My Name is Nobody (Image Release) - TERRIBLE! (1 Viewer)

[dpippel]

I sold my old WHAM! import DVD of the great Terrence Hill/Henry Fonda western My Name is Nobody a couple of months ago in anticipation of the new U.S. release of the film by Image Entertainment. Yesterday I finally got around to watching the new DVD. It is, unfortunately, TOTAL CRAP.

The WHAM! release was terrible. The "master" appeared to be an old VHS tape, the compression work was atrocious, and it was non-anamorphic. I assumed (wrongly it turns out) that Image would at least give this fantastic film an acceptable transfer. Instead it looks like they simply ported over the existing WHAM! transfer and gave it anamorphic enhancement. It's EASILY the worst looking DVD in my 400+ disc collection. It has all of the problems that the WHAM! transfer had - mosquito noise, MPEG blocking, aliasing, shimmering, terrible color balance, faulty framing, etc. In addition it's incorrectly flagged as VIDEO rather than film, which only adds to the absolutely unacceptable image quality of this disc. There are no extras and no sound options; all you've got are chapter stops.

So, in my opinion unless you absolutely cannot live without having My Name is Nobody on DVD you should give this one a wide berth. Image Enterntainment TOTALLY dropped the ball on this release and what a major disappointment it is. I've seen much better transfers on $5 public domain titles.

Perhaps one day this great film will get the treatment it deserves, but this certainly isn't it. Way to go Image.

 

[Damin J Toell]

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/dvdcompare/nobody.htm

The Image disc may not be perfect, but it isn't even remotely a port of the Wham! disc.

DJ

 

[John Hodson]

If you're multi-regional, it's coming sooner than you think - see here.

 

[dpippel]

You're basing this opinion on screenshots? Both transfers could very easily be from the same source. The Image release may just be processed and re-compressed. Some video manipulation needed to be done to make it anamorphic.

At any rate, saying that one of these transfers is better than the other is like comparing warts on a toad - they're both DAMNED UGLY.

 

[dpippel]

John - Thanks for the heads-up! I'm not MR but can be with a firmware update. Why oh WHY can't we get a R1 release that's comparable to what TLEFilms is doing?

 

[Damin J Toell]

Really? Then from where did Image get the additional picture information that is cropped out of the Wham release? Unless you're going to tell me that Image used some manner of CGI to recreate the previously-cropped parts of the picture, it can't be a port of the Wham transfer. The Image transfer also contains a lot of additional resolution, which can't be magically created by porting from the Wham disc. It is quite obviously an entirely different transfer, no matter what you happen to think of its quality.

DJ

 

[dpippel]

Well I certainly don't know all the ins and outs of DVD video authoring, but couldn't the cropping have occured during compression? In other words, when converting to MPEG from the video master? I'm sure that the compressionist has some control over framing.

 

[Damin J Toell]

I guess it could happen that the tech just decided to randomly crop the picture, but there would be no particular reason for it. Basically, I don't see any similarity between the two discs to indicate that they come from the same source. They don't appear to look anything alike, other than the fact that they're the same film. You may think they both look bad, but that doesn't mean that one is a port of the other.

DJ

 

[Vincent_P]

As far as I know, compressionists have no control over the framing. That would be a friggin' disaster. Their job is to author the master that they are given so that the final MPEG-2 DVD compression looks as close to the original master as possible, not to make artistic decisions regarding the film's framing.

The difference in image quality, color, detail, etc. etc. etc., between those two versions is drastic. Maybe the Image disc has its own flaws, but it certainly didn't come from the same master as the WHAM disc.

Vincent

 

[dpippel]

Well it was a guess on my part, fueled by my extreme disappointment in the quality of the Image release. I just find it hard to believe that there are two *different* masters for this film floating around that look so poor, and in such similiar ways. But, stranger things have happened.

In any case, the bottom line is that both the WHAM! and Image releases of My Name is Nobody are really, really lousy. Hopefully a new transfer from the restoration work being done on the film by TLEFilms for the R2 release will make it's way into good hands in the U.S. and we'll eventually get a new R1 DVD. Hopefully. :frowning:

 

[Damin J Toell]

Coincidentally, I received the Image disc in the mail today as part of the recent DDD sale. It does look quite poor, especially on a progressive display. That said, and assuming that DVD Beaver's shots of the Wham disc are accurate, it is not from the same source as Wham's. Those Wham screenshots have a telltale haze of video noise to them that indicates they come from an old analog source (if not sourced directly from a VHS tape). The Image disc, whatever its faults, looks definitely like a made-for-DVD transfer. It just happens to be a really bad one. All of its faults are pitfalls a DVD transfer may face, but they're not indicative of coming from a pre-DVD source. There's nothing to indicate that it comes from anything on the level of, say, VHS.

On its own, and even moreso in comparison to well-made transfers, the Image disc is really bad. When the Wham disc is thrown in for comparison, the Image disc goes from really bad to just plain ol' bad. The likely story here is that Image was stuck with what the licensors supplied to them (and the curious 2002 copyright date for the disc content would indicate the transfer they were given was already about 3 years old by the time they put the disc out). This doesn't excuse the quality of the disc, nor does it make me any happier about the money I spent on it, but it makes me sympathetic to Image. This is an all-too-common tale with genre films owned by producers outside the U.S.

DJ

 

[Mark Edward Heuck]

First off, AFAIK, the WHAM disc was a glorified bootleg that managed to leak into legitimate businesses. Less said about it the better.

Second, I don't know how this happened, but a likely reason why the Image disc is so terrible is because of who licensed it to them. Alfredo Leone's International Media Films is claiming to be the copyright owner on this movie, which I think would be a big surprise to Universal, who had previously released a very good-looking laserdisc of the film, which I still own. I'm sure he's got some paperwork that asserts that he has a legal claim to the movie, but that also means he (and by default, Image) does not have access to any of the materials in Universal's vault, and had to make do with whatever existing master he had on hand.

Leone was also responsible for the PAL-sourced LA DOLCE VITA disc released by Koch Lorber last fall, which also struck me funny because earlier that year Paramount (inheritor from Republic Pictures) was circulating a new print. Again, there must a loophole that grants him the ability to license the title, but not to use, say, a clean NTSC master available in the Paramount archive, thus forcing Koch Lorber to the expensive task of time-correcting the PAL master.

To quote Foghorn Leghorn, "There's somethin', ah say there's somethin' about this fella that just don't add up."

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

These are most definitely two completely different transfers, and could not possibly look more different:

[c](screen grabs from DVD Beaver Comparison)

Image Ent. on the top vs. WHAM! on the bottom.











Look at the differences in their bitrate tracking:


[/c]

 

[walter o]

I was rather suprised that so many web sites said how nice the transfer was, until you actually see it with your own two eyes! I am glad I am hanging on to my old MCA LD.

Ironically, I am in touch with a Italian producer who claims he is the right owner, and apprently has access to the Universal vault material, and when I told him it was already out, and when he asked me who licensed it to image, and when I said his name, he said to me "MAMA MIA!"

 

[Garry Cowell]

Here's some grabs from the current (UK) R2.