The Criterion Collection

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by DimitriL

I agree! But he and Avary spent time waxing rhapsodically on the VHS on their podcast.

I mean, there's movies I watch on tape that look and sound like ass, but I don't pretend the other 99% of my tapes even hold a candle to my Blu-rays and 4Ks.

As said before, there's very few instances ever where a tape beats a disc, and it's always because the disc is such a shitshow that the tape tops it by default.

The last tapes I've played have been the 1980 VHS of The Wizard Of Oz, the 1984 VHS of Scarface, the 1999 VHS of Greed, and the 1999 VHS of Raintree County. Anyone who could honestly sit and heap praise on the picture quality of any of them needs their head examined.

I don't have Dark Star on VHS, but unless it's the single best VHS of the 80s, I doubt it's as good as they said it is.

And as for judging 4K on the basis of one of the single worst 4K transfers ever...yeah, I'm not surprised to hear that, but I'm surprised to hear it from Tarantino.

The title/transfer I hear most frequently, and it's about 50/50 between trolls and serious users, is Heat, but the arguments are the same, that the disc fails in all these specific ways so 4K as a whole must suck.

Now while the genuine users may not know the minutia of a film transfer or a home video release, Tarantino definitely knows the minutia of both. Having seen his share of prints, transfers, and home video releases, he should know that when you put a bunch of drunken lemurs in charge of restoring a film, it's going to look terrible when it's done.

I just hope someone sends him the Arrow discs, because I think they're going to be amazing. At the very least, they won't look like the atomic piss atrocities we got before.

Originally Posted by HillSprinter

I compared the new 4K clip on Criterion website against the original Blu-ray, and that’s what makes the blueness much more evident.

I'll have to check the clips and caps out, since the old transfer never bothered me. Either way, I hope the new transfer is worth all the years I've spent waiting for it.

[CrimsonLegionVMCXIX]

Originally Posted by Jobla

Nothing for me this month, sadly.

Yeah, same. Hey, at least it is money saved. That's how I look at it. There are plenty of labels releasing films I want on any given month, so if another label's monthly releases aren't interesting to me, that's a blessing for my wallet. There is always another month.

[Sommerswerd]

Originally Posted by Professor Echo

However, just to be true to form, I will say I'm not crazy about the art for SORCERER, which makes it look like a Disney cartoon for Christmas nor for MIDNIGHT, which looks like a drawing from one of those YOU CAN DRAW ads on the back of old comic books.

I think the Sorcerer cover-art might be inspired by the crew shirts like the one Spielberg is wearing:

[Professor Echo]

Originally Posted by Sommerswerd

I think the Sorcerer cover-art might be inspired by the crew shirts like the one Spielberg is wearing:

That certainly doesn’t make it any better for me.

[BoydR12]

Originally Posted by Professor Echo

That certainly doesn’t make it any better for me.

Yeah… that makes it sick as ****

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by HillSprinter

I compared the new 4K clip on Criterion website against the original Blu-ray, and that’s what makes the blueness much more evident.

That doesn’t mean the original was anything like accurate, especially since Friedkin was still in his revisionist mode. (No one should ever make judgments based on an earlier disc release. It reminds me of the grousing of the Three Colors 4k, when it turned out all the earlier video releases didn’t look a thing like the original but the new one was frame accurate to the film prints. And don’t get me started on Matewan, where Criterion actually had to run the films side-by-side to show how accurate it was.)

[sherlockjr]

Originally Posted by DimitriL

Here’s where he called all 4k “television”, whether shown in a theater or not. It’s probably the root of most of these stories.

https://theplaylist.net/quentin-tara...ssed-20141002/

If that interview is the source for people thinking Tarantino "hates 4K" at home they sure weren't reading the whole interview. Tarantino was explicitly talking about 4K projection in a theater! vs 35mm film projection in a theater. He seem completely happy with digital versions at home. Tarantino said

“Is that fine in my home? Yeah, absolutely it’s fine in my home, I don’t think about it. But in the Palais, I felt like there was some glass between me and the movie that wouldn’t have been there had we shown the 35mm print,”

I absolutely agree with Tarantino--I love going to a theater to see a film projected in 35mm from a decent print. Even if the print has some wear and damage from normal use (so long as it's not visibly color faded). That's absolutely my preference for viewing a film. And next is a 4K, which apparently Tarantino is perfectly happy with watching at home, too. Though not in a theater, especially the theaters he owns where what's on screen is strictly shown from film, as he (and I) prefer.

Also, he's comparing an early 4K theatrical projection to a an original release Technicolor IB dye transfer print which is the ultimate for color imaging. Nothing else can match a Tech IB print. Not any digital format. Not a brand new Eastmancolor print. Nothing. So of course he was disappointed that Cannes showed what would have been guaranteed to have been an inferior image quality when he could have supplied them with a Tech IB print He would have, correctly, said the same about a 35mm Eastman print too.

