Artificial Eye / Curzon Film World

[andyli]

I've already bought the Gaumont set. So I'm in a different boat, waiting patiently for Criterion to eventually make the upgrade so that I get to supplement the beautiful Gaumont with a different set of extras, as well as a native 4K presentation.

[nicolas]

Jean Vigo 4K collection coming on November 28.

UK pre-order, cover art and specs are up: https://www.rarewaves.com/products/5021 ... ed-edition

[Peacock]

Incredible extras!

[DeprongMori]

Mostly, in this case, I’m curious about seeing Tournage d’Hiver, which I suspect would not be included in a Criterion upgrade.

So, Curzon makes it official! Their UHD Vigo set looks amazing, but alas does not include Tournage d’Hiver. Probably springing for it anyway.

[GoodOldNeon]

I would assume "Winter Shooting: L'Atalante, Rushes and Outtakes" is Tournage d'hiver, even if there is a discrepancy between the duration indicated by Film Forum (96 mins) and the length of the "Tournage d'hiver (rushes, photos de tournage)" included as part of the Gaumont Jean Vigo - L'intégrale box (70 mins). The difference is perhaps partly explained by 15 mins of Zéro de conduite outtakes in "Young Devils in School: Zéro de Conduite - Rushes, Sound, and Images".

[rrenault]

I can’t decide whether I should preorder the Vigo release or wait for reviews first. As in, is it a safe preorder in terms of the expected A/V quality?

[Finch]

Memories of Murder had a very good encode. Nicholas may have mentioned another Curzon 4k that was very good, I don't remember which one though. I'm going to wait for Criterion to upgrade because of the current import costs.

[rrenault]

Memories of Murder had a very good encode. Nicholas may have mentioned another Curzon 4k that was very good, I don't remember which one though. I'm going to wait for Criterion to upgrade because of the current import costs.

Werckmeister Harmonies?

Speaking of import costs, do people in the US get stung on "after the fact" import costs if ordering from somewhere like Rarewaves?

[nicolas]

Paris, Texas is excellent, as is Orlando. Flow is an outlier where something went wrong either at the encoding stage or earlier. Either VDMS set the gamma too low or Curzon decided to tinker with the colors, causing blacks to be crushed and primaries to appear more saturated. At the same time the actual dynamic range in SDR was also compressed. Sounds bizarre but I actually think that it wouldn’t be a huge deal in motion if there’d been no reference to compare it against. Haven’t seen it myself but I wouldn’t call these alarming developments and see no reasons not to pre-order the Vigo set. I’ll be getting it and can report in time if anyone’s concerned.

[Captain Paranoia]

Memories of Murder had a very good encode. Nicholas may have mentioned another Curzon 4k that was very good, I don't remember which one though. I'm going to wait for Criterion to upgrade because of the current import costs.

Werckmeister Harmonies?

Speaking of import costs, do people in the US get stung on "after the fact" import costs if ordering from somewhere like Rarewaves?

I've heard Curzon's release of Parasite is solid, reportedly better than the Korean CJ UHD and supposedly on par with the French UHD.

I've heard that physical media is exempt from the tariffs, I recently bought a DVD for very cheap off of Ebay, but its still on its way and I haven't been hit with any fees yet.

[perkizitore]

I can’t decide whether I should preorder the Vigo release or wait for reviews first. As in, is it a safe preorder in terms of the expected A/V quality?

I wonder when they will release a standard edition, with Memories of Murder they surely took their time.

[nicolas]

I got my copy of the Curzon Haneke set. Packaging is as always with their director’s editions. Slip cases + digipack(s) inside, plus booklet and poster.

In short, it’s not a complete home run but this is mostly due to what Curzon were supplied with. These are all the same masters released by other labels and Curzon themselves except for the newly restored TV movies. I did a brief check of the English subtitles and they seem good to me. My advice would be: Buy if you love Haneke’s films (which I do) and appreciate the new encodes (which I do).

Here’s a brief breakdown of how things are:

Disc 1 - LEMMINGS

Both Lemmings films were restored in 2023 under the supervision of Michael Haneke at Listo in Vienna. They aren’t devoid of grain but they were both heavily grain-managed. Grain is often magnetic and ebbs and flows depending on how fast the camera or objects in the frames move. I’ve seen this phenomenon before but usually with films that are finer-grained. The Lemmings films are very grainy and therefore this is very noticeable and especially ugly. It’s disappointing that Haneke approved this but it’s not the first time this happened. Still most likely much better than what was available before.

