385 Army of Shadows

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, some of those shots can be seen in DVDBeaver's screen caps, albeit from the Blu-ray releases, and Rialto still has their trailer up on YouTube, uploaded in 2015. The new trailer looks brighter and more saturated with more contrast, but the overall palette is the same.

This is why I originally asked about the color grading last year, my first instinct was that something was wrong, but then I looked at the screen grabs for all the available home releases and after I read Lhomme's statement, I was fine with it.

I may stick with the old release though. At least Lhomme was alive to supervise and/or approve those.

[nicolas]

Screenshots from the UK BD of the new restoration of Army of Shadows: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... stcount=36

[hearthesilence]

Texture looks like it's an improvement. Compared to the Blu-ray caps on capsaholic, the grading is visibly different. I can only see one sort of overlapping cap so it's tough to judge, but it's possible the new master is simply a bit more saturated, with maybe a tiny bit more contrast. With nothing to compare to, the grading does pop out, but put up against the old HD masters supervised and approved by Lhomme when he was still alive and well, I have to concede it's pretty close to what he chose with the caveats he mentioned above. I probably would've backed off on the saturation though.

EDIT: To be clear, I think going into this, you have to accept the overall color as a revisionist fix, regardless of which Blu-ray you're watching. At this point, there have been so many works subjected to revisionist fixes - not just in films but elsewhere like popular music - that you have to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis IMHO as I'm not a fan of obstinate doctrinism. I'm skeptical the film could ever have been graded like this in 1969 even if they were given the freedom to do so, but I understand where Lhomme's coming from and if a reliable and stable 1969 color print still existed, I'd likely think of the look as compromised. So to me, this is basically Army of Shadows (2006), but I'm actually more than fine with it - I think it's very much a well thought-out artistic choice by Lhomme and it doesn't strike me as following any trends, partly because it was done ahead of them.

[nicolas]

Texture looks like it's an improvement. Compared to the Blu-ray caps on capsaholic, the grading is visibly different. I can only see one sort of overlapping cap so it's tough to judge, but it's possible the new master is simply a bit more saturated, with maybe a tiny bit more contrast. With nothing to compare to, the grading does pop out, but put up against the old HD masters supervised and approved by Lhomme when he was still alive and well, I have to concede it's pretty close to what he chose with the caveats he mentioned above. I probably would've backed off on the saturation though.

EDIT: To be clear, I think going into this, you have to accept the overall color as a revisionist fix, regardless of which Blu-ray you're watching. At this point, there have been so many works subjected to revisionist fixes - not just in films but elsewhere like popular music - that you have to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis IMHO as I'm not a fan of obstinate doctrinism. I'm skeptical the film could ever have been graded like this in 1969 even if they were given the freedom to do so, but I understand where Lhomme's coming from and if a reliable and stable 1969 color print still existed, I'd likely think of the look as compromised. So to me, this is basically Army of Shadows (2006), but I'm actually more than fine with it - I think it's very much a well thought-out artistic choice by Lhomme and it doesn't strike me as following any trends, partly because it was done ahead of them.

The solid compression on these BD caps actually gives me some hopes that the UHD won't be another disaster after Le cercle rouge. Also, in HDR and maybe DV, the saturated colors are hopefully a bit more muted than in SDR. After seeing these caps, I'm now willing to give the 4K a chance and hope for the best.

[tenia]

EDIT: To be clear, I think going into this, you have to accept the overall color as a revisionist fix, regardless of which Blu-ray you're watching. At this point, there have been so many works subjected to revisionist fixes - not just in films but elsewhere like popular music - that you have to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis IMHO as I'm not a fan of obstinate doctrinism. I'm skeptical the film could ever have been graded like this in 1969 even if they were given the freedom to do so, but I understand where Lhomme's coming from and if a reliable and stable 1969 color print still existed, I'd likely think of the look as compromised. So to me, this is basically Army of Shadows (2006), but I'm actually more than fine with it - I think it's very much a well thought-out artistic choice by Lhomme and it doesn't strike me as following any trends, partly because it was done ahead of them.

In the present case, it's a combination of things. There is the revisionism from Lhomme, but also now probably the addition of a lab's signature. Not only this would be going one step further from anything ethical from a restoration standpoint, but it also means that it's a combination of wilfull decisions, and that it's not a matter of finding a reference print (because plenty of movies have been able to use reference prints - or other elements - and avoid DP revisionism and/or structural issues stemming from the new digital grading).
I don't mind rationalising things, it's a healthy way of reasoning, but at some point, it's not doctrinism to call out things for what there is, ie a DP altering a movie's 35 years later and a laboratory almost grading all of their projects kinda the same.

[nicolas]

McCrutchy on the other forum confirmed that the French SC UHD has English subtitles! https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.ph ... 914&page=3