Note that this interview is from 2014 which was the early--technologically inferior--days of theatrical 4K projection. And before home 4K technology was even available, correct? Modern dual 4K laser projection from a DCP, projectors unavailable in 2014, would have looked far superior to what Tarantino was commenting on. But it still wouldn't have matched his own Tech print.

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by sherlockjr

If that interview is the source for people thinking Tarantino "hates 4K" at home they sure weren't reading the whole interview. Tarantino was explicitly talking about 4K projection in a theater! vs 35mm film projection in a theater. He seem completely happy with digital versions at home. Tarantino said

But he doesn’t consider those films on video to be movies anymore. It wasn’t just the quality of the print. His crack about looking for his remote control made that clear. In fact, there’s nowhere in the interview where he actually complains about the transfer. He’s specifically talking about the ineffable quality of film, that you’re watching film, that you know you’re watching film and that’s what makes it a movie.

And this is the guy who wanted a film print of Fury Road. I mean, I love film. I go to see film prints of classic films. But I couldn’t imagine a more - to paraphrase QT himself - head up his own butt maneuver than to take one of the most inherently digital films of all time and stick it on film stock just so it would seem like an actual movie to him.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by sherlockjr

If that interview is the source for people thinking Tarantino "hates 4K" at home they sure weren't reading the whole interview. Tarantino was explicitly talking about 4K projection in a theater! vs 35mm film projection in a theater. He seem completely happy with digital versions at home. Tarantino said



I absolutely agree with Tarantino--I love going to a theater to see a film projected in 35mm from a decent print. Even if the print has some wear and damage from normal use (so long as it's not visibly color faded). That's absolutely my preference for viewing a film. And next is a 4K, which apparently Tarantino is perfectly happy with watching at home, too. Though not in a theater, especially the theaters he owns where what's on screen is strictly shown from film, as he (and I) prefer.

Also, he's comparing an early 4K theatrical projection to a an original release Technicolor IB dye transfer print which is the ultimate for color imaging. Nothing else can match a Tech IB print. Not any digital format. Not a brand new Eastmancolor print. Nothing. So of course he was disappointed that Cannes showed what would have been guaranteed to have been an inferior image quality when he could have supplied them with a Tech IB print He would have, correctly, said the same about a 35mm Eastman print too.

Note that this interview is from 2014 which was the early--technologically inferior--days of theatrical 4K projection. And before home 4K technology was even available, correct? Modern dual 4K laser projection from a DCP, projectors unavailable in 2014, would have looked far superior to what Tarantino was commenting on. But it still wouldn't have matched his own Tech print.

All of this is correct, but there's also the fact that he was watching one of the single worst 4K transfers in existence when he made this comment.

I've seen 4K DCPs, even back then. I've seen at least The Greatest Showman, one of the Jurassic World films (I forget which one, but it was the one with the mother and baby dinosaur), and Top Gun: Maverick. The first two were flawless, TGM looked a bit waxy, but was otherwise great. (I saw all three in 90s theaters, so there might've been some serious hardware lag too.) I saw none of the problems Tarantino said.

I've also seen tons of 4K-mastered Blu-rays and UHDs in my home. Rarely have I had those problems. When I have, it's because something went royally wrong during restoration. Looking over some of my collection, the 89-97 Batman movies, Planes, Trains And Automobiles, and of course the Leone films come instantly to mind.

The studio that prepared the original 4K restoration of A Fistful Of Dollars, L'Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, Italy, has a long, notorious track record of botching film restorations, most notably in the color timing, but also in other areas. While many of their restorations do look like film prints, they look like worn, faded, awful film prints. The Leone films are no exception.

So to see one of the worst transfers ever, from one of the worst studios ever, and conclude that all 4K DCPs and 4K restorations are bad, that is just seriously faulty logic. 99% of 4K restorations, 4K DCPs, 4K-mastered Blu-rays, and native 4K UHDs are truly amazing. It sucks that even a decade into UHD's life and over 30 years after 4K resolution was first reached, we still have a few bad apples spoiling the bunch.

[sherlockjr]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

So to see one of the worst transfers ever, from one of the worst studios ever, and conclude that all 4K DCPs and 4K restorations are bad, that is just seriously faulty logic. 99% of 4K restorations, 4K DCPs, 4K-mastered Blu-rays, and native 4K UHDs are truly amazing. It sucks that even a decade into UHD's life and over 30 years after 4K resolution was first reached, we still have a few bad apples spoiling the bunch.

Except that isn't what Tarantino said at all! He did not say "all 4K DCPs and 4K restorations are bad". In fact, Tarantino explicitly said:

“Is that fine in my home? Yeah, absolutely it’s fine in my home, I don’t think about it.

He was explicitly talking about theatrical exhibition in a large theater

But in the Palais, I felt like there was some glass between me and the movie that wouldn’t have been there had we shown the 35mm print,”

Tarantino in that paragraph and the preceding one actually praises home viewing of quality video vesions.

