James Bond Ultimate Ed Framing Issues (1 Viewer)

[John H Ross]

Any chance a new master of Goldeneye could be struck prior to the US release date? It seems ridiculous that we know, several months in advance, that something REALLY bad is coming but that we're not able to do anything about it...

John

 

[Greg Black]

For anyone else who wants to see how bad GoldenEye looks ravaged in the new UE, have a look here:

http://www.bulletsnbabesdvd.com/foru...pic.php?t=2183

 

[dailW]

don't they use the PAL system and over here is NTSC so your going to see a slightly different picture.as for captioning maybe they want consistency throughout the series.

 

[John H Ross]

The PAL/NTSC has nothing to do with, and has no impact upon, framing. Only colour, resolution and speed. So no, you're not going to see a magically correctly-framed picture.

As for captions, it's got nothing to do with consistency (witness that one of the captions in TND has always been there while the others have always been player-generated, also that LALD are burned-in while Octopussy's are missing altogether, etc etc etc). Nope, they're just sloppy.

John

 

[John H Ross]

And now's the only (slight) chance you're gonna get to see it corrected, guys. HTF representatives? Anybody?

Isn't this what the forum is all about?

John

 

[Greg Black]

In the link I posted above, compare the R2 SE with the R2 UE. The R2 SE looks more or less identical to the R1, save for the player generated subtitles.

All the screens show a zoomed in frame, muted/changed colors, and a softer look.

 

[dailW]

thanks. i looked at the link. pardon my french but WTF!!framing issues aside the pictures dimly lit and muddy as hell.lowery does good work but their blacks need work.too dark.i mean this isn't the first time these films have been on video.i think fox would have done a better job.but then again from what i i've read in the past cbs/fox , had issues with james bond films in the 80's

 

[Daniel-M]

i hope they fix it for R1 and Blu-Ray

 

[Brandon Conway]

*Post removed by author*

 

[Anthony Hom]

Is there any chance these UE versions start with the original United Artists and United Artists - Transamerica logos instead of the new UA or MGM logos? I assume they won't.

 

[Gary Tooze]

I just compared FRWL on DVDBeaver

MGM - Region 1 - NTSC "From Russia With Love" vs. MGM (2-disc Ultimate Edition) - Region 2, 4 - PAL

NTSC - 1.78

 

[Tim Glover]

Dang, either way...she's HOT.

...

Tim, are you coming to bed now?

"yes, dear...just finishing a post on the HTF"

 

[Steve Christou]

Here are a couple of comparison shots from Goldfinger.

Top is the old Region 2 Special Edition - Bottom is the new Region 2 Ultimate Edition

 

[Greg Black]

Oh brother... The more comparisons I see, the more upset I am getting about these new "Ultimate" Editions.

For instance, why has everything that was blue in the SE transfers turned into a blue-green aqua color?

Octopussy & A View To A Kill:











Also, A View To A Kill is cropped in some areas, but not in others. Other aspects of the transfer are inconsistent as well.

A View To A Kill comparison:
http://www.bulletsnbabesdvd.com/foru...pic.php?t=2200

Octopussy:
http://www.bulletsnbabesdvd.com/foru...pic.php?t=2193

 

[Brandon Conway]

You know, in most cases, whether Ben-Hur, The Wizard of Oz, or A View to a Kill, it seems to me that old DVD transfers were more on the "blue" side.

 

[dailW]

goldfinger i think looks good but i'm getting confused what is the original color of these flicks.not skin color but the look of the film

 

[Greg Black]

I have noticed that as well, but in this case, it strikes me as being a deliberate change. I do wonder if something about today's encoders is affecting it. But I think the bluer shades are generally more pleasing to the eye.

And the new UE of GoldenEye looks more blue to me than the SE, which was more yellow/gold-ish. I much prefer the more golden hues of the SE.

