Fear and Desire 4K UHD (1952) - Page 3 - Blu-ray Forum

philthehip · 03-03-2024, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by callahan09

It's possible that this shouldn't be considered disrespecting his wishes. He did not want us to see the the shorter 61 minute cut that was unearthed in the 90s. Who's to say he didn't want us to see the full 70 minute original version that he made? But it didn't exist in his lifetime (after 1953).

Anyway, I quite liked the 70 minute cut. It was fascinating and much more interesting than the 61 minute cut, which is a rote and rather boring low-budget take on a standard war film. The more philosophical and metaphysical version that I watched on 4K UHD today was really, really interesting. A very entertaining and thought-provoking movie I thought!

Sidney's (Paul Mizursky's) descent into madness was much more fleshed out as well, and his performance more appreciated by me in this version.

The transfer looks amazing as well. It's not a perfect looking movie with signs of some amateurishness in the photography, some cheap equipment, some poorly stored elements, but the shots that looks great look AMAZING.

I watched the longer version on Friday and thought it was very decent, especially compared to the shorter version.

DarthMarino · 03-08-2024, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by twcc

I doubt it, the Kino-Lorber information clearly indicates a scan from an original 35-mm print, so I expect the 4K to feature the 12m 35s 'Kubrick' version NOT the expanded 'This is America' RKO version.

The good news is that it's the longer "This is America" version running a tad over 16 minutes. The bad news is that the audio sync is absolutely atrocious. Most of the time it doesn't matter since its mostly the narrator and music but every time they have punch sounds you hear them well before it happens. Often during the preceding shot.

I did a quick adjustment of 500ms and it lines up much better.

nicwood · 04-11-2024, 03:38 PM

This is the most comprehensive post I compiled since the Curzon Wim Wenders set, which still contains the worst BDs I’ve ever seen.
This time, it affects one of the worst UHDs I’ve ever seen. As with the above Wenders set, there may be worse transfers on both formats but the „worst“ I’m talking about refers to the assembly of a BD / UHD - the least amount of care, love and knowledge. Curzon dropped the ball on the BD format, KL on UHD.

And ironically, KL’s complete f*ck up affects the one filmmaker known for his utter perfectionism who famously said: „Either you care, or you don't. There's no in-between. And if you care, then go all of the way.“ Or maybe it was Kubrick’s ghost himself that „guided“ KL’s encoder to ruin his first feature as he unequivocally hated it throughout his lifetime. I think the quote nails this situation best. Had Kubrick or maybe even Leon Vitali been involved, Fear and Desire wouldn’t have looked like this.

In short, the new Fear and Desire edition is a disaster of an UHD with its crown jewel, the premiere version unseen since 1952, looking worse than two of the bonus features on this edition and worse than the BD version. In fact, the edited version that’s been available all these years looks slightly better than the premiere version, being encoded at almost twice the size on the BD-100 but still utterly horrible with severe macroblocking. Seldom has a BD-100 been this wasted in general. The film seldom looks like something that was sourced from an OCN, not due to lacking detail but simply inappropriate encoding.

The short films are also of varying quality. The one color film, The Seafarers also looks worse on UHD than the BD. There are significant differences in the color grade as seen in my screenshots and the 4K encoding is also laughably bad with the file sizes varying a mere 2 GB. The file size of the film on the 2012 BD is bigger than the UHD’s. Besides, the UHD has glaring chroma issues in HDR10 as seen in the caps. The BD also looks more detailed. A shame that the transfer on the 2012 BD isn’t better.

Day of the Fight and Flying Padre are both in black and white and may be the best-looking films in this cursed set. Again, ironically, Day of the Fight has so little image detail that the difference in 4K isn’t given to begin with and therefore the „stratospheric bitrate“ (quote DVDBeaver) encoding is meaningless. Flying Padre has shots that are sourced from the OCN. These look for the most part very good and appropriately detailed in 4K and a little less so on BD. Exactly how this ENTIRE set should have looked like.

I don’t think I need to mention that this set is a disgrace for the hardcore Kubrick fans this set is made for and a 10/10 display of embarrassment for Kino Lorber, THE quantity over quality label that goes all the way in restoring these classics only to ruin hard work at the most important step in the journey towards a finished release in order to save a few meaningless bucks.

