Dark Star (1974) - October 02,2012

[Arkadin]

wow, sounds like a disaster.
great job vci.

Noise reduction has been added here and quite liberally at that, making what should have been a grainy looking 16mm film into a smeared and waxy beast. Detail and texture both suffer for this, and the picture quality winds up looking artificial rather than film like.

[beckmen]

I still don't agree with that assessment. Even in those lossy screencaps, you can make out something of a grainfield. I see no wax. I see softness. The kind of softness I have witnessed in crappy old photographs from my childhood.

We'll see what others say, I guess. I could be wrong. The image looks pretty bad, for sure. But "Low budget" bad, not "DNR Botch-job" bad IMO. It also suffers from some visible compression artifacts, so VCI doesn't get a gold star from me.

[rammsteinfan]

Finally got my copy in the mail from BB last night (Awesome they put the blu-ray in a envelope loose with no protecition! way to go shipping dept, thank god it didnt get damaged.) It doesnt look bad for the source material. I havent watched the extras yet. I think it looks a step above the DVD to me and glad I got it. Just wish it had both cuts, didnt realize it until the other day. Guess better to have the longer cut than shorter one if you had to choose. Now we just need to get the rest of Carpenter's films covereted over to BD.

[Lyle_JP]

Oddly enough, I find little wrong with the actual transfer of the film. There is excellent detail considering the source and age of the materials, and the softness is indicative of a 16mm blow-up. But what VCI managed to totally botch was the encoding.

Which blows my mind, because they used VC-1. If there ever was a near idiot-proof, set-and-forget codec, VC-1 is it. But they botched it horribly anyway. I've never seen so much block noise on a VC-1 transfer in my life. It almost looks like someone went out of their way to disable VC-1's in-loop deblocking filter before encoding. Who does that!?! By using my player's block noise filter, I get a satisfying (if soft) presentation.

[beckmen]

Originally Posted by Lyle_JP

Oddly enough, I find little wrong with the actual transfer of the film. There is excellent detail considering the source and age of the materials, and the softness is indicative of a 16mm blow-up.

Thank you. I knew I wasn't nuts.

Watched the movie last night, part of a triple-feature of Dark Star, Prince of Darkness and They Live. On a 100" screen from a WXGA projector, I didn't notice any encoding problems, although I did notice artifacting on my 52" 1080p TV when I first sampled the disc. Oh, well. I find (after having seen the movie once, nearly 10 years ago) I still enjoy the film. I find it pretty funny, although it has some slow parts. The alien scenes are hilarious, and the stuff with Bomb #20 is inspired. My friends were remarking how they were going to start calling people "false data" when they didn't want to hear their BS.

I also wish Dan O'Bannon had appeared in more roles. His quirky voice and demeanor should have been immortalized in film much more.

[NoirFan]

Has there been a comparison between this disc and the UK one?

[DarthMarino]

So this only includes the extended theatrical version and not the shorter directors cut? I figured it was a given that it would have both.

[al cos.]

I know they used a theatrical print, is the 16mm camera negative lost?

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by Arkadin

wow, sounds like a disaster.

But it is not.

I don't know where or in what condition the original negative for this low-budget film is, but what I am seeing here most definitely isn't destroyed by DNR. Yes, there is noise reduction, but if what VCI states is true -- and I think that it is -- that they had to work with some theatrical print, the final result is indeed more than decent. I am not seeing any waxiness here.

I will pick up this disc shortly.

Originally Posted by Arkadin

Noise reduction has been added here and quite liberally at that, making what should have been a grainy looking 16mm film into a smeared and waxy beast. Detail and texture both suffer for this, and the picture quality winds up looking artificial rather than film like.

Hardly. I don't see this artificiality here. Low-budget look, traces of some digital work, some compression issues, yes.

But people need to pay attention what was the source used to produce the new transfer (which is something Jeff notes in his review).

Pro-B

[Nighteyes]

For the record, is this release region-free?

[csdot]

my copy has the text at the top of the cover cut off and its printed at a weird angle. are they all like this or is mine a goof?

[Lyle_JP]

Originally Posted by csdot

my copy has the text at the top of the cover cut off and its printed at a weird angle. are they all like this or is mine a goof?

Mine is the same way. They used a very cheap printer. In addition to being askew, the sides on my cover label aren't even properly parallel when I take it out of the blu-ray case.