The Criterion Collection

[steel_breeze]

Criterion now has a chance of making a clean sweep of the last three remaining standard-def DVDs in my collection... I hope I hope I hope!!!

I Am Cuba was one of my final three (although sad to put aside the ol' cigar box, lol), and was probably the LEAST likely to become a Criterion title, simply because I thought Milestone was handling it themselves. But I'm over the moon happy about today's announcement!

My only two remaining DVDs were already Criterion titles: David Lean's Oliver Twist and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Pppppplease Criterion, set me free of standard def shiny discs!!!

[BorisKarloffice]

Originally Posted by steel_breeze

Criterion now has a chance of making a clean sweep of the last three remaining standard-def DVDs in my collection... I hope I hope I hope!!!

I Am Cuba was one of my final three (although sad to put aside the ol' cigar box, lol), and was probably the LEAST likely to become a Criterion title, simply because I thought Milestone was handling it themselves. But I'm over the moon happy about today's announcement!

My only two remaining DVDs were already Criterion titles: David Lean's Oliver Twist and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Pppppplease Criterion, set me free of standard def shiny discs!!!

I envy you. I have a lot more than 3 DVDs that I can't replace, and somehow I doubt that Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter is getting a Criterion disc any time soon.

[HenryHill]

Originally Posted by trobrianders

Good point. But it's kinda wokey. The subtext is watch this film. Help bring down western civilisation.

Have you seen Dogfight? It's a good movie and you've already read the setup. How is learning to see people as more than their appearance, to see the wholeness of a person a bad thing? I'll bet you call yourself "an independent thinker," which in your case probably means listening to Joe Rogan on the regular.

Art is not merely entertainment; it is opening yourself to the possibility of transformation, to learn, to see life through another lens.

[HenryHill]

Originally Posted by BorisKarloffice

I envy you. I have a lot more than 3 DVDs that I can't replace, and somehow I doubt that Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter is getting a Criterion disc any time soon.

Ditto. Where are the HD upgrades for Z, Red Beard, Stray Dog, The Last Wave, just to name a few DVD-only Criterion Releases?

[trobrianders]

Originally Posted by HenryHill

How is learning to see people as more than their appearance, to see the wholeness of a person a bad thing? I'll bet you call yourself "an independent thinker," which in your case probably means listening to Joe Rogan on the regular.

Art is not merely entertainment; it is opening yourself to the possibility of transformation, to learn, to see life through another lens.

I wasn't criticising the movie so much as its co-opting to serve an agenda. I made that pretty clear in references to Criterion blurb ABOUT the movie. The movie itself isn't really that good anyway. Movies with a "Message" generally aren't. You seem to like them though cos you say you got the message about "learning to see people as more than their appearance". Didn't prevent you making incorrect assumptions about me though, did it? Who's Joe Rogan? Don't know him. I'm in the UK. Maybe you should watch the movie again. Let the message really sink in.

[koberulz]

Originally Posted by trobrianders

Go woke, go broke!

https://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...ken-box-office

[trobrianders]

Originally Posted by steel_breeze

My only two remaining DVDs were already Criterion titles: David Lean's Oliver Twist and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Pppppplease Criterion, set me free of standard def shiny discs!!!

You're not likely to see this released but if Criterion did you can bet they'll put their own slant on things. Kundera hated the "progressive" political movement which he saw as a sneaky new form of the Soviet communism that blighted his life and progressives hate him. An entire chapter of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, chapter 6: The Grand March, is about that. So of course progressives accuse him of misogyny. What a surprise! In the old Soviet days they used to call that denunciation.

Only "Darlings of the Left" get blu-ray releases.

[trobrianders]

Originally Posted by koberulz

https://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...ken-box-office

Um, I don't take movie advice from Ben Shapiro. Right wingers take left wingers at their word. That's just plain dumb!

[Shane Rollins]

The Criterion Collection

[koberulz]

Originally Posted by trobrianders

Um, I don't take movie advice from Ben Shapiro. Right wingers take left wingers at their word. That's just plain dumb!

I think you quoted the wrong post.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by ravenus

The new master has been controversial. Geoff D from the forums, who has worked on QC for Second Sight's releases, speculates that there has been aggressive film grain removal followed by addition of digital grain which looks unnaturally uniform.

Not being sarcastic, Geoff D actually works for a boutique?

[Scottie]

Enough.

[Scottie]

I wonder if 2024 will see any of the following:

Márta Mészáros box set
Kinuyo Tanaka box set
Antoine Doinel series
Jean Eustache box set
Ousmane Sembène box set

Retrospectives were presented over the past couple of years by Janus but they're the only ones we haven't received yet (or at least in full).

[ravenus]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

Not being sarcastic, Geoff D actually works for a boutique?

I'm not sure if he is an employee / freelance or just did it for the greater good, but this is what he said about Second Sight's Dawn of the Dead release:

Originally Posted by Geoff D

David Mackenzie ultimately handled the QC of everything. I provided a second set of eyes.

As well as checking the masters of all three cuts at various stages of the process starting in July 2019 and carrying right on through until late 2020 (highlighting framing errors, mastering errors etc) I reviewed the final encodes of the theatrical BD, theatrical UHD and Argento UHD. The Cannes cut took a bit of back and forth to set the black level properly on the additional footage (as it came from the CRI interneg rather than the OG neg) but once that was done I didn't check any further encodes myself as the majority of the footage is from the approved theatrical master.

