A Few Words About A few words about...™ Chinatown-- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[rich_d]

Chinatown is my favorite film. I saw it when it was released and it absolutely stunned me. I could talk about this film to the cows come home.
Sometimes I think there is a little bit of copier logic going on with films. What I mean is the more you REALLY need to use the copier the more likely it will fail. Seems to me that videos are sometimes that way for the movies we really care about. Maybe if I truly change my mind and don't care about Lawrence of Arabia on hi-def, it will get released tomorrow in a fantastic release.
Oh, by the way god of video, I really don't like Vertigo and Rear Window ... detest them, really I do.

 

[Rick Thompson]

Almost more remarkable than Cortez being replaced by Alonzo, is the fact that Phillip Lambro completed score (apparently the trailer makes liberal use of his music) was rejected by Robert Evans, and Jerry Goldsmith's now iconic score was written and recorded in 10 days!
Doug

According to Robert Towne (at least as quoted by William Goldman in "Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade"), Evans wasn't behind the score change. In a section on sneak previews, Goldman quotes Towne about Chinatown:
The first sneak? It did not go well. We had a horrendous score on the picture. By some guy Roman knew. It was dissonant, weird, scratchy. Roman was momentarily enamored of it. He said the score was perfect. He was going off to direct an operetta at Spoletto, when mercifully, he ran into a grand old gentleman named Bronislau Kaper, who won an Oscar for his score of Lili, and he said, "Roman, that score is killing your picture." Roman had great respect for him and he said, "Okay, we better get the score changed." Jerry Goldsmith came in and did that great score. I was on the set when Jerry spotted it, and it was at that time when you could see the movie come to life. It was like you couldn't see the movie with the other score, and now you could, and I thought, "Omigod, we may have a chance..."
To which Goldman says, "I love movie stories like that," adding that we should remember two things:
1. It's so hard to get a movie made.
2. It is so much harder to make a movie of quality.

 

[JoeDoakes]

Mr. Harris, I was wondering, if the transfer this blu uses is 5 to 6 years old, what kind of scan would they have done? How much difference is there between this blu ray and an upconverted dvd? Thank you.

 

[Robert Harris]

Originally Posted by JoeDoakes /t/319347/a-few-words-about-chinatown-in-blu-ray/60#post_3910625
Mr. Harris, I was wondering, if the transfer this blu uses is 5 to 6 years old, what kind of scan would they have done? How much difference is there between this blu ray and an upconverted dvd? Thank you.

The scan could have been from any number of different pieces of hardware. The difference between this Blu-ray and an up-convert?

Huge.

This is not a bad release. It just isn't either anything new or a great one. Could have looked like film.

RAH

 

[Patrick H.]

Another question for Mr. Harris or anyone who has the disc in-hand: Is the "restored mono" track actually correct here, or is it another 2.0 stereo downmix like the previous DVD? I'm curious because the Beaver review claims stereo again...

 

[Lord Dalek]

Tooze tends to label any 2.0 track "stereo" no matter if its real stereo or not. Its one of his many habits that annoys me to no end.

 

[Peter Neski]

well what a shame ,they(and You) did a wonderful job on The Godfather BRand I Thought they do things the right way with this classic
looks like there's nothing new here,the extras seem to be the same as the dvd set

 

[Matt Hough]

I watched this one this afternoon, and I thought it looked and sounded splendid. Not the least bit disapppointed. Maybe on a large FP setup there may be issues, but on my 58" plasma, I was delighted by what I was seeing.

What a masterpiece this movie is!

 

[Robert Harris]

Originally Posted by MattH. /t/319347/a-few-words-about-chinatown-in-blu-ray/60#post_3914031
I watched this one this afternoon, and I thought it looked and sounded splendid. Not the least bit disapppointed. Maybe on a large FP setup there may be issues, but on my 58" plasma, I was delighted by what I was seeing.

What a masterpiece this movie is!

Do not suggest an upgrade to a larger image. Chinatown looks fine. It just isn't either correct or film-like.

And it could have been.

RAH

 

[Robert Crawford]

Originally Posted by MattH. /t/319347/a-few-words-about-chinatown-in-blu-ray/60#post_3914031
I watched this one this afternoon, and I thought it looked and sounded splendid. Not the least bit disapppointed. Maybe on a large FP setup there may be issues, but on my 58" plasma, I was delighted by what I was seeing.

What a masterpiece this movie is!

It looked fine to me too, but it could've been better.






