CBS to Rebroadcast I Love Lucy Christmas ep... Colorized (1 Viewer)

[mattCR]

http://tv.yahoo.com/blogs/tv-news/first-look---i-love-lucy--in-red-and-green--not-black-and-white--184135928.html

On Dec. 20, CBS will rebroadcast "The Christmas Episode" of "I Love Lucy," and that's big news. But here's the kicker: The episode has been colorized.

Surreal? Yes. Legend has it that when "The Christmas Episode" first aired in December of 1956, star Lucille Ball had mixed feelings about it. (See "The Lucy Book: A Complete Guide to Her Five Decades on Television" by Geoffrey Mark Fidelman for more details.) For whatever reason, the holiday episode was taken out of syndication, much to the chagrin of the iconic series' massive fan base. And now, it's back.

This, in some ways, mirrors my concern of turning non-3D films into 3D.. it defies part of what made the original work good.... plus, I thought this tide was turned back with Ted Turner a long time ago..

 

[Mark-P]

The Lucy Christmas Special was first re-broadcast in 1989. The wrap-around segments were colorized in 1990 for that year's broadcast. So unless CBS is airing it in high definition this year, this is hardly newsworthy.

 

[Stan]

I'm looking forward to it. Have never seen it.

Of course I'll be switching my TV to black & white, I don't care for the phony colorization process, just show the thing as originally filmed.

 

[Mark-P]

I'm looking forward to it. Have never seen it.

Of course I'll be switching my TV to black & white, I don't care for the phony colorization process, just show the thing as originally filmed.

It's included in the the I Love Lucy: Complete Sixth Season DVD release. The DVD has the complete episode in black & white. The colorized wrap-around segments are included as an extra. Ideally they should have used seamless branching to let you watch whichever version you wanted, but they didn't. On the DVD the only way to see the episode in its entirety is in black & white.

 

[JohnMor]

This is probably just going to essentially be a promo for the new dvd CBS just released that features 3 colorized episodes: this one, Lucy's Italian Movie and Lucy Goes to Scotland, which was already released on the complete series set. I did watch the Scotland one when I got the complete series, and though I dislike colorization, the technology has grown by leaps and bounds and it was technically well done. Might watch this just to see how it looks, since I won't be buying the dvd.

 

[mattCR]

My understanding was that prior they had done the wrap arounds, this time the entire presentation is colorized, so not the same.

 

[TonyD]

The Lucy Christmas Special was first re-broadcast in 1989. The wrap-around segments were colorized in 1990 for that year's broadcast. So unless CBS is airing it in high definition this year, this is hardly newsworthy.

Forgetting that it is colorized just knowing it will be aired at all is certainly newsworthy.

 

[Bob_S.]

Wow, Just saw that clip on yahoo. You're right John, the process has gotten alot better. I'm impressed with how Lucy looked. I'm definitely going to watch this. If coloriziation continues to improve I'm not against it AS LONG AS we have access to the orginal black and white version.

 

[Matt Hough]

CBS/Paramount included "Lucy Goes to Scotland" as an extra on their release of I Love Lucy - The Movie. Here's what I said about that episode in my review:

“Lucy Goes to Scotland” is a season five episode which has been colorized here based on extensive photographs and home movies taken during dress rehearsal to get the colors exactly as they appeared on the night of the filming. Though I am not a fan of colorization, I must admit the job here is as good and as natural-appearing as I’ve ever seen, the only telltale aspects of the process being a lack of shading on the faces of the actors (it’s obvious that the rouge blush on their faces has been ignored by the colorizers).

 

[Stan]

It's included in the the I Love Lucy: Complete Sixth Season DVD release. The DVD has the complete episode in black & white. The colorized wrap-around segments are included as an extra. Ideally they should have used seamless branching to let you watch whichever version you wanted, but they didn't. On the DVD the only way to see the episode in its entirety is in black & white.

Are there actually DVDs with seamless branching? I remember it being promoted as one of the great things about DVDs back in the late 90s but have never seen it used.

I own probably over 1,000 DVDs, countless rentals and have never come across one with seamless branching.