Can’t wait for the KLI to reply that I should be grateful to have gotten a UHD in the first place. No thanks, I’d rather have nothing than garbage like this for my hard-earned money.

For all the films and formats, BDInfo report, graph, standalone caps and an attempt at comparisons. The 2012 BD is also included. Please note that it wasn’t always possible to perfectly matching frames due to differences in the framing, edits and obviously the two cuts.

-> See for yourself in the screenshot comparisons below. Select "Canvas: screen width" and "Fit into canvas" in the menu on the bottom of Slowpoke Pics until I solve the windowboxing issue. <-

Comparison of 2012 BD (edited cut only) vs. 2024 BD vs. UHD: https://slow.pics/c/T45h4TJc
Two BD / UHD caps of the Premiere cut that didn’t fit into the comparison: https://slow.pics/c/scJjjglq

The Seafarers 2012 BD vs. 2024 BD vs. UHD: https://slow.pics/c/AQhszlGn

Day of the Fight 2024 BD vs. UHD: https://slow.pics/c/lpojSvb5

Flying Padre 2024 BD vs. UHD: https://slow.pics/c/LeAVI6xv

nicwood · 04-11-2024, 03:44 PM

Fear and Desire BDInfo comparison Edited Cut

1. 2012 BD

[Show spoiler]

2. 2024 BD

[Show spoiler]

3. 2024 UHD

[Show spoiler]

Fear and Desire BDInfo comparison Premiere Cut

1. 2024 BD

[Show spoiler]

2. 2024 UHD

[Show spoiler]

nicwood · 04-11-2024, 03:54 PM

The Seafarers Short Film

1. 2012 BD

[Show spoiler]

2. 2024 BD

[Show spoiler]

3. 2024 UHD

[Show spoiler]

Day of the Fight Short Film

1. 2024 BD

[Show spoiler]

2. 2024 UHD

[Show spoiler]

Flying Padre Short Film

1. 2024 BD

[Show spoiler]

2. 2024 UHD

[Show spoiler]

sidetracked1 · 04-11-2024, 04:07 PM

Ugh. Depressing and frustrating, but thank you for what was clearly a ton of work. Sigh...

philthehip · 04-11-2024, 04:31 PM

I am not going to suggest any of you disregard what has been written above because 'nicwood' clearly knows more than I from a technical pov, but in motion I thought the presentation on the disc was fine, not especially great, but fine for the age and condition of the material. However, I feel that the extras should have been on a second disc but otherwise I am very happy with it in motion.

I am not at all technically gifted, I want to make that clear...

professorwho · 04-11-2024, 04:34 PM

A fantastic companion. I would’ve upscaled the BD shots for the Slow Pics comp, though, because then you avoid windowboxing (due to the resolution being kept the same), but even without it, the differences are very clear.

nicwood · 04-11-2024, 04:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by philthehip

I am not going to suggest any of you disregard what has been written above because 'nicwood' clearly knows more than I from a technical pov, but in motion I thought the presentation on the disc was fine, not especially great, but fine for the age and condition of the material. However, I feel that the extras should have been on a second disc but otherwise I am very happy with it in motion.

I am not at all technically gifted, I want to make that clear...

I'm happy that you think that the film looks fine, I wish I did as well in situations like this as we clearly don't get another UHD / remasters of the films. KL could have easily encoded the film as well as the bonus shorts on a BD-66 without any issues if they wanted to hire a skilful editor. They could have seamlessly breached the premiere and edited cuts together and had enough space for the shorts. Even more so on a BD-100 of course. For KL, it appears that even 200 GB wouldn't have been enough for a major improvement.

nicwood · 04-11-2024, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by professorwho

A fantastic companion. I would’ve upscaled the BD shots for the Slow Pics comp, though, because then you avoid windowboxing (due to the resolution being kept the same), but even without it, the differences are very clear.

Do you know a software I can do this with? I noticed the windowboxing issue as well. When selecting "Canvas: screen width" and "Fit into canvas" in the menu on the bottom of the page, everything looks as it should but this is definitely not perfect. I'll happily re-upload the comparisons with upscaled 1080p caps. I added a note to my initial post for the meantime

professorwho · 04-11-2024, 04:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nicwood

Do you know a software I can do this with? I noticed the windowboxing issue as well. When selecting "Canvas: screen width" and "Fit into canvas" in the menu on the bottom of the page, everything looks as it should but this is definitely not perfect. I'll happily re-upload the comparisons with upscaled 1080p caps. I added a note to my initial post for the meantime

The problem is trying to find a neutral upscaler which avoids “enhancing” the image. I remember using a website which had a pretty good one, but I can’t seem to find it again. What I did do was try a bunch of different websites until I found one which produced a quality image without enhancements, so if you’ve got the time, it might be worth trying that?

