My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) - February 3, 2015

[filmmusic]

yeap, it's really dark as i remember it from theaters.

[Filmmaker]

Originally Posted by Firecrackker

Review is up. Not to hate but another mediocre review (the actual review, not the release). Sentence structure is horrible. Instead of ending a sentence, he just goes on and on adding commas everywhere.

Seriously! Was he drunk when he wrote this?! I had to read sentences two or three times to even piece together some sense of what was being prattled on about. Egads.

"The characters spring the movie to life with a passion for their cores and the values they bring to the table, with tangible shape and honesty even in their most dishonest dealings and manipulations."

Dafuq???

[Firecrackker]

Originally Posted by Filmmaker

Seriously! Was he drunk when he wrote this?! I had to read sentences two or three times to even piece together some sense of what was being prattled on about. Egads.

"The characters spring the movie to life with a passion for their cores and the values they bring to the table, with tangible shape and honesty even in their most dishonest dealings and manipulations."

Dafuq???

I don't think so. All of his reviews are like that. His bio says he has natural writing ability.. yeah no lol

[caztia]

Region free?

[tama]

Originally Posted by caztia

Region free?

Good question? I just received mine today and on the back where it shows regions it only has a Region A symbol. Interesting.

[mickeyLD]

Originally Posted by caztia

Region free?

No, I received it today and it's region A locked.
French canadian dub...

[tama]

So my Wife and Me watched it last night and I was curious that in the train station scene did anyone notice an awkward jump in frames right before the scene ended? It doesn't seem to skip out of sync but it looked kinda like a skip or jump. Has this always been there?

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by tama

So my Wife and Me watched it last night and I was curious that in the train station scene did anyone notice an awkward jump in frames right before the scene ended? It doesn't seem to skip out of sync but it looked kinda like a skip or jump. Has this always been there?

Yep, I noticed that too. It's when they're sitting on the big wooden benches in the station waiting room, just before they stand up and walk away at the end of the scene. I checked my old UK BD, which is a completely different transfer. It has that flaw too. It's clearly inherent in the film.

Blu-Ray is just letting us see these flaws in a way DVD never did. For example, in NOTTING HILL, multiple scenes seem to have been shot on a faulty camera. They clearly used two cameras and, for example, in the scene where Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts are sitting in his living room talking and Julia is sobbing, after the tabloid story has run, the angle on Hugh Grant is rock solid, but the angle on her has very subtle but noticeable vibration throughout. And this is present in other scenes too, like the "apricots" scene by the fridge. I checked my old DVD, and it was indeed there, but the low resolution had never let me really notice it. Only on BD did I notice it. One camera must have been faulty, causing the film in it to subtly vibrate as it went through.

[tama]

Ah ok. Thanks for the input and checking the DVD.

[James Luckard]

People might be interested in this thread. Looks like this BD is not alone in having an unnaturally dark transfer. FURY and THE INTERVIEW also suffer from this. All of them are Sony releases from the last couple of months. Something is SERIOUSLY wrong with quality control there. See this thread for some screen caps comparing the atrocious BDs with the UV versions, which are normal, for some reason:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=257809

Luckily this film is mostly very brightly lit, so it's not as bad as in those other two films, as the problem is mainly evident in shadowy or black portions of the image. Still, it's noticeable here when you compare the two versions. Here are some caps to show how dark MRFW is:

[Show spoiler]Proper UV version:


Crushed blacks in the BD version:


UV version:


BD version:


UV Version:


BD version:


UV version:


BD version:

Notice in particular how the bushes outside the tent at the wedding vanish completely in the darker BD transfer. And how his tuxedo turns into a huge black blob. I saw the film multiple times in theaters, and it NEVER looked this dark. And no previous version - VHS, DVD or even BD was this dark.

The same thing happens throughout THE INTERVIEW. Kim Jong Un wears a black costume, and it looks like a black puppeteer's suit, lol. These are cruddy BDs that need to be REPLACED ASAP.

