Bill Burns
Supporting Actor
- Joined
- May 13, 2003
- Messages
- 747
Having now watched the disc twice:
"Excellent!"
The horizontal banding jumped right out at me, it's unmistakable just as Herb said, but it's fleeting, and involves only the one static shot. I imagine there's some bizarre telecine excuse behind it -- it doesn't look in any way encoding related, and I doubt it's print related. A very minor hiccup.
The "jitter," or scuffing, mentioned in Herb's review and by others looks like ordinary vertical frame damage to me. The scratches are a series of soft, horizontal marks in a vertical line to the left of the frame, minimally distracting (much less so than the banding, I thought), and look like mishandling and/or misfeeding of a film element into a projector, film cutter, or something similar. The film elements in this section of the picture seem to be the grainiest and have the heaviest damage, and may very well come from a lesser source (i.e. dupes further removed from the original negative than elements available for the remainder of the film, etc.).
Some scenes look so good, I'd swear they were digitally restored/remastered, suggesting perhaps LDI (who did Casablanca, to my understanding), but others display unmistakable frame jitter, by which I here mean "shaking," something LDI's digital processing (perhaps simply the fact that's it's digitally scanned in the first place lends it ready stability?) usually rectifies beautifully, and damage/aging (scratches, brightness fluctuations, smudges) one would usually expect to find absent in anything handled by that company. I wonder if Warner may have opted to restore only certain sections or reels of the film, those that were in the worst shape, and saved on cost with the rest? That's strictly a guess, but even at its worst, this transfer looks very good. I'd recommend it very highly indeed. That I fell in love with this picture on VHS is no small part of that recommendation -- this transfer is a beautiful, far more film-like experience.
And if WB happens by -- I cherish this new "film night" feature, recreating the theatrical experience of the period with shorts and newsreels. What a marvelous idea!
As a trivia note, I found it amusing that curse words bleeped in the commentary were allowed to pass unbleeped in the documentary (one or two are associated with specific quotes from the director and/or stars). Hmmm. The longer, beautifully made documentary on John Huston himself is absolute gold -- I adore this thing. What a great piece of work. Oddly, though, in what I could swear was the same interview of Angelica Huston used for this documentary, I heard her make a comment in a previous television broadcast not found here (it involves the energizing effect filmmaking had on her father, and that is nevertheless discussed by other parties in the documentary as found on this DVD). Perhaps that interview has been cut in various ways for more than one documentary? Or perhaps there are alternate cuts of this same documentary? It looks like the same interview, but who knows -- maybe not. It's a great quote, though, and so I'll share it here. After discussing her father's work on The Dead, and the fact that he was often breathing from an oxygen tank while shots were being set-up, etc., but would take off the oxygen hose to direct the scene (shots here make it look as though he at least occasionally wore it regardless, but no matter), she observed, in a comment I'll never forget, "directing had literally become easier for him than breathing."
Now that's a filmmaker.
"Excellent!"
The horizontal banding jumped right out at me, it's unmistakable just as Herb said, but it's fleeting, and involves only the one static shot. I imagine there's some bizarre telecine excuse behind it -- it doesn't look in any way encoding related, and I doubt it's print related. A very minor hiccup.
The "jitter," or scuffing, mentioned in Herb's review and by others looks like ordinary vertical frame damage to me. The scratches are a series of soft, horizontal marks in a vertical line to the left of the frame, minimally distracting (much less so than the banding, I thought), and look like mishandling and/or misfeeding of a film element into a projector, film cutter, or something similar. The film elements in this section of the picture seem to be the grainiest and have the heaviest damage, and may very well come from a lesser source (i.e. dupes further removed from the original negative than elements available for the remainder of the film, etc.).
Some scenes look so good, I'd swear they were digitally restored/remastered, suggesting perhaps LDI (who did Casablanca, to my understanding), but others display unmistakable frame jitter, by which I here mean "shaking," something LDI's digital processing (perhaps simply the fact that's it's digitally scanned in the first place lends it ready stability?) usually rectifies beautifully, and damage/aging (scratches, brightness fluctuations, smudges) one would usually expect to find absent in anything handled by that company. I wonder if Warner may have opted to restore only certain sections or reels of the film, those that were in the worst shape, and saved on cost with the rest? That's strictly a guess, but even at its worst, this transfer looks very good. I'd recommend it very highly indeed. That I fell in love with this picture on VHS is no small part of that recommendation -- this transfer is a beautiful, far more film-like experience.
And if WB happens by -- I cherish this new "film night" feature, recreating the theatrical experience of the period with shorts and newsreels. What a marvelous idea!
As a trivia note, I found it amusing that curse words bleeped in the commentary were allowed to pass unbleeped in the documentary (one or two are associated with specific quotes from the director and/or stars). Hmmm. The longer, beautifully made documentary on John Huston himself is absolute gold -- I adore this thing. What a great piece of work. Oddly, though, in what I could swear was the same interview of Angelica Huston used for this documentary, I heard her make a comment in a previous television broadcast not found here (it involves the energizing effect filmmaking had on her father, and that is nevertheless discussed by other parties in the documentary as found on this DVD). Perhaps that interview has been cut in various ways for more than one documentary? Or perhaps there are alternate cuts of this same documentary? It looks like the same interview, but who knows -- maybe not. It's a great quote, though, and so I'll share it here. After discussing her father's work on The Dead, and the fact that he was often breathing from an oxygen tank while shots were being set-up, etc., but would take off the oxygen hose to direct the scene (shots here make it look as though he at least occasionally wore it regardless, but no matter), she observed, in a comment I'll never forget, "directing had literally become easier for him than breathing."
Now that's a filmmaker.
