TCFHE Press Release: The Man With No Name Trilogy (Blu-ray) (Re-Release) (1 Viewer)

[Steen DK]

I've not passed judgment on the transfer based on the caps because I feel that to do such a thing would be equivalent to judging the entire state of Michigan based only on Detroit

Yes, I'm sure that all the different people who did the grabs deliberately picked the yellow parts of the film and that the rest is fine. /sarcasm

I've seen it, it's all yellow.

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

Or should I say "Piss Yellow".

 

[haineshisway]

I'd love to see it, but amazon doesn't actually seem to have it - which is very off-putting and weird. I pre-ordered it several weeks ago and it still hasn't shipped.

 

[Brandon Conway]

I also canceled mine to save a few $$ in the short term (moving apartments ain't cheap), but I'll be curious to see what people in the know for these types of things like Mr. Harris will have to say. The cynical angle is that the Italian Restoration is a complete farce. The optimistic angle is that they are correct and it is supposed to be color timed with the yellow push. All previous US releases - theatrical or home video - seem to have been based on film prints made for the US market. But the Italian Restoration team claims to have original Italian Technicolor source prints (along with Assistant Cameraman Sergio Salvati's consultation) as the basis of their color timing. Due to the distribution arrangement in the 1960s with UA it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that the US distributor decided that Leone's coloring was not to their liking, with the result being the world getting the more natural color ever since. (Though I think it's pretty clear that most previous video editions are too blue).

 

[cineMANIAC]

My copy of the UK release of GBU arrived yesterday and I quickly skimmed through various parts of the film. Firstly, the film looks absolutely gorgeous. It will NEVER look better than it does here. Grain is intact, detail is much improved, and, yes, there is a slight yellow hue present throughout some of the film, mainly during events taking place outdoors in broad daylight (and mainly in the beginning) . But it's NOT a situation where the entire film in bathed in yellow. That's exactly what I was expecting after reading all the comments here and elsewhere but, no, this is not the abomination all the armchair critics and screencap aficionados are saying it is. If you're a fan of this film do yourself a favor and buy this re-release.

 

[David_B_K]

My order of the set from Fox is supposed to arrive today. Looking forward to it with trepidation.

 

[Jari K]

"But it's NOT a situation where the entire film in bathed in yellow."Interesting. And sadly it tells something about the hyberbole that is surrounding some of these transfers.

 

[FoxyMulder]

My copy of the UK release of GBU arrived yesterday and I quickly skimmed through various parts of the film. Firstly, the film looks absolutely gorgeous. It will NEVER look better than it does here. Grain is intact, detail is much improved, and, yes, there is a slight yellow hue present throughout some of the film, mainly during events taking place outdoors in broad daylight (and mainly in the beginning) . But it's NOT a situation where the entire film in bathed in yellow. That's exactly what I was expecting after reading all the comments here and elsewhere but, no, this is not the abomination all the armchair critics and screencap aficionados are saying it is. If you're a fan of this film do yourself a favor and buy this re-release.

Thank you for your post, i feel more confident in buying the release now.

 

[dpippel]

Twenty bucks @ Costco...

 

[Yorkshire]

Okay, I'm saving this film for a special viewing, so I haven't watched my copy in its entirety.

But I did put the disc in my player and stick it up on my calibrated projector, 2.8m wide screen.

To be honest, I almost stopped reading these threads for a while. In theory, what MGM and the restorers have done is right (consult original Italian prints and the only surviving cameraman), but in practice when I saw the comparisons they looked yellowy-green, and it was quite off-putting when seen next to the caps with bright blue skies.

So I almost simply stopped looking at the caps...but couldn't quite bring myself to do so.

Last night I put the disc in the player and skipped through to the first few seconds of each chapter. This way I thought I'd get to see a fair representation of the whole film, not just the start or finish, not jus the indoors or just the outdoors, a good mix of everything. I want to say, based on last night's viewing, that this is one of the most jaw-droppingly fantastic, gorgeous Blu-ray Discs that I own.

I was less bothered by the deficiencies of the original MGM Blu-ray than some, and found it quite adequate. But this is a Leone fan's wet dream. Detail, texture, depth, in spades.

Sorry, did someone mention a colour issue? I forgot. Skipping back, none of the images looked like those in the caps. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the caps aren't accurate, but when I've viewed them I've seen skies which are bright green/yellow when compared to the bright blue of the other releases. This didn't look like that at all. Quite possibly because I didn't have a side-by-side comparison, but the skies looked more like a muted grey-blue.

Even if the colour on this is inaccurate, I'd suggest you just forget about the colour and get lost in the fantastic presentation, because I now simply can't wait to watch this properly.

In short, I can only agree with cineMANIAC's comments (above).

One more thing, as I suspected, the grotto scene is contained (at least on the UK disc) in its own chapter. Don't like it? Just click >>¦ as soon as you see the hand holding out the cockerel. Please remember, whilst Leone apparently didn't want this scene, there's a lot cut from the theatrical version which he did want left in (pretty much everything else).

Steve W

 

[Ronald Epstein]

You know what? I have argued against judging a Blu-ray by screencaps
since day one.

...but driving that point home doesn't seem to do any good.

Sites will still benefit from showing viewers screencaps and those viewers
will scrutinize them to no end, establishing problems that don't exist.

I am happy to read about these real-world viewing experiences. Seems,
perhaps, we have been too hasty to judge this Blu-ray reissue.

I am going to wait for a Fox sale to get this set at $20 or less. I don't belong
to Costco.

