UHD Titles Worth/Not Worth Upgrading [Archive]

[Finch]

Conan The Barbarian & Conan The Destroyer (Arrow)

Early word on Kino's Scarlet Street is decent though everyone seems to agree that the film needs further restoration still as the master provided to KL still exhibits a lot of damage.

[nicolas]

Conan The Barbarian & Conan The Destroyer (Arrow)

Early word on Kino's Scarlet Street is decent though everyone seems to agree that the film needs further restoration still as the master provided to KL still exhibits a lot of damage.

Scarlet Street feels like a typical Kino rush job for a film that isn’t considered top-tier despite Fritz Lang being the director. They probably thought that they could get away with not cleaning it up properly because of its age and the condition of the elements. I also don’t have a good feeling when looking at Svet’s UHD caps and the blocking patterns I noticed in highlights. I know I should take them with a grain of salt and I know they’re not tone-mapped as well as downscaled but the whites don’t look optimal to me compared to the beautiful rest. Zoom in on the left chair and the gentlemen’s forehead here: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screensh ... osition=30

Despite the issues, I will get the UHD in the coming weeks as I’ve never gotten around to pick up the BD. In an ideal world Eureka would issue their own UHD but they appear to be very cautious with the format.

Btw, it looks like their new Paths of Glory 4K is exceptional. Svet caught compression issues on the Kino and mentioned that they’re not on the Eureka. In other words, FiM treated us again.

[Finch]

Early feedback on Criterion's McCabe and Mrs Miller is very good; one BR user said the encode is as good as on the Bowie documentary and davidhare posted a rave on his Facebook timeline.

[bfaison]

McCabe is definitely in the red category for me. I didn't think it would be much of an upgrade over the 2016 bd considering the production style and no HDR but its wonderful.

[nicolas]

McCabe is definitely in the red category for me. I didn't think it would be much of an upgrade over the 2016 bd considering the production style and no HDR but its wonderful.

The same is true for all the well encoded Criterion UHDs that were upgrades from their previous BDs, even films like the Apu trilogy with badly affected original elements. Once you see how nice these masters actually look, it’s very hard to go back to their sometimes heavily filtered BD encodes. The severity of the filtering and encoding issues are often further enhanced due to the loads of extras. Maybe the best overall decision they made for UHD was encoding film-only 4K discs, although the results don’t always speak for themselves. I can’t imagine how Walkabout etc. would look with extras on there.

[Finch]

No surprises there: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1976) (Arrow)

nicholas' review here

[bfaison]

McCabe is definitely in the red category for me. I didn't think it would be much of an upgrade over the 2016 bd considering the production style and no HDR but its wonderful.

The same is true for all the well encoded Criterion UHDs that were upgrades from their previous BDs, even films like the Apu trilogy with badly affected original elements. Once you see how nice these masters actually look, it’s very hard to go back to their sometimes heavily filtered BD encodes. The severity of the filtering and encoding issues are often further enhanced due to the loads of extras. Maybe the best overall decision they made for UHD was encoding film-only 4K discs, although the results don’t always speak for themselves. I can’t imagine how Walkabout etc. would look with extras on there.

I mean, yes, obviously, but I was even more hesitant to buy the new release considering the two things I mentioned in my post. There seemed a chance it wouldn't be worth a double dip even if CC knocked it out of the park technically. As a big fan of the film I'm happy to report that it's 'in the red' A bit surprised there isn't more talk about it actually.

[tenia]

Aparajito and Apur Sansar have 34Mbps AVBs on Criterion BDs though, so it's hard to blame the encodes being rubbish because of too many extras clogging the discs and hampering the movies' disc space. Moreover, in particular considering the AV of many of the extras that Criterion can include on their discs, even if so, one could perfectly blame their authoring house being lazy in the disc space prioritization and giving way overkill space to the extras detrimentally to the main feature (which technically is what happened on Criterion release until around 2016, and is the main reason why Pather Panchali only has a 25 Mbps AVB).

As for Walkabout, it's a 100min movie with a LPCM 1.0 track filling a whole UHD-66 and ending up with 80Mbps of combined HDR/DV AVB. It's not a 180min movie with an Atmos track. There's 0 reason for this kind of context to yield such a rubbish result except the encoding setups not being properly setup, and it's nothing 10Mbps less would explain (and : Criterion could have included the extras by switching to a UHD-100, which would have required 0 change in the movie's AVB).