Disc 2 - THE SEVENTH CONTINENT

The Seventh Continent looks ok. Highlights are a bit blocky but nothing egregious. The German Camera Obscura is essentially the same. Ironically, Criterion a bit better there but their encode of the same master is typically low-pass filtered, so the Curzon is still preferable.
Three Paths to the Lake (1976) - TV movie was newly restored and looks good. I only sampled this one for a few minutes but didn’t notice anything out of order. Maybe they left this one alone as it’s such an obscure film.

Disc 3 - BENNY’S VIDEO

Encode is slightly mushy with blocky I-frames. The German disc is essentially the same. Criterion is better but low-pass filtered and has blockiness when the color red is on screen and in darker areas. I prefer the Curzon.
Variation (1983) - TV movie was taken from a SD source.

Disc 4 - 71 FRAGMENTS OF A CHRONOLOGY OF CHANCE

Feature looks excellent.
The Rebellion (1993) - TV movie has a restoration card as Lemmings but is from a tape source even though it was clearly shot on film.

Disc 5 - FUNNY GAMES

Excellent encode but wildly inconsistent old master with DNR. Very disappointing!

Disc 6 - THE CASTLE

Old DNR master and unimpressive detail but we’ve seen worse. It would have made sense for Curzon / VDMS to put all the TV movies in less ideal quality on this disc instead of encoding them together with the other features.

Disc 7 - CODE UNKNOWN

2K master as found on the Criterion BD, solid encode.

Disc 8 - THE PIANO TEACHER

HD master as found on the Criterion BD, very good encode.

Disc 9 - TIME OF THE WOLF

Very good encode but the master is plagued with scanner noise and the grain looks electronic. Not DNR’d but still harshly digital. Fine for what it is. Needs a remaster urgently.

Disc 10 - HIDDEN (CACHÉ)

Looks better than ever without discernible filtering but still some conspicuous blocking and mushy noise in larger areas and highlights. Darker areas are fine. The film is in the 1.78 AR and very noisy altogether, so maybe no perfect middle ground is possible on BD. I would’ve liked to see this one in 4K.

Discs 11-13 - FUNNY GAMES U.S., THE WHITE RIBBON, AMOUR

Excellent masters and encodes. The set would’ve been disappointing without these new encodes.

Disc 14 - HAPPY END

Same disc as Curzon’s previously released one and it’s poorly encoded.

[MichaelB]

Given the HD video source, what would a 4K version of Hidden achieve aside from a higher price tag?

[swo17]

If I get this set, would anyone recommend still keeping the Strand Time of the Wolf or any of the Criterion releases?

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Disc 10 - HIDDEN (CACHÉ)

Looks better than ever without discernible filtering but still some conspicuous blocking and mushy noise in larger areas and highlights. Darker areas are fine. The film is in the 1.78 AR and very noisy altogether, so maybe no perfect middle ground is possible on BD. I would’ve liked to see this one in 4K.

The cameras used for Caché arguably aren't even up to regular old BD-Video standard. The only thing 4K would've provided is a pretext for a new and hopefully better master, though it's entirely possible the issues you mention are actually inherent to the source.

[nicolas]

Given the HD video source, what would a 4K version of Hidden achieve aside from a higher price tag?

Better encoding is the reason I suggested this. The noisy source master in the full-frame, 1.78 AR is data consuming and VDMS, who did the encode, likely had to outweigh how they’d undertake this at best without filtering or introducing other, potentially even more annoying artifacts. The more efficient HEVC codec might’ve done the trick.

[nicolas]

If I get this set, would anyone recommend still keeping the Strand Time of the Wolf or any of the Criterion releases?

Criterion has a couple of exclusive extras with Haneke and his collaborators across their BDs but if picture quality matters most, you can replace them with the set.

[pistolwink]

I'd say that not only is the videography of Caché noisy, but it's expressively and very deliberately noisy.

[MichaelB]

Yes, on the big screen it was very, very obviously shot on video - indeed, Haneke emphasises this right at the start by rewinding the high-definition image as we watch it. You're supposed to read it as a "video" image, and a video image according to the mid-2000s technology of the time.

