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A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Fury (Arrow UK import) -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

Sgt Pepper

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haineshisway said:
More pleasing to YOUR eye. Please don't speak for everyone :) And Mr. Harris, in all his recent posts, is right on the money so no need for me to respond. If there is sharpening on the Twilight Time release then it is so mild and minor that it didn't cross my radar at all.
Oh dear, then your radar is in need of calibration.

PS
I have no affiliation or agenda to any label, I only report what I see. If it's good I say it, if it's not so good well I say that to.
 

haineshisway

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tele1962 said:
Oh dear, then your radar is in need of calibration.
In your opinion. You do understand that many, many owners of the Twilight Time Blu-ray were extremely happy with it and for them the Arrow release isn't on THEIR radar? I'm just not like you - I don't sit in my house freeze-framing shots to look at noise or grain or sharpening - I don't look at screen caps and blow them up as if that means something. I just watch the movie. And if there's some egregious problem with the transfer, say bad color, which few talk about on the boards, or bad sound, or lousy source material, then I say so. And when I perceive a transfer as being amazing, I say so. You think the Arrow is miles ahead of the Twilight Time - I find the color more pleasing on the Arrow, the darkening of a scene that should not look that dark and contrasty not so good, and both transfers fine - I just don't find the Arrow MILES ahead. And that's what makes horse racing, as you well know. I think we've gone about as fer as we can go, don't you - actually I think we hit that plateau about three pages ago.
 

ROclockCK

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haineshisway said:
Well, there's that. Can you imagine if we actually went to a movie theater in days of old and sat in the first row looking up at the screen thinking "that grain looks like noise" or "I think I see some sharpening" or "look at that halo, what have they done?" Happily, we went to see the movie, admire it or not, be impressed with the cinematography or not, and not even have a spot of bother if some dirt specks showed up. Today at home - it's turned into something wholly other for some folks, and I don't think that's such a good thing.
Do you remember our conversation* on another forum about Fox/TT's release of Journey to the Center of the Earth when someone posted a *.JPG of Arlene Dahl's hat and cape blown up to Zapruder levels...swearing that TT's Blu-ray was awash in "edge-enhancement"? And yet when you looked carefully (more so than anyone had ever previously bothered) at one of the original Fox teaser trailers circa '59, you could still spot that very same slight haloing effect? Nevermind that this was only selectively visible, only in selective areas of the frame, only in selective shots...and only if you practically pinned your schnozz up against the screen and squinted.

Point is, this minor aberration was always there...on the film...just some photo-chemical effect endemic to duped elements of very dark objects against much lighter backgrounds (the name of which, escapes me at the moment, sorry). [Most] film era viewers recognized this effect for what it was...had seen it countless times theatrically during the 50s, 60s, and 70s...and pretty much ignored it like we always have for the sake of just enjoying what survives of this classic moooovie. However, [some] video era viewers were practically apoplectic over Fox' *perceived* digital manipulation, and were on yet another witch hunt against the unholy, the unclean, and the unrepentant.

Where does this nonsense stop though? In 5 to 10 years someone will probably attempt to remaster The Fury yet again and come smack up against the same reality; the negative for this film happens to be an inconsistent patchwork of original camera, severely pushed, and unremarkably duped footage. Unless it becomes common practice to digitally make over films like this into something they never were, then the benefits of such OCD remastering are almost guaranteed to be incremental at best.

FWIW, in years to come, I will no doubt still be listening to John Williams' rich, dark-hymnal score. But after all this reductive analysis of grain structure via NSA-scaled screen caps, I've reached a point where I don't particularly care if I ever see The Fury again...certainly not any time soon!
 

Sgt Pepper

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I think discussion and debate on this subject is the way forward and find it pleasing that so many experts that normaly I would have no contact with can offer up so much invaluable information.
 

schan1269

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How 'bout y'all go take a ride in a certain red Fury...

Jeebus...I'm buying the Arrow only cause I can...for less money. It is about the movie. If you want to complain about a shitty BD, bitch about Predator(elsewhere, of course).
 

FoxyMulder

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It's the older scan and the sharpening that Mr Harris says was common practice back then that i find objectionable, an older scan without such sharpening would probably be more pleasing, just my opinion, i am pretty intolerant of obvious sharpening and if screencaps can show this and save me money, save me from buying a product that would hurt my eyes then more power to those who take the caps.

As for the halo effect on Journey To The Center Of The Earth, i am well aware of such things, i can tell the difference between sharpening and for example a film shot where the stock has no anti-halation backing and the problems this can cause when there are bright points in the image.
 

Jari K

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"Where does this nonsense stop though?"Is it so hard to admit that THIS time the release from TT is not the best presentation (and certainly not the best "package" when it comes to extras) of this film? I mean that's a fact, isn't it.Nobody is saying that the TT disc & transfer is bad. Just that some other disc & transfer is better.
 

FoxyMulder

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The other thing is this, the car scene that Bruce keeps mentioning and the film grain in that scene, sharpening is going to make the film grain more edgy and prominent, no two ways around that, it's a fact and we are all in agreement the TT release comes from an older scan with some sharpening built in.
 

Mark-W

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Anyone who wants my TT copy of The Fury, which I only watched once, I am going to part with it for $17, plus shipping UPS ground w tracking. I bought the film, but it is not my flavor and don't wish to keep it.

PM me if interested.
Payment via Paypal.

