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What A Disgrace wrote: Wed Feb 21, 2024 2:38 pm I wonder if Whiskey Galore! and The Man In the White Suit will qualify for UHD releases, and surely Dead of Night will.

bottlesofsmoke wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2023 6:22 am Warner Archive’s new Blu-ray of Gentleman Jim has a similar warning. I haven’t watched any other of WAC most recent discs but this is the first time I’ve seen it on a non-cartoon release from them. Certainly something like Santa Fe Trail would have warranted one if the few seconds of an extra in blackface in Gentleman Jim did. I suppose if it is making them more comfortable releasing A Day at the Races or as Domino said in the WAC thread, the remaining Garland-Rooney-Berkeley musicals, I can’t complain, not that I would have any way.

What A Disgrace wrote: Wed Feb 21, 2024 5:33 am The Lavender Hill Mob Is the next Ealing comedy to get a 4K Blu-ray release, on the 22nd of April.

hearthesilence wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 7:51 pm I just caught the latest 35mm print of The Conversation supervised by Coppola (per Rialto and MoMA’s description). I was surprised how soft it looked in spots. I actually thought it was a focus issue but it became clear that select shots or scenes were softened up. I will have to compare it to the Blu-ray later (which pre-dates the print) but I can only speculate it was de-grained digitally even though it was a film print - the scenes in particular were the opening (especially in the van), the convention, and back at Harry’s office.

I have seen this projected in 35mm before, way back in 2009, but have no recollection of any softness like this. A shame - had I known, I would have seen Warhol’s Batman Dracula which got a rare screening in the smaller theater.

EDIT: Looked through the Blu-ray - it could use a new scan (the grainier parts like the opening shot are a little "clumpy" looking), but otherwise the soft shots I remember from the screening do not look soft at all. All the grain and detail is there on the Blu-ray release. I imagine this will eventually get bumped to UHD - hopefully the detail and grain will be intact there as well. Again, for whatever reason, the scenes where they're back at Harry's office (the place that looks like an empty industrial building) was especially bad during the screening, but there were plenty of scenes that looked normal.

Finch wrote: Thu May 02, 2024 1:24 pm Studio Canal are also releasing Army of Shadows on 4K and BD. The 4K listing is only for France so far, (June 10) the UK listing was only for the Blu-Ray (June 3). As with the Coppola, I'm not parting with the older BDs until it's been confirmed that they're all safe to buy (I'm more confident about the Coppola than the Melville). The new restoration of Army of Shadows will be playing at Cannes so hopefully we get an inkling of whether the grade is faithful or not.

PS.: I really wish Studio Canal, Arrow and others would follow Second Sight's example and release a regular version simultaneously with the tat stuff.

hearthesilence wrote: Thu May 18, 2023 5:56 am

hearthesilence wrote: Wed May 17, 2023 11:05 pm Just out of curiosity, when Pierre Lhomme supervised the 35mm and digital restorations that were used for the belated U.S. release (2006 and beyond), was he able to match the look of the original 1969 release, or did he make any tweaks or changes?

I've found the answer.

[Lhomme] reveals that Melville wanted to shoot the picture in black-and-white, but the financiers mandated color. The filmmakers subsequently strove for images that were as desaturated as possible, leaning toward the blue tones. “Melville hated warm colors, so every effort was made to avoid them, and bright colors in general,” says Lhomme. In addition, a thin orange-yellow wash of paint was sometimes added to the set walls and later timed out by adding blue; this allowed the filmmakers to achieve paler skin tones while keeping the walls gray.

The restoration of Army of Shadows was initiated by Studio Canal with assistance from the CNC, the French National Center for Cinema. Lhomme was involved in the timing of the restored print and the digital master, working with restoration supervisor Ronald Boullet and color timer Raymond Terrentin at Eclair Laboratories. (Beatrice Valbin of Studio Canal shepherded the project from start to finish.) When asked whether the restored version matches the original 1969 print, Lhomme replies with a laugh, “I don’t remember what the original print looked like anymore!” The truth underlying his jocular response is that because the prints have faded, there is no absolute reference for the look of the timed print.

During production, Lhomme shot a reference shot, called a “Lily” in France, with a small grayscale for each setup. He kept a few frames of the negative of these Lilys and stuck them to the appropriate pages of his script. Prints from these Lilys served as a reminder of what was on the negative, and as a starting place for timing.

Lhomme notes that the digital-intermediate (DI) process allowed him to create a restored negative that is perhaps more faithful to Melville’s vision than the original print was, in that he was able to further desaturate the images and increase the blue tonalities. The DVD might be even more faithful, he continues, because it was a further refinement of the DI created for the new “digital” negative. “By doing the restoration of this film, I restored my own memo­ries — no joke,” says Lhomme. “To restore is to discover, and 35 years [after I shot this film], I rediscovered it on the big screen and saw its extraordinary cinematic qualities.”

Original source: American Cinematographer, July 2007 pp. 62-70