What's new

Blu-ray Review A Few Words About A few words about…™ Fancy Pants – in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

Robert Harris

Archivist
Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 8, 1999
Messages
18,311
Real Name
Robert Harris
Fancy Pants, a 1950 Technicolor vehicle directed by George Marshall for Robert Hope and Lucille Ball, is a musical re-make of Ruggles of Red Gap (1935).

One never knows what to expect from Technicolor productions these days, as they vary wildly dependent upon the specific scanning and elements, and this one is a bit of an anomaly.

It's billed as "Remastered in HD by Paramount Pictures - From 4k scans of the 35mm YCM Three-strip Technicolor Elements!"

But I'm, once again slightly befuddled by the word "Remastered," only because viewing the new Blu-ray from Kino, I could have sworn that I was seeing an older 3-strip to IP recombine that had a pleasant appearance, yet nothing startling - nothing akin to one of the WB recombines or Universal's recent Phantom of the Opera, which all seem to hop off the screen.

Color here is fine, grain is minimal (unlike War of the Worlds), but the imagery almost appears a tad too soft, and I'm seeing slight mis-registrations especially at the edges of the image.

Again, color me confused.

From a nominal seating distance all is well, and it's nice to see this film in a more highly resolved version than the older DVD.


Image – 3.25

Audio – 5 (DTS-HD MA 2.0)

Pass / Fail – Pass

Upgrade from DVD - Yes

Works up-rezzed to 4k - Yes

Recommended

RAH
 

Will Krupp

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Oct 2, 2003
Messages
4,014
Location
PA
Real Name
Will
You're a lot more generous than I am.

If I didn't know better, I would have thought I was watching an upscaled DVD (and an often fuzzy one, at that) made from dupe elements. IMO, the image has zero dimensionality and there's literally nothing about this that even looks HD to me, to be honest.

Personally, I think it's a complete misfire.
 
Last edited:

Users who are viewing this thread

Latest Articles

Forum statistics

Threads
356,814
Messages
5,123,679
Members
144,184
Latest member
H-508
Recent bookmarks
0
Top