New Line Cinema appreciation (1 Viewer)

I was going through all my old DVDs recently, checking how well some of the older ones hold up to the current releases transfer and sound wise.
After comparing a lot of old ones I realized something...New Line a few years ago put out better product than most other studios have in their entire run. The transfer on the original Blade was mindblowing. Great level of detail, black levels dead on...just a gorgeous transfer...and all the way back from 98.
Another one that shocked me was Dark City. Being a single layer release back from Aug 98 I was a little paranoid of the quality. Once again...was shocked to see one of the best transfers I have ever seen, and again on an older New Line release. The black levels in this were amazing, and the Dolby mix was fantastic.
I recommend some people go back and take a gander at some of the older new line stuff like these. I was just wanted to test the older discs on my widescreen and got a pleasant surprise. next up is Pleasantville.

So a HUGE thank you to New Line for a job well done on even the older releases and the current ones as well. Most studios can learn a thing or two from you.

Yea,Ive always said New Line put out the best DVDs.

They need to get rid of the snapper though.

They're re-packaged most of their titles into keep cases, I think.
Or maybe that's just Alliance Atlantis...

Considering "Bed of Roses" (Christian Slater & Mary Stuart Masterson) was released July of '99, it looks great, it's anamorphic, DD 5.1, music video and trailer. Not bad for a movie that I thought would go the route of Letterboxing and bare bones.

Dancer In The Dark was "filmed" with a MiniDV camera with a modified 2.35:1 scope lens attached. That's likely why the transfer looks bad.


As for New Line...I only have one of their DVDs (The Fellowship of the Ring: 2-disc) with the 4-disc FOTR coming soon (I'll buy it next time I can)...top-notch quality.

New Line's always been my favorite studio. THe first disc I bought was the original Blade the day after Christmas in 1998. I mean think about it, they've NEVER pissed us off about widescreen, they consistently put out great transfers, they at least put a few extras even on the box office bombs, and it took a lot of guts to spend 300 million dollars on a film trilogy (I mean it was going to do great but you never knew back then). Plus they listened to customer feedback and they are getting rid of their snapper cases.

New Line set the standard, if only more studios could be more like them.

It's so sad that they are so new compared to the other studio's, but still beat them in the DVD quality.

I have yet to find something about them to complain about, other than the snappers, and now that those are gone... can't think of a thing.

Well, CRITTERS needs to be released, but that's not a big deal.

Another thing about new line is they only had one major rerelease and that was Seven, which was a flipper to begin with. SO they went back and fixed it and gave us an amazing disc. The only other unintentional double dip(meaning we didnt know ahead of time) was Boogie Nights, but both of those were great discs.

And at least with the Boogie Nights re-release, I felt it was due more to the director than New Line's marketing department (re: Universal and their "Ultimate" line... or is it now called "Tricked Out" line?). Kudos to you New Line!!!

Also kudos to New Line for consistently using dts on the majority of their releases.

While I agree, I think it's important to note that both New Line and Dreamworks are very young companies with a minimal back catalog and a giant library of modern, fresh film prints to work with.

I would actually be pretty more surprised if these companies would have sub-par product, as they have all modern elements and can commit large time and budget to each release.

-Vince

New Line really does stand out from the rest of the pack. In addition to a guaranteed (more so than a THX certification too) top-notch transfer, some other things the separate New Line from all the other studios:

Anamorphic everywhere -- not just trailers but *supplements* too. They spend the extra money to do this on every DVD while I can count the number of DVD's I've seen from the other studios that had anamorphic supplements on one hand. And most of the other won't even cost-justify including an anamorphic and/or 5.1 trailer either!

And there's lots of other New Line distinctions too, like:

1) A New Line "Special Edition" is really a special editions. Plus, they announce upcoming special editions before the regular editions hits the street so you can make an informed purchase.

2) actually starting the movie when you hit Play -- everyone else is gleefully inserting mandatory commercials, clip reels, etc before they'll let you watch the movie. New Line even puts the FBI Warning screen *after* the movie, not before.

3) always getting the technical details right. I have a DVD player (RP-91) which doesn't handle DVD menu stills correctly unless properly flagged. Lots of titles come out from all the other studios either incorrectly flagged or not flagged at all, even today. They either don't know about it or don't care (since most DVD players hide the issue).


The only reason anyone could fault New Line is on the snapper case, but they've fixed that too!


Steve

Guys, don't forget to give some credit to Columbia/Tristar. I've been collecting DVDs since Oct. 97 and from the very start Columbia/Tristar had the best anamorphic, film-like transfers out there. Granted, they've also had a few disappointments along the way and were slow on the uptake with special editions, but look at the discs which came out during the summer of '97 and still look great. The Fifth Element is obviously still used as a reference tranfer, Jerry Maguire, Desperado, Legends of the Fall. All still great anamorphic tranfers, before (I believe) New Line even had DVDs on the market.

Sadly, the same can't be said of New Line's parent company, Warner. Blade Runner, Batman, etc haven't held up well.

I still say American History X is one of the best transfers Ive ever seen.