The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 4K UHD (1966)

[ShortFuse98]

Originally Posted by gameguru

I certainly hope you're right. I don't own any Arrow titles yet but they seem to be the best distributor, besting even the major studios. But even so I worry they won't have the finances to do a ground up restoration. I don't see them doing a complete re-scan of the elements. At best I can seen them scan the missing footage from FAFDM from an IP or a release print. I'm sure the mono will be quite easy to source and inexpensive to fix, but a full re-scan from the negatives would be too cost prohibitive I would think. I sure do hope I can eat my shoe on this one because I'd love to see these films properly restored, along with the rest of Leones works.

If they need more money I'd gladly donate to a Kickstarter.

[Matt89]

Also I'm sorry but f*ck the extended cut. With the re-done sound effects, the absolutely terrible grotto scene with the dubbing, I am so glad that Kino ended up going with the US theatrical. The extended cut was made in the early 2000s, so it's not even a cut that was ever approved by Leone himself so I honestly dgaf if that version never sees the light of day on UHD.

If Arrow gives it to us as an alternate version (which honestly, they probably will) that's fine, but if not I don't care.

[Cholly]

All I want is the Italian/International cut with the full torture scene and a proper new colour grade with Dolby vision and original audio. With arrow, I believe all of that is possible. Just pray for a new 4k scan

[ThulsaMike88]

Originally Posted by Brian81

Would they have access to the same film elements Kino did to create the proper international cut?

Kino used both the Ritrovata SDR master supplied to them, and a 1967 IB Tech print for color comparison and missing frames. I'm sure Arrow have a higher budget for this release than Kino, so it'll be interesting seeing what they have access to in terms of privately owned prints, and whether they do all new scans of the negs. I'm not sure what the benefit is for Arrow to just use the same SDR masters, otherwise they could just ask Kino for their theatrical cut and go from there. Just speculation, but I think these will be ground-up restorations in HDR from the negative, with Arrow working with Leone experts to carefully reconstruct the cuts. I doubt they half ass it, knowing their track record. Plus these Leone licenses are huge, potentially one of their biggest releases, so I'm sure they are taking care on these as to not screw it up. Fingers crossed.

[hanshotfirst1138]

Originally Posted by Matt89

Also I'm sorry but f*ck the extended cut. With the re-done sound effects, the absolutely terrible grotto scene with the dubbing, I am so glad that Kino ended up going with the US theatrical. The extended cut was made in the early 2000s, so it's not even a cut that was ever approved by Leone himself so I honestly dgaf if that version never sees the light of day on UHD.

If Arrow gives it to us as an alternate version (which honestly, they probably will) that's fine, but if not I don't care.

Being a fan of the extended cut makes me feel like a bad person .

[dallywhitty]

Arrow should prep some kind of alternate hybrid audio ala Deep Red where the bulk of the film is English but the additional scenes are Italian.

[DAT_JB]

Originally Posted by dallywhitty

Arrow should prep some kind of alternate hybrid audio ala Deep Red where the bulk of the film is English but the additional scenes are Italian.

Who's back !?

[Kyle15]

I have faith in Arrow releasing the Italian cut. I can feel it in my bones.

[captainsolo]

Originally Posted by dallywhitty

Arrow should prep some kind of alternate hybrid audio ala Deep Red where the bulk of the film is English but the additional scenes are Italian.

That's what MGM should've done in the first place. At first they just gave us the cut scenes as an extra with Italian mono and no subtitles. A hybrid track can be done beautifully as seen on the Indicator release of THE BIG GUNDOWN.

Some at MGM wanted to do a proper English mono in 2002 but due to the insistence of some of the financing partners behind the extended cut, (AMC mostly) it was decreed that a brand new 5.1 remix with brand new effects be done and thus was created the most notorious filth 5.1 remix of all time.

Of course had MGM actually made a proper English mono transfer it likely would've had issues and extreme overprocessing as all their Leone masters did.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by captainsolo

That's what MGM should've done in the first place. At first they just gave us the cut scenes as an extra with Italian mono and no subtitles. A hybrid track can be done beautifully as seen on the Indicator release of THE BIG GUNDOWN.

Some at MGM wanted to do a proper English mono in 2002 but due to the insistence of some of the financing partners behind the extended cut, (AMC mostly) it was decreed that a brand new 5.1 remix with brand new effects be done and thus was created the most notorious filth 5.1 remix of all time.

Of course had MGM actually made a proper English mono transfer it likely would've had issues and extreme overprocessing as all their Leone masters did.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but there is a hybrid mono for the extended cut tho, with the actual English mono for the US theatrical portions and a mono reduction of the English remix for the extended scenes. It sounds quite dull and flat, but at least it's there.

