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As an oft-dissident of tech-based discussion here in the past, I must say I so appreciate reading your in-depth walkthroughs of what to expect with a disc in (more or less) layman’s terms, not to mention the consistency of impressions on current releases

therewillbeblus wrote:As an oft-dissident of tech-based discussion here in the past, I must say I so appreciate reading your in-depth walkthroughs of what to expect with a disc in (more or less) layman’s terms, not to mention the consistency of impressions on current releases

Thank you, I’m so glad to hear you find my reviews valuable. I wish I could be as euphoric every time but the studios let us down too much.

While I’m at it, Paramount strikes again in both directions. Scrooged looks surprisingly excellent with (for Paramount) astonishing filmic texture that appears devoid of grain management and the color grading is actually quite lively and colorful and not the same, one-note, anemic smudge they usually grant their classics in addition to the DNR. Despite, I have a strong feeling they employed a low-pass filter á la Pixelogic for the encode as the grain is never as crisp as it should be. Compared to their other efforts, this is a revelation and actually recommended. I hope I enjoy the film, too. (I don’t own a previous BD but this is surely a solid upgrade).

The contrary is Trading Places, although it’s surprisingly no Planes and Trains disaster as that one’s color grade is “normal” as well and equally doesn’t show their infamous grain management. The encode ruins it all though - it’s even worse than Walkabout’s UHD. I’m specifically mentioning that disc as the blocking patterns are all but equal on Trading Places. White, blue, even grey spaces are all single, grainless, textureless blankets. Skies, floorboards, rocks, walls, buildings, … The “ghosting” effect with motion blur in fast-moving moments is present on the UHD as well as the 4K-remastered Paramount Presents BD (also included in the set). The BD shows many of the same artifacts but due to the other format (good BD bitrates are low for UHD), they don’t appear as drastic. As such, the BD is recommended over the UHD. (Before anyone asks, I don’t mind having picked the UHD as that format is cheaper for me to import than nearly consistently expensive Paramount Presents releases and I know what I’m getting with Paramount). TP’s UHD is worse than the PP BD.

What really freaks me out though is American Graffiti. When the first caps were released, the UHD was already on its way to me. I pre-ordered in good faith that George Lucas wouldn’t give a damn any more about the film. I still gave it a look to see it with my own eyes but my God, nothing could have prepared me for this utter disaster. T2-level bad. The little “grain” a few people here and there mentioned is not real and (mostly) not present in the slightest. Honestly, I don’t even think it’s the last traces of the original grain is left on there. I can’t watch this. Add to that the sound’s reworking in 5.1 which equally didn’t feel right to me with way too much LFE. I looked at the BD - thank God it’s the old one - and it’s much, much better but still very bad. The processing isn’t as heavy on there - grain is still present, basic textures of “film” (the UHD is not “film” any more) are palpable and the film likely remotely enjoyable. Sound is 2.0 and sounded immediately better. I’m mad that I’ve waited all those years for my first viewing of the film in anticipation of something better only to go back to the version that’s been there for a decade now (and save fifteen euros).

What is the consensus of the Last Picture Show Criterion vs Columbia Classics. I own the Columbia Classics 4k and its a good transfer but there are rumors online that the Criterion has a better encoding which is surprising to me. The Columbia package includes the theatrical and the directors cut but Criterion only has the directors cut. Criterion also includes the sequel Texasville. But I am more interested in the video quality. Is the Criterion better or Columbia Classics for video quality?

kniselyb wrote:What is the consensus of the Last Picture Show Criterion vs Columbia Classics. I own the Columbia Classics 4k and its a good transfer but there are rumors online that the Criterion has a better encoding which is surprising to me. The Columbia package includes the theatrical and the directors cut but Criterion only has the directors cut. Criterion also includes the sequel Texasville. But I am more interested in the video quality. Is the Criterion better or Columbia Classics for video quality?

