Any Chance That Paramount Will Release McLintock! (1 Viewer)

[MCCLOUD]

I have been reading some comments on here and other places from people expressing their disappointment with the Olive Blu-Ray of McLintock! How does the Olive Blu-Ray compare in video quality with The Paramount 2005 DVD? Does anyone have any information as to whether Paramount plans on releasing McLintock! on Blu-Ray like they did Rio Lobo, Big Jake, Hondo, and True Grit? I wish Paramount would release McLintock! on Blu-Ray. Any comments and information is appreciated!

Take Care!

Robert

 

[Robert Crawford]

Hondo has already been released on BD and True Grit is coming out again on BD next week with a Steelbook edition.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

Sadly, a Blu-ray release of a public domain film minimizes the chances of a legit release, even if the BR release is harvested from master 35mm elements.

The Olive Blu-ray was transerred from a standard composite 35mm release print.

 

[Derek M Germano]

Would love an official Paramount release of McClintock! on Blu-ray. Definitely a favorite. Donovan's Reef would also be fun. Sent from my GT-P3113 using Home Theater Forum mobile app

 

[Adam Gregorich]

If its licensed to Olive they wouldn't even consider releasing until that agreement expired.

 

[Torsten Kaiser]

Sadly, a Blu-ray release of a public domain film minimizes the chances of a legit release, even if the BR release is harvested from master 35mm elements.

The Olive Blu-ray was transerred from a standard composite 35mm release print.

Bob,

can you elaborate ? In what way would the OLIVE release not be legitimate ??? The reason I am asking is since Paramount made their master for their later DVD issue at the time from a 1995 Intermediate Positive (no composite - and NOT a print element) it would sound a lot more logical to me that OLIVE had been provided that master - provided it was made in High Definition, which I would assume but cannot confirm. Albeit somewhat problematic re: color range, density and registration in many scenes that master should then have been a very good basis. However, in all fairness they also did not have a reference, with Batjac having destroyed all TC print elements they could lay their hands on back when the renewal was missed in order to prevent the film from the being used in the public domain.

Merely a few prints - the 35mm Prints were anamorphic COMOPT Technicolor Dye Transfer materials originally - survived, and during the extensive restoration we made (2005/2006) we worked with probably the only (combined out of 2) Technicolor Dye Transfer source that was a) still complete and b) in mostly very good to excellent registration - and with aid of many additional references. But, with appropriate work in color timing and re: density the Paramount master - again, if native HD, should also hold a rather good potential, aside from the fact that it had far less blemishes to contend with compared to the sources we had, as good as they may have been.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

Is the Olive release taken from an element (negative, IP, etc) in the Wayne Estate holdings, or from 35mm composite dye-transfer release prints?

 

[Torsten Kaiser]

What I can say for sure is that the 35mm element that was the basis is a positive (either IP - in that case from the Wayne estate - or Dye-Transfer Print - in that case our restoration).

If the Paramount Master made back some years ago off the 35mm Intermediate Positive the Wayne estate provided is, indeed, native HD I see no reason why they (Paramount) should not have handed it to OLIVE for the (further) use of the Blu-ray.
However, it is also possible that if the master was not HD that (our) Technicolor restoration from the 35mm COMOPT composite Dye-Transfer was accessed thru our client. I would have to see the disc to be certain. These images following are from our restoration back in 2005/2006 (it seems to reduce the images here - the link to the large files is http://www.tlefilms.com/TLEFilms_MCL_portal.htm. (click Picture Samples)

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

The Olive disc has "Ignite Films" logo on the back (and also a copyright for Batjac) - would Ignite have supplied the master?

 

[Bob Furmanek]

Thanks, Torsten.

I'm confused. If Batjac was involved, why wasn't the restoration taken from 35mm master elements? While it looks magnificent on screen, the densities of a dye-transfer Technicolor print yield far less detail than a low-con IP or IN from the camera negative.

Is Olive's release licensed from Paramount and/or the Wayne Estate?

 

[Torsten Kaiser]

Thanx Peter, we now have clarity. Bob, you were correct with your information re: composite print being used - the master used for the Blu-ray is our (Technicolor Dye-Transfer) restoration.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Thanx Peter, we now have clarity. Bob, you were correct with your information re: composite print being used - the master used for the Blu-ray is our (Technicolor Dye-Transfer) restoration.

