A Few Words About While we wait for A few words about...™ The Rodgers & Hammerstein Collection -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[AnthonyClarke]

I'm with you, Mark ... I love Carousel every bit as much as I do Oklahoma and South Pacific. They're my top three......

 

[Mark Booth]

Will someone please post screen caps of Carousel?

Working on it for you now!

Mark

 

[Mark Booth]

I'm with you, Mark ... I love Carousel every bit as much as I do Oklahoma and South Pacific. They're my top three......

Of these six R&H musicals, my favorite still remains 'The Sound of Music'. I enjoyed 'Carousel' (yesterday was my first viewing) but the story was a little bit too dark for me. I prefer bright and cheerful.

Before the release of this set, I would have ranked 'Oklahoma!' near the bottom of these six films. But the Todd-AO restoration is so amazing, it's an entertainment in its own right. I just watched it from beginning to end last night and I'm ready to see it again!

Mark

 

[MarkW2]

Thank you so much Anthony and Mark. Great to know other Carousel fans out there. The message is relevant to my life. That will be the first one I pop in when I buy the set. The score never fails to move me.

 

[OliverK]

Yes, but the difference is the blue used in "Hello Young Lovers" is actually a lovely shade of blue - not this awful washed out grayish blue that pervades this blu-ray. Just wanted to make that distinction because the blue in "Hello Young Lovers" on the blu-ray is not pretty like it should be. I know "pretty" is a subjective term, but see the intended blue as a highlight; it wasn't the main color of the scene. In addition, there should be a stark contrast between Anna on the terrace and the very warm inside of the room behind her, and on the blu-ray, the background is cold and devoid of warmth. Skewer me for screen grabs if you will, but I feel so passionately about this. This cap is from the SD DVD; look at the warmth in the background; Deborah's hair is red; her skin tone is warm; the blue lighting is a pleasing blue and is a highlight, not a color scheme ( and thanks to Mark B for inspiring this comparison). Now a similar shot from the blu-ray - cold background, Deborah's hair is an odd shade, not quite red, not sure what it is; her skin is cadaverous; the background is cold, the ladies exhibit no warm colors. This blu-ray seriously needs to be redone.

The HD airing that I have recorded is color-timed exactly like the DVD, both in caps and motion.I will not claim that it is perfect and maybe it is a little bit too warm but it is much more consistent and believable. I don't think that I am going out on a limb when I say that Fox at present has big issues with properly timing and grading not only The King and I but also other releases. Blue or rather a complete lack of warmth is an issue with so many of their Blu-rays, I am also thinking of the Marilyn Monroe collection, Desk Set or Cleopatra, that Fox needs to do something about this and possibly use different colorists in the future or for a re-release.In any case this has got to stop as it is destroying otherwise beautiful releases and hopefully with The King and I we finally have a movie that enough people care about to make this a discussion point at Fox. Schawn Belston is a great guy and I am sure he was instrumental in bringing us a re-release of Patton so hopefully he and whoever else is in charge can also look into the issues with The King and I and other titles that look so blue now - texture and detail is important but so are contrast/gamma (Carousel?) and colors - it all has to be done right.

 

[Mark Booth]

Mark, here are screenshots from Carousel. I got a little carried away (14 of them)!

Mark

 

[MarkW2]

Wow! That looks clearer than any release I've ever seen. Thanks for taking the time to post those Mark. I'll be looking at them for a while tonight. The caps look so crisp and vast. Amazing. I've heard reports about the sound on the disc being close to the standard def. Is there any improvement there? Are the background choir vocals still distorted?

 

[Konstantinos]

Thank you very much for the Carousel screenshots!
They indeed look marvellous.
I haven't seen the film and I'm looking forward to.

Does anyone think that they might have applied a slight DNR?
It doesn't seem to have much grain.
Or was it that way from the start?

 

[Wayne_j]

I found The King and I to be watchable, but it definitely has a blue cast all through the movie. I'm thinking of making myself a copy with the blue cast removed.

 

[Will Krupp]

Does anyone think that they might have applied a slight DNR?
It doesn't seem to have much grain.
Or was it that way from the start?

Couldn't say about the DNR but the purpose of CinemaScope55, shooting on 8 perf (or was it 6 perf?) 55mm negative and then printing down for 35mm release was to supposedly have a virtually grain free release print.