Judging from screenshots provided on the other forum, the CC is indeed better than the Sony version in PQ and AQ although the Sony has the theatrical cut. Texasville apparently looks rough though. A classic victim of bad encoding. I’m still not sure whether to get the Criterion even on sale as the Director’s Cut of Last Picture Show isn’t universally recognized as the better cut. I’ve yet to see the film and tend towards the theatrical cut. While I admire Criterion for attempting to improve on a competitor’s product in this case, I think they should have ported over the TC as well.

nicolas wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2023 9:12 pm Judging from screenshots provided on the other forum, the CC is indeed better than the Sony version in PQ and AQ although the Sony has the theatrical cut. Texasville apparently looks rough though. A classic victim of bad encoding. I’m still not sure whether to get the Criterion even on sale as the Director’s Cut of Last Picture Show isn’t universally recognized as the better cut. I’ve yet to see the film and tend towards the theatrical cut. While I admire Criterion for attempting to improve on a competitor’s product in this case, I think they should have ported over the TC as well.

I've only seen the Director's cut but I believe this is a case where that version is actually the universally preferred version. This is what Bogdanovich himself said about it:

We were told to get the picture down to two hours. And when it was about two hours and ten minutes I said, “We’re in deep danger now of losing things we shouldn’t lose.” I said “well, just keep on cutting, we gotta get it under two.” Well, it was only my second picture, so I didn’t have any, you know, clout about it, I just tried to cut things that I thought could go without hurting the overall picture. So this is one of them, although it didn’t hurt the picture, but I thought we could live with out it. If we had to, so we did. We got down to little tiny cuts too, like that scene in the movie theater that was really only about a couple of seconds that were cut out. But I did that because we were looking for seconds, we were adding up seconds to get it under two hours. It was really frustrating. That’s one of the reasons I always thought the picture was a bit jerky in it’s original form. It always seemed like it wasn’t complete to me.”

I know the director's preference doesn't always align with consensus, but here it is a case of studio meddling and not because he wanted to change things years later.

M-A wrote:

nicolas wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2023 9:12 pm Judging from screenshots provided on the other forum, the CC is indeed better than the Sony version in PQ and AQ although the Sony has the theatrical cut. Texasville apparently looks rough though. A classic victim of bad encoding. I’m still not sure whether to get the Criterion even on sale as the Director’s Cut of Last Picture Show isn’t universally recognized as the better cut. I’ve yet to see the film and tend towards the theatrical cut. While I admire Criterion for attempting to improve on a competitor’s product in this case, I think they should have ported over the TC as well.

I've only seen the Director's cut but I believe this is a case where that version is actually the universally preferred version. This is what Bogdanovich himself said about it:

We were told to get the picture down to two hours. And when it was about two hours and ten minutes I said, “We’re in deep danger now of losing things we shouldn’t lose.” I said “well, just keep on cutting, we gotta get it under two.” Well, it was only my second picture, so I didn’t have any, you know, clout about it, I just tried to cut things that I thought could go without hurting the overall picture. So this is one of them, although it didn’t hurt the picture, but I thought we could live with out it. If we had to, so we did. We got down to little tiny cuts too, like that scene in the movie theater that was really only about a couple of seconds that were cut out. But I did that because we were looking for seconds, we were adding up seconds to get it under two hours. It was really frustrating. That’s one of the reasons I always thought the picture was a bit jerky in it’s original form. It always seemed like it wasn’t complete to me.”

I know the director's preference doesn't always align with consensus, but here it is a case of studio meddling and not because he wanted to change things years later.

Thank you for the info, this makes perfect sense. Now I’ve got to pick up the release.

Has anyone reviewed Possession UHD? https://diabolikdvd.com/product/possess ... -preorder/

Which is better Mean Streets criterion or second sight?

Re: Texasville, if this is the director's cut (albeit with a new grade to convert it to black & white), poor quality may be a result of the source material (or at least source material in addition to poor encoding). It's been discussed in bits and pieces in various interviews with Bogdanovich, but when it was reconstructed, it was for LaserDisc, not theatrical release, so the final master was never in a form that could be called high-resolution. That's one of the reasons why it remained unavailable for so long, even with Criterion's strong interest - Bogdanovich really wanted this cut to be reissued, not the theatrical cut, and it was believed that it would have to reconstructed again from good film elements, which would make the whole project costly. I don't know what was ultimately done, but given what's been said before, I've been a bit wary as to what the quality would be like. I'm still getting it though - it's either that or spring for the LaserDisc and a LaserDisc player.