[SpacemanDoug]

It'd be nice to have a proper release of the Italian cut. Its home video history is just as messy as the US cut's history and actually is missing around 2 or 3 minutes of footage on the Eagle 4K.

Apparently it's never been released on home video either like ever, so I'm curious what sources Arrow would have to use to try to release it.

[captainsolo]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but there is a hybrid mono for the extended cut tho, with the actual English mono for the US theatrical portions and a mono reduction of the English remix for the extended scenes. It sounds quite dull and flat, but at least it's there.

Yes they finally did a version to go along with the extended edit instead of having just the Italian mono conformed to the 2003 version as the DVD did. It needs to be properly redone with the LD mono and the untouched Italian mono to actually sound good and be fully accurate to the design.

Originally Posted by SpacemanDoug

It'd be nice to have a proper release of the Italian cut. Its home video history is just as messy as the US cut's history and actually is missing around 2 or 3 minutes of footage on the Eagle 4K.

Apparently it's never been released on home video either like ever, so I'm curious what sources Arrow would have to use to try to release it.

It needs to be done and should be easily doable. As far as I can tell, you could take the pre-existing 4K source master and use some high-quality frames from an Italian print source if necessary while making sure to follow the Italian release edit exactly with a proper reference print.

OUATITW needs that badly to fix the cut opening sequence and of course the wrong music end titles and reissue credits. Not to mention all the extra bits found only in that Italian 1990’s reconstruction.

[SpacemanDoug]

Originally Posted by captainsolo

It needs to be done and should be easily doable. As far as I can tell, you could take the pre-existing 4K source master and use some high-quality frames from an Italian print source if necessary while making sure to follow the Italian release edit exactly with a proper reference print.

Then of course there are moments where certain scenes had differing music or none at all compared to the current releases of the Italian cut approximation

I know of at least one instance where the 35mm print of the Italian cut was silent but the Mondo BD had music

I'd be particularly curious with how Arrow would handle that aspect

[Jeyl]

Originally Posted by Matt89

I don't think they "conveniently" changed their mind so much as it was the results of the poll they put out asking fans which cut they'd prefer to be in 4K and the US theatrical cut overwhelmingly won.

Cripes, I forgot it was done in a poll. Now it's all coming back—a 4K release whose content was dictated by a stupid Facebook poll. It almost makes me wonder if they did that on purpose so they could feel vindicated in retracting their initial announcement of releasing the extended edition. Has Kino done a Facebook poll since 'The Good, The Bad and the Ugly' 4K that dictated the disc's content?

Even if the theatrical cut is superior, I still find value in the extended edition and feel it warrants a 4K release.

[BigBMaster]

There are some misconceptions here regarding how the Kino Lorber 4K release came to be.

When KL originally assigned this project to my team, our instructions were to re-grade the 2014 4K master to match the color timing of the 2003 MGM restoration. That was it; no other work was requested. There were lots of issues with this approach from the offset. One was that the 2014 4K master that was supplied to us had an extreme and technically flawed yellow/teal grade done by L'Imaggine Ritrovata. The other was that the HD master based off the 2003 MGM restoration was also inaccurately timed. That grade was very desaturated, cold, with a bias towards blue/magenta, very typical of early 2000s MGM telecine transfers. They all looked similar in that regard. Even if it were an accurately color-timed transfer, matching the 2014 restoration to the 2003 timing would have been impossible because the grades could not have been more different in style and execution.

Without a good color reference in hand, I did some research and stumbled upon this article:

https://nationalpost.com/entertainme...-authorization

Once I established contact with Devan Scott and Will Ross, they were extremely generous to walk me through all their research, supply their fan-edit, and express their desire to see the international cut properly restored to its original edit, something that was nearly achieved with the Laserdisc release, even though that was slightly incomplete. It was missing one brief shot (12 frames) of the brick wall getting blown out by the cannonball, about 45 minutes into the feature. With their assistance, they introduced me to both Jordan Krug and Benji Heran.

Several years ago, Jordan purchased a 35mm IB tech print of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. With his own personal funds, he had the print transferred at 4K resolution to 10-bit DPX. His friend Benji, who owned copies of the 1990 and 1993 Laserdisc releases (the audio mix is identical on both releases), ripped the audio tracks then went through to sync the Laserdisc release to match the timing of the optical track on the IB tech print.

With a digital reference file of the IB tech print scan now in hand (it was only missing a couple of frames), along with captures of the 1990/1993 LD audio tracks, we were able to stitch together the footage from the extended cut to see what existed and what was missing. I reached out to Jordan and had him send over the missing frames electronically so we could conform, restore, and grade those into the master.

I had also asked Kino Lorber to request the restored, non-graded files from Ritrovata so we could re-grade the film from a clean source. According to Kino Lorber, after discussions with Ritrovata, those files were not properly archived, and we would have to proceed with corrections over the graded 2014 version.

