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A Few Words About A few words about...™ House of Bamboo -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

Robert Harris

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It's time to celebrate when another Sam Fuller film makes it to Blu-ray, and his mid-1955, 2.55 aspect ratio House of Bamboo is a doozy.


One of the later 4-track mag stereo only releases, the film looks terrific, although you already know that if you've been reading the commentaries and reviews here at HTF.


Shot on still early 5248, the film looks great, and 2.55 is a treat.


I got to know Mr. Fuller a bit, after meeting him in Telluride back in 1981 or thereabouts. Extraordinary filmmaker, and a man's man. With a cigar virtually always burning, we generally had our chats outdoors. The trick was to always position oneself upwind.


Great cast: Robert Ryan, Robert Stack, Cameron Mitchell, and the extraordinary Sessue Hayakawa, a gentleman who David Lean felt was the greatest actor with whom he's worked.


Wonderful, and accurate color, with nice blacks, and crisp white whites. A highly resolved image, with good grain, and generally pleasing shadow detail.


Thanks to Twilight Time for making this one available.


It's a must own, especially with the isolated score by Leigh Harline, who was responsible for so many of the great Fox films of the '50s.


Image - 4.75


Audio - 5

4k Up-rez - 5 - Beautiful

Pass / Fail - Pass

Highly Recommended

RAH
 

Robert Harris

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haineshisway said:
Hey, I was in Telluride in 1981 and met Fuller.
And I recall meeting you initially in '81, on the roof of the L'Ermitage.

Hopefully, you used that upwind thing with Mr. Fuller. Was that the same year that Woody Strode, Margaret Hamilton, Elisha Cook and John Carradine were in T'ride, or am I confusing that with 1979?
 

haineshisway

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Robert Harris said:
And I recall meeting you initially in '81, on the roof of the L'Ermitage.

Hopefully, you used that upwind thing with Mr. Fuller. Was that the same year that Woody Strode, Margaret Hamilton, Elisha Cook and John Carradine were in T'ride, or am I confusing that with 1979?
Can't remember who was there - I went a few times. The first time was when they did the Joseph H. Lewis tribute and showed, I think, Sunrise or some Murnau film in the outdoor park.
 

haineshisway

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And yet the blue brigade is out in full force on another board, despite several folks sticking up for this transfer. And that includes the Dr. who runs the site who tells us all with his great expertise how none of these films looked like this. Really. And this expertise comes from where exactly? But I'll tell you who has the expertise - Mr. Belston, who has all the original timing notes. Him I trust.
 

OliverK

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I would really like to hear from somebody in charge at Fox how they arrive at this really special color balance that seems to be there with almost all the 50ies cinemascope titles from Fox. While I do not like the look and find it irritating myself I would like to know how they arrived at that look back then and also why Fox would have chosen such a rather unusual look at all. Another interesting question would be why Fox titles from this time looked rather similar to titles from other studios on LD and DVD and now they look so different - everybody must have done everything wrong before with regard to colors and now they are doing things right? When all these other home video versions were created Fox would not use timing notes and check prints at all?

Lots of questions and probably very few answers from the people who create these new versions.

In any case I will not comment on this being right or wrong as it only results in unproductive back and forth but I would like some explanation for the inconsistent look compared to previous releases and most of all I would like to know if the colors have been determined from timing notes, IB Tech prints, special director / DOP approved prints or something else and of course if maybe some degree of fading may have contributed, too to the look we see now, namely yellow layer failure that is not uncommon for other movies shot on Eastman 5248.

By the way: I saw the caps on the other site and detail and textures look very impressive.
 

haineshisway

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From what I know, timing notes are always used. We live in a different time than other releases - as Mr. Harris and many others have said, you cannot judge ANYTHING from a previous home video incarnation. Fox has timing notes on all these films and obviously they feel they are using them correctly and I believe they are, too. Why anyone anywhere would think a brown and yellow transfer is somehow correct I have no idea, but all I can tell you is that brown and yellow were NOT how these Fox films looked ever. Brown and yellow are usually the result of going off a fading internegative. Previous transfers were not taken off camera negatives, as these new 4K restorations are.
 

Dr Griffin

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haineshisway said:
And yet the blue brigade is out in full force on another board, despite several folks sticking up for this transfer. And that includes the Dr. who runs the site who tells us all with his great expertise how none of these films looked like this. Really. And this expertise comes from where exactly? But I'll tell you who has the expertise - Mr. Belston, who has all the original timing notes. Him I trust.

And the good Dr. sells it as gospel delivered directly from above - there's no arguing with him.
 

JoshZ

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haineshisway said:
And yet the blue brigade is out in full force on another board, despite several folks sticking up for this transfer. And that includes the Dr. who runs the site who tells us all with his great expertise how none of these films looked like this. Really. And this expertise comes from where exactly? But I'll tell you who has the expertise - Mr. Belston, who has all the original timing notes. Him I trust.

As much as it pains me to agree with the Dr., I watched this disc before hearing anything about the color controversy and the blue stood out to me immediately. Unlike what some in that other forum are claiming, it doesn't look like a revisionist teal grading to me. (It doesn't look teal at all, frankly. It's straight-up blue.) Instead, it looks like the color temperature is wrong, like you've chosen the "Cool" preset in the TV menus. This has the effect of making the colors look drab and washing out contrasts.