 

[Steen DK]

My copy of the UK release of GBU arrived yesterday and I quickly skimmed through various parts of the film. Firstly, the film looks absolutely gorgeous. It will NEVER look better than it does here. Grain is intact, detail is much improved, and, yes, there is a slight yellow hue present throughout some of the film, mainly during events taking place outdoors in broad daylight (and mainly in the beginning) .

Or maybe your eyes just get used to it as time passes. Put on a pair of sun-glasses and you immediately notice that colours change, but after a few minutes you forget about it. It's the same thing here: The scenes at the end are just as yellow as the beginning.

This is Fellowship all over again, but of course there are still people who claim that that one wasn't green. And the usual choir of "screen caps are physically impossible to do and they have no relation to the data on the disc - none whatsoever" (half of whom probably think they're done with a camera).

Not to mention that if someone tells you something you don't want to hear, you go "Hmm, I'll trust it when I see it for myself", but if someone tell you what you want to hear, you go "I'm so glad to hear that! This really gives me comfort." Funny how that works.

 

[Yorkshire]

Or maybe your eyes just get used to it as time passes. Put on a pair of sun-glasses and you immediately notice that colours change, but after a few minutes you forget about it. It's the same thing here: The scenes at the end are just as yellow as the beginning.

You know, maybe so. But if that's correct, that diminishes the argument that this is 'wrong' in the first place. If what you're saying is true, then if a director decides to make a film particularly dark, light, green, megenta, whatever, but our brains ignore it after a few minutes, then it's probably a waste of time producing an accurate transfer in the first place!

Whatever the truth of the matter, I'll just come back to my own experience, and that was based on pressing Play, then hitting 'Next' to the first scene and watching it for 10 or 20 seconds, then hitting 'Next' again, and so on.

Some chapters I stayed with for longer than others.

But my view of the colour did not change from the first few seconds on scene 1 right through to the end. I did not 'get used' to anything, it stayed the same throughout the film.

If I'd put my laptop screen up against the projector screen it may have been that the colour was the same on both, but for me, watching the film without a comparison next to it, the yellow/golden/green tint was nothing like as pronounced as it looks on the sccreencaps I've seen.

Maybe the other versions are too blue, and this one is equally too yellow, so the yellowness on this is exagerated when compared to the 'too blue' versions.

I don't know. I just know that it looked bloody fantastic.

Just one more thing, I was wanting this to look perfect, but I was primed and ready for it to be a disaster, given the extremity of the screencaps.

Steve W

 

[Yorkshire]

You know what? I have argued against judging a Blu-ray by screencaps
since day one.

...but driving that point home doesn't seem to do any good.

Sites will still benefit from showing viewers screencaps and those viewers
will scrutinize them to no end, establishing problems that don't exist.

I am happy to read about these real-world viewing experiences. Seems,
perhaps, we have been too hasty to judge this Blu-ray reissue.

I am going to wait for a Fox sale to get this set at $20 or less. I don't belong
to Costco.

Ron, what I'm going to do is this. I'm going to try to take some caps from both old and new releases, then compare them on both my PC, and the same portion of the disc as a still on my projector, to see if something odd is going on.

Maybe capturing the still exagerates the colour, or maybe it's just the side-by-side comparison.

I need to work out in my own head why I was so disappointed by the caps and yet so thrilled with the real thing.

Steve W

 

[David_B_K]

I did some spot checks last night as well. It is certainly an improvement over the previous DNR'd version. However, I did find the movie a bit too yellow-green. It's not so much the skies as things like skin tones. The skies frequently have a sort of blown-out look rather than a green look. They are never pure blue, but at best sort of cerulean blue.If I get a chance to watch the whole thing this weekend, I will play around with some tint adjustment. Maybe this is what Leone intended. It's definitely much more detailed, and IMO better than the previous release.

 

[Jari K]

"Funny how that works."What about those people who are unhappy with the transfer, tell that to other people and then are kinda annoyed that not all people agree. It's also sometimes funny.Some people wrote that the transfer is "soaked with urine", but then other people say that some scenes have a slight yellow push - especially compared some earlier transfers. To me it sounds like I have to watch the film myself to know the whole truth. Well, at least my truth - I've no idea what is the original color scheme.

 

[FoxyMulder]

But I did put the disc in my player and stick it up on my calibrated projector, 2.8m wide screen.

Steve W

Just wondering something Steve,what did you use to calibrate your projector. ?

I always find screencaps to be accurate but only if the display you are viewing them on is also accurate and calibrated and most computer displays will not be and thus people will be seeing exaggerated yellows or some other problem, it's their display and not the screencaps that are the issue.

 

[cineMANIAC]

To expand on my comments earlier, I did a little color adjusting on my TV during the scenes that had the yellowish hue and, lo and behold, the colors looked "normal". I might do a bit more adjusting with the colors and brightness when I watch the film in it's entirety. That's all people need to do, really - play around with the colors a bit if the tint bothers you.

 

[Osato]

Twenty bucks @ Costco...

IMG_0500.JPG

Thanks!!!

 

[Yorkshire]

. To me it sounds like I have to watch the film myself to know the whole truth. Well, at least my truth - I've no idea what is the original color scheme.

I suppose that's all I have to offer.

It might be that in 5 minutes RAH publishes his A Few Words About... and trashes it.

I can only relate my own experiences - I was expecting it to be (at the very least) distractingly yellow, and it wasn't. To me.

Steve W