And this is directly quoting his words on the Picnic at Hanging Rock UHD:

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Yep, this is the one. When I saw it I went straight back to Second Sight and aksed why it looked as DNR'ed as it does, particularly because the footage used in the montage for the main menu looks grainier, but they double checked with the restorers and this is exactly what Peter Weir signed off on. Apparently he wasn't happy with the level of grain, possibly because it was exacerbated by the HDR (which is quite zingy), so he done smudged it to maintain that 'dreamy' look he was going for. And the menu montage looks grainier because the person who put it together added their own grain field to it, not because there was some unfudged master lying around.

There's still some level of texture there to be sure, like a very mild layer of noise/grain, and uniformly geometric detail like the stitching on clothing still looks good and sharp, but the issue is more that the underlying photography is so diffuse because of all the filtration that it just didn't put a lot of randomly-arranged 'organic' detail, like that of facial features, onto that negative. With the grain intact then you'd still get a feeling of perceptual sharpness if not actual sharpness, but with the grain fudged it lays bare how little detail is there underneath it, if that makes sense.

Tenia is incorrect in his musings that this didn't come from the OG negative though, the main titles have been rebuilt digitally which is why they don't lose any detail (such as it is) compared to the main body of the feature. There's no conspiracy here, it's just a *very* soft source given a fairly strong dose of modern DNR and other grain-related processing, entirely at the behest of the director. It is what it is.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Councilspectre above hit the nail on the head. The movie was always meant to have a soft, dreamy, ethereal quality, but it always carried the sweet tang of film grain with it on prior transfers. Here, the OG grain has been removed and a velvety layer of very fine noise/grain laid back over it. It’s not the waxiest DNR disaster I’ve ever seen, but at the same time it’s the most visibly “processed” transfer I’ve encountered in a while. As said, some will love, some will hate, some (most?) just won’t care one way or the other.

[dkelly26666]

Originally Posted by steel_breeze

Criterion now has a chance of making a clean sweep of the last three remaining standard-def DVDs in my collection... I hope I hope I hope!!!

I Am Cuba was one of my final three (although sad to put aside the ol' cigar box, lol), and was probably the LEAST likely to become a Criterion title, simply because I thought Milestone was handling it themselves. But I'm over the moon happy about today's announcement!

My only two remaining DVDs were already Criterion titles: David Lean's Oliver Twist and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Pppppplease Criterion, set me free of standard def shiny discs!!!

I'm keeping my cigar box DVD anyway, LOL. That's been a part of my shelf for so long, and it's such a nice release. But I'm getting the Criterion, too.

[concolt]

Originally Posted by HenryHill

UK? oh, sorry, GB News, then. You are deinitely putting out a vibe. And, no Dogfight is not a message movie. It's a story and sometimes stories have themes.

I heard Jason Statham has a new movie out.

You seem like a pleasure to be around.

[MrMarsFargo]

...and here I was, just excitedly checking to see what Criterion is releasing this year 😂

[MrMarsFargo]

Originally Posted by ravenus

And this is directly quoting his words on the Picnic at Hanging Rock UHD:

Okay, as someone who works in film professionally, a little additional insight (not applicable in all cases, and not saying you're doing this, but it's something people who accuse discs that look really clean of being "DNRd to death" don't always know to keep in mind).

Film prints don't work they way digital does. Meaning that when you copy and paste a digital print, the copy will look exactly the same as far as quality. That's not the case with film. With celluloid negatives, there is virtually no grain IN-CAMERA. Grain is an artifact that shows up on film prints later, as a result of copying the negative to master and then copying the master to theatrical print.

To non-editors, this is what's known as a GENERATION of loss. Think of it like being "steps removed" from a person. Like, "I'm one step removed from Lou Ferrigno, who's one step removed from Edward Norton, who's one step removed from Wes Anderson, making ME three steps removed from Wes Anderson." Generations work the same, in that the master is one "generation" removed from the negative, and theatrical prints are one generation removed from the master (making them two steps removed from the negative).

With celluloid, each generation removed introduces a little bit of quality loss (do to rephotographing/reprinting) which is what introduces grain. Essentially, as many editors have explained before, a negative is essentially a "picture" and master is a picture OF that picture. It's like if you took out your iPhone, and took a picture of your old polaroid picture. The re-photographing would introduce quality loss and artifacts that weren't on the "original" photo. This explains a lot of the quality loss with theatrical prints, because they're a picture OF a picture OF a picture (rather than the original picture, that came straight out of the camera).

What this means, in simple terms, is that films actually had MORE grain in theaters than they had on their negative and master prints. So the reason Blu-Rays sometimes have very little grain isn't necessarily because they've been DNR'd to death, it's because they've probably been sourced from a negative or master (which has far less grain to begin with) rather than a theatrical print.

Full disclosure, recognize it's possible this is already known on this forums, just leaving here in case it's not that well known (as I've seen some on here who really aren't that aware of the grain differences between different kinds of prints, so figured it'd be good information to share as a professional editor).

[koberulz]

Originally Posted by jw007

the patience to sit through this 145 min. film

Tell me you're unfamiliar with Béla Tarr without telling me you're unfamiliar with Béla Tarr.

[Scottie]

It appears this thread went to shit after I went to sleep. It truly blows my mind how these discussions begin in the first place. Furthermore, why can no one drop it and move on? Thankfully another moderator took care of things. If you folks can't behave, I'll start to play the bad guy and hand out bans myself.

I'm reopening the thread since I want to discuss how Criterion is distributing Farewell My Concubine on digital retailers. It may be too early to get your hopes up, but this seems like a good sign that Criterion themselves will be distributing the film (presumably on both 4K and BD) rather than Film Movement.