Any word on whether the new DV version of Animal House is worth the upgrade? I guess that it probably is, but the HDR version was already one of my favourite UHD's.

Any feedback about someone who would have bought "The Way We Were" UHD ? Is the blu-ray also upgraded in comparison to the previous release ?
The review at blu-ray.com looks okay in terms of PQ.

The Way We Were

andreas's screenshots

Finch wrote:The Way We Were

andreas's screenshots

Finch, I think you forgot to add the Fargo UHD to the master list.

OP includes Fargo now, thanks.

Early word on WB's The Fugitive is very good.

Someone asked about Mean Streets: the Second Sight 4k isn't out for a while still. But hopefully we'll know soon what the encode is like on the Criterion.

our own Chris gives the Criterion 4k of Mean Streets a 9/10 so there may be very little to separate the US and UK editions. The Second Sight 4k doesn't ship until January though.

for nicholas and the other techies: fkid on BR.com did this comparison

Finch wrote:our own Chris gives the Criterion 4k of Mean Streets a 9/10 so there may be very little to separate the US and UK editions. The Second Sight 4k doesn't ship until January though.

for nicholas and the other techies: fkid on BR.com did this comparison

Good news re. the Criterion UHD. I wonder whether the awareness of Second Sight’s upcoming version (and the strong likelihood of a FiM encode) influenced Pixelogic’s efforts. Despite Criterion always getting the bigger business due to their name, there’s still a significant amount of customers purchasing by technical accomplishment.
This is now the second case in short time after Last Picture Show when Criterion and their authoring house made an effort to deliver a quality encode. When they announced their release, I had the impression that LPS will turn out a tough seller due to Sony’s in-house release and with Texasville initially appearing to be the sole advantage.
Color me (positively) surprised but after Walkabout, I did not expect things to go that way.

Today is the US release date of Love Actually in 4K. The Universal release seems to be MOD like Elizabeth. The encode of that film was clearly a standard one with little care by Universal with hints of macroblocking and light filtering. Despite that, still looks quite good overall. I suspect that Love Actually will be similar - they put the 135-minute film and bonus on a BD-66 per the back cover.

I’m writing this as I’ve just seen the specs for the French Studiocanal release, which is due in December. Compared to HDR10 on the Uni disc, they have Dolby Vision. Also, SC claims that Silver Salt UK did the restoration, which is incredible news as that all but guarantees great color reproduction and an encode by one the top authoring houses. Santa Claus is also a Silver Salt resto, as Andreas’ screenshots have shown on the other forum. That film (108 minutes) also got a BD-100. The only issue that may prevent the SC Love Actually from being definitive could be on-screen translations of English text into French, although SC didn’t do so for Bridget Jones.

Here’s the full SC verbiage:
“Nouvelle restauration 4K par Silver Salt Restoration (Londres) pour Studiocanal, à partir du négatif original 35mm fourni par Universal Pictures et scanné aux studios Illuminate (Los Angeles), étalonnage aux studios Goldcrest (Londres) par Adam Glassman sous la direction de Richard Curtis.”

Looking forward to this!

As a direct result of the agonising torture of sitting through that film on its original release, I agreed with my wife that we would no longer inflict our very different tastes on each other, which is one of the major reasons why our 21-year marriage has been so remarkably harmonious.

But it's nice to know that the restorative glitter that it's been rolled in is of the very highest quality.

I'll never cease to refer to it as Shite Actually.

MichaelB wrote: Tue Nov 21, 2023 1:06 pm As a direct result of the agonising torture of sitting through that film on its original release, I agreed with my wife that we would no longer inflict our very different tastes on each other, which is one of the major reasons why our 21-year marriage has been so remarkably harmonious.

So what you're saying is that the thing that's kept your marriage so strong is...well, love, actually

Finch wrote:I'll never cease to refer to it as Shite Actually.

Uh, oh. I guess I’d better rent it first. Thanks for the warning.

The blurb "Better than Patch Adams!" just about covers it from all angles.

I wonder what the full quote might've been. Maybe "better than Patch Adams but only in the sense that dying from natural causes is better than crucifixion" à la Anthony Lane.

I've heard that Criterion's Mean Streets 4K has significantly worse audio than the Warner blu. I wonder what Second Sight's will sound like.