MGM Press Release: BOND 50 (Blu-ray) (1 Viewer)

[Will*B]

Originally Posted by Osato /t/317593/mgm-press-release-bond-50-blu-ray/1440#post_4009704
Interesting review and comments about the video on The Living Daylights.

I don't understand all the positive comments for The Living Daylights on BD. I love the film very much (it was the first one I saw at the cinema, aged 8), but to me the transfer is terrible. Looks very video-ish, and not at all filmic. It's nowhere near as much of an improvement over the DVD than the earlier 4K titles.

It looks the same as Octopussy and A Vew To A Kill - bland, flat, vague, no detail and undersaturated.

I re-watched the OHMSS BD last night. Absolutely stunning picture, even though both audio options are unacceptable. I agree with you 100% - the 4K titles look infinitely better than the 2K ones. It's bizarre, but the general rule for the Bond 50 set seems to be the older the film, the better the picture.

 

[DVDvision]

OHMSS suffers from a too bright picture, especially in the Piz Gloria studio interiors shots. I agree they are all a step up from the DVDs, but these transfers are from 2005/2006. They are totally antiquated as far as Blu-ray goes. Those were all shots with glorious Panavision cameras, by top notch DPs. They should all look way better than the recent Terminator looks, and they don't.

 

[FoxyMulder]

Originally Posted by HDvision /t/317593/mgm-press-release-bond-50-blu-ray/1440#post_4009830
OHMSS suffers from a too bright picture,

Contrast boosting, it removes detail that should be seen and gives the illusion of a better image ( on televisions ) than it actually is, a good new 4K scan with minimal clean up would yield far more impressive results.

 

[brioni]

If you have time to read a review of someone watching through rose tinted glasses then look no further than here:
http://www.avforums.com/movies/Bond-50--Celebrating-Five-Decades-of-Bond-007-review_11061/blu-ray.html

 

[Osato]

Thanks for the posts and great discussion.
I'm watching FYEO right now. It looks very good, but again I do wonder how it would look with a 4K scan.
I wonder if all of the news about 4K and 8K coming if MGM and Fox decided to release the Bond 50 set with minor tweaks based on the prior UE DVD releases..
Maybe by the time Bond 24 is out they will be working on 4K or 8K transfers for the films at that time.
It's funny to think that Lowry still was unable to get the transfers right and that there are still audio issues on some of the films.
Overall I am still very happy with the set. However there's a part of me that thinks now they could look even better if better scanning was done.
Crazy.
It's also unfortunate that there is not a standard for restorations and remastering. Instead most of the time the projects are handled by how much studios are willing to spend rather then how to make the film look as good and as true as it should.
I don't think it was MGM's intention to skimp on the transfers and audio. They went all out in 2005 for all of this work, however we are seeing some of the downside now and also as mentioned in another post these transfers are 7+ years old and if they were done now a different approach may have been used.

 

[Osato]

So MGM must've limited Lowry on the scanning and really only the 4K ones were taken from the negative scans? Or were the other films (at 2K) scanned at a lower rate by Lowry?
Hmm.
Anyway...
Interesting comparison comments on TMWTGG which is a 2K scan..
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/8102/bond50_goldengun.html
The Video: Sizing Up the Picture
When MGM contracted Lowry Digital to remaster all of the Bond movies for the 2006 Ultimate Edition DVDs, the company was unfortunately not able to strike new 4k film scans for every title. Whether due to budget, resources or other pressures, many of the films were sourced from older high-def masters that Lowry attempted to clean up with dirt and scratch removal, grain management and other digital tweaking. The results of those efforts were hit-or-miss, depending on the quality of the existing masters. Some looked better than others. 'The Man with the Golden Gun' is one such title. The Blu-ray was not derived from a new 4k scan. Fortunately, despite this, the disc came out looking pretty good.
As he had for 'Live and Let Die', Guy Hamilton shot 'Golden Gun' at a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. This would be the last Bond picture composed for that narrower format. (Most are photographed for "scope" 2.35:1.) The Blu-ray's 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer is quite sharp and detailed. The picture is bright and vividly colorful, with good contrast and shadow detail.
As is common for the Lowry process, grain has been mostly dialed down without negatively affecting other picture detail. However, the image has a bit of a gritty texture, and isn't quite up to the same standard as the titles that received newer film scans. Dark scenes and shadows are distractingly noisy at times. Some edge ringing artifacts from artificial sharpening also occur every so often, but aren't too disastrous. If not perfect, this is a fairly nice-looking disc for the most part.

