I love the diversity of opinions here. See, I love Brazil, Time Bandits and 12 Monkeys, could take or leave Baron Munchausen, and am not a fan of The Fisher King.
That being said, it's getting harder and harder all the time to resist upgrading to HD. I trust RAH's judgment on these titles; after all, he does have one of the best trained sets of eyes around here.
Was moving through the "12 Monkeys Archives" similarly 'uncontrollable' on the SE? You seemingly can only start it and watch--no pausing or otherwise controlling the speed of advance from one image to the next.
On this HD DVD, the first part of the movie is cropped until after the scene where Bruce Willis sits in a metal chair to go back into the past. Is this the way the actual film was made?
It was great seeing this film again for the first time in 10 years. I consider this film Gilliam's "masterpiece," and it certainly has not lost any of its impact after all these years.
Just great watching this film again!
That being said, I totally have to agree with Peter Bracke's assessment of the HD-DVD presentation in that it's really subpar. I don't think this is a film that was made to be shown off in HD. Picture quality varies tremendously from scene to scene. In some spots you see that terrific film quality that only HD can deliver. In other spots, the picture loses all its sharpness, becoming noticeably soft. Mostly, there's a lot of film grain to be seen throughout.
As Peter mentioned in his review, this transfer is certainly not bad by any means -- but it certainly doesn't gain much in its transformation to the high definition format.
Fortunately, the audio is the one thing that remains consistently good here -- and it's always great to hear the old man's voice channels calling to "Bob" from different corners of the room.
I spun the SD through several segs that caught my eye as looking problematic on the HD. I originally agreed with Bracke's comment that the HD looks like SD at times but now recant.
I think that maybe Gilliam suffered from constraints of the $29M budget? There are shots that do look soft, but I think it's open to debate that it's because of the transfer as opposed to this higher rez medium simply better revealing what's on that original film stock.
The odd, purplish lighting that's on the right side of Bruce's face when he's leaning forward from the backseat of Railly's Jeep Cherokee enthusiastically asking her to turn up the radio . . . that's on the SD, too--we can just see it better now in HD. Some of the two shots of Bruce and Railly in the car that looked like such obvious matte shots on the HD, what with some haloing around Bruce's chrome dome: is that the transfer, or HD revealing dated vifx tech on a "lower" budget pic?
Granted I'm watching on "just" a 34" but every scene that I thought looked like SD on the HD was still sharper and more detailed upon direct comparison.
I also loved this film, and while the HD release was far from a show piece, it was an enjoyable watch. I wonder if we are just expecting too much for many of the HD releases. Some movies just don't justify the cost and time involved in the preperation to produce a pristine copy. 12 Monkeys, while a very good film, is no The Searchers. While this is not an excuse for studios to deliver shoddy releases, Like DVD's, and for that matter, much the same for the LD releases, the average HD release will not be films you want to use to show off your theater.
or could it be that not every film was concieved to look like The Searchers?
Are people expecting the first Superman movie to look all clean, sharp and 3D as the recent Thing, just because they were produced fairly close to each other (4 years apart)? Should Superman look as brilliant as Blazing Saddles? I would have thought, especially here, that people would be more astute to realize that each film is using different film stock, different lighting styles, different lenses, and has elements that have been stored with varying degrees of care over the years... I look at standard def versions of these movies, and no matter how good the disc, I still see instability, vibration, and ringing (not haloing or EE) around fine details and especially in details in background shots. I look at the HD DVD and these qualities are gone and the details are solid and consistent.
Y'know I expected many of the pans and criticisms I read with these titles to have been slung on the Bd side- there it would have been no surprise at all since they are trying to piggyback the format on the enthusiasm of gamers who (I would assume) generally have little in the way of cinema history appreication. I'm really disappointed to see that same ignorance taking root with this format.
I couldn't agree with you more Scott. What people sometimes fail to recognize is that *any* home video presentation should attempt to, as closely as possible, reproduce the movie experience as it was intended by the filmmakers. With HD-DVD and Blu-ray the ability to do this is much better than it ever has been, BUT NOT ALL FILMS WILL LOOK THE SAME. More to the point, not all films will look like "The Searchers" or "Batman Begins" because they never were never meant to look that way. "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" is a perfect example of this. Many people criticized the HD-DVD when it was first released, saying that the transfer was "soft". The film was DESIGNED to look that way and the HD-DVD presented it wonderfully, but the complaints abounded.
Films are like paintings in many ways - each one is unique. All we can ask for is that they are reproduced as closely as possible to the original and as transparently as the available source elements allow.
I am currently watching 'Excalabur' and I am sure some will complain about the slight softness to the look of the release, even though I believe it was filmed this way.
I'm with you up until your second-to-last paragraph, Paul.
I don't think it's fair or accurate to say/intimate that the staff at Sony's High Definition DVD Center (http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/feat...twithsony.html) are adjusting/compromising their telecine efforts because another arm (Sony Computer Entertainment) of their parent company is bringing the PS3 to market.
It may be the case amongst, as you referenced, some arguably less cinemate segments of the intended BD consumer audience (namely gamers who aren't vidphile movie buffs) that those consumers have problematic expectations. But I think it's off the mark to imply/state that that "ignorance" is disproportionately found amongst cinemate BD (versus HD DVD) fans or the technicians creating BD titles.
that's what I was referring to- The demographic that the Fox rep triumphantly celebrates in the X-Men 3 press release. These are the kinds of viewers that I would expect would be disparaging in their reviews when a given title isn't free of grain, or doesn't 'pop' the way The Searchers or The Thing or Mission:Impossible III does. These are the kinds of viewers I would expect would have a very narrow definition of what HD reproduction should represent. Obviously there would be exceptions, but it doesn't seem far fetched to think they would be the minority. I expect to see this kind of nonsense on AVS (that sad tier thread that reduces a presentation to 'tier 3 or 4' just because it looks like it should and doesn't look like something it shouldn't), but here its very disconcerting.
