Stooges released colorized (1 Viewer)

[Zack_H]

Re: Kurt & Rob

I know full well comparing remastered audio cds to the colorized versions of the stooges is apples & oranges. If you reread my post, I was referring to the restored black & whites. One of the big complaints I see on this thread, is the rerelease of some shorts that were previously available. I was making the point that its the same as buying the 24-bit rematered dark side of the moon which is also previously available. Thats not considered double dipping is it?

Re: Brian

As much as I love the stooges, do you think we really need superbit versions?

On the other hand, they didnt even fill up the discs. The discs I believe, have about 5-6gb of data whereas a full dual layer disc can hold 8.3gb. They easily could have fit another episode or two.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Zack,

My apologies for misreading your post. When you put it that way, then YES, restored B&W versions of the Stooges are comparable to remastered (but not remixed) CDs.


No DTS = No sale!

 

[Philip Brandes]

There's an interesting article about this in the September Stereophile Ultimate AV, which makes the following points:

1. This is an entirely-new colorization process, not the Turner-funded paint-by numbers monstrosity of the past. Not only is the technology superior, but a lot of historical research went into furniture and fabrics of the film's time to get the hues as appropriate as possible.

2. The ChromaChoice folks are absolutely committed to providing painstakingly restored b&w versions with every title they work on.

3. The process offers a financial inducement to studios to restore films that would otherwise never been restored.

Do you think Columbia TriStar would ever have gone to the trouble of restoring those shoddy black & white Stooges shorts if it weren't for this process?

Rather than approaching this as a question of dogma, it might be more productive to approach it as one of pragmatism: if the colorization effort gets us superior restorations in black and white of films that would otherwise have languished in lousy transfers, who's the loser here? Purists get a much better b&w version, and a new improved colorization process is just icing. IMO, it's silly to argue whether this is a matter of absolute right and wrong.

Cheers,
Philip Brandes

 

[Rob Gardiner]

My point exactly.

 

[Kevin M]

I have seen some of what these new colorisation studios claim as being a "new improved" prosess and it still looks unnatural, basically appearing as flat watercolor over the original image. Yes it has less bleeding of colors that the older processes had but still extremely artificial looking to my eyes at least.

 

[Rob W]

I think the term 'restoration' is again being misused . Can anyone confirm that there is more than just a digital clean-up of the films being done and true restoration of film elements has been performed ?

I suspect they haven't , but would love to be proven wrong.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

I believe this is a "video restoration" rather than a "film restoration". Am I misusing the term "restoration" when qualifying it like this?

 

[Rob W]

It appears that the R-word has been incorrectly used by the folks promoting these new releases and I did not mean to point out any single individual. Robert Harris has often ( and politely) pointed out the differences between a genuine restoration ( involving film ) and a video clean-up.

Using both words together, as in 'video restoration' makes the meaning clear to me. I just want to point out that the "benefits" of the colorization are not nearly as justified if there is no real work being done to preserve the original elements, as has been implied.

 

[Will Krupp]

I hate to sound cynical, but I'm old enough to remember how the old colorization process touted its historical accuracy by correctly determining the exact shade of a 1937 New York Cab (Topper) and the exact shade of a 1947 Macy's Santa Suit. It still looked like garbage.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Rob W,

Isn't video restoration much more common than film restoration in any case? Isn't that what the fine folks a Lowry do?

I'm curious to know if these were transferred from film to HD, and the restoration done on the HD copies. If that's the case, then the next generation of video software will benefit from the work done on these. Given C/TS's tendency to do HD transfers, I would suspect this is the case, but as always, I eagerly await any hard info.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

There was some discussion about this over at the Doctor Who Technical Forum - the discussion arose because some of the episodes with Jon Pertwee were filmed in colour, but the colour versions have been lost, so there is general interest in whether colourisation is economically viable to restore these episodes.

Anyway,

Someone proposed the possibility of colourising the stories with the first two Doctors, Hartnell and Troughton. These were filmed in B&W, but the person expressed curiosity about seeing the stories in colour. He, as with some in this forum, was very insistent on the importance of choice. As long as people can choose to watch the originals, why not? My answer: (Please note that some of my comments are applicable to this disc, some relate more to Doctor Who releases.)


Hope this comment interests people.

 

[Douglas R]

No one seems to have mentioned that the featurette about the colorization process which accompanies these DVDs states that Columbia's next colorized title will be THE WAR LOVER. The color extracts of the film are actually very impressive, far better than the old process, and rather better, it seemed to me, than the Three Stooges. Columbia will include the remastered black and white version of the film on the DVD but of course the danger is that it may be only a matter of time before they decide to only issue the colorized version - in the same way that some studios start dropping the extras for subsequent releases.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

Since they have to clean up the black and white to make a colorized version, it doesn't really cost any extra to include the restored B&W versions.