Actually, it might be interesting to see which Criterion UHDs are well and poorly encoded and see how the AVBs look. There might be a threshold, but if they can't get a proper encode at 70+10 Mbps, I mean, come on.

[Finch]

A more mixed take on Vinegar Syndrome's Southern Comfort 4k than most reactions so far but VS have an unfortunate track record of boosting the colors on several of their titles (the worst offender, Flesh for Frankenstein, was so bad they had to recall the first pressing). I thought they'd stopped that practice.

[jheez]

My non-expert opinion is Southern Comfort looks mostly good.

The skin tones in some scenes (but not every scene) are too magenta. It’s hard to say if this is the fault of the film stock, VS’s grading, or that the original people working on the film might have timed the IP to remove the excessive inherent green cast caused by the lush green location.

Blacks are pretty deep as they are in most VS releases I’ve seen, which makes a pretty high contrast and can boost look of the colors. But I don’t think it’s terrible. I don’t know if they’re trying to replicate the look of a (higher contrast) print or what. When projecting a print you’d lose that contrast due to the bulb bringing up the black levels. The higher contrast seems pretty standard for most VS releases I’ve seen.

I do have to say there are some stunning shots in 4k on Southern Comfort. The bayou setting really looks good here.

Dr. Hichcock is more of the same. Looks generally good but the grading a little uneven and looks a bit boosted in my unprofessional opinion. The photography, again, is quite stunning in this film.

[therewillbeblus]

This is of course ridiculous to an extent, but the weird skin tones on the VS discs always felt 'right' to me, simply because of the company's brand of shameless dusting trash darlings, esoteric or popular. I know they're expensive and things should look good and right, but Flesh for Frankenstein having weird colored tones on weird looking and acting people doesn't bother me. Nor does Road House's Fun Bad Movie VHS vibe, where the elements of low-budget/effort show but they would stand out in a more jarring manner if the skin tones weren't also kinda artificial, bent a bit, fitting genuine drama within an un-serious atmosphere to create a relaxing but involved effect. Obviously I want people to look like people and all, but I dunno, if any label is gonna tinker with these things to fit the tone, even if it's an accident, VS seems most appropriate.

[tenia]

I'm not so taken by that. To me, it often looked like an "old school" take on color gradings, with an overly neutralised white balance and a saturation too high, leading to skin tones typically turning very pinkish and the overall grading fuelling what could be summed up as "bingo card of the old US way of grading".
I seem to recall they at least don't do that in a systemic fashion, but several of their works have this specificity which I doubt actively comes from the movies' photos.

So though I understand the point of "hey, at least it's happening within a context I can make it spin", I'd prefer movies faithfully graded.

[nicolas]

This is of course ridiculous to an extent, but the weird skin tones on the VS discs always felt 'right' to me, simply because of the company's brand of shameless dusting trash darlings, esoteric or popular. I know they're expensive and things should look good and right, but Flesh for Frankenstein having weird colored tones on weird looking and acting people doesn't bother me. Nor does Road House's Fun Bad Movie VHS vibe, where the elements of low-budget/effort show but they would stand out in a more jarring manner if the skin tones weren't also kinda artificial, bent a bit, fitting genuine drama within an un-serious atmosphere to create a relaxing but involved effect. Obviously I want people to look like people and all, but I dunno, if any label is gonna tinker with these things to fit the tone, even if it's an accident, VS seems most appropriate.

I get what you mean and definitely feel that a less neutral or natural look wouldn’t botch the experience of the films in their ballpark. I agree with tenia though that the “VS look” isn’t something appropriate from either angle, the preservation one and the entertainment one. The reddish skin tones don’t merge with either of them because they’re unfortunately the result of badly mismanaged grading. I would be more lenient about this if VS put in minimal or no restoration effort on their titles - meaning, they scan and present their films “as is” directly from IPs, prints etc. without doing anything apart from digitally presenting and preserving the state of the film element(s) of their films at the time of the scan. Something like: “This is how Flesh for Frankeinstein from the 70s looks like in 2024 without any retouching and restoring, take it or leave it”. This would be a bold undertaking and clearly going against what everybody else does with meticulous restorations. (Quentin Tarantino would probably love it. I think he even attempted to launch a line like this with Sony after the success of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood).