Once I knew I had all the elements together to create an accurate edit of the international cut, I presented KL with my findings and emphasized how this was the edit audiences saw in the United States during its initial theatrical release, and one of only two cuts that Leone approved (the 2003 extended cut never being one of the two).

Kino Lorber was hesitant to move forward with this plan. It was not authorized by MGM, who unfortunately, do not hold any original film elements for TGTBATU. They only hold digital and tape masters. Eventually, the fate of the release was decided by a Facebook poll (KL's idea, not mine), and the poll was pretty much split down the middle. The theatrical international cut won out by a slim margin. When many ask, why not release both edits in 4K, it simply came down to cost to encode, author, and replicate a whole new set of 4K discs. KL thought it would adversely impact revenue, and that's why the theatrical international cut is the only cut presented on the disc. Side note: that UA logo at the head never existed on the prints, but KL insisted. Also, the original prints said "A Film by Alberto Grimaldi", but that had to replaced (and fairly so), as to not violate DGA rules.

In my brutally honest opinion, while the new grade on the 4K disc is the closest attempt to date to match the timing of the original prints, it is well known here that it has some warts that would have been improved upon with a new grade from the raw restored files. That being said, most of the grade is pretty damn close if not spot on accurate. For instance, there are no shots in the 4K release that are so "off" as to suggest they should have been timed to reflect a different time of day or different color temperature. The film's look is meant to reflect that of a golden afternoon, and that is well represented in the 4K release. If there is areas for improvement, it is improved color separation and shadow detail, both of which were hampered from working on top of the faulty 2014 Ritrovata grade.

The next attempt for a true restoration would be to acquire an original IB tech print and grade the new DI to match side by side. I must say that the likelihood of this happening anywhere outside of Italy is not good, but never say never.

The reason why the 5.1 track on the disc is an upmix of the Laserdisc mono was because that was really the only way to include a 5.1 track and have it be the international cut. Kino Lorber includes a 5.1 audio mix on all their 4K releases. It would have been historically inaccurate and faulty to edit the revisionist 5.1 track in where applicable, not to mention it would have been a complete headache that would have introduced a whole new list of problems. My recommendation to all viewers is to watch with the mono track, but if you insist on the 5.1, at least you're getting accurate sync, sound effects, and a slightly modified version of the mono mix. The LD mono mix itself required a little bit of audio restoration, as there were several drop-outs and distortion in the audio track that had to be repaired. No noise reduction or filtering was applied.

As for an upcoming release from Arrow, I have no knowledge of whether that's happening, but I would be very surprised. I myself have not been asked to participate and I highly doubt they have acquired the elements necessary to create both the Leone-approved Italian and US international cuts. The Leone estate holds their assets very close to the chest and it would require some very skillful negotiation to let them release elements without their supervision at every step of the process. I think that post was to foreshadow the announcement for The Good, the Bad and the Weird.

My sincere thanks to Jordan Krug and Benji Heran for supplying their source files, and to Devan Scott and Will Ross for their passionate research and connecting me to them.

[jtu128]

Originally Posted by BigBMaster

There are some misconceptions here regarding how the Kino Lorber 4K release came to be.

When KL originally assigned this project to my team, our instructions were to re-grade the 2014 4K master to match the color timing of the 2003 MGM restoration. That was it; no other work was requested. There were lots of issues with this approach from the offset. One was that the 2014 4K master that was supplied to us had an extreme and technically flawed yellow/teal grade done by L'Imaggine Ritrovata. The other was that the HD master based off the 2003 MGM restoration was also inaccurately timed. That grade was very desaturated, cold, with a bias towards blue/magenta, very typical of early 2000s MGM telecine transfers. They all looked similar in that regard. Even if it were an accurately color-timed transfer, matching the 2014 restoration to the 2003 timing would have been impossible because the grades could not have been more different in style and execution.

Without a good color reference in hand, I did some research and stumbled upon this article:

https://nationalpost.com/entertainme...-authorization

Once I established contact with Devan Scott and Will Ross, they were extremely generous to walk me through all their research, supply their fan-edit, and express their desire to see the international cut properly restored to its original edit, something that was nearly achieved with the Laserdisc release, even though that was slightly incomplete. It was missing one brief shot (12 frames) of the brick wall getting blown out by the cannonball, about 45 minutes into the feature. With their assistance, they introduced me to both Jordan Krug and Benji Heran.

Several years ago, Jordan purchased a 35mm IB tech print of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. With his own personal funds, he had the print transferred at 4K resolution to 10-bit DPX. His friend Benji, who owned copies of the 1990 and 1993 Laserdisc releases (the audio mix is identical on both releases), ripped the audio tracks then went through to sync the Laserdisc release to match the timing of the optical track on the IB tech print.