I won't pretend to be an authority on CinemaScope of the era like RAH, but the disc doesn't look right to me. I have a hard time believing that this blue push is accurate. I don't care for it.
 

haineshisway

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JoshZ said:
As much as it pains me to agree with the Dr., I watched this disc before hearing anything about the color controversy and the blue stood out to me immediately. Unlike what some in that other forum are claiming, it doesn't look like a revisionist teal grading to me. (It doesn't look teal at all, frankly. It's straight-up blue.) Instead, it looks like the color temperature is wrong, like you've chosen the "Cool" preset in the TV menus. This has the effect of making the colors look drab and washing out contrasts.


I won't pretend to be an authority on CinemaScope of the era like RAH, but the disc doesn't look right to me. I have a hard time believing that this blue push is accurate. I don't care for it.
I see nothing drab in this transfer - I have no way of knowing how people are watching this, but drab doesn't enter the equation - every color is presented perfectly and the blue is the proper amount - it's not being pushed it's being put back where it belongs. There are tons of scenes in this film where every color in the spectrum is present and accounted for and more importantly accurate. If there was some extreme push to blue the other colors would not be accurate. It's okay to not like the look of Fox films of this era, but again the man doing the transfers has the cameraman's timing notes in front of him. What looks "right" to you is a very subjective thing and that's not the way doing transfers works, because what looks right to you and others doesn't look right to an equal number of people, ESPECIALLY people who know these films.
 

kathy13xia

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awesome, one of my favorite Fuller's movies! Should look gorgeous. Nightmare Alley, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Kiss of Death and Fallen Angel should be in Blu-ray as well.
 

OliverK

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JoshZ said:
As much as it pains me to agree with the Dr., I watched this disc before hearing anything about the color controversy and the blue stood out to me immediately. Unlike what some in that other forum are claiming, it doesn't look like a revisionist teal grading to me. (It doesn't look teal at all, frankly. It's straight-up blue.) Instead, it looks like the color temperature is wrong, like you've chosen the "Cool" preset in the TV menus. This has the effect of making the colors look drab and washing out contrasts.

I won't pretend to be an authority on CinemaScope of the era like RAH, but the disc doesn't look right to me. I have a hard time believing that this blue push is accurate. I don't care for it.
This bluish tint as some call it is a look that many early Fox Cinemascope productions have now that they are on Blu-ray. Including at least two of the Marilyn Monroe movies. I currently have other issues to look after but I will try to get a reading of some whites in these movies and I am quite certain that they will be deficient in green and red compared to D65 white while previously on DVD they were lacking in blue.
 

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haineshisway said:
I see nothing drab in this transfer - I have no way of knowing how people are watching this, but drab doesn't enter the equation - every color is presented perfectly and the blue is the proper amount - it's not being pushed it's being put back where it belongs. There are tons of scenes in this film where every color in the spectrum is present and accounted for and more importantly accurate. If there was some extreme push to blue the other colors would not be accurate. It's okay to not like the look of Fox films of this era, but again the man doing the transfers has the cameraman's timing notes in front of him. What looks "right" to you is a very subjective thing and that's not the way doing transfers works, because what looks right to you and others doesn't look right to an equal number of people, ESPECIALLY people who know these films.

I did not say that it's an "extreme" push, but there is a push. Or, more accurately, it does not look like a deliberate tint was applied but rather that (as OliverK states) red and green are deficient. As I said earlier, it looks like the "Cool" color temperature setting in a TV was turned on.
 

Robert Crawford

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Dr Griffin said:
It has to be considered that we may be seeing a lot of these films properly for the first time on home video.
That's what I'm thinking especially if they continue to look this way as I'm sure Fox is aware of the complaints over the last couple of years.
 

JoshZ

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Dr Griffin said:
It has to be considered that we may be seeing a lot of these films properly for the first time on home video.

It seems like that's always the first defense whenever a controversial disc is released. "Everything you've ever known has always been wrong. Up is down. Left is right. Inside is outside. Greedo always shot at Han Solo first." Often, there's no way to prove or disprove that beyond taking someone's word for it (aside from the Greedo thing).


I didn't come here to argue this. I just popped into the forum to see if RAH had commented on the blue bias, but he didn't. This was actually my first time seeing the movie, so I didn't go into it with any expectation for what it should look like. Nevertheless, the blue tinge struck me as weird and unnatural right away. I don't know why anyone would intentionally time a movie to look this way. Shadows and other blacks are bluish. Flesh tones are sometimes slightly purple. Who would do that on purpose? It looks like an error.
 

haineshisway

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Flesh tones are purple? Either I have a different disc or something is crazily wrong with the way you're viewing this film. Flesh tones are accurate throughout and are never purple. Give me a specific time on the disc to go check out purple skin tones, even slightly. Someone on another forum said these new transfers resulted in red lipstick being purple. A simple look at even the dreaded screen caps will tell you the lipstick is very red and nothing like purple. Anyway, I'm happy to say that with THIS transfer the too blue folks are finally in the real minority.
 

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I don't understand why an arbitrary definition of "white" - no matter how scientifically valid for certain uses - should be used as the determining factor about the "correctness" of a film's color balance. In real life, there are a whole range of values that the human eye perceives as "white" depending upon circumstances - such as ambient light quality and proximity to other colors. Besides, this doesn't take into account artistic decisions about color, particularly with subtle variations. Further, it's totally subjective on the part of the viewer making such measurements as to what in a film frame is "supposed to be" "white."
 

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