So what would a 4K transfer actually achieve, aside from a minor improvement in bitrate? It would have to be an upscale (and a really obvious upscale at that), there's no point attempting an HDR grade as the information just won't be there on the source (and in any case it would work against the film's clearly intentional pre-UHD aesthetic), so the bottom line is that only the most obsessively anal Caps-a-holic perusers would notice anything different, and those differences would have not one iota of impact on what Haneke intended us to see and to feel.

[nicolas]

Resolution alone isn’t the decisive factor and neither is bitrate. As mentioned, it would have just been nice to get an encode of that master that renders every last bit of its intrinsic noise without any macroblocking in the highlights and elsewhere. Where did I suggest anything else? Like film grain, digital noise IS image detail and of course it’s supposed to be there.

You wouldn’t need to upscale, re-build the DI or (HDR) re-grade anything for a 4K encode of the same master but the benefits of the more advanced HEVC codec in the hands of a skilled compressionist would be worth the effort.The fact that Caché is presented in the 1.78:1 aspect ratio requires encodes on any format to process more data as there’s no black bars to “subtract” from the image area and thus conserve bits. VDMS is sufficiently capable at properly reproducing film grain, digital noise and image detail in their encodes, BD and 4K alike, so we’re not talking Kino Lorber quality here, hence it’s more than fair to assume that the technical capability of the MPEG-4 codec for HD Blu-rays was at its limit when it comes to this particular film and under the circumstances VDMS had to work.

So yes, Michael, the intention clearly is to ideally preserve every last iota of detail in Haneke’s HD master as it was finished in 2005. If this is for whatever reason impossible to achieve with a HD disc, then I don’t see a problem in suggesting the superior format. If this is “obsessively anal” behavior, I’m very happy to stand by that.

[mhofmann]

(...) but the benefits of the more advanced HEVC codec in the hands of a skilled compressionist would be worth the effort.

I honestly think this, together with the increased resolution capacity, could/would benefit any sufficiently high-frequency 2K master.
That said, differences might be minuscule in the discussed case.

[Zot!]

(...) but the benefits of the more advanced HEVC codec in the hands of a skilled compressionist would be worth the effort.

I honestly think this, together with the increased resolution capacity, could/would benefit any sufficiently high-frequency 2K master.
That said, differences might be minuscule in the discussed case.

What is a "high frequency" 2k master...also why would increased resolution capacity benefit a 2K master?
Otherwise I respect the concept, and I think it works well for low res things like 16mm film and such, but in the case of Cache, I don't think there is clarity on what the source actually looks like, and if it can be improved, or if the compression artifact anomalies are baked into either the original source tapes or the DI. I guess if somebody is dedicated they could check the original AE encode vs the Curzon encode vs an online stream to see if things like noticeable macro- blocking are shared between the encodes.

[TMDaines]

Disc 5 - FUNNY GAMES

Excellent encode but wildly inconsistent old master with DNR. Very disappointing!

Is the Criterion better?

[nicolas]

Disc 5 - FUNNY GAMES

Excellent encode but wildly inconsistent old master with DNR. Very disappointing!

Is the Criterion better?

No, it’s the same master. Curzon has better encoding though but that honestly doesn’t matter much in this case. I don’t have the French BD but it seems to have the grain intact.

[nicolas]

What is a "high frequency" 2k master...also why would increased resolution capacity benefit a 2K master?
[…]what the source actually looks like, and if it can be improved, or if the compression artifact anomalies are baked into either the original source tapes or the DI. I guess if somebody is dedicated they could check the original AE encode vs the Curzon encode vs an online stream to see if things like noticeable macro- blocking are shared between the encodes.

It means that a master was produced on the basis of suitable film elements (or a video source) and scanned with a good scanner, such as a Lasergraphics Director or Arriscan, which provides colorists with great latitude in the dynamic range and especially highlight detail. Even when the master is finished in 2K, it can make a difference when presented in a 4K container as you’re getting a small amount of extra detail that is inevitably lost when encoding the 2K master down to HD for a BD. When you factor in less ideal compression of the BD, the 4K upgrade of the same master can therefore turn out really nice.

On a general note, compression artifacts are rarely baked into DIs, even when they’re as “old” as Caché’s but sometimes it does happen, so anything is possible. I’ll try to find out what’s the case with the earlier Curzon BD and see if I can compare them.