Crawdaddy

 

[haineshisway]

Finally watched it this afternoon. Of course the film is a masterpiece and absolute perfection in every department. I especially love that Mr. Polanski resisted what people back then usually did with period films - shot with haze and golden yellow as if that somehow denoted the past. The past, of course, was just as colorful as the present and Chinatown is one of the most perfect evocations of the LA of old ever. Much better than LA Confidential in that regard - that film wears its "period" settings on its sleeve. Everything in Chinatown is subtle in terms of location and settings - that is why it's brilliant - it just IS the period without calling attention to it.
As to the transfer, it looks perfectly okay for a transfer done several years ago. Had Paramount not gotten rid of Mr. Ron Smith and he'd overseen a fresh transfer, this could look amazing - but I think Paramount, like most majors, simply see the sales of classics and then see what they paid to restore them and it obviously is a lot more cost effective to just throw the older transfer onto Blu-ray. What this transfer is missing is texture - the texture of film. One of the last films to be printed in IB Tech, those prints had texture and density and were luminous. This thing gets the job done but boy I wish they'd gone back to the well.

 

[Felix Martinez]

Just saw it on my projection setup. It's a B class release of A+ material. Okay, but not great. And this film deserves great.
Will Paramount re-do this title properly for the film's 40th anniversary in a couple of years when they didn't see fit to do it right for the company's 100th? Given the state of catalog releases, doubtful. What a shame.

 

[Richard--W]

What a shame.

 

[RKR1970]

Chinatown is running at TCM Festival next week from a DCP and I assume it will be the same transfer as this blu-ray.

 

[ShellOilJunior]

I had a chance to view the blu-ray this past weekend and I think Mr.Harris nailed it in his review. The blu-ray is not spectacular but good/acceptable. I was more impressed with Paramount's handling of Breakfast at Tiffany's.

 

[haineshisway]

I had a chance to view the blu-ray this past weekend and I think Mr.Harris nailed it in his review. The blu-ray is not spectacular but good/acceptable. I was more impressed with Paramount's handling of Breakfast at Tiffany's.

You can't compare the two. Breakfast at Tiffany's was a new transfer and, from what I understand, supervised by Ron Smith, who was really good at his job. Since he's no longer there, it seems the powers that be would rather just put out what they have on the shelf - in this instance, the transfer used for the previous DVD release. It was a decent transfer considering the technology back then, but it needed a fresh transfer supervised by someone who knows the look of the film.

 

[ShellOilJunior]

You can't compare the two. Breakfast at Tiffany's was a new transfer and, from what I understand, supervised by Ron Smith, who was really good at his job. Since he's no longer there, it seems the powers that be would rather just put out what they have on the shelf - in this instance, the transfer used for the previous DVD release. It was a decent transfer considering the technology back then, but it needed a fresh transfer supervised by someone who knows the look of the film.

I'm comparing them in as much as the Tiffany's Blu is a tier above the Chinatown release (By my eyes and ears, at least).

 

[Brandon Conway]

Originally Posted by Felix Martinez /t/319347/a-few-words-about-chinatown-in-blu-ray/60#post_3914398
Just saw it on my projection setup. It's a B class release of A+ material. Okay, but not great. And this film deserves great.
Will Paramount re-do this title properly for the film's 40th anniversary in a couple of years when they didn't see fit to do it right for the company's 100th? Given the state of catalog releases, doubtful. What a shame.

The thing is - how often can studios be expected to do new HD transfers of their films? Every year? Every 2 years? Every 4? Every 6? There's only so much they can budget for these releases. That's just the reality of the home video market. If this was done within the last 4-5 years - essentially the Blu-ray era - I really can't blame them THAT much for not doing it again.

 

[Robert Harris]

Originally Posted by Brandon Conway /t/319347/a-few-words-about-chinatown-in-blu-ray/60#post_3914772
The thing is - how often can studios be expected to do new HD transfers of their films? Every year? Every 2 years? Every 4? Every 6? There's only so much they can budget for these releases. That's just the reality of the home video market. If this was done within the last 4-5 years - essentially the Blu-ray era - I really can't blame them THAT much for not doing it again.

This really is not about HD transfers.

Chinatown is an important film, with extremely high IP value to the studio. It also needed to be properly archived, now that 4k technology is available.

The release of an important Blu-ray is a rationale toward proper preservation of assets. The HD master portion of that program is in the range of 35k or less. It should be a down-rez of that archival strategy, which is apparently not yet in place.

The need for the HD master should be the linch-pin toward proper preservation.

Let me see if I can crystalize this a bit.

While certain Blu-ray releases of less than A list titles (outside of new product) might be sourced from older transfers, it should be part of the overall release plan for important films to use that Blu-ray release as the jumping off point for proper archival preservation, and restoration, if necessary.

We now have the technology to harvest information from original elements, that should allow us to never again go back to those originals.

Do the work once, get it right, produce a stellar Blu-ray, and move on.

It couldn't be more simple, and it's less expensive in the long run that re-visiting, unless the concept is to have the public double and triple dip.

RAH

 

[haineshisway]

I'm comparing them in as much as the Tiffany's Blu is a tier above the Chinatown release (By my eyes and ears, at least).

It's in a whole different universe for the reasons that I stated. It's not really a fair comparison, but I do take your point