(What I’d usually do is take the screenshots and set the resolution to whatever I want, be it 1080p or 2160p in MPC-HC with MadVR, so that everything is uniform in a screenshot comparison)

sidetracked1 · 04-11-2024, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by philthehip

I am not going to suggest any of you disregard what has been written above because 'nicwood' clearly knows more than I from a technical pov, but in motion I thought the presentation on the disc was fine, not especially great, but fine for the age and condition of the material. However, I feel that the extras should have been on a second disc but otherwise I am very happy with it in motion.

I am not at all technically gifted, I want to make that clear...

I get it. Indeed, I just wrote the below in the Serpico thread when someone said they didn't notice the flaws being discussed:

There's no question the digital messiness is there - it's very clear in the still frames - but how much one notices/is bothered by it seems a very individual mix of one's set up and how much your brain/eyes are distracted by it.

What flaws one notices or doesn't - vision or sound - seems tremendously different from person to person, film to film, system to system, flaw type to flaw type (e.g. I'm much more quickly bothered and taken out of a film by heavy DNR than the type of encoding errors seen here). But of course that doesn't mean they're not present, or won't knock someone else out of enjoying the disc.

It's great that people on this site look with such clarity, knowledge and focus, and reveal real problems and issues. Someone needs to call out companies that are doing less than optimal work. Plus it's terrific to be forewarned before spending money on a release that has flaws... and yet...

Because it's hard to 'unsee' a problem once you know it's there, I'll admit to selfish moments of thinking 'ignorance is bliss'.

M A · 04-11-2024, 07:40 PM

I was looking at the caps for the shorter cut and thinking how terrible it was, then switched to the premiere cut which makes the shorter cut look fantastic by comparison

Sterling450 · 04-11-2024, 07:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nicwood

I'm happy that you think that the film looks fine, I wish I did as well in situations like this as we clearly don't get another UHD / remasters of the films. KL could have easily encoded the film as well as the bonus shorts on a BD-66 without any issues if they wanted to hire a skilful editor. They could have seamlessly breached the premiere and edited cuts together and had enough space for the shorts. Even more so on a BD-100 of course. For KL, it appears that even 200 GB wouldn't have been enough for a major improvement.

And this is why Eureka's Touch of Evil UHD is so great. Yes, it has "only" two BD-100s, not three as Kino's edition does, but it is so competently encoded, that it doesn't matter, hell, it looks drastically better than the US variant.

kristoffer · 04-11-2024, 08:57 PM

Guess I will get the UK BD instead...

Kyle15 · 04-11-2024, 09:56 PM

Positively horrendous. I forgot this was coming out, but I'll be waiting on another release provided it has the premiere cut. Just about adding Kino to my no-no list along with Severin. Yucko!

philthehip · 04-11-2024, 11:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sidetracked1

I get it. Indeed, I just wrote the below in the Serpico thread when someone said they didn't notice the flaws being discussed:

There's no question the digital messiness is there - it's very clear in the still frames - but how much one notices/is bothered by it seems a very individual mix of one's set up and how much your brain/eyes are distracted by it.

What flaws one notices or doesn't - vision or sound - seems tremendously different from person to person, film to film, system to system, flaw type to flaw type (e.g. I'm much more quickly bothered and taken out of a film by heavy DNR than the type of encoding errors seen here). But of course that doesn't mean they're not present, or won't knock someone else out of enjoying the disc.

It's great that people on this site look with such clarity, knowledge and focus, and reveal real problems and issues. Someone needs to call out companies that are doing less than optimal work. Plus it's terrific to be forewarned before spending money on a release that has flaws... and yet...

Because it's hard to 'unsee' a problem once you know it's there, I'll admit to selfish moments of thinking 'ignorance is bliss'.

The screencaps look hideous, what is worse is that the shorter cut looks good in comparison to the premiere. This is why i tend to ignore them, because as you say, "ignorance is bliss". If a UK label take this film on I will certainly be checking it out and hopefully upgrading.

