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

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Don't forget about Doctors Without Borders, a far better organization than the Red Cross when it comes to using your money effectively and not participating in active discrimination.
Doctors Without Borders | MSF USA

People are going to need somewhere to live after they stop bleeding, so don't forget Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity Int'l

And Heifer International helps people become self sufficient in more rural areas, seeding livestock populations to create sustainable populations for food, milk, farming labor animals etc.
Charitable Gift Giving that Makes a Difference | Heifer International

Helping Haiti isn't just thinking about today, it's thinking about tomorrow as well. Making sure they come out of this disaster more stable than they went in doesn't just help Haiti, the ripples in the pond make the world's life better.

[SpaceDog]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Bottom line- your viewing experience and that of your son, illustrates the reason why marketing folks in all the majors are getting a gun-shy attitude concerning older titles, especially really old titles for BD and it is providing an impediment to the studios from going deeper into their libraries, which b.t.w., people should also keep in mind that said libraries are not at all equal on a purely numbers basis in terms of the amount of “classic” or catalog titles each individual major studio holds home media rights to. For example, when WB announced BD exclusivity just prior to the end of the format war, it wasn’t just the fact of one more additional studio putting another nail in HD DVD’s coffin, but it was more like driving a spike into said coffin by having a studio with such a LARGE library of classics as well as modern day fare now diverted solely to Blu-ray home media exhibition.

I'm wondering if someone could convince folks like Martin Scorsese or Robert Harris to record a studio agnostic PSA about grain and the qualities of film as reproduced on blu-ray that could be attached to any release that is otherwise technically spectacular but has grain or other faithfully reproduced elements that may concern an average HD consumer.
As with OAR, I think it all comes down to education.

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

A great deal of time, expense and attention to detail was invested in the HD master of Ghostbusters.

A fact that I'm personally pleased with PM, as even though I haven't gotten around to watching this movie on Blu-ray in its entirety yet, I've seen the movie numerous times in the past, so I ended up watching multiple scenes in the film, and it looked fantastic on my set.

~Alan

[Oliver K]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I’ll be attending the 2010 Winter Olympics as I’ve been invited to stay with friends who have a place in Vancouver and Whistler.

Oh well, the winter Olympics are only every 4 years and I get the impression that you like winter sports to a certain degree so I can understand your decision

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Grover will indeed be attending Berlinale again this year and like you, is planning on seeing Metropolis. Funny thing is, he was with one of the restorers in Italy on the exact day when word came to the restorer on the 16mm find.

He certainly has one of the most interesting jobs (imo) in the business and from what I have read it seems that he has good taste in westerns which is great in my book

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

For the festival itself, Grover will be providing a few prints on not very old titles, but there is no SPE restoration program this year per se, instead a Stephen Frears retrospective and selected titles that debuted at the festival over the last 60 years, to celebrate the 60th.

I guess that means that I get to look forward to some interesting older stuff from Columbia then, that sounds great! I hope that other studios will do similar things with regard to older titles.

[Jeff Kleist]

I was in Nagano about a month before the 1998 games just to check it out. I didn't stay over because the gouging had already begun This'll be my first winter games in HD, so I can't wait to check it out

[johndoyle123]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

What I’m saying is, that marketing folks are cognizant of the fact there is an HD movie viewing population with definite picture *quality* preferences…. and I’m not just talking about the mainstream public but rather, also some ‘audio-video enthusiasts’ or ‘home theater enthusiasts’ that regularly frequent internet forums, who make their Blu-ray purchasing decisions based upon whether or not a particular movie has “pop” or is “eye candy”. Heck, I think there are even *picture quality* Tier threads based upon that criteria disregarding the true technical merit of the Blu-ray transfer (informed, not speculative) or the creative intent of the filmmaker both of which are given little or no consideration in the end. In essence, many people want movies which will show off their full 1080p displays the best……….creative intent by the filmmaker or mastering accuracy to the source be damned. I think it would be safe to say that if Public Enemies had been shot in the 50’s or 60’s, the studio holding the BD rights for that motion picture would think long and hard about releasing it on Blu-ray these days and possibly not even release it at all, no matter how perfectly the HD master replicated the theatrical exhibition.

tbh all the most loved classics will come to blu-ray and that,s about that really ,,, you dont take the next generation of home video and say ahh i dont feel like releaseing anything pre-1980 lets not bother ...
because thats why people love wb and moc and criterion because they give us what we want
maybe sally and bob next door dont want on the waterfront but there is a hell of a lot of people who do

[micks_address]

Penton - Thank you for your detailed response. I'm pretty sure the answer will be yes but do you know if the Region A and B copy of the Ghostbusters blu-ray are using the same transfer?