If the Blu-ray is derived from your restoration then I wonder what happen because the disc doesn't look particular good to my eyes.

 

[Torsten Kaiser]

Thanks, Torsten.

I'm confused. If Batjac was involved, why wasn't the restoration taken from 35mm master elements? While it looks magnificent on screen, the densities of a dye-transfer Technicolor print yield far less detail than a low-con IP or IN from the camera negative.

Is Olive's release licensed from Paramount and/or the Wayne Estate? *

BATJAC was not in any way involved at the time. We, of course, would have liked to access the best elements available but BATJAC was not interested (under the circumstances - re: rights lost). So, in essence, we could not get anything from them. Paramount much later only got MCL "out" as a "by-product" because of a package incl HONDO.
And: thanx in part a) to the elements we got hold of - b) to the technical equipment used (in this case the SPIRIT) - and c) the techniques we used to work with such (indeed critical) elements we were able to close the gap in detail mostly to a very narrow margin, at least to a level, where I could after the months of work around the clock (5 of them) and a team of total 19 be resonably satified with the result given what the material looked like BEFORE. Time of work on the SPIRIT alone was 11 1/2 days. And: please remember, this was 2005/2006. In the last 7 years the whole thing has dramatically changed.
* From what I see here: IGNITE FILMS directly (who do own underlying rights tied to the film).

 

[Torsten Kaiser]

If the Blu-ray is derived from your restoration then I wonder what happen because the disc doesn't look particular good to my eyes.

Care to elaborate ? This is a bit (very) vague....

 

[Robert Crawford]

Care to elaborate ? This is a bit (very) vague....

It's not a terrible disc, but I thought the disc had several moments in which detail and color were lacking compared to a recent HD broadcast on HD Net Movies. I fully understand that comparing the two is not a good idea, but the BD still looked less than what I was expecting it to look like. Somebody has mentioned the audio being compromised too, but I didn't notice that during my viewing of the BD.

 

[Torsten Kaiser]

It's not a terrible disc, but I thought the disc had several moments in which detail and color were lacking compared to a recent HD broadcast on HD Net Movies. I fully understand that comparing the two is not a good idea, but the BD still looked less than what I was expecting it to look like. Somebody has mentioned the audio being compromised too, but I didn't notice that during my viewing of the BD.

Hmm. Interesting . The HD Broadcast is also our restoration master, and the sound should be just fine... Unfortunately, we had no hand in the issues down the road of compression to Blu-ray (making of the MOV etc). I do not know what happend - but I have yet to see the disc in any case... But in all respects there is no reason why the release should not look like the images posted by me here / on our website.

 

[haineshisway]

Mr. Crawford is absolutely correct - the Olive Blu-ray a) looks nothing like the caps you posted here (not that I take much stock in caps), and b) is decidedly lackluster in quality and sharpness.

 

[Torsten Kaiser]

Mr. Crawford is absolutely correct - the Olive Blu-ray a) looks nothing like the caps you posted here (not that I take much stock in caps), and b) is decidedly lackluster in quality and sharpness.

By the way, the "caps" in this case are not screengrabs (such as from an encode or similar). These are jpg renders made from the original 10bit 4:4:4 RGB DPX files of the Final Restoration Master.
However, back to the issue at hand: if applied correctly, the compression for Blu-ray media (best via MOV made from DPX or TIFF, in this case most likely directly from the HDCAMSR dub) should in no way render or cause a significant change in quality.
So if, indeed, the signal should vary or differ from these files visibly this would be very unfortunate. As I said, until today I was not even aware that our restoration was used for this Blu-ray release; we certainly had no part in the production of the OLIVE BD.

 

[Torsten Kaiser]

Thanks, Torsten.
(...)

By the way: very good article on SHANE. I hope this brings a lot more clarity to an at times potentially very muddy issue.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

Thanks, although the complete article on SHANE won't be posted for another few weeks. I'm still doing research on that one.

Here's the widescreen article: http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/home/widescreen-documentation