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Press Release USHE Press Release: Alfred Hitchcock: The Iconic Film Collection (4k UHD) (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Ronald Epstein
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Charade is scheduled for restoration this year.
https://www.nbcuniversal.com/articl...r 112 years,audiences for generations to come
Currently Criterion owns the US home video rights. That may change for this restoration. If so, we should see a Uni release soon after. If Criterion retains the rights, who knows how many years it may be.
Since we’re less than two weeks from November, the work on Charade is either completed or is close to being completed with the caveat of no unexpected circumstances. If not any issues then any further 4KUHD delay might be attributed to Criterion’s slow pace in releasing their titles. Hopefully, 2025 will be another exciting year for physical media.
I wouldn't exactly count One Eyed Jacks among their stellar efforts. They lopped off the Paramount and VistaVision logos at the start of the feature and replaced them with a Uni globe, despite the VistaVision fanfare playing in the background. Don't care what rights issue they needed to wrangle to get this done. If they can negotiate a Hitchcock set with North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief, this could have, and SHOULD HAVE been done on the Brando flick to ensure total preservation of the original elements.
The featurette is interesting for several reasons, chiefly, because it relies rather heavily on the work that was done on deep catalog several years ago. Lots of clips of The Sting, Duck Soup, Frankenstein, Man Who Knew Too Much and a lot on The Wiz. Sugarland is the only 2024 Blu/4K release prominently featured here.
Yep, I see the poster art below the featurette for, among others Charade and The Wiz. Question - the Wiz's Blu that's currently out, and several years old, doesn't look bad. Are they claiming a new restoration on this in 2024? Not a great movie, by any means.
And Charade, while included in the poster art, along with Till We Meet Again, Wild Party, and others is currently MIA except in the old transfer quality, and NOT referenced in this featurette at all. So, work done?!? Where? When? And any thoughts on a Blu or (choke!) 4K?
I got a mild laugh for my previous comment about work that needs to be done on movies like The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Charade, The Paper, House Sitter, Death Becomes Her, etc. But with all due respect - these are fun films in the Uni canon. You can argue their value as high art. I don't think any of us here would put any of them in the same class as Citizen Kane or Gone with the Wind.
But they're movies that have not been given their due thus far on home video. 'Whorehouse' as example, has a ton of gate weave, color balancing issues, edge enhancement and pixelization. There are also major issues with the soundtrack - pretty much diminishing the choral sections to prominently feature the principle voices. This isn't how the picture looked or sounded initially. A real mess.
Obviously an older transfer. It would also help considerably if Uni would restore the excised number 'Where The Stallions Run' that Dolly Parton wrote and Burt Reynolds performed in an open field, with remarkable tenderness. It's never appeared on any cut of the movie except DVD.
If you haven't already guessed, I'm a fan of this one and would like to see something done with it before I pass on. Ditto for The Paper, Ron Howard's badly underrated masterpiece from 1994 that, in its current iteration on Blu is about as unappealing as any modern effort I've seen thus far. Harsh contrast, edge enhancement in the extreme, amplified grain looking like digitized grit. Honestly, no excuse for something as new as this looking this bad.
House Sitter and Death Becomes Her need new scans too. Colors anemic on both, and contrast falling into a mid-range plunk. I could go on, but won't. Uni thinks that by peddling what they've already done in the past, with one or two new efforts inserted into the mix, makes up for the fact their proactive-ism where deep catalog is concerned, pretty much ended with their 100th anniversary spate of releases in 2012.
First Halloween since I can't remember when that they haven't re-re-re-re-packaged their classic monsters. Now, they're on to Hitchcock, or rather, haven't actually left him for at least a decade of repurposed efforts.
Wouldn't hurt them to apply the same level of quality remastering to their Abbott and Costello holdings that, apart from Buck Privates, needs considerable work.
Ditto for their Deanna Durbin catalog. Great talent, totally absent on home video.
And then, let's not forget they own the rights to all of the Bing Crosby catalog - virtually NONE of those early efforts, like If I Had My Way with the spectacular Gloria Jean, on Blu-ray.
While studios like Columbia are doing comprehensive sets to augment their major players of yore, like the new Frank Capra set, Uni seems intently focused on forgetting about a lot of talents it has under its umbrella and could market similarly with just a bit more concerted effort for mining their archive.
Not impressed. Not by a long shot.
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Never mind!
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