A Few Words About A few words about...™ My Cousin Rachel -- in Standard DVD (1 Viewer)

[JoHud]

I have been assured by Twilight Time's Nick Redman that this is simply not the case with The Left Hand of God. The film will be issued on standard definition DVD, but the master was not standard definition.

 

 

Thanks, at least this gives hope for a future blu-ray.

 

[Robert Harris]

Originally Posted by Thomas T



I apologize if you find my opinions distasteful and not serious, Mr. Harris. I certainly don't expect my opinions to be popular with everybody. Standard DVD doesn't look digitized to my eyes. There are a few of we heathens left including Susan Sarandon whose quote "Don't get me started on hi-def. I hate it. It makes movies look like video games" I've quoted here before. I'm genuinely sorry you have a difficult time tolerating such "heresy".

My blog link is automatic in just about every internet site I'm involved with. In fact, some automatically ask for your "home base" when you register. But your "below the belt" remark was cutting and I am suitably humbled.

http://http.//www,thecinemascopecat.blogspot.com

I don't for a moment believe that Susan would make a comment such as that regarding Blu-ray. Possibly she was viewing Patton or Gangs of New York.

 

[Citizen87645]

It also sounds like whoever made such a comment was likely referring to the frame interpolation feature or "soap opera effect" on many HD displays (and incorrectly lumping separate issues together).

 

[Bob Cashill]

Those who rely on pressed DVDs for studio-released catalog titles are being "left behind," however. Other than a few modest hand-offs to Twilight Time, etc., the market has migrated to MODs on DVD-Rs and superior-quality Blus (mostly of previously released titles on DVD), and into the dubious arms of streaming.

 

[Mark-P]

Despite the tangent this thread has taken, am I the only one who noticed that the title of the thread is: A few words about...™ My Cousin Rachel -- in Blu-ray when ironically it is a DVD-only release?

 

[Robert Crawford]

Originally Posted by Mark-P /t/314696/a-few-words-about-my-cousin-rachel-in-standard-dvd#post_3849881

 

[Thomas T]

I don't for a moment believe that Susan would make a comment such as that regarding Blu-ray.

 

LOL ... wow, first my comments are not worth taking seriously and now my word is being doubted. Well, here is a video link, Mr. Harris from an IMDb interview with Ms. Sarandon. It's short about 4 minutes but around the 2 minute mark, she makes the infamous comment. http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2698053913/

 

[Bob Cashill]

Unless I missed something it's a throwaway comment about HD (not Blu-ray) as she discusses THE CONFORMIST. She later goes on to praise the beautiful imagery that digital cameras can produce, which she thinks will democratize the film industry. Pretty thin evidence against Blu-ray. I'm sure if someone sat her down with the non-anamorphic DVDs of DEAD MAN WALKING, then showed her the Blu-ray, she'd be serving up drinks on the DVDs in no time. All I can say is, I went from doubter to convert, and I'm glad I did it now, when the equipment and BDs have come down in price. It's a great time to be a home video fan; trouble is the market is a lot more scatttered now.

 

[Thomas T]

Oh dear, I am getting so tired of this that I'm sorry I opened this can of worms. I really had no idea people were so sensitive on this issue. Throwaway comment or not, when using the Sarandon quote, I never used the term blu ray but always, as she did, hi-def. Blu ray is the standard for hi-def media in the home video format, is it not? Do you disagree with her comments on hi-def? Digital cameras can produce beautiful imagery but it's not automatic. Just having seen Soderbergh's Contagion this weekend which was shot digitally, it didn't have a "hi-def" look to it at all but rather a coarse, textured look to it (it may have been the lighting) that gave it a nice faux documentary look rather than a glossy Hollywood finish. "It's a great time to be a home video fan;" On that we can agree. It may be the last hurrah but what a hurrah it is!

 

[Mark-P]

Susan Sarandon's comment was that she hated HD (as in "shot in HD") because it didn't look like film. I have no doubt that she would love how Blu-ray can brilliantly reproduce all the nuances of the original film element. You quoted her comment totally out of context.

 

[Thomas T]

Susan Sarandon's comment was that she hated HD (as in "shot in HD") because it didn't look like film. I have no doubt that she would love how Blu-ray can brilliantly reproduce all the nuances of the original film element. You quoted her comment totally out of context.