[filmmusic]

If you know of any email we can send our concerns, let us know..
Now that I see the screenshots next to each other, the new Bluray looks awful!

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by filmmusic

I you know of any email we can send our concerns, let us know..
Now that I see the screenshots next to each other, the new Bluray looks awful!

I'm gonna call Sony tomorrow. I'll let you know what I hear.

More calls to Sony Home Video could not hurt, but PLEASE, make them constructive and polite. Stress that you know they have always had exceptionally high standards, and that this must be some mistake. The last thing anyone should do is be unpleasant or start complaining, that's the surest way to see that we're not taken seriously, and don't achieve our goal of replacement discs with new transfers.

[bookcase]

I think the BD looks great, personally.

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by bookcase

I think the BD looks great, personally.

We got a 4K scan from the original negative for MBFW, so 90% of it looks gorgeous, there's no argument there. Colors are rich and detail is stunning, as discussed earlier in the thread. The issue is very specific to the dark/shadowy areas of Sony BDs released in the last month or two, as detailed in the other linked thread. Since this film is almost entirely set in broad, well-lit daylight, it's a relatively minor issue here, but it's certainly present, as the caps show. Unfortunately THE INTERVIEW is set almost entirely at night, or in dimly lit interiors, so it makes that film almost pitch black and unwatchable on BD.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

People might be interested in this thread. Looks like this BD is not alone in having an unnaturally dark transfer. FURY and THE INTERVIEW also suffer from this. All of them are Sony releases from the last couple of months. Something is SERIOUSLY wrong with quality control there. See this thread for some screen caps comparing the atrocious BDs with the UV versions, which are normal, for some reason:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=257809

Luckily this film is mostly very brightly lit, so it's not as bad as in those other two films, as the problem is mainly evident in shadowy or black portions of the image. Still, it's noticeable here when you compare the two versions. Here are some caps to show how dark MRFW is:

[Show spoiler]Proper UV version:


Crushed blacks in the BD version:


UV version:


BD version:


UV Version:


BD version:


UV version:


BD version:

Notice in particular how the bushes outside the tent at the wedding vanish completely in the darker BD transfer. And how his tuxedo turns into a huge black blob. I saw the film multiple times in theaters, and it NEVER looked this dark. And no previous version - VHS, DVD or even BD was this dark.

The same thing happens throughout THE INTERVIEW. Kim Jong Un wears a black costume, and it looks like a black puppeteer's suit, lol. These are cruddy BDs that need to be REPLACED ASAP.

Please take proper pictures and not ones from Video Players.

Use AvsPmod with Avisynth.

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by Dion

Please take proper pictures and not ones from Video Players.

Use AvsPmod with Avisynth.

My caps of the UltraViolet version are meant simply to give a general idea of how unnaturally dark and devoid of detail the black/shadowy areas are on the new 4K scan BD. This is one of the numerous Sony titles released in the last month or so that have the "black crush" problem.

If you know how to make caps from UltraViolet files using the programs you mentioned, please do so, they'd be a welcome addition.

[kukushka]

can't see any detail improvement over old transfer, grain is next to non-existent now. maybe old transfer can be considered a bit too light, but this one is definitely too dark, i'm keeping the old one

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by kukushka

can't see any detail improvement over old transfer, grain is next to non-existent now. maybe old transfer can be considered a bit too light, but this one is definitely too dark, i'm keeping the old one

The new 4K transfer is definitely clearer. A lot of the missing fuzz is not grain but digital noise. That's what makes the black crush even more tragic, otherwise this is definitely a great disc with improved image quality. However the black crush is so distracting, at least to me, that it's moot.

[filmmusic]

So, no word from Sony, right?

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by filmmusic

So, no word from Sony, right?

Sadly, no. I keep meaning to call their 800 line and check in.

I contacted some people behind the scenes that I hoped could help with the more recent titles at least, but so far nothing has happened it seems.

Of course, if I remember right, it took me about a year to get FRANTIC corrected. I never expected this to get fixed overnight.