as i was reading this and received an email from roger eberts mailing list.
" Here comes the corpse... "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" is not the macabre horror story the title suggests, but a sweet and visually lovely tale of love lost. In an era when most animated films look relentlessly bright and colorful, "Corpse Bride" creates two palettes, and not the ones we expect. "
This Divimax 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer of Evil Dead 2 looks marginally more impressive than Anchor Bay's last one, but there's not a sea of difference. Black levels are particularly rich and dense – that's what is most noticeable here – but the reality of the situation is that Evil Dead 2 succeeds in spite of its technical shortcomings and doesn't necessarily need to rest in the laurels of fancy-schmancy DVD transfers. Color contrast here is as good as it probably can be, the quality of this print is relatively without blemish or grime, and fine detail quality is fairly strong as well. Not a jaw-dropping transfer, but then again, Evil Dead 2 never looked jaw-droppingly great.
Since I never grabbed this before, seems pretty safe for me. d
Divimax seems to be a really sophisticated "paintbox" process. It looks like a large part of the image is kept "frozen" while only moving elements seem to have more movement.
The only problem is that I see occasional "outlines" left in the stationary background. This is only based on the Dawn of the Dead (theatrical cut) DiviMax DVD. It looks great, but individual frames do get a few weird artifacts.
Hey Guys! Now This Is The Directors VISION! OK? Now We Should Just Accept It! OK? I Think This Film Was Always Supposed To Be Imagined As A Comic Book, And.....oh...wait, what thread am I in?
Ah, yes..yes.."Ebertatious Palletteatious".
Anyway, I still will wait until I can see this new transfer for myself before I totally dismiss or praise it.
Actually, DiviMax refers to the original film-to-tape transfer having been done in High-Definition then downconverted to SD for the DVD.
As for the DVD File review indictaing that EVIL DEAD 2 never looked good, uhm, okay. It was only shot by a brilliant DP (Peter Deming, who went on to shoot several David Lynch films among others) and has some of the most amazing camerawork EVER seen in a movie, regardless of budget or genre...
But yeah, it totally never looked good. Uh huh. Right.
You know, another thing that some reviewers are saying is that this transfer has much less EE than the previous transfers....I have unfortunately* come to recognize EE when I see it thanks to HTF but I never really saw it much in the previous transfer, I'm not saying that it isn't there but it, IMO, wasn't really that bad compared to various big studio offerings. Grainy yes, but EE wasn't that much of a factor when I watched it.
*Unfortunate because if I hadn't been alerted to it I probably wouldn't have noticed it as much as I do now.
No one said it was. Anchor Bay, however, only uses the logo when using an HD source. They had not used any HD transfers prior to their first DiviMax release. For Evil Dead 2, this is the first time that AB (and possibly anyone else, for that matter) has done a HD transfer. DiviMax is nothing like "Vista Series" or "Platinum Series."
Divimax is still a marketing gimmick. Just about every dvd release of a studio film is derived from a HD source. I guess "mastered in high definition" doesn't sound as cool as "Divimax".
When the eyeball shoots across the room and lands in Bobby Joe's mouth, they've digitally erased the pole holding the eyeball, as well as the string holding it in the next shot. If you don't believe me, watch the documentary "The Gore The Merrier" included on the disc (its also on the old DVD). They mention how you can see it, but now its gone from the actual movie.
Its not the new transfer that took it away, if anything, the improved picture quality should have made it more obvious. It has clearly been erased digitally with a computer.
The obviousness of the pole and then the string made the scene funnier, but now its gone. It reminds me of the glass in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" being erased from the DVD, its a crying shame!
Aw that's a shame, I agree, the cheapness of the...hey don't they mention it in the commentary as well? Boy for anyone who hasn't seen any other version of the film that part of the commentary is going to confuse the hell out of them..."what poll?" -rewind- (rub's eyes) "I don't see any poll!"