I dont make purchase decisions based solely on picture quality or to show off my tv.. and of late all my purchases have been catalogue titles which i find truely amazing in HD..

Its good to know titles like this are as they are intended - otherwise its easy to misinterpret them as inferior products.

Cheers,
Mick

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Mick,
A great deal of time, expense and attention to detail was invested in the HD master of Ghostbusters. There is really nothing to fault regarding the technical BD production of this title. I’ve discussed some of the specifics in my past posts either on this thread or other Ghostbuster thread(s) located in the Blu-ray Movies – USA and Region A forum…..can’t recall which. Essentially, all the above responses to your query given by other members here are spot-on. All I’ll add is that there is no “noise” (or at least none that a human can detect) in the movie. All the texture which you see is grain. On the other hand, something which I haven’t addressed in the past is that your reaction to viewing the motion picture is a real-world dilemma now faced by the marketing folks in every major Hollywood studio which is distributing Blu-ray movies.

What I’m saying is, that marketing folks are cognizant of the fact there is an HD movie viewing population with definite picture *quality* preferences…. and I’m not just talking about the mainstream public but rather, also some ‘audio-video enthusiasts’ or ‘home theater enthusiasts’ that regularly frequent internet forums, who make their Blu-ray purchasing decisions based upon whether or not a particular movie has “pop” or is “eye candy”. Heck, I think there are even *picture quality* Tier threads based upon that criteria disregarding the true technical merit of the Blu-ray transfer (informed, not speculative) or the creative intent of the filmmaker both of which are given little or no consideration in the end. In essence, many people want movies which will show off their full 1080p displays the best……….creative intent by the filmmaker or mastering accuracy to the source be damned. I think it would be safe to say that if Public Enemies had been shot in the 50’s or 60’s, the studio holding the BD rights for that motion picture would think long and hard about releasing it on Blu-ray these days and possibly not even release it at all, no matter how perfectly the HD master replicated the theatrical exhibition.

Bottom line- your viewing experience and that of your son, illustrates the reason why marketing folks in all the majors are getting a gun-shy attitude concerning older titles, especially really old titles for BD and it is providing an impediment to the studios from going deeper into their libraries, which b.t.w., people should also keep in mind that said libraries are not at all equal on a purely numbers basis in terms of the amount of “classic” or catalog titles each individual major studio holds home media rights to. For example, when WB announced BD exclusivity just prior to the end of the format war, it wasn’t just the fact of one more additional studio putting another nail in HD DVD’s coffin, but it was more like driving a spike into said coffin by having a studio with such a LARGE library of classics as well as modern day fare now diverted solely to Blu-ray home media exhibition.

[mark antony]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

It looks like your precursor thread to the poll itself is coming along nicely.

It's getting there, but not as much interest as I thought there might be.

However many responses we get, it's an interesting exercise.

The titles that are generally popping up are those that I would expect to have seen, plus one or two "not in a million years" titles!

M

[wallendo]

Originally Posted by mark antony

It's getting there, but not as much interest as I thought there might be.

However many responses we get, it's an interesting exercise.

The titles that are generally popping up are those that I would expect to have seen, plus one or two "not in a million years" titles!

M

I suspect part of the problem is that many of us want certain older movies released, but in many cases don't know off the top of our heads which studio released them.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by wallendo

I suspect part of the problem is that many of us want certain older movies released, but in many cases don't know off the top of our heads which studio released them.

Personally, I'm just exceedingly skeptical about the practical value/potential impact of such a poll. Home video software sales is not a new enterprise; the marketers know what they're doing. I think they're well aware that the enthusiast market wants more classics than we're getting.

