"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Again, for me, the 3D film I'm most looking forward to all year is the Herzog. The rest I could care less about, alas, despite Penton's astute observation that helping 3D helps the studios which helps classics on Blu. Or, at least I guess that's the Reagan/Thaterite trickle-down theory.

Here’s your chance to overtly plug TIFF.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

One of the better pieces of eye-candy in The Matrix: Reloaded was Carrie-Anne Moss dressed in tight black leather riding a Ducati.

Please jog my memory with a pic or video clip.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Have you seen the BD, or are you basing this on the DVD?

The Blu.

The appearance is rather pathognomonic of the process. I don’t really care if you don’t see it as such, as I know you’re not into that sort of thing anyway but, what does worry me a tad is that as a film reviewer, you believe that the ending of Shutter Island was “ambivalent” < that, to me is far more disconcerting.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Oliver K

While I do not really share that fascination for the folks in the first link I surely do share the fascination for the ladies in the second one

I love Ducati girls –
http://vfrworld.com/photos/showphoto...girls-/cat/633

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Oliver K

And of course you got to tell us about that little event called the Reel Thing - it has been more than a day already and not a word from you about the surprise screening...

The original The Fly, from Fox.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

you believe that the ending of Shutter Island was “ambivalent”

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Please jog my memory with a pic or video clip

Here's a small image I found via a web search:


Edit: here's a video clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF9AC2Ce2ow

[fitprod]

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

Oh, geez. You had to dredge up that format... and the terrifying memories come flooding back.

Curiously, about half of them involve Don Knotts.

It was the HD DVD of it's day... Probably screwed up the sales of LD for years. (Relatively, for the time period) Hell, I worked in an Laserdisc shop in the '90s and many newbies still confused LD with CED.

fitprod

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

The Blu.

The appearance is rather pathognomonic of the process. I don’t really care if you don’t see it as such, as I know you’re not into that sort of thing anyway but, what does worry me a tad is that as a film reviewer, you believe that the ending of Shutter Island was “ambivalent” < that, to me is far more disconcerting.

Pathognomonic, huh? Fancy. One thing I -did- notice was a slight colour aberration on the left side of screen. I actually thought my set might be suffering from some persistance, but it seems, uh, "endemic" to the print.

As I said, I didn't watch it and think "Gah! Horrible!" (quite the opposite), so I'm genuinely interested in which process you're referring to (the Panavision rig? The modern post-processing?) that has caused the issues. I'm trying to learn here what to look out for, as, without screenshots, your words are all I've got to go on.

As for Shutter Island, I descend into spoiler mode.

[Show spoiler]Yes. "Ambivalent" may not be the correct phrase, but I think it's at least an open question whether Leo (in SI) is actually still under the delusion, or playing around with being delusional in order to be operated upon so that he'd forget permanently. The ambivalence refers to the motivations of the character, and that's what makes it intriguing, there's a question at the heart of the ending. I made the allusion to the Leo of Inception, where the "is he/isn't he dreaming" (wishing to live in a past memory) mirrors the "is he/isn't he still crazy" end of Shutter Island (wishing to remove his past from memory).

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

Et tu, Doctor?

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

I'm genuinely interested in which process you're referring to?...

In videophilic parlance, ‘somebody turned up the EE knob on the mastering or Blu-ray making machine’.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

As for Shutter Island, I descend into spoiler mode.

[Show spoiler]Yes. "Ambivalent" may not be the correct phrase, but I think it's at least an open question whether Leo (in SI) is actually still under the delusion, or playing around with being delusional in order to be operated upon so that he'd forget permanently. The ambivalence refers to the motivations of the character, and that's what makes it intriguing, there's a question at the heart of the ending. I made the allusion to the Leo of Inception, where the "is he/isn't he dreaming" (wishing to live in a past memory) mirrors the "is he/isn't he still crazy" end of Shutter Island (wishing to remove his past from memory).

I don't believe it's an "open question". The ending is clear-cut…..watch it again. It demands a second viewing for other nuances, much more subtle than the ending. Marty S.’s Direction is outstanding.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

Here's a small image I found via a web search:


Edit: here's a video clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF9AC2Ce2ow

Sweeeeet.
I'll watch the clip later when I've got more time. Thanks.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

As for Shutter Island, I descend into spoiler mode.

^ Listen to Laeta K’s (the person who wrote the script) interview which I posted earlier, who, b.t.w., was also Executive Producer on AVATAR…speaking of which -

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=68820

Good interview by Jim.
Moderators, arm yourselves for the grain lovers vs. grain haters debate.

