Alliance.....is the quality of their DVD releases inferior? (1 Viewer)

[Gary Tooze]

You've been very disrespectful of others' opinions in this matter.

Point out where EdH and I will gladly apologize... you and monkeyboy are welcome to your opinion... I just hope you can conclude that others are welcome to theirs as well... no directors that doesn't have his palms greased by their distributor would accept washed out, cropped, hazy images of what he/she filmed... but you are welcome to watch anything you want... congratulations on your choice.

Cheers,

 

[Paul_Stachniak]

"see as the director saw"

Any good director and DP compensate the image they see through the lens, from what they want in the end result.

Your point about O'Brother Where Art Tho is particularly weak because both the Cohens and DP Roger Deakins wanted that golden effect, and had to visualize it every time they watched a daily.

Hell, that's the whole point of color grading. Almost every movie now and day is recolored to suit the directors vision. Remember, to photograph the world is a mechanical process, but to make it a thing of beauty is art.

 

[Tom Tsai]

^ I think that's what EdH was trying to say, thus the "quatation marks" around "see as the director saw". Gary said: "I want to see the same colors he did... I want the grass to look as green as what he saw (not brown as in the Alliance)... I want to see the snow as white as he did (not blue-tinged as in the Alliance)... " so EdH is saying that we currently don't know what the director has in mind. Maybe the director's vision is different from what he actually "saw".

 

[Gary Tooze]

...showing the production of the film, and we realize with a little shock that the film was made now, by living people, with new technology. There is a way in which the intimacy of the production and the 172-minute running time lull us into accepting the film as a documentary of real life...

I don't want my documentary to play a big pretense with me... manipulating the colors of the environment, some telecine operator at Alliance cropping the film and determining what I should and shouldn't see, masking the sharpness to hide its genre, its message, its intent...

Perhaps Edh and monkeyboy do?

 

[EdH]

Gary,

For me, watching Atanarjuat "as a documentary" minimizes the aesthetic acheivements of the movie. Here's a quote from an article on FilmCritic.com that indicates the filmmakers feel similarly:

After screening Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) before a sold-out crowd at the New York Museum of Modern Art, filmmakers Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn answered an audience member's question with obvious chagrin. While the film had collected six Genie awards (Canada's Oscars), including prizes for Best Film, Best Direction, and Best Screenplay, Cohn noted that not a single cast member had received an acting nomination.

"I guess people think they're not acting," said Cohn ruefully.

It's not a documentary, and attempting to view it as such not only misreads the intent, it misreads reality. Yes, it's based on a 1,000 year old myth, but the filmmakers also rewrote the myth to their liking - e.g.

Exactly. It's kind of silly to sit around arguing about which version is truer to the director's vision until the director has weighed in on the matter. I don't think you mean to come off this way, likely a byproduct of your passion, but you sound like a righteously indignated, self-appointed arbiter of taste. It reminds me of the people who screamed when the Kubrick films were released open matte that the artist's vision was tampered with, when Kubrick in fact approved them. Or the people who complained about the transfer on Todd Haynes' Safe, when he himself personally instructed the transfer engineer to dull the image.

A lot of assuming is going on about the filmmaker's intent here. What if the director and DP disagree on which is the better transfer? Antanarjuat was made in a "team spirit" fashion, with everyone contributing and resolving differences together. The "director's vision" may be a "western world" concept (or "southern world", if you're from the north pole) that's not even applicable here.

Above all, I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong. I'm saying WE DON'T KNOW, and to presumptuously defend the director's viewpoint when you don't know what the viewpoint is, well, it's presumptuous. All I know is what I like, and I don't like the Columbia transfer.

 

[Gary Tooze]

EdH,

Can you take my point and respond for me... I have other things to do...

Glad at least that your tone has become more civil...

I guess people think they're not acting

No, I for one, knew they were acting just as I did with the non-professionals in "The Bicycle Thief". It doesn't make it any less neo-realistic if they were acting... they were not professionals, and had not been thespians previously.

Regards,

 

[Paul_Stachniak]

I have no idea what's going on anymore...

Whatever, color is fun. There is my answer.

Here are some emoticons. :b :star:

 

[EdH]

Hello again, Gary,


Thank you! Unless those images move, they don't do the comparison justice.

 

[Gary Tooze]

Okay EdH,

It has been fun, but I guess we will have to agree to disagree on aesthetic grounds... I'm pretty sure we have scared everyone out of this thread that was supposed to be focusing on Alliance’s poor DVDs... so I agree with this statement of yours:

I want to make a film about Andrei Rublov, the great 15th century Russian painter. I'm interested in the connections between creator's personality and his times. Thanks to the inborn subtlety a painter is able to comprehend the deepest meaning of the times he lives in and to present this meaning to the full. This will be neither a historical nor a biographical film. I'm fascinated by the process of artistic maturing of the painter and by the process of analyzing his talent. Andrei Rublov's work marks the apex of the Russian Renaissance. Rublov is one of the most outstanding figures in history of our culture. His life and art contain an unusual wealth of material. "

Okay you were a little baited into that one... but as my son's middle name is Andrei, I would steer clear of these references...

I still feel certain most directors (talking away from their distributor ) would not want their film, cropped, hazy with inaccurate washed-out colors... but you, your monkeyboy, and the rest are entitled to their opinion... ( had to squeeze in one more "monkeyboy" reference

Cheers,

 

[Dan Rudolph]

I notice 4% speed ups pretty easily and I'm no Superman. I'm not even a musician.

 

[EdH]

That's weird, I'm a musician... does being a musician increase one's sensitivity to film speedup?

Of course, claiming I'm a musician could just be a clever ruse on my part. :rolleyes

 

[Dan Rudolph]

Musicians tend to be more sensitive to pitch shifts.

 

[Gary Tooze]

That's weird, I'm a musician.

So what is it, you on the steel drums... monkeyboy on the comb and Kleenex?