[sharkshark]

I'M BACK, BABY (hold your applause... thanks to DM for pleading the case, and PM for being a mensch.... and Doc? WTF? Where the hell was the poll to bring me back? I mean, we're -gunner- fans together, no? )

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Bottom line- your viewing experience and that of your son, illustrates the reason why marketing folks in all the majors are getting a gun-shy attitude concerning older titles...

Completely understandable and, unfortunately, fits in with my pessimism regarding this push for HD for older flicks.

It's an old yarn, often told, but worth repeating - back when I dipped my toes in the HD format quagmire, and everybody was going on about CGI flicks and eye candy, I rented three films - Serenity, Unforgiven, and Goodfellas. I hadn't seen Serenity, but figured it'd be a reasonably decent representation of a low(er) budget CGI extravaganza.

Serenity looked about as good as I thought it might, with some issues, but I was super pleased with Unforgiven - the shots through the rain were just mesmerizing, the clearly delineated shafts of light from the studio rig above the rain towers.... But it was Goodfellas that sold me - it's a bit maligned these few years later, but that was my "subtle" difference disc. I had the DVD to quickly a/b, and as Marty uses a nice mix of closeups and wider shots, you could really see where things shined... I used the crane shot of the cars in one of the early chapters to see what type of difference could be made, and was looking at background elements (bricks, fenders of cars). It's in things like the clarity of the specular highlights off the chrome, the texture of the bricks behind someones head, that lack the "fuzziness" that an upconverted 720x480 image belies.

At a Tosh event pimping their TVs and new disc format, they had two 40" LCDs setup to showcase what was then the ultimate show-off disc, Fast and the Furious. Everything was all glossy and shiny, and people were wowed by how much better-er the HD disc was. I managed to take over the players for a couple minutes, and synch'd up my HD and DVD (from the same master) discs, and put them up on equally calibrated displays.

I was pleased. For me, there was a clear difference. Then again, I knew what to look for.

The crowd (Best Buy and Futureshop employees, salespeople for these sets - I weaseled in cuz of a connection) was a bit confused. What's the difference, they thought? They both look... OK. Why is there that noisy stuff on that side. "Grain", I said. I showed them how instead of being blocky and repetive it "swam" with a certain organic quality, that this so-called noise was integral to the original negative, and that we were finally seeing at home what we'd see in a movie theatre.

They got bored and walked away to something showing off Happy Feet, I think...

I have yet to see Ghostbusters on BD, but I'm sure that both sides are right - for the uninitiated, it's a "noisy" film. For those that are a bit more engaged in the history of film and the joys/challenges of grain in the capture and projection of movies, then it would be a happy thing to see this master capture an archive worthy representation of the original work.

Before my absence in this thread, I had expressed concern about the bitrate and codec thread referenced here. Keeping the stats is a noble goal, I guess, as would be the myriad of Tier and PQ/SQ threads. But, like the much pilloried "screenshot science" often admonished here, there's a clear connection made between, say, high bitrate and a preferred codec and a subsequent quality disc. I simply do not think that the connection can be made except on a disc-by-disc basis, and that even "bitrate starved" formats were able to present gloriously cinematic presentations (Forbidden Planet, Grand Prix) whereas full 50gb, high bandwidth, lossless audio presentations of films that have been scrubbed of grain and tweaked for "pop" should not be celebrated as an accomplishment.

I'm not, for the umpteenth time, reflecting upon the format itself - not only has that ship sailed years ago, but in the end it simply did not matter to me. The film on a physical medium has always been the thing (give it to me again on 12" shiny disc and I'd be happy). This dip into HD by the studios could end tomorrow and I will have received some of my favourite films of all time in a presentation that I really do not think is going to be bettered any time soon. These are, finally, archive editions, the culmination of a home theatre hobby, the best we're going to get for (I think) decades to come.

That's why it pisses me off when they screw up a release like fav-whipping boy Patton .

There's a responsibility to get these things right from the studio. But there's also going to be a need for even more education on the grain "issue", and a real push from members of this community to support classic or older films on this format. There's a need from us to support things like Seventh Seal (a gloriously grainy black and white masterpiece).

I'm just not sure there's enough of us that do care about such things to make a dent in the grand scheme of things, and like HD audio formats before us, there's always the possibility of this format dying within half a decade.

