A few words about...™ Gangs of New York -- in Blu-ray

Robert Harris · 06-20-2008, 07:04 PM

Gangs of New York, a masterful film by Martin Scorsese, was my Best Picture of 2002.

I was thrilled to add the Miramax DVD to my library until I viewed it, and found that, much like their Cold Mountain, it was one of the worst looking standard definition DVDs of a recent important production.

I have not viewed it since.

With knowledge there comes a higher level of home theater software.

And so it was a thrill when Gangs of New York in Blu-ray finally arrived, replacing something that to my eyes was all but unviewable.

Gangs of New York on Blu is something that looks quite different from anything else that I've seen, and I admit to being a bit confused by what my eyes are telling me.

As a Super 35 production, the original prints had a visible layer of beautiful grain, and a full range of color, from black to white with all shades in between. 35mm prints were just gorgeous.

Gangs on Blu has some things in common with its standard definition counterpart.

It appears that there is an attempt to reduce the grain, and then sharpen the resultant image, creating a soft, occasionally disturbingly grainy image fully textured with the sharpening of electronic enhancement, and with high contrast lines around virtually everything.

White fade to nothingness, and there is no apparent shadow detail.

Make no mistake. This is a Blu-ray that yields an image that is fully electronic.

Like Patton, Gangs of New York is the new poster child for precisely what NOT to do with the Blu-ray software system.

An extraordinary film in every way.

I assure you that it gives me no pleasure to report that it is Extremely Highly NOT Recommended.

I would suggest a re-call, starting out fresh with a new piece of film for scanning in order to give Mr. Ballhaus' cinematography another chance.

I am appending to this post, after having taken another look at the disc.

I must believe that there were old and new masters, with something going horribly wrong, and an incorrect and unapproved master being shipped in error.

RAH

Dave Mack · 06-20-2008, 07:07 PM

Sorry to hear this. Thanks for the heads-up. I had a feeling this might be the case as they might have simply used the old master since everything else seems identical to the previous 2 disc release. I actually bought the PAL version as well because (while still not perfect), it looked better than the R1 NTSC version with noticeably less EE.

Gangs of New York R1 vs R2 in Editorial > Articles at DVDActive Look at the "M" in Miramax to see how bad the EE and ringing were in the old DVD.

A shame. I really like the film as well and it deserves better. I saw it opening weekend in NYC and it looked wonderful.

Ivy Mike · 06-20-2008, 07:30 PM

As always, great to hear from RAH about a new release. Sad to hear about the quality on this one though.

This has me terrified for what could happen to the Minghella releases (Cold Mtn and English Patient specifically) should they make it to Blu in the near future, but in fairness I don't want to speculate on future "what ifs..." But this release doesn't sound like it's setting a great track record.

Robert Harris · 06-20-2008, 07:50 PM

Deleted. Redundant.

Dave H · 06-20-2008, 08:06 PM

Robert,

Your comments are appreciated.

It's quite puzzling and shameful what these studios are doing. I thought with the studios supporting high definition/Blu-ray it would change the problems they created with SD DVD, but I was wrong.

**HTF Ads**

Robert Harris · 06-20-2008, 08:15 PM

There have been situations in the past where the wrong master was pulled or shipped.

I'm hoping this to be the case.

Many of Disney's Blu discs have previously been of high quality.

Something is very wrong here.

RAH

TonyD · 06-20-2008, 08:42 PM

thats too bad.
i was looking forward to burning my sd dvd and having this one instead.

Paul Arnette · 06-20-2008, 09:31 PM

Oh, no. I have this on pre-order, and it looks like I will be canceling it tomorrow. I too am very disappointed to hear this, as I was looking forward to watching this film for the first time.

Incidentally, does anyone else feel like it isn't safe to pre-order anything anymore?

TravisR · 06-20-2008, 09:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Harris

Many of Disney's Blu discs have previously been of high quality.

Yeah, I think the best looking Blu Ray discs that I own are Disney releases so this is very dissapointing. Hopefully, Disney will get the message and correct this disc. Fortunately, Disney is better than probably every other studio when it comes to issuing corrected discs.