With a digital reference file of the IB tech print scan now in hand (it was only missing a couple of frames), along with captures of the 1990/1993 LD audio tracks, we were able to stitch together the footage from the extended cut to see what existed and what was missing. I reached out to Jordan and had him send over the missing frames electronically so we could conform, restore, and grade those into the master.

I had also asked Kino Lorber to request the restored, non-graded files from Ritrovata so we could re-grade the film from a clean source. According to Kino Lorber, after discussions with Ritrovata, those files were not properly archived, and we would have to proceed with corrections over the graded 2014 version.

Once I knew I had all the elements together to create an accurate edit of the international cut, I presented KL with my findings and emphasized how this was the edit audiences saw in the United States during its initial theatrical release, and one of only two cuts that Leone approved (the 2003 extended cut never being one of the two).

Kino Lorber was hesitant to move forward with this plan. It was not authorized by MGM, who unfortunately, do not hold any original film elements for TGTBATU. They only hold digital and tape masters. Eventually, the fate of the release was decided by a Facebook poll (KL's idea, not mine), and the poll was pretty much split down the middle. The theatrical international cut won out by a slim margin. When many ask, why not release both edits in 4K, it simply came down to cost to encode, author, and replicate a whole new set of 4K discs. KL thought it would adversely impact revenue, and that's why the theatrical international cut is the only cut presented on the disc. Side note: that UA logo at the head never existed on the prints, but KL insisted. Also, the original prints said "A Film by Alberto Grimaldi", but that had to replaced (and fairly so), as to not violate DGA rules.

In my brutally honest opinion, while the new grade on the 4K disc is the closest attempt to date to match the timing of the original prints, it is well known here that it has some warts that would have been improved upon with a new grade from the raw restored files. That being said, most of the grade is pretty damn close if not spot on accurate. For instance, there are no shots in the 4K release that are so "off" as to suggest they should have been timed to reflect a different time of day or different color temperature. The film's look is meant to reflect that of a golden afternoon, and that is well represented in the 4K release. If there is areas for improvement, it is improved color separation and shadow detail, both of which were hampered from working on top of the faulty 2014 Ritrovata grade.

The next attempt for a true restoration would be to acquire an original IB tech print and grade the new DI to match side by side. I must say that the likelihood of this happening anywhere outside of Italy is not good, but never say never.

The reason why the 5.1 track on the disc is an upmix of the Laserdisc mono was because that was really the only way to include a 5.1 track and have it be the international cut. Kino Lorber includes a 5.1 audio mix on all their 4K releases. It would have been historically inaccurate and faulty to edit the revisionist 5.1 track in where applicable, not to mention it would have been a complete headache that would have introduced a whole new list of problems. My recommendation to all viewers is to watch with the mono track, but if you insist on the 5.1, at least you're getting accurate sync, sound effects, and a slightly modified version of the mono mix. The LD mono mix itself required a little bit of audio restoration, as there were several drop-outs and distortion in the audio track that had to be repaired. No noise reduction or filtering was applied.

As for an upcoming release from Arrow, I have no knowledge of whether that's happening, but I would be very surprised. I myself have not been asked to participate and I highly doubt they have acquired the elements necessary to create both the Leone-approved Italian and US international cuts. The Leone estate holds their assets very close to the chest and it would require some very skillful negotiation to let them release elements without their supervision at every step of the process. I think that post was to foreshadow the announcement for The Good, the Bad and the Weird.

My sincere thanks to Jordan Krug and Benji Heran for supplying their source files, and to Devan Scott and Will Ross for their passionate research and connecting me to them.

I don’t recall which page, but there was a prior post from someone involved in the production of new special features for an upcoming Dollars Trilogy release. That, along with the Arrow post, has raised speculation of a new release.

[dallywhitty]

Yeah, I'm still confident that an Arrow release is coming. I think Arrow know there'd be riots in the streets if those Twitter posts alluded to a completely unrelated film.

[RegressiveScan]

Thank you jtu, for quoting the entire message immediately prior to yours. If you hadn’t done so, I would have had no idea what you were responding to!

[Hedrox]

Originally Posted by dallywhitty

Yeah, I'm still confident that an Arrow release is coming. I think Arrow know there'd be riots in the streets if those Twitter posts alluded to a completely unrelated film.

There would be backlash if they came out and admitted the tease was specifically for The Good, the Bad, the Weird and not the Dollars trilogy, but they don't really need to acknowledge anything. The can just leave people guessing as to whether that's happening or not.

I do think it's happening tho.

[Mierzwiak]

Originally Posted by Hedrox

I do think it's happening tho.

It better do happen, because if not then it was Trolling of the Decade.