Restored SPARTACUS OCT 6. (1 Viewer)

[Reed Grele]

Having seen RAH's restored Spartacus in 1991 at the Ziegfeld theater, NYC. I'm thrilled that the new BD transfer will be a high quality representation of that memorable experience on my 120" screen. It's been a long wait for perfection to arrive.

 

[moovtune]

Universal posted their Q2 report today. You may be interested in some of the on-going projects.

• Mastering & Restoration

- Completed 4k feature restoration project: Spartacus

- Continued to work on the 4k restorations of: “Animal Crackers”, “Cocoanuts”, “Duck Soup”, “Horse Feathers”, “Monkey Business”, My Man Godfrey” and “Shanghai Express”. These will be completed in Q3

- Began 4k restoration work on “Ghost of Frankenstein”, “Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman”, “House of Dracula”, “House of Frankenstein”, “Son of Frankenstein” and “The King of Jazz”. These will be completed in Q4

- Began 4k restoration work on silent features: “Last Warning”, “Oh Doctor” and “Outside the Law”. These will be completed near the end of 2015

- Began film element research and scan tests for the 4k restoration of “One Eyed Jacks”, Marlon Brando’s only directorial effort. This work is being partially funded by the Film Foundation

- Completed standard (non-restoration) feature re-mastering work on “Phantom Lady”. Also began standard re-mastering work on “Something for a Lonely Man”, “Winchester ‘73”, “Desperado Outlaw Wars” and “Desperado Badlands Justice”

 

[atfree]

Universal posted their Q2 report today. You may be interested in some of the on-going projects.

• Mastering & Restoration

- Completed 4k feature restoration project: Spartacus

- Continued to work on the 4k restorations of: “Animal Crackers”, “Cocoanuts”, “Duck Soup”, “Horse Feathers”, “Monkey Business”, My Man Godfrey” and “Shanghai Express”. These will be completed in Q3

- Began 4k restoration work on “Ghost of Frankenstein”, “Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman”, “House of Dracula”, “House of Frankenstein”, “Son of Frankenstein” and “The King of Jazz”. These will be completed in Q4

- Began 4k restoration work on silent features: “Last Warning”, “Oh Doctor” and “Outside the Law”. These will be completed near the end of 2015

- Began film element research and scan tests for the 4k restoration of “One Eyed Jacks”, Marlon Brando’s only directorial effort. This work is being partially funded by the Film Foundation

- Completed standard (non-restoration) feature re-mastering work on “Phantom Lady”. Also began standard re-mastering work on “Something for a Lonely Man”, “Winchester ‘73”, “Desperado Outlaw Wars” and “Desperado Badlands Justice”

Sounds like maybe a "Marx Brothers Collection" and a "Monsters Collection Part II" coming next year!

 

[Ronald Epstein]

James,


Great information. Hope you don't mind that I headline that in another post and credit you.

 

[John Hermes]

Universal posted their Q2 report today. You may be interested in some of the on-going projects.

• Mastering & Restoration

- Completed 4k feature restoration project: Spartacus

- Continued to work on the 4k restorations of: “Animal Crackers”, “Cocoanuts”, “Duck Soup”, “Horse Feathers”, “Monkey Business”, My Man Godfrey” and “Shanghai Express”. These will be completed in Q3

- Began 4k restoration work on “Ghost of Frankenstein”, “Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman”, “House of Dracula”, “House of Frankenstein”, “Son of Frankenstein” and “The King of Jazz”. These will be completed in Q4

- Began 4k restoration work on silent features: “Last Warning”, “Oh Doctor” and “Outside the Law”. These will be completed near the end of 2015

- Began film element research and scan tests for the 4k restoration of “One Eyed Jacks”, Marlon Brando’s only directorial effort. This work is being partially funded by the Film Foundation

- Completed standard (non-restoration) feature re-mastering work on “Phantom Lady”. Also began standard re-mastering work on “Something for a Lonely Man”, “Winchester ‘73”, “Desperado Outlaw Wars” and “Desperado Badlands Justice”

I wonder how Universal got involved with One-Eyed Jacks? Not that it matters, as long as it gets done right.

 

[AlexNH]

Interesting that Universal is releasing this and not outsourcing or licensing the title to Criterion. Is that a good sign or a bad sign?

 

[Worth]

There could still be a Criterion release. There are several titles that Universal has released concurrently with Criterion - Brazil, Dazed and Confused, Charade etc.

 

[Dr Griffin]

A 4K scan of Ghost of Frankenstein?! My brain cannot process that! I thought it was over for deeper catalog releases, let alone 4K scans. A 4K scan of Ghost of Frankenstein?!

