A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Sting -- in Blu-ray (2 Viewers)

[FoxyMulder]

Originally Posted by JoeDoakes /t/320885/a-few-words-about-the-sting-in-blu-ray/90#post_3934853
Mr. Harris, this post of yours has been in my head for the last 10 days. It's a very strange response to the question of whether this release should be boycotted. You could have said:
1. yes, boycott
2. boycotts do no good, send them a letter or email
3. get the HDDVD and an HDDVD player for Universal's screwed up blus (as you have said elsewhere)
4, given that I am part of the film industry and not your typical consumer, I am not the best person to call for a boycott. Make your own decision.
Instead, you said that it's best that your don't discuss it right now. Just a wild thought, but could it be that Universal has discussed getting you to consult with them about their blu ray releases? Universal's recent problems do not seem to be a question of money; they just do not seem to have a clear idea of what they are doing. If not yourself, they need to find someone.

From my perspective the answer would be 1 and 3.

The buck stops with whoever is in charge of their home video department, i think they dislike film grain, some lesser titles such as Halloween 2 escape the "tools" and look good, i think that's only because they deem them not worth tinkering with and we are lucky in that regard, i can't help but recall what director John Landis said regarding Animal House, they consider film grain an anomaly, they really need to be educated and unfortunately whoever is in charge of Universals video department obviously see's film grain as an issue to be eradicated or lessened, i do fear for the release of Jaws, i'm sure the film scan they made and the master they created from that no doubt looks great, i fear for what will happen with the actual blu ray encode.

:From this site:

When the technical guys proudly showed me the new BluRay master of Animal House, they had cleaned and polished and brightened it so much it looked like a Doris Day movie! I made them put the grain and darken all of the shots they had “restored” incorrectly. It now looks great, but the technician kept writing “Image Degraded per Director” in his shot log!

 

[benbess]

Today I saw The Sting at my local Cinemark theater. PQ was ok. The film was better than OK, obviously, and still works well. My memories of it were vague, since I last saw it when my parents took me 40 years ago at the age of 8. The thing I most remembered were the people touching their noses as a code for the scam. Even at 8 I got that! Good visual effects for the few scenes where you see a panorama of the city.
The end seems almost a thematic flip of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In that one, iirc (and I may not be, bc I also saw that one when I was about 8) they die at the end in a hail of bullets. In this one they walk out without a scratch as winners. The production code was almost dead in 1969, or maybe it was dead and the effects still just lingered a little, but by 1973 an ending like this was possible. I think even though it's quite a good period film, there's a little counter cultural something that crept into this film of rebels with honor and a cause, even if they're con artists. I guess I'm just saying the obvious thing that The Sting is as much about 1973 as it is about 1936.
I may be the only one, but I think George Roy Hill's greatest film is The World According to Garp from 1981. But that film was not a big hit, I think, compared to the expectations the studio had for it. Still it's a classic I'd like to see again. Is Garp coming to blu?
I read somewhere that Hill didn't like actors who were late to his set. I think Redford or Newman or both said that he would punish tardy actors by taking them up in his private plane later, and then scaring the heck out of them so they wouldn't delay his film again.

 

[Dave H]

I ended up purchasing this for $8.99 recently and watched it for the first time. When I was a kid, I recall seeing bits and pieces on TV, but this was my first real viewing and I liked it as I felt the film aged appropriately, i.e., well. As far as the PQ, I am viewing on a pro-cal'd 65" Panasonic VT60 sitting about 8.5 feet back. I thought the PQ was solid despite some obvious digital tweaking. I just didn't find it too distracting compared to other releases out there. It was definitely a far better Universal release compared to many, many other titles which have been quite poor.

Question for Robert Harris: it seemed to me there was some slight contrast boosting and some black crushing going on with this release - was this inherent in the photography or part of the mastering process of the Blu-ray?