"As in shot in HD"? Where do you get that? Sarandon didn't say "as in shot", that's something you're adding that she never said. As for quoting her out of context, any comment taken from an entire interview is always "taken out of context" unless the whole interview is published. But how much clearer can "I hate hi-def it makes everything look like football games or video games" be? I'm sorry she didn't elaborate more but the interview was to push the Wall Street sequel, not to discuss the state of home entertainment. Personally, I've never seen a film shot in hi-def that looked like a football game or video game (unless it was intended like Sarandon's own Speed Racer) but I have seen hi-def (I'm loath to use the "b" word lest more people get upset) DVDs that do. Hey, chalk it up to poor eyesight. Maybe I need new glasses and leave it at that. While I find no pleasure in HD home entertainment, I certainly have nothing against the concept for other people nor their attachment to it. God bless 'em each and every one. I just don't know why some take it so personally. It's not like I'm slurring your mother or sister! The attitude is that there is something wrong with me for not appreciating it as every good movie fan should. http://www.thecinemascopecat.blogspot.com

 

[Mark-P]

Thomas, allow me to put Ms. Sarandon's comments "in context" for the benefit of everybody else. Direct quote from interview: "The first film that I saw that really made me think films could be something different was Bertolucci’s Conformist, and I had I don’t think a very solid grasp on what that film was talking about politically, but I had never seen anything that looked like that, and there are images from that film that I still remember that made me think that, you know, film could actually be something that is so mysterious, this is why I hate HD by the way, because it’s so – it makes everything look like a football game or a video game, but I love the Italian sensibility and what they were doing at that period with film." It's very clear she is comparing the art of film versus movies shot in HD. You're misinterpreting her comments to mean that she doesn't like films transferred to an HD format, but that is not what she was talking about.

"As in shot in HD"? Where do you get that? Sarandon didn't say "as in shot", that's something you're adding that she never said....

 

[Thomas T]

And I ask you, Mark, have you ever seen a movie that looked like a football game or a video game? I haven't. If, as you interpret it, she is referring to cinema one can only wonder what films she has seen. I see my films at the Academy Of Motion Picture Sciences theater here in L.A. with state of the art projection and in the years I've gone there, I've never seen a film that looked like a football game or video game. Until Ms. Sarandon can clarify what she meant exactly I stand by my interpretation. Anyway, thank you for the non-hostile response. Anyway bringing it back to the subject at hand, My Cousin Rachel is a handsome B&W transfer, a wonderful Gothic romance with a solid De Havilland performance. I hope everyone checks it out.

 

[Brian McHale]

The attitude is that there is something wrong with me for not appreciating it as every good movie fan should.

I don't think it's so much that anyone is suggesting that there is anything wrong with you, just that there seems to be a misunderstanding of what HD can do for the presentation of a film. You made the statement that you thought Blu-ray looked "more digital" than DVD. Since both formats are digital, the question then would be why would the higher resolution format look more digital? And the answer is that it shouldn't, and in most cases won't. When you increase the resolution of a digital image, the image will actually look less digital. If you have seen a Blu-ray Disc that looked more digital than a DVD, I can guarantee you that the fault does not lie in the technology of Blu-ray. There was something about either that particular disc or the setup it was being viewed on. A properly made Blu-ray Disc of a film-based movie will always look more film-like than a DVD of the same film. It is just not possible for a DVD to give a more film-like presentation of a film than a Blu-ray, unless the Blu-ray isn't produced properly (or digitally scrubbed).

 

[Mark-P]

And I ask you, Mark, have you ever seen a movie that looked like a football game or a video game?

Indeed I have. "Looking like a football game" simply means that the image is razor-sharp HD video that is like looking through a window. There is nothing bad or wrong about it. Some directors such as George Lucas prefer the HD look over film. Steven Spielberg on the other hand prefers the look of celluloid.

 

[SeanAx]

I don't want to seem like I'm jumping the dogpile, Thomas, but the Blu-ray revelation came to me with the Criterion releases of The Seventh Seal and Last Year at Marienbad on Blu-ray. Criterion had their own learning curve when it came to Blu-ray, as the grain-storm on The Third Man attests (there indeed is a film that looks "more digital" in the way it turned film grain into digital grain), but they found the right alchemy in Seal and Marienbad, which were the first experiences I ever had where a home video screening looked like a film print being projected on my TV screen.


Not all Blu-ray releases are given that kind of care and attention, of course, but when it is correctly mastered and properly shown on an appropriate system, the best Blu-rays are the closest you can come to the film experience in your own home short of putting your own 35mm theater.