And I'm really worried that studios are seeing these posts and thinking "geez, they don't like it when the film looks like it should...maybe we should institute a policy of digitally grading everything to better match what they want- plenty of 'pop' and a smooth picture".
Dougs painting analogy was completely apropos- some painters want you to see the brushstrokes or the texture of the support- it is intregal to the experience of the piece- however physical expressiveness, that dimensionality is mostly lost in reproductions. On the other hand there are artists that blend every transition, and whose work is so smooth that there is no trace of brush strokes or the supports texture, and it usually reproduces very well. Neither is wrong, and neither should be reproduced to look like the other.
I appreciate and understand your comments -- but we as consumers are at a disadvantage when it comes to sizing up the video quality of a particular release simply because we have no idea how the film originally looked when it came to transfer.
In my assessment of the picture quality (post #26) I never came out and blamed the studio for doing a bad transfer. I merely pointed out that the high definition format really adds little to this film's value.....
....and this is somewhat important to members of this forum who own the original standard DVD release. So many of us are concerned about double-dipping on titles. I appreciate the fact that there are those that come out and say, hey, this transfer really does not look that much better on the high definition format(s).
With the introduction of HD-DVD and BLU-RAY, we are now faced with decisions on what titles we want to repurchase. These are expensive decisions, and I for one appreciate it when someone says that perhaps I should save my money for something else.
Here's a prime example of what I'm talking about....
It's my understanding (and correct me if I am wrong) that Sony slapped a transfer of The Fifth Element on Blu-Ray without being able to secure a new print and restoration from its director. Now, was it wrong for many to come out and alert consumers that this film does not look any better on Blu-Ray than it did on DVD?
Sometimes we don't even know if a studio is just throwing an existing transfer on the HD formats or if any additional tweaking or restoration has been done.
Nobody is screaming or whining here about any studio doing a bad transfer. After all these years talking about film transfers, most all of us are aware that film stock, budget constraints, storage methods and artist's intent (among others) all are factors to consider when judging picture and audio quality.
To recap, my intent was to alert potential buyers that 12 Monkeys may not meet or exceed expectations of those looking to upgrade from their standard DVD.
I didn't see any aspect of this presentation last night that I would label sub-par. My criteria for sub-par would be -noticeably worse print used for the transfer -noticeable posterization -noticeable artifacting -aggressive aliasing/jaggies/moire -picture break-up among other things (coincidentally, the first three were qualities I noticed with the Fifth Element Bd- that is why I would easily label that disc as being sub-par) I honestly didn't see much in the way of intrusive or distracting film grain with 12 Monkeys. And while some scenes/shots were sharper and more finely resolved than some others, there was never anytime where I felt that the image was not superior to its standard definition counterpart for one reason or another. I was greatly impressed by the presentation of The Thing the other night. It was certainly an eye popper (no pun intended). If that's what your looking for, that's definitely a disc to grab. That said, I'm also very happy with 12 Monkeys (and Spartacus, and Dirty Dozen, and Fast Times, and Sky Captain, etc) and I look forward to upgrading more of my core collection with HD versions if they are all of this caliber. It concerns me that people are being warned to steer clear of excellant films, which have been given obviously high quality HD encodes and driven towards others simply because they do or don't deliver on a narrow thrill-ride perception of what HD should mean.
One of my concerns with these new HD formats is the fact that the studios want us to double-dip, and there are many of us that are willing to do so only if the HD presentation gives us something better over the original sDVD version.
I am happy that there are some of you that think that a movie like 12 Monkeys benefits from its HD presentation.
There are obviously others like myself and Peter Bracke who see too much inconsistency in the quality of the presentation.
My problem is that those of us that point out reasons NOT to double-dip on this title are quickly being conceived by others as being downright invalid complaints. I don't think any one of us not particularly happy with this DVD should be immediately labeled as someone who "does not appreciate what film or HD-DVD is all about." That's completely not the case here. All we are saying is that this title may not be worthy of an upgrade.....
....and quite frankly, I think the opinions on both sides (meaning yours and mine) are welcome on this forum -- especially to those individuals contemplating a purchase.
Interesting discussion. My $0.02 is that this disc is an accurate re-production of the way the actual film looks -- some scenes sharper than others -- in which case I say it is an "excellent" mastering job because it captures the original very well. (Now if we want to fault Gilliam and Pratt for not getting every shot the way we want, that's fine, but not really on topic.) Luckily, 12 Monkeys is enough of a cult film that it still gets shown in repertory theaters in some (mostly college) towns on a regular basis. I caught it in SF not too long ago. I recommend checking it out that way -- in a theater -- to see that this is not a sub-par mastering job, but an accurate reflection of the actual film.
Like I mentioned earlier in this thread...I had never seen this before. Based on alot of very positive recommendations from my trusted HTF members ....I pre-ordered it and it arrived last week.
Finally watched this on Monday. Wow. It was NOT what I was expecting. I need to see it again because I know I didn't catch everything. It was a film that had terrific meaning and yet sad too. Brad Pitt was indeed excellent as many of you stated. I've always felt Mr. Pitt is at his best in a supporting type role. Good stuff.
I really, really liked 12 Monkeys and glad I bought this one blindly. It's the first HD-DVD I've purchased without ever having seen it.
Regarding the image, no it didn't have the snap and sheer 3D look of Mission Impossible 3 or V for Vendetta. But...I thought it looked good. Truthfully, I was so caught up in the dang movie to care. Guess that's a pretty good compliment.
Strange, bizarre, thoughtful, meaningful, sad, and genious comes to mind. This weekend I plan on seeing it again.