As I said originally, I found it OK in motion, but note not brilliant.

Adam4Rizzel · 04-15-2024, 05:10 AM

Wow. The macro blocking on this disc is some of the worst I've ever seen. Step it up guys.

Shane Rollins · 04-15-2024, 11:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kyle15

Positively horrendous. I forgot this was coming out, but I'll be waiting on another release provided it has the premiere cut. Just about adding Kino to my no-no list along with Severin. Yucko!

Yeah, Kino is teetering on being back on the shitlist with me. They have a lot of great titles, and then they have a lot of great releases, and then at the same time they completely lay an egg on some other releases.

And KLI's customer service, where they're nice to people who like their discs and silent or rude to people who have a legitimate complaint is just wrong. It honestly reminds me of Shout's customer service, which still has me somewhat bitter towards them. I have yet to hear even one response from anyone inside the company about the whole Boogens fiasco. This is one of those cases where the silence speaks pretty loudly.

As for the FaD release, judging by the caps, it's not great, but it's not objectively awful either. Each disc has their own pluses and minuses, but neither is a solid disc throughout. Maybe it's elements issues, maybe it's bad encoding, maybe bad restoration work, maybe a combination of all those factors.

As ridiculous as this sounds, we need a 4K restoration of these films. Unfortunately, this was the 4K restoration of the films. Then again, ACO had three 4K restorations in 12 years, so third time's the charm on FaD perhaps???

Egbert Souse · 04-16-2024, 12:13 AM

Really surprised there's compression issues at all since three hours of Academy Ratio, monaural, and mostly B&W material should have plenty of room on a BD-100. Almost seems like the premiere cut was encoded with the wrong settings considering how the Blu-ray manages to have a healthy encode for both versions.

04-11-2024, 03:38 PM	#43
nicwood Blu-ray Samurai Member since:Apr 2018 Location:Germany Trading Score:2	This is the most comprehensive post I compiled since the Curzon Wim Wenders set, which still contains the worst BDs I’ve ever seen. This time, it affects one of the worst UHDs I’ve ever seen. As with the above Wenders set, there may be worse transfers on both formats but the „worst“ I’m talking about refers to the assembly of a BD / UHD - the least amount of care, love and knowledge. Curzon dropped the ball on the BD format, KL on UHD. And ironically, KL’s complete fck up affects the one filmmaker known for his utter perfectionism who famously said: „Either you care, or you don't. There's no in-between. And if you care, then go all of the way.“ Or maybe it was Kubrick’s ghost himself that „guided“ KL’s encoder to ruin his first feature as he unequivocally hated it throughout his lifetime. I think the quote nails this situation best. Had Kubrick or maybe even Leon Vitali been involved, Fear and Desire wouldn’t have looked like this. In short, the new Fear and Desire edition is a disaster of an UHD with its crown jewel, the premiere version unseen since 1952, looking worse than two of the bonus features on this edition and worse than the BD version. In fact, the edited version that’s been available all these years looks slightly better than the premiere version, being encoded at almost twice the size on the BD-100 but still utterly horrible with severe macroblocking. Seldom has a BD-100 been this wasted in general. The film seldom looks like something that was sourced from an OCN, not due to lacking detail but simply inappropriate encoding. The short films are also of varying quality. The one color film, The Seafarers also looks worse on UHD than the BD. There are significant differences in the color grade as seen in my screenshots and the 4K encoding is also laughably bad with the file sizes varying a mere 2 GB. The file size of the film on the 2012 BD is bigger than the UHD’s. Besides, the UHD has glaring chroma issues in HDR10 as seen in the caps. The BD also looks more detailed. A shame that the transfer on the 2012 BD isn’t better. Day of the Fight and Flying Padre are both in black and white and may be the best-looking films in this cursed set. Again, ironically, Day of the Fight has so little image detail that the difference in 4K isn’t given to begin with and therefore the „stratospheric bitrate“ (quote DVDBeaver) encoding is meaningless. Flying Padre has shots that are sourced from the OCN. These look for the most part very good and appropriately detailed in 4K and a little less so on BD. Exactly how this ENTIRE set should have looked like. I don’t think I need to mention that this set is a disgrace for the hardcore Kubrick fans this set is made for and a 10/10 display of embarrassment for Kino Lorber, THE quantity over quality label that goes all the way in restoring these classics only to ruin hard work at the most important step in the journey towards a finished release in order to save a few meaningless bucks. Can’t wait for the KLI to reply that I should be grateful to have gotten a UHD in the first place. No thanks, I’d rather have nothing than garbage like this for my hard-earned money. For all the films and formats, BDInfo report, graph, standalone caps and an attempt at comparisons. The 2012 BD is also included. Please note that it wasn’t always possible to perfectly matching frames due to differences in the framing, edits and obviously the two cuts. -> See for yourself in the screenshot comparisons below. Select "Canvas: screen width" and "Fit into canvas" in the menu on the bottom of Slowpoke Pics until I solve the windowboxing issue. <- Comparison of 2012 BD (edited cut only) vs. 2024 BD vs. UHD: https://slow.pics/c/T45h4TJc Two BD / UHD caps of the Premiere cut that didn’t fit into the comparison: https://slow.pics/c/scJjjglq The Seafarers 2012 BD vs. 2024 BD vs. UHD: https://slow.pics/c/AQhszlGn Day of the Fight 2024 BD vs. UHD: https://slow.pics/c/lpojSvb5 Flying Padre 2024 BD vs. UHD: https://slow.pics/c/LeAVI6xv Last edited by nicwood; 04-11-2024 at 04:43 PM. Reason: Corrected title of Flying Padre*