The threat of only getting new releases of blockbusters on BD -would- be a death to the format, the dropping of classic titles that simply do not sell in numbers to warrant the care I reference above may in fact be inevitable once the studios exhaust some of their A-level classics only to find that they simply are not selling in numbers they expect (read: Close Encounters). For

For example, when WB announced BD exclusivity just prior to the end of the format war, it wasn’t just the fact of one more additional studio putting another nail in HD DVD’s coffin, but it was more like driving a spike into said coffin by having a studio with such a LARGE library of classics as well as modern day fare now diverted solely to Blu-ray home media exhibition.

I completely and entirely agree. The same argument was made on the opposite side - if (in crazyland) Warner had gone exclusive the other way, BD simply would not have been sustainable. Both formats would have either had to coexist, or have been crippled to the point of irrelevance (exclusive Warner/Uni/Paramount on one side, no Fox/Sony/etc. on the other side would not have, I think, been sustainable for long).

Thank God that didn't happen.

We now see consolidation of format, but a real lack of depth from certain studios in their releases. I've seen many a Warner bashing comment on this thread regarding their lack of lossless audio (something I too would like to see improve), without shouting from the tops of mountains in thanks for some of their tremendous catalogue releases. Hell, give me mono MP3 audio, if I can have North By Northwest look as good as it does!

2010 will be a turning point, with either a mass adoption by studios for a wide range of their releases, or the pulling back of all but the most lucrative titles that are bound to sell in numbers that warrant the effort. Nothing would make me happier to be wrong on this point, but I fear that more and more we're seeing the peak of this format with the decline around the corner, as opposed to us just now getting onto a real renaissance in the home theatre hobby.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Doc? WTF? Where the hell was the poll to bring me back?

A poll to bring you back?! Do you really want to go there?

Welcome back, man!

[Dennis M]

Shark, I see you wanted your first post back to be short and sweet.

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Dennis M

Shark, I see you wanted your first post back to be short and sweet.

Pent-up thoughts on the Pent-on thread...


*cough*

Hell, I've got 2 weeks to go back over....

[sharkshark]

...oh, and on the "Sony is doing right" front, my replacement Miles Davis set shipped, no questions asked:

Consumer Concerns: The Complete Columbia Album Collection | Miles Davis

It certainly has never come to this on the home video front, but it's pretty awesome to see them take responsibility for the mistakes on disc packaging and work to correct it. Companies don't often proportionally get enough credit when they fix their mistakes compare to our rants, so chock this one up as a win for the consumer...

[blindcat87]

Penton,

I can't believe that, in the mess and stress of this past fall and holiday season, I missed the stories on Sony's commitment to descriptive video service tracks. I sat down and enjoyed District 9 with some family without realizing that it had a descriptive track. It was while reading the review here on Zombieland, which I have preordered at Amazon and wanted to get an idea of what to expect on the BD, that I discovered that it had a descriptive track and that led me to do some Google exploring on BDs with such tracks which led me to the stories from back in September.

I would like to extend a belated, but extremely heartfelt thank you to you and all at Sony for taking this step. Also, if you know anyone at Universal, who have also now voiced a commitment to descriptive video service tracks on BD and DVD, please forward my thanks on to them as well. Disney included a descriptive track on Up on BD, DVD, and iTunes, so hopefully another major will be joining in here as well. I've said many times that if one major studio would commit to DVS, others would follow and now Sony has led the way.

Thanks so very much,

Chris

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

I'M BACK, BABY (hold your applause... thanks to DM for pleading the case, and PM for being a mensch....

What the hell is a “mensch” ?
Is that good or bad?

Re.- The White Ribbon (a film which you reviewed at the Toronto Film Festival?)
In case you missed the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Language Film………..
HFPA - Nominations and Winners

And the American Society of Cinematographers nominations for best cinematography -
https://forum.blu-ray.com/2779790-post47.html

[Jeff Kleist]

I might have to kick up the Zombieland descriptive track. The plainspoken descriptions have real potential to be hilarious on their own

[Joe Cain]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

What the hell is a “mensch” ?
Is that good or bad?

What are you, meshuggenah?

It's good.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by blindcat87

Penton,..........

Thanks so very much,
Chris