 

[Douglas_H]

One-Eyed Jacks!!!!

Joy. Rapture.

No thread crap intended but this is as good as Spartacus to me.

I have(had) the HD-DVD of Spartacus and it is indeed sorry.


But why no 4k restoration for Winchester '73?!?!?!?

C'mon, that's as classic a western as there is.


Oh well I guess you have to take the great with the inexplicable

 

[FoxyMulder]

According to previous reports, this restoration is in fact a brand-new 4k image harvest from the original camera negatives...Universal is putting its full weight into getting this done right, apparently.

Great news, i hope when it comes to the actual disc encode part they do not include any "enhancements."

 

[Matt Hough]

I wonder how Universal got involved with One-Eyed Jacks? Not that it matters, as long as it gets done right.

That information is monumental for me. Thanks so much to all for sharing it and the other breaking news.

 

[Dr Griffin]

How long has the Spartacus DVD been back up for sale at Criterion? I guess I was out of the loop on this, thinking it was out of print. More possibility for a Blu-ray version from them?

 

[RMajidi]

Deleted (I hadn't seen dedicated HTF thread with link)

 

[Mike Boone]

Funny to me that Spartacus and King of Kings's elements are so far apart in terms of being problematic - the films were a year apart. And on previous pages I've now read all about heavy grain on this film so let me just say "heavy grain" and Spartacus is an oxymoron. In a large format film there is only the finest of grain - that was the POINT of large format.

A lot of the talk that incorrectly blamed Spartacus with having heavy grain was probably my fault for not properly describing the video mess that was Universal's HD-DVD release of the film. Earlier in this thread, I erroneously described what I see on that HD-DVD as having the "heaviest, thickest grain" of any of the discs in my collection.


But fortunately, OliverK corrected my botched description of what I was seeing, when he said: "It should be noted that the old HD-DVD had not so much grain but scanner noise in abundance - not the same thing."


So I regret that rather than adding any light to the conversation regarding the visual quality of Spartacus, I only contributed to confusion.

 

[trajan]

The titles on the SPARTACUS bluray always looked to me squeezed down in height from the 2:20 aspect ratio for the rest of the film. Can this be corrected?

 

[willyTass]

- Began film element research and scan tests for the 4k restoration of “One Eyed Jacks”, Marlon Brando’s only directorial effort. This work is being partially funded by the Film Foundation


Element research?
Wonder if that means they're on the hunt for all the trims from the original 4 hour version.

I just pray to god the original negatives are in good shape

 

[haineshisway]

Yes, don't know what they mean by element research as the elements have always been at Paramount - unless they mean the research to gather everything together under their own roof. Very good news, though.

 

[haineshisway]

Great news, i hope when it comes to the actual disc encode part they do not include any "enhancements."

Not sure what you mean by enhancements. When the transfer goes to authoring they don't enhance at that stage - the transfer is complete and finished and the only thing they do at authoring (what the wags call the "encode") is author - at that stage the only bad things that can happen have to do with bit rates and disc space - that's it.


Good to see you back here.

 

[OliverK]

Funny to me that Spartacus and King of Kings's elements are so far apart in terms of being problematic - the films were a year apart. And on previous pages I've now read all about heavy grain on this film so let me just say "heavy grain" and Spartacus is an oxymoron. In a large format film there is only the finest of grain - that was the POINT of large format.

I am going by what I have read about the restoration of Spartacus by RAH regarding the Spartacus elements. It did not look like a standard job to me but rather some heavy lifting while King of Kings apparently was more of a standard job.

With regard to how they looked when released I can only comment on two faded 70mm prints that I saw and King of Kings looked a little bit cleaner but this may have been due to it being a more heavily faded print. Spartacus still had more density and textures - there was more grain, but also more detail. And more grain still means very little grain compared to stadard 35mm, not a lot, not excessive or blocky. As you say that was one of the advantages of shooting large format - increased detail, light output, much better sound and reduced grain visibility.

 

[OliverK]

RAH has many times described how going from ECN 5248 to 5250 made a huge difference in long term stability. These two films were right at the cusp of the changeover. I think Spartacus was shot on the former. Mr. Harris has said that 1959 was probably the worst year for 5248 as well. Hopefully, with the original negative and modern tools at his disposal, this release will be a winner.

It would be very interesting to know the film stock used in these and other movies, too bad there is no database where we can look it up. Most western large format movies were shot on 5248, 5250 and 5251 but the succession between the three was in a 3 year timeframe which complicates things:
http://www.motion.kodak.com/motion/About/Chronology_Of_Film/1940-1959/index.htm
http://www.motion.kodak.com/motion/About/Chronology_Of_Film/1960-1979/index.htm