- Joined
- Feb 8, 1999
- Messages
- 18,407
- Real Name
- Robert Harris
Brian DePalma's The Untouchables, a 1987 production, was a beautifully produced studio film, photographed by Stephen H. Burum, ASC.
Based in part upon the book by Eliot Ness, a screenplay by David Mamet, and with terrific cast of both leads as well as supporting players, The Untouchables continues, two decades later, to easily hold one's attention.
It is also one of the films from the Paramount library that I've been personally waiting to see on HD & BD, and I'm very pleased that it's finally here.
A treat for cinephiles is the sequence shot in Chicago's historic Union Station, which after 12 years of construction opened in 1925. As an Amtrak traveler, I've spent hours wandering this complex, inclusive of the worn stairway which serves as a setpiece for the film, and an homage to the Odessa Steps sequence from Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, also (coincidentally) 1925.
Colors are rich and blacks are generally well defined, but after viewing the film in HD, and then switching over to the BD counterpart, something continued to trouble me, and it appears to be based on some sort of processing decision.
As an example, there is a scene that provides a well-lit two shot of Kevin Costner and Sean Connery, and I viewed this, as well as a few others numerous times.
What I'm seeing is what a friend and co-worker has defined as the "CBS Movie of the Week" look.
What this means is that grain has been heavily reduced to a point at which it really no longer exists, except that it occasionally seems to hang, unmoving, on a background.
High frequency information that would have been carried within the grain has been lost along with the grain, and the resultant image has then been slightly sharpened or tweaked to attempt to bring the missing information back. This is something that is extremely difficult to do well, if one finds the need to do it. Forensics, perhaps?
On Mr. Connery's face, it appears as a virtual loss of definition and detail, and an artificial darkening and sharpening of facial features such as lines, almost taking on the appearance of our old friend, electronic enhancement, but in high definition mode. Viewed close up, it gives the actors an extremely artificial look. Essentially this seems to be an attempt to bring back detail originally captured by Mr. Burum's lens, removed via grain reduction and then artifically added back via resultant sharpening.
Another friend has defined this as the "freshly waxed linoleum" look.
Returning to the real world, these comments should not be taken as damning of the release, simply because there probably aren't more than a dozen people around that will be troubled by it, or care in the slightest.
Does it matter?
I believe it does, as it disallows the film to look like film, and turns it into something else -- more like those beautifully scrubbed new editions of the Disney classics, which are fine, as young children should be kept away from both dirt and grain, unless parents are going to have them sent in for occasional dry cleaning.
Will it affect the way that the general public looks at this disc.
Not one bit.
The reality is that they'll be thrilled by both it's cleanliness and "apparent" sharpness. This is a disc that will be well reviewed, and possibly a wonderful test case for understanding how to read both reviews as well as reviewers.
The Untouchables is a terrifically entertaining film, that in HD and BD is just a bit different than it might have looked with all of the photographic detail that would have been enabled by the high definition process left intact.
For everyone except those dozen people who will react negatively to a decidedly non-film look, the disc is Recommended to the general populace.
RAH
Based in part upon the book by Eliot Ness, a screenplay by David Mamet, and with terrific cast of both leads as well as supporting players, The Untouchables continues, two decades later, to easily hold one's attention.
It is also one of the films from the Paramount library that I've been personally waiting to see on HD & BD, and I'm very pleased that it's finally here.
A treat for cinephiles is the sequence shot in Chicago's historic Union Station, which after 12 years of construction opened in 1925. As an Amtrak traveler, I've spent hours wandering this complex, inclusive of the worn stairway which serves as a setpiece for the film, and an homage to the Odessa Steps sequence from Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, also (coincidentally) 1925.
Colors are rich and blacks are generally well defined, but after viewing the film in HD, and then switching over to the BD counterpart, something continued to trouble me, and it appears to be based on some sort of processing decision.
As an example, there is a scene that provides a well-lit two shot of Kevin Costner and Sean Connery, and I viewed this, as well as a few others numerous times.
What I'm seeing is what a friend and co-worker has defined as the "CBS Movie of the Week" look.
What this means is that grain has been heavily reduced to a point at which it really no longer exists, except that it occasionally seems to hang, unmoving, on a background.
High frequency information that would have been carried within the grain has been lost along with the grain, and the resultant image has then been slightly sharpened or tweaked to attempt to bring the missing information back. This is something that is extremely difficult to do well, if one finds the need to do it. Forensics, perhaps?
On Mr. Connery's face, it appears as a virtual loss of definition and detail, and an artificial darkening and sharpening of facial features such as lines, almost taking on the appearance of our old friend, electronic enhancement, but in high definition mode. Viewed close up, it gives the actors an extremely artificial look. Essentially this seems to be an attempt to bring back detail originally captured by Mr. Burum's lens, removed via grain reduction and then artifically added back via resultant sharpening.
Another friend has defined this as the "freshly waxed linoleum" look.
Returning to the real world, these comments should not be taken as damning of the release, simply because there probably aren't more than a dozen people around that will be troubled by it, or care in the slightest.
Does it matter?
I believe it does, as it disallows the film to look like film, and turns it into something else -- more like those beautifully scrubbed new editions of the Disney classics, which are fine, as young children should be kept away from both dirt and grain, unless parents are going to have them sent in for occasional dry cleaning.
Will it affect the way that the general public looks at this disc.
Not one bit.
The reality is that they'll be thrilled by both it's cleanliness and "apparent" sharpness. This is a disc that will be well reviewed, and possibly a wonderful test case for understanding how to read both reviews as well as reviewers.
The Untouchables is a terrifically entertaining film, that in HD and BD is just a bit different than it might have looked with all of the photographic detail that would have been enabled by the high definition process left intact.
For everyone except those dozen people who will react negatively to a decidedly non-film look, the disc is Recommended to the general populace.
RAH
