I don't know on what size of screen Gary Tooze watches his BDs but on my 2m wide screen TGTBTU looks like crap and I could hardly see any improvement over the DVD. I can deal with some DNR (I even defended Zulu) but I can't see anything positive in this release. There's absolutely no fine detail. It almost looks like an upconvert of the DVD with additional DNR applied and not true HD. It's BAD.
I can very much understand where you come from - Having had the pleasure to watch the Italian Blu-Ray of the first dollar movie it is very saddening to see what they have made out of TGTBTU. I still think that the Blu-Ray is the version to get if one HAS to watch the movie at home but I would recommend to rent now and wait for a better version to purchase the movie later.
Maybe to avoid being criticized by those who will feel robbed of having the choice to buy them separately? Witness some reactions here to The Matrix Trilogy and The Godfather Trilogy.
You are cracking me up there - and I mean that in a good way
Your post pretty much sums up the stance of a lot of people that have tried with so many words to voice their disappointment with this Blu-Ray and you brilliantly put it in just one short sentence
the second image seems more clear and shows slightly more detail, but it isn't Nite and day... so if the first Image is DVD and the Second the BluRay then the BD looks better but that goes without saying.
As a Techniscope film, there may not be much additional detail to get out of the elements, but if whatever fine detail there is is going to be mostly obscured by filtering/DNR, I'll be passing.
Pass. And would it have killed them to include the theatrical US version? I know the extended scenes were cut without Leone, but it's still valuable. (and it seems like having a soundalike for a dead actor isn't automatically preferable to having the scene cut)
The sound-alike was never the problem. In fact, his scenes are the least jarring and out of place. It's the voices of the 70-something Eastwood and Wallach emanating from their 30-something bodies that suddenly rip me out of the moment every time I try to watch this extended cut. Had the producers tried to digitally "youthen" their voices (as was done with great success on "Lawrence of Arabia") than maybe it could have worked. But really, they should have gone with all sound-alikes or just left the scenes alone.