However VS does restore like everyone else and they do wish to polish their gems (and/or turds) to have them look like something shot in Hollywood. They’re therefore in competition with all the other labels and studios that do restoration work. As such, I have a very hard time with their red skin tones because they clearly don’t stem from something we can consider intended. This particular “defect” is not “naturally filmic” enough for me to be perceived as normal and appropriate during the viewing. (In fact, I tooled with my color balance settings to get rid of some of the reds in Road House). TWBB, I really get what you mean but I think you’re giving VS an unwarranted pass for shoddy work on the affected titles.

[therewillbeblus]

Haha, sorry, didn't mean to actually stir the pot with a positive reframe but you're both of course correct in that this does not objectively change the utility in the acceptable nature of such practices. I was responding more to Finch et al. who may state they would refrain from picking up a certain release due to the blemish, and that prompted me to start thinking about where and why I'm inclined to budge and just try to enjoy the upgrade, and in what cases and why I might not. But, for me at least, it's definitely a scale based on some subjective context and not an across the board, blanket-rule of "this was not well-received so I won't get it," which is more of what I was trying to communicate.

[swo17]

Flesh for Frankenstein was egregious and quickly replaced. Are we sure that belongs in the same category as these others?

[Finch]

From what they've described over at BR.com, Southern Comfort doesn't sound as bad as the original Flesh for Frankenstein pressing and no one has brought up encoding issues, so it feels like it might be safe to call it a solid upgrade but I'd like to hold off for a little longer.

Tremors 2 (Arrow) Chris's review

[therewillbeblus]

The Man Who Knew Too Much looks radiant, another case where a drastic format upgrade makes the cinematic aspects pop so hard that I wind up loving a movie I never cared for previously (I'm looking at you, Arrow's UHD of Lynch's Dune). Hitch's 'Making Something Grand out of Very Little' projects are hit-or-miss, but if To Catch a Thief's eventual UHD looks half as good as some of these, my brain might implode when Grace Kelly's dress gets lit by the moonlight

[Finch]

Kino's UHD of Kindergarten Cop is poorly encoded (capsaholic) but the old Universal BD is hideous. Still, it will only take another label to give the files to a better authoring house than whoever Kino use, and end up with a superior product (especially if the other label also includes OG audio).

[Finch]

[ if To Catch a Thief's eventual UHD looks half as good as some of these, my brain might implode when Grace Kelly's dress gets lit by the moonlight

Paramount released it in 2020 and botched it, unfortunately. Edit: BD, not UHD, as others have pointed out below. Having a senior moment.

[therewillbeblus]

Well, that sucks. Is it worse than the current blu?

[andyli]

There hasn't been a UHD for To Catch a Thief yet. Finch was referring to the Paramount Presents blu-ray remaster.

[Matt]

It’s streaming in 4K on Paramount+ and looks very good to me. Can also be rented or purchased (for $5!) in 4K from Apple or Amazon.

[Finch]

My bad, folks. I thought it was a 4k they'd released.

[rrenault]

You-know-who over at blu-ray.com is mostly impressed with the Punch-Drunk Love and didn't highlight any compression issues but admits the upgrade is more noticeable in some parts of the film than in others. I guess it's too early to tell whether this is a red or a blue title relative to Criterion's blu-ray.

[nicolas]

You-know-who over at blu-ray.com is mostly impressed with the Punch-Drunk Love and didn't highlight any compression issues but admits the upgrade is more noticeable in some parts of the film than in others. I guess it's too early to tell whether this is a red or a blue title relative to Criterion's blu-ray.

Do you mean Svet? Kenneth Brown reviewed Punch-Drunk Love’s UHD and gave it 5 stars. Based on his prior reviews, it seems he’s okay when it comes to his judgments. He gave the excellent Gattca and Neon’s Oldboy 4.5 stars. (Not sure what happened with Sleepless in Seattle’s UHD where he had issues with the overall darker nature of the film.) Since the Criterion PDL BD was sourced from an interpositive and when looking at Sony’s overall track record, I’m certain the UHD is a big upgrade. BD Caps for His Girl Friday are already online on the other forum and even they show a magnificent improvement over the Criterion.