 

[Ray H]

Unfortunately, all of the titles from the 80s on look unspectacular but passable.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Originally Posted by Ray H /t/317593/mgm-press-release-bond-50-blu-ray/1440#post_4010570
Unfortunately, all of the titles from the 80s on look unspectacular but passable.

Living Daylights and License to Kill look great.

 

[Reed Grele]

Look what's parked at the used car lot at the end of my street:
I wonder if it's for sale?
Oddjob was nowhere to be seen.

 

[Charles Smith]

What's it still doing down there? By now you should have been posting pictures of it in your driveway!!

 

[Reed Grele]

What's it still doing down there?  By now you should have been posting pictures of it in your driveway!!     

Looking it all over, it needs quite a bit of restoration before I'd park it in my driveway. As it sits, might make a good planter though.

 

[Sam Favate]

Making my way through the set chronologically, this weekend I watched For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy on blu-ray, on the big screen (108"). FYEO I remember fondly, having seen it multiple times in the theater in 1981 and many times since. I haven't watched it since the initial blu-ray release in '08. It is every bit as good as I recall, and takes the #2 spot in my favorite Roger Moore movies (behind the Spy Who Loved Me). Octopussy I also remember fondly. When it came out in the summer of 1983, about two weeks after Return of the Jedi, I loved it, and had a hard time admitting I liked it better than ROTJ. I haven't watched Octopussy since the initial DVDs were released, around 1999-2000, so it's been a long time. My memories didn't hold up. While I still found it to be charming and exciting in places, it is clear that the series was now becoming a parody, with far too many winks at the audience and punchlines. (Between this, ROTJ and Superman III, I have to ask "WTF was going on in 1983?!?!) The sequence in India is one embarassing stereotype after another. I did enjoy the sequences in Berlin and those at the East-West crossing. The whole movie should have had more of those. General Orlov was a good character, who doesn't get much to do until the last quarter of the film. Nothing against Rita Coolidge, but using her for the title song wasn't very inspired. They should have recruited The Police, then at the top of their game. I thought the video on both films was very good, with FYEO looking better than Octopussy, which looked good, but just didn't scream out "Wow!" the way the early Bond films did. (I know, I know, films of very different eras.) Next, I will muddle through A View To A Kill - my least favorite until I saw Die Another Day - which I have not seen since the days of VHS, so it has easily been 20 years or more since i sat through that. Then, The Living Daylights, which, in 1987, was one of my all time favorite Bond movies. Let's see if it holds up.

 

[Bryan Tuck]

AVTAK was always one of my least favorites as well, but when I watched it again recently, I was pleasantly surprised. There are definitely some silly things in it, and Roger Moore (by his own admission) was really too old for the part by then, but overall it was a little better than I remembered.

 

[Mikey1969]

Despite some lapses in taste (some glaring) and some elements that don't really work, it still holds together quite well. This was my first. Bond film I watched in a theater so I've always had a soft spot for it.

 

[DVDvision]

Whiskas?

 

[Osato]

My mistake. The Moore commentary is still there. : )

 

[mikeyhitchfan]

Finally got to see the documentary Everything or Nothing in HD on Netflix streaming. Very well done! There were things I didn't know and a few things that were left out (like the 1967 Casino Royale), but overall a great overview of the series. It's also a MGM/Columbia produced film, so I must wonder again..WHY wasn't in included on the bonus disc of the Bond 50 box set?

 

[Sumnernor]

I found this on Amaz-UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00ANQXMG0/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE I notice that there are no sub-titles- May be if reissued elsewhere it will have them.

 

[Sam Favate]

Originally Posted by Sumnernor
I found this on Amaz-UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00ANQXMG0/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE
I notice that there are no sub-titles- May be if reissued elsewhere it will have them.

So far, no US release dates on the horizon. I would have thought it would coincide with the Skyfall disc, but that's not happening.
BTW, I recently watched The Living Daylights on blu from the box and was pleasantly surprised that it did, in fact, live up to how good I remembered it. The transfer was great, IMO.

 

[Worth]

Everything or Nothing is currently available in HD on Netflix streaming.