I would rather skip eBay.
 

haineshisway

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FoxyMulder said:
The other thing is this, the car scene that Bruce keeps mentioning and the film grain in that scene, sharpening is going to make the film grain more edgy and prominent, no two ways around that, it's a fact and we are all in agreement the TT release comes from an older scan with some sharpening built in.
You know, you completely, as always, miss the point. It doesn't MATTER if that sequence has sharpening or not - it has ALWAYS looked like it looks on the Twilight Time disc because it was shot in low light with pushed film. What MATTERS is that the gentleman who did the Arrow work made a subjective decision to darken the scene to hide the overt grain (not completely successful anyway) - you hate sharpening and I hate solutions like that, which renders the actors so dark you can barely see them and renders the entire sequence looking nothing like it has ever looked. That is the point. You don't want to see it, that's fine, but it is the point and it's been made repeatedly including the quote from the man who did the work stating that he made a conscious decision to alter the way the sequence looked on the negative. Really, there is nothing more to say, but if you keep invoking my name and subverting my point, I will be here to refute it.
 

Robert Harris

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I've a feeling that there is little else to be gained by having this thread open. All opinions have been heard, and a bit of education has been accomplished. I'll add nothing as a last word, as that would be inappropriate. I'm locking for the present.RAH
 

Robert Harris

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Unlocked. But I request that any new posts be "new" and relevant, as well as respectful to members.

RAH
 

John Hodson

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Unlocked, so this post belongs here:
John Hodson said:
I'm posting this, not in order to stir up any kind of argument, but simply to set the record straight on a few things. In the (now closed) thread on the Arrow release of The Fury, I said that despite ongoing speculation (presented as fact) on what was or was not done during the transfer of the film to disc, only one man really knew what was done and why - partiuclarly in regard to the night scenes - and that was the inestimable James White, who oversaw the process. This is he, quoted from another forum: The pushed film look of the night scenes in question appeared to me to be to be directly linked to the element transferred by Fox for their own master (and the source of TT's disc), produced at least five years ago, which would have been the interpositive or internegative, a 2nd or 3rd generation element respectively. The settings that made these scenes stick out in this overly brightened manner were almost certainly baked into the element itself, and therefore one wouldn't have much choice but to transfer these scenes other than how they were printed.But I had the good fortune to be working from the original negative, the one and only first generation element for THE FURY, and this material demonstrated no such boosting. Instead the film exhibited good, consistent and for the most part, natural, night for night cinematography from shot to shot. Not being hamstrung by what appeared to be a rather crudely processed 2nd or 3rd generation element, we were able to retain the look of how the film was shot and indeed how it appeared to be intended to look. On our master blacks appear black, highlights appear bright but not burnt out, and colour, detail and grain haven't suffered as a result of forced lab processing.To match the overly bright and noisy grading of the old Fox transfer and TT release, we would have had to manipulate the images far more aggressively, and as a result, black levels, flesh tones, detail and grain would all have suffered, as they clearly do in the old master. Doing this would also make these scenes stick out like a sore thumb compared to the consistently high quality of the images in the whole of the film.I don't accept descriptions of the night scenes as we've graded them as so dark that "you can barely make out Mr Douglas in the scene", which is pure hyperbole. I can also put to rest the charge that we darkened the scenes or brought up the contrast significantly to disguise grain or noise, as this is something we didn't do - and wouldn't do - either. The decisions we made in grading were always done with reference to older print materials, but were also done in service to the original elements, and what they would actually allow without exactly the kind of manipulations we're accused of doing.Did I made a judgement call in my grading of THE FURY? Of course I did, as does anyone overseeing this kind of work, which often involves thousands of similar judgement calls throughout the workflow process. The point is that you do the best you can by referring to historical representation and the original materials, which can be a bit of a balancing act at times. Sometimes this involves making unobtrusive alterations where improvement was previously impossible, due to the limits of what older technology could achieve. Going from the negative allowed us the benefit of making many such improvements, from restoring the original colour spectrum (including natural flesh tones, pure blacks and highlights), retaining the original grain structure and the extensive details therein, and as one review as pointed out (Mondo Digital), adjusting for the correctly centred framing of the compositions. The images appear sharp, untreated and natural, and there have been no manipulations of any kind to falsely boost details, noise, sharpness, etc. I wouldn't call any of these decisions "revisionism", but rather me doing my job in service to the film.Were we saddled with the same element utilised for the creation of Fox's old master, we would have likely ended up with something very similar to what Twilight Time released (minus the sharpness/aperture correction settings that were an inherent part of the older transfer process). As it stands I don't have a bad word to say about that release, as Twilight Time simply did the best with what they were given. But Arrow made the decision to go the extra mile with THE FURY, and I think the quality we were able to achieve with our master justifies that decision.
BTW, I have no axe to grind. Some might feel comfortable with applying the sobriquet 'revisionist' to the Arrow release. Personally, I think that's nonsense. Your mileage may - and likely for some will - vary. Each transfer services their own markets, and possibly their different needs. Shouldn't that be enough?
 

Robert Harris

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John Hodson said:
Unlocked, so this post belongs here: BTW, I have no axe to grind. Some might feel comfortable with applying the sobriquet 'revisionist' to the Arrow release. Personally, I think that's nonsense. Your mileage may - and likely for some will - vary. Each transfer services their own markets, and possibly their different needs. Shouldn't that be enough?
The Arrow release is not revisionist. It is a new edition by a very well-trained and talented archivist, toward creating the best example possible, using the OCN and modern technology.

RAH
 

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