04-11-2024, 04:07 PM	#46
sidetracked1 Senior Member Member since:Nov 2013 Blu-ray reviews:1	Ugh. Depressing and frustrating, but thank you for what was clearly a ton of work. Sigh...

04-11-2024, 04:31 PM	#47
philthehip Special Member Top contributor Member since:Nov 2016 Location:Wirral, England 4K collection:226 Blu-ray collection:629 DVD collection:187 Blu-ray reviews:1	I am not going to suggest any of you disregard what has been written above because 'nicwood' clearly knows more than I from a technical pov, but in motion I thought the presentation on the disc was fine, not especially great, but fine for the age and condition of the material. However, I feel that the extras should have been on a second disc but otherwise I am very happy with it in motion. I am not at all technically gifted, I want to make that clear...

04-11-2024, 04:34 PM	#48
professorwho Blu-ray Champion Top contributor Member since:Apr 2017 4K collection:229 Blu-ray collection:982 Blu-ray reviews: 64 Trading Score:7	A fantastic companion. I would’ve upscaled the BD shots for the Slow Pics comp, though, because then you avoid windowboxing (due to the resolution being kept the same), but even without it, the differences are very clear.

04-11-2024, 07:40 PM	#53
M A Senior Member Member since:Jun 2021 4K collection:- Blu-ray collection:-	I was looking at the caps for the shorter cut and thinking how terrible it was, then switched to the premiere cut which makes the shorter cut look fantastic by comparison

04-11-2024, 08:57 PM	#55
kristoffer Blu-ray Ninja Member since:May 2010 Location:Denmark	Guess I will get the UK BD instead...

04-11-2024, 09:56 PM	#56
Kyle15 Blu-ray Duke Top contributor Member since:Jan 2011 Location:Alabama 4K collection:152 Blu-ray collection:394 DVD collection:8 Trading Score:5	Positively horrendous. I forgot this was coming out, but I'll be waiting on another release provided it has the premiere cut. Just about adding Kino to my no-no list along with Severin. Yucko!

04-15-2024, 05:10 AM	#58
Adam4Rizzel Expert Member Top contributor Member since:Dec 2011 Location:New York City 4K collection:156 Blu-ray collection:230 DVD collection:45 Digital collection:42 iTunes collection:251 Trading Score:9	Wow. The macro blocking on this disc is some of the worst I've ever seen. Step it up guys.

04-16-2024, 12:13 AM	#60
Egbert Souse Blu-ray Guru Top contributor Member since:Mar 2011 Location:Northern Virginia Home Theater Gallery:5 4K collection:309 Blu-ray collection:1871 DVD collection:182 Digital collection:3	Really surprised there's compression issues at all since three hours of Academy Ratio, monaural, and mostly B&W material should have plenty of room on a BD-100. Almost seems like the premiere cut was encoded with the wrong settings considering how the Blu-ray manages to have a healthy encode for both versions.

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