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I don't believe it's an "open question". The ending is clear-cut…..watch it again. It demands a second viewing for other nuances, much more subtle than the ending. Marty S.’s Direction is outstanding.

I have, I think it remains questionable, and that's a good thing. We choose to disagree.

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

^ Listen to Laeta K’s (the person who wrote the script) interview which I posted earlier

I did, interesting interview, but I remain, respectfully, unconvinced that it's an impossibility that things remain... open.

Yes, the screenwriter has a POV, but so does the editor and director and, well, audience. Just cuz Arthur C. Clark thinks he knows what 2001's about doesn't make him right...

(and, no, this isn't in the same league of, erm, "cryptic", but that's why it's only an analogy, as imperfect as trying to have a definitive stance on the motivation of a fictional character.)

However, I'll give it another shot with your interpretation in mind, if you'll do the same with mine

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

In videophilic parlance, ‘somebody turned up the EE knob on the mastering or Blu-ray making machine’.

Huh. Yeah, again, I didn't see on first viewing anything atrocious, save for what I thought to be some instances of haloing due to what I thought was mere backlight. The reviewer here, fwiw, glowed about the transfer (5/5).

I'm not sure you can provide more specifics, it might be cool (ie., what scens you think are particularly egregious and what elements of the frame to look out for. It's a genuine request, I'm not looking for furtherance intra-insider confrontation here (in case that's why you're being mildly coy), just pedagogical assistance.

Short version: I'm clearly a moron about this. Teach me (specifically) what I missed.

At least, if you care to...

**********

ps. Nevermind. I went to AVS (links to there aren't allowed, right?) As expected, there are screenshots. Yes, I see the issues they're pointing out. In motion there's some light highlighting, I found, in certain high contrast areas, but I just didn't think on my set it was -nearly- as awful looking as the SD clips they showed elsewhere on the disc (hence my question about whether you saw it on BD or not). The train scene in particular looked pretty bad in SD (exacerbating, if I take your point, the issue that was already there on the HD master used for both).

FWIW, again, these shots on my (uncalibrated laptop) monitor look decidedly worse still than the same scenes on my (calibrated) 60" Plasma, but, well, there you go. I'd still be interested if you could shed light as to what you think was the cause of what's, with this evidence, a "challenging" transfer?

pps. Any reason for the intermittent colour discoloration that I -did- manage to notice on first viewing on the left side of frame?

[sharkshark]

ps. Adding to the "Films I NEVER thought I'd see in HD" is HEAD!

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Ameri...Blu-ray/14981/

Wow, Zappa and the Monkeys on Blu Ray! A second copy of Easy Rider will be amusing, especially as save for the movie IQ Criterion has all the extras from the Columbia release, and then some...

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Even boutique content providers are not immune to unnecessary digital edge enhancement…watch Days of Heaven very closely.

This got me thinking about another issue common to photography as well as cinematography: chromatic aberration. This is an optical problem that can occur with camera lenses when photographing high contrast objects, such as a brightly colored object shot in bright daylight or a silhouette of a dead tree against a sunset. The image may end up with color fringing problems on high contrast edges and even halos.

That's just another thing to think about when accusations are made that the video encoders "turned up the EE knob." The problem could very well be in the original photography itself.

The best camera lenses often include optical elements and various kinds of coatings to fight chromatic aberration. But few if any lenses are perfect at totally eliminating the problem. Chromatic aberration can be a really nasty challenge to digital photographers, particularly if they're shooting in an already compressed format like JPEG, or a compressed video format like MPEG-4 AVC. D-SLR cameras already have enough issues with aliasing without compounding things with camera lens limitations. At least with shooting RAW some of the tools in Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom, etc. can deal with the problem and lessen the fringing effects.

Days of Heaven was filmed more than 30 years ago. I'm not an expert on camera lens history, but I have a feeling the lenses used on that production didn't feature many of the latest advancements common to high quality cine and still camera lenses today. It would be interesting to see some of the original image scans to see if any chromatic aberration was present.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

I did, interesting interview, but I remain, respectfully, unconvinced that it's an impossibility that things remain... open.

[Show spoiler]If at the end of the flick, Laeddis still was under the delusion that he was “Teddy”, he wouldn’t have gone so willingly with the orderlies for his ice-pick lobotomy.

In the Blu-ray extras, I think some of the filmmakers (other than Laeta) also make reference to the ending . That may be of help to you too.