My Fair Lady SE?

Greg_M · 07-31-2003, 10:49 AM

Anyone know if Warner is planning to add "My Fair Lady" to their Two-Disc Special Edition sets (next year is the 40th anniversary?)The Film currently is on one DVD, not all extras from the Laserdisc are included and some have a lower bit conversion rate.

rutger_s · 07-31-2003, 11:04 AM

My Fair Lady now belongs to Paramount.

The title is part of the CBS library. The new VHS release is by Paramount and newer pressings of the DVD omit the Warner Brothers logos.

DaViD Boulet · 07-31-2003, 11:26 AM

While the current DVD was produced from a nicely restored print...the DVD itself seems to suffer from some severe MEPG artifacting at times (like GWWW). I think it could definitely stand to be redone given the improvements in compression we've seen on so many newer DVDs (even those made from older and/or more challenging source-material).

-dave

Eric Paddon · 07-31-2003, 03:15 PM

I agree. The DVD really only has the commentary track going for it, but I still use the old 30th anniversary LD boxed set for whenever I watch the film (not just because of more supplements but also I like being able to hear Audrey's vocals within the context of watching the whole film, courtesy of the analog tracks)

Peter Kline · 07-31-2003, 03:54 PM

Mr. Harris and Mr. Katz did the restoration (in the film domain I believe) for My Fair Lady.

**HTF Ads**

Joe Caps · 07-31-2003, 10:04 PM

I still wish we could get My Fair Lady with better sound. I have a broadcast from the late eighties off of Cinemax where CBS used a six channel master track that had all of the original surrounds encoded in it.
the restoration does not have the surrounds and has had a lot of whacko reverb added to every song. Not good.
Let the flaming begin!!

MatthewA · 08-01-2003, 01:27 AM

Is it perhaps possible that these masters may have been lost since then?

frank manrique · 08-01-2003, 04:11 AM

Any revision of MFL needs to address the dire situation with its "EE" (edge enhancement) content; too much of it on negates enjoyment of the otherwise awesome restoration work done by Harris and Katz.

Blown to a 12 foot wide image one becomes crossed-eyed, so heavy is the "ghosting" produced by EE. Utterly unwatchable. And to top it all, no directional Stereo tracking sound as with original 70mm showings either.

This classic deserves much better treatment...

-THTS

DaViD Boulet · 08-01-2003, 09:16 AM

Agreed Frank. Compression blocking, mosquito noise, and horrid ringing/ghosting from EE really mar the current DVD presentation. I was actually going to host a My-Fair-Lady viewing event with some friends on my buddy's FP but when I screened the DVD at that scale the digital artifacts were so horrendous I canceled and we picked another movie! I'm always perplexed when Harris seems to compliment the DVD...I'm sure that his restoration efforts are evident on the disc in many other aspects like color-timing and film-restoration but the digital/electronic artifacts on the DVD really get in the way. Hopefully now that Warner has come a long way on fixing these sorts of problems on their newer discs (just compare old/new DVD releases of many other titles like Fugitive, Amadeus, and Color Purple) there's hope here too.

We can *hope* for a properly rendered soundtrack mix, but for some reason Warner seems to take a special delight in altering source mixes for home-theater...and getting rid of all historic directional dialogue is first on their list. What gives?

-dave

Gordon McMurphy · 08-01-2003, 09:45 AM

Quote:

Hopefully now that Warner has come a long way on fixing these sorts of problems on their newer discs (just compare old/new DVD releases of many other titles like Fugitive, Amadeus, and Color Purple) there's hope here too.

As Rutger rightly points out, Paramout now own the rights to My Fair Lady.

But I wonder if they will create a new transfer and new DVD for it?

What movie did you show instead of My Fair Lady, Dave? How's the transfer for Pretty Woman?

Man, I hate that movie!

But don't tell my girlfriend - she'll do... I don't even wanna think about it!

Gordy

GlennH · 08-01-2003, 09:46 AM

Too bad about Paramount now owning it. Not that they are that bad or anything, but Warner's 2-disc SEs have set a high bar that I'm not sure Paramount would reach.

DaViD Boulet · 08-01-2003, 09:56 AM

Quote:

But I wonder if they will create a new transfer and new DVD for it?

Gordon, no new transfer is necessarily needed if the source transfer (film-digital) looks decent. What's probably the case is that the transfer looks decent but the digital compression and electronic processing done *after* that is what screwed everything up.

However, this transfer was done before Warner was in the habit of doing HD-res film-tape transfers, and 1080 24P -> DVD downconversion typically look much better than the standard-definition transfers from several years back...so a new transfer while maybe not necessary to get rid of some of the nasties that we see now, would probably improve things even further.

p.s. I think we ended up watching Moulin Rouge...