And he walks the talk, given that his two theaters only show film prints. Near me the theaters that show film prints can get a lot of audience of younger people to those screenings, even when they charge higher ticket prices for film than DCP. That audience also prefers the look of real film to digital, and they're going out of their way to see it projected in a theater, not watching at home.

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by sherlockjr

Tarantino in that paragraph and the preceding one actually praises home viewing of quality video vesions.

But he doesn’t consider those movies to be films anymore. Like I mentioned to Shane, when he would only rave about Fury Road after watching it on a 35mm print, I thought the jig was up. There is NOTHING that having that film on celluloid that doesn’t actually degrade the experience. There’s a point where you’re just fetishizing film grain and the clackety-clack of the projector.

And yes, I understand that there are legacy theaters and that’s why they made the prints in the first place. That’s fine! But opting-in for that when that particular film is such an unapologetically digital experience - by a chief advocate of digital filmmaking - is just him trying to force everything into his own worldview. It’s no longer about “the glory of film,” as he puts it. It becomes changing the nature of the intended viewing experience.

[jw007]

Originally Posted by Sommerswerd

I think the Sorcerer cover-art might be inspired by the crew shirts like the one Spielberg is wearing:

I want that t-shirt!

Ps. Spielberg looked like Adam Driver in a Noah Baumbach film back then.

[Bolo Seagull]

This month's announcements were early, I didn't even get a chance to make my guesses, all of which would've been wrong. I thought 'The Crying Game' would be this year's pride month pick.

These announcements were great. I feel very happy with WB's blu-ray of 'Sorcerer', so I'm not jumping to upgrade. But it's an amazing movie and I'm happy it's getting this release.

The big July sale this year is going to be a motherload of purchases for me.

[BillWatkins]

Originally Posted by jw007

I want that t-shirt!

Ps. Spielberg looked like Adam Driver in a Noah Baumbach film back then.

I thought it was Sam Waterston in Rancho Deluxe.

[DukeTogo84]

Feels like it was awhile ago since Criterion was touring Classe Tous Risques new restoration. Figured that would hit disc soon. Also really need Le deuxième souffle soon too.

[SeanJoyce]

Originally Posted by DukeTogo84

Feels like it was awhile ago since Criterion was touring Classe Tous Risques new restoration. Figured that would hit disc soon. Also really need Le deuxième souffle soon too.

Give 'em a break, they're hard at work on the 4k of The Big Heat after it's been so neglected on HD...having only 2 releases from Twilight Time and 1 from Indicator, ya know.

[DukeTogo84]

Originally Posted by SeanJoyce

Give 'em break, they're hard at work on the 4k of The Big Heat after it's been so neglected on HD, having only 2 releases from Twilight Time and 1 from Indicator, ya know.

Yeah, didn't want to say anything about that yesterday as I already exhausted my anti criterion sentiment, but The Big Heat already has a pretty NICE transfer on BD and if someone wants to release it on 4K it should just be Sony and let Criterion release something without a HD release instead.

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by SeanJoyce

Give 'em a break, they're hard at work on the 4k of The Big Heat after it's been so neglected on HD...having only 2 releases from Twilight Time and 1 from Indicator, ya know.

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important contemporary and classic films*



*unless versions have been put out by defunct and British-only labels on an inferior format with barely half the resolution of film, in which case, who cares how important it is, that film can ROT

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by DukeTogo84

Yeah, didn't want to say anything about that yesterday as I already exhausted my anti criterion sentiment, but The Big Heat already has a pretty NICE transfer on BD and if someone wants to release it on 4K it should just be Sony and let Criterion release something without a HD release instead.

I’m just gonna say it, screw BD, I’m tired of BD apologizing, it’s bad enough that we have to deal with compression, if there’s a 4k option, I’m not even going to deal with a format that literally throws away half the resolution of the original film as a STARTING POINT

My semi-professional video camera by itself has *6k resolution,* I’m sort of done with this whole mess, the same way I’m done with people arguing, “what’s wrong with watching Lawrence of Arabia on a cell phone, it’s still the movie”

DUKE NOW YOU HAVE ME RANTING WHAT HAVE YOU UNLEASHED I WAS GOING TO HAVE SUCH A NICE DAY

[DukeTogo84]

Originally Posted by DimitriL

I’m just gonna say it, screw BD, I’m tired of BD apologizing, it’s bad enough that we have to deal with compression, if there’s a 4k option, I’m not even going to deal with a format that literally throws away half the resolution of the original film as a STARTING POINT

My semi-professional video camera by itself has *6k resolution,* I’m sort of done with this whole mess, the same way I’m done with people arguing, “what’s wrong with watching Lawrence of Arabia on a cell phone, it’s still the movie”

DUKE NOW YOU HAVE ME RANTING WHAT HAVE YOU UNLEASHED I WAS GOING TO HAVE SUCH A NICE DAY

I think I used up all my arguing powers yesterday for the week, but I will say, I love BD resolution.

On that note, instead of continuing this debate today, I will give you something better with this gif.