the bad compression obscures the fine detail.

Regarding the OCN in bad condition. Honestly, I had no idea about this. In the moments the presentation looks gorgeous, you wouldn’t guess that at all. There’s really remarkable detail for an early 60s production, as well as very thin and precise grain. The potential for something astounding would have definitely been there.

For comparison with my favorite UHD as of recently, Plaion’s Rider on the Rain. (Consider that this film was shot in “normal” European widescreen (1.66:1) with likely less budget / production value than Godard’s biggest film at the time.) There’s thick grain in the OCN footage but beautiful detail underneath. Essentially, you perceive that “grain blanket” all the time.

With Contempt, again referring to the well-encoded OCN moments, you could easily forget that you see a film form the era, especially in exterior daylight shots. There’s no noise reduction, don’t get me wrong but something so surprisingly detailed and a revelatory thin / small layer of grain. I personally think that’s somewhat surreal after only knowing the older masters so far. Same as with the Kurosawa Toho UHDs whose OCN elements I also thought people said they were too damaged for further use.

[rrenault]

The dolly shots in the beginning looked okay to me personally. It’s during the apartment section the bad encoding becomes noticeable in a few shots. By the way, how does one track the bitrate on a Panasonic UHD player? Even on the DCP I saw a few weeks back, the opening shot with the narrated credits wasn’t all that “crisp and grainy”.

I could be wrong, but I imagine having that crisp “grain blanket” is reliant both on the condition of the OCN and on the type of film stock that was used.

[nicolas]

The dolly shots in the beginning looked okay to me personally. It’s during the apartment section the bad encoding becomes noticeable in a few shots. By the way, how does one track the bitrate on a Panasonic UHD player? Even on the DCP I saw a few weeks back, the opening shot with the narrated credits wasn’t all that “crisp and grainy”.

I could be wrong, but I imagine having that crisp “grain blanket” is reliant both on the condition of the OCN and on the type of film stock that was used.

You’ll see the bitrate in real time when you select the “Playback Info” key on your remote.

The dolly shots in the beginning are already affected by bad encoding. They’d likely look much better now if treated by another encoder. The first really fantastic moment that is longer than a couple of seconds is the scene in the cinema when Prokosch and Lang discuss the film-in-film footage. Bitrate ranges from 80 Mbps to over 110 there. If only the entire film looked that way…

[rrenault]

Surely these encoders are aware they’re messing these things up, even if they wouldn’t publicly admit to it. That’s my confusion. What’s going through their heads? And it seems to only be the UHDs of Canal’s French language films that have these issues, although their Trial release is also problematic apparently.

Half jokingly, I wonder if they encode these poorly on purpose to stick it to “Anglo-Saxon techno-fetishism”.

[Finch]

There are problems with the subtitles on the Showgirls 4k, too.

[tenia]

I gave the disc another look and tried to see a pattern. There are many static shots with not much on-screen movement running at a very low bitrate in the single digits or hovering around 10-15 Mbps but it affects all types of shots, even those where I believe OCN footage was used, for instance in some of the exterior dolly shots in the beginning. I can’t say for certain though since the bad compression obscures the fine detail.

I wonder if the encode is actually just following automatically what is on the master, and goes down that much because the master is smooth in these portions, not leaving much to encode to the encoder.
That's what happened to Basic Instinct, where you could find back the sequences that were DNRed just by following the bitrate graph.

There are problems with the subtitles on the Showgirls 4k, too.

VS SDH subs have always pretty much been rubbish, to the point I often wondered why they even bother. I remember fansubbing rules from 15 years ago, and VS subs often wouldn't have passed even just the lowest requirements. They are often very poorly timed (out of sync, too quick, not synced to the visual editing, having sometimes 3 lines of text), with typos, and I've stumbled on some that were missing lines.
I suppose it's only caught here and talked about because it's on a much bigger title than, say, Psycho Cop Returns or Malibu High (though I seem to recall Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss subs to be quite poor too).

[Ozymandias]

Thank you Finch and everyone for contributing to this crazy awesome list, and continuing to update it for almost two years you mad lads! I just got into collecting movies again for the second time since I was maybe 10. I recently got the 4K bug after witnessing Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, which, to me, is a work of art akin to DaVinci (lol).

So I looked over the list, and I noticed I have struck gold with my Fifth Element buy, which I bought after reading several Amazon reviews by sage people recommending the Studio Canal version. Sadly it seems I need to upgrade my Ghost in the Shell to the Japanese version. I just bought The Princess Bride 4K (which I didn't even know existed till I found this thread) thanks to a German friend's help, and now will be getting the GitS as soon as I can find a decent price somewhere.

I noticed some 4K releases that I didn't see in the master list, and wanted to have others' opinions on them:

Alita (US 20th Century Fox)
Pacific Rim (US Legendary/WB)
Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (Japan has some nice collector editions) (US Columbia Pictures)
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (haven't checked yet, but possibly same as above) (US)
The Matrix: Deja Vu 4 Film Collection (US WB)
Final Fantasy: Advent Children (US? Sony Pictures)
Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (US? Sony Pictures)
Blade (US WB Dec 2020 & PAL Nov 2020)

Also as an aside, is it safe to assume that some Sony releases, or 4K releases in general, in Japan, are superior to their other counterparts across the world?

[senseabove]

No idea how limited their titles actually are, but Spectrum tweeted that there are <200 copies of the Millennium Mambo UHD left.

[tenia]

Should be 1000 copies.

[AxeYou]

What is "limited" in Spectrum's case? Is it analogous to the Arrow LE/booklets situation, or is the entire release a limited run?

[tenia]

The entire release. There is only one run, and once gone, it's gone.

[ryannichols7]

where's the best place to import it from? wow that's such a small run

[nicolas]

No idea how limited their titles actually are, but Spectrum tweeted that there are <200 copies of the Millennium Mambo UHD left.

Wow, this is very positively surprising. I’m happy for Spectrum that the disc sells well even without English subtitles on the disc.

My copy is on the way. Don’t know when it comes (no tracking) but I’ll try to look at it as soon as I can. I haven’t seen any reviews so far, but I really hope it’s a nice disc.

I bought mine from Spectrum directly. I believe they don’t sell their discs via Amazon though. At least the random ones I tried were not available there, so I just went with them.

[tenia]

where's the best place to import it from? wow that's such a small run

They're mostly sold on their webstore. I believe metalunastore.fr might be able to have some and ship internationally,

[AxeYou]

The entire release. There is only one run, and once gone, it's gone.

Interesting. They commissioned their own Dolby Vision / HDR grading on this one. A hard cap of 1000 copies means a maximum of 40,000 € in revenue, ever. Does that even cover all the cost??

where's the best place to import it from? wow that's such a small run

I caved in to FOMO and just ordered direct from Spectrum. Shipping to the U.S. is a reasonable 10 €. After deducting VAT and applying a 5%-off newsletter-signup coupon, it comes out to 41.66 €. It might work out to be a better deal if their other (limited) in-stock titles interest you enough to combine shipping. According to tenia's reviews on testbluray though, it looks like most of their releases are sourced from old HD masters (because that's what's available).

[rrenault]

Lost Highway is getting released in France by Potemkine, but no word yet on the quality of the encode and whether or not it has forced subs. Tenia may know something there perhaps.

As much as I loved Millennium Mambo when I watched it in the cinema the €40 price tag is giving me cold feet. Saying that, I just spent €35 on Carlotta’s Blu-ray release of Satantango the other day. True, it’s a seven hour film requiring multiple discs so maybe not an apples to apples comparison.