 

[RichardCrowther]

You think those are bad, wait until you see what they've done to the opening sequence of OHMSS:



http://www.ohmss.ohmss-007.com/video...e_frames5.html

http://www.ohmss.ohmss-007.com/video...e_frames4.html



Ladies and gentlemen - it appears we've been wrong all these years - sunlight is, in fact, blue, especially when glinting off the ocean! Or could it just be a massive cock up? I know which choice I'm going for. The framing may be a tad more pleasing on the UE, but that blue "wash" has massacred what is probably the most beautifully shot sequence in the long history of the series. The subtle pinks and yellows of the dawn sun, as it crept across the sky, and reflected off the water, and sillhouetted the characters as they fought it out on the beach, has now been removed and replaced by, well, a mess, frankly.

You know that perfect, brilliant shot of the henchman has he grabs the anchor to attack Bond with, and is momentarily sillhouetted by the sun in the sky? Well, he's not now. He's just surrounded by a blue blob. It's as if whoever changed the colouring assumed it was supposed to be set at night, and thought "ooh, I'll give everything a blue hue instead". Appalling, depressing, and totally against everything the cinematographer (and John Glen, who, as second unit director, shot this sequence) wanted. Heck, even the commenatry bangs on about how they shot it at dawn, and tried ever so hard to get just the right amout of light and shade, etc., and it's now all for nothing. A disgrace.

Oh, and most of the gunshots during the end battle (most obviously, as Bond slides across the ice, firing as he goes) and again during the very final sequence, have been replaced by dull "thwumps" instead of incessant "rat-at-at-at" noises, as heard in the original. Irma now only pumps about seven bullets into Bond's car at the end, not the constant steam of bullets she fired in the mono mix. The effect looks to have been timed to the amount of times we see fire leaping from the muzzle of Irma's gun, so it looks like someone wasn't too keen on the original mix, and decided to tie the new sound into the visuals "a bit better".

 

[Tim RP]

Fat chance. Never happen. Which is a great pity.

I know one shouldn't hate but reading about the issues that are cropping up (ha ha ha) it does beg the question: why can't these idiots get it right?

 

[RichardCrowther]

Business is business, I suspect. If you've got so much budget, and so much time to do twenty films in, I dare say corners are cut to some degree somewhere, or things get left unchecked. After all, even technicians have to sleep and eat. Plus, we're all human, and mistakes do and can creep in.


However, that's just making excuses - more than one person must have worked on these films, and some faults are beyond understanding.

When such a fuss was made about the missing captions for Octopussy and Living Daylights in the original US pressings, why, several years later, are those same faults now transferred across the Atlantic and made once again on the PAL discs? Why was this not checked? Why was it not discovered? Why didn't someone who knows the films backwards not sit down and check each one from beginning to end? Were there no check discs? Isn't that pretty astonishing for such popular, high profile movies? This restoration has been going on for years, so it's not as if there wouldn't have been time to check twenty, two-hour films during that period.

Again, the missing mono tracks; that's not down to understandable human error - someone, somewhere, sat down and made a very deliberate decision not to include them.

Whether this was for disc space issues (which I doubt - a mono track takes up virtually no room at all), or because there simply wasn't the time/desire to clean up the mono tracks to a similar "standard" as the pictures, and so they were left until a later release, or whether it was simply down to the need to hold something back for the HD releases, to make them ever more desirable a purchase (at which point, we'll probably get still more deleted scenes, and better framing and colouring for those films affected this time round, not to mention that elusive trailer for OHMSS, once contained on the VHS release, but never on disc as of yet, which is about a minute longer than the DVD version, and contains footage unique to that trailer that never made it to the final cut of the film - a pretty important incluasion, wouldn't you say, given the lack of any other deleted material for this film), I don't know, but in any event, the term "Ultimate" is starting to have a hollow ring to it.


Some of these faults are sloppy (missing captions) and could have been easily rectified (just give us the original captions burnt-in, thus limiting the number of errors that can be made), some are completely incomprehensible (the cropping and colouring issues of Goldeneye and A View To A Kill), and some are, whilst very obviously made for a (doubtless, dubious) reason, quite simply unjustifiable (the loss of original sound mixes).


It's as if it became policy at some point to give with one hand (a complete cut of Licence To Kill, more extras), but to make sure that they took something away with the other, to ensure healthy sales of the HD versions in the future.