Apparently, Fox's research told them that there was little additional gain (when printing down to 35mm) to using a negative larger than 55mm but there was tremendous gain in terms of clarity and grain reduction to be had in using sizes UP to 55mm.

 

[Konstantinos]

Couldn't say about the DNR but the purpose of CinemaScope55, shooting on 8 perf (or was it 6 perf?) 55mm negative and then printing down for 35mm release was to supposedly have a virtually grain free release print.

Apparently, Fox's research told them that there was little additional gain (when printing down to 35mm) to using a negative larger than 55mm but there was tremendous gain in terms of clarity and grain reduction to be had in using sizes UP to 55mm.

Ok, thanks for the information.

 

[DennisKre]

Just to join the discussion about The King And I: I've checked two scenes mentioned earlier through caps (slightly before Getting To Know You and at the end of Something Wonderful) via DVD and the drop in image quality and change of color are already there. Both occur either right after or right before an optical. So, the issues might just be more apparent than before.

 

[Will Krupp]

Both occur either right after or right before an optical. So, the issues might just be more apparent than before.

That definitely accounts for the quality "drop" in those scenes, but the inconsistent color issues are not exclusive to the opticals (although, as I was mentioning to ahollis the other day, it looks like there may be some additional dupe sections dropped in here and there for reasons unknown to us.)

 

[Mark Booth]

Here's another screenshot from 'The King and I'. I do not believe this is an optical (previous transition was about 20 seconds earlier, next transition is about 18 seconds after).

I brought that image into Photoshop and measured the color of Anna's "white" gloves. This is a patch of that color:

Then I also measured the color on one of the poles of the hut in the background:

I'd appreciate if someone with the DVD would post a screenshot of the same scene!

Mark

 

[RolandL]

Couldn't say about the DNR but the purpose of CinemaScope55, shooting on 8 perf (or was it 6 perf?) 55mm negative and then printing down for 35mm release was to supposedly have a virtually grain free release print. Apparently, Fox's research told them that there was little additional gain (when printing down to 35mm) to using a negative larger than 55mm but there was tremendous gain in terms of clarity and grain reduction to be had in using sizes UP to 55mm.

CinemaScope 55 was 8 perf, 1.824 x 1.430 frame size. The plan was to release it 6 perf but that never happened. 35mm CinemaScope was .864 x .732.

 

[Joe Caps]

Some comments -
No, the repainted parts of the temple from the Egyptian are not blue and on the sd they look like white marble.

I am also glad that others are also hearing the sound problems on Oklahoma,
the crisp intensity from previous masters is now hopelessly gone.
by this morning I had had enough and sold the blu ray set to a friend, while pointing out to him all of the problems.
I ran back to my transfers of Oklahoma from the laserdisc and all of the two disc old SDs of the other films, except for Sound of music and South Pacific.
The odd thing is that NONE of this makes any sense. All of this has been newly or recently restored. There should be NO sound problems with Oklahoma.
No picture problems with King and I. and to me - Carousel is simply too dark, often.

Shawn Belston at Fox is in charge of this, and he is one of the best film people around. So, again - none of this make sense.

 

[EddieLarkin]

Here's another screenshot from 'The King and I'. I do not believe this is an optical (previous transition was about 20 seconds earlier, next transition is about 18 seconds after).

It certainly still looks like an optical. It should be quite easy to tell; after the scene transition, does the image "pop" back into life after a few frames? If not, does the scene continue from the transition with no other shots edited in? If your answers are "No" and "Yes" respectively, it'll be an optical.

 

[KPmusmag]

I'd appreciate if someone with the DVD would post a screenshot of the same scene!

Mark

SD DVD:

BR:

 

[OliverK]

Here's another screenshot from 'The King and I'. I do not believe this is an optical (previous transition was about 20 seconds earlier, next transition is about 18 seconds after). I brought that image into Photoshop and measured the color of Anna's "white" gloves. This is a patch of that color: Then I also measured the color on one of the poles of the hut in the background: I'd appreciate if someone with the DVD would post a screenshot of the same scene! Mark

Trying to get the same screencap up here from the HD version, it is quite a difference in colors and not for the better.Something else is interesting: The cap from the Blu-ray is missing some information at the top, left and the bottom and it is vertically stretched a bit compared to the HD cap.I suggest to pull up a third color from photoshop - the second woman on the right in the foreground is wearing something more or less yellowish-white in my version of the cap, in yours it is quite a different color.

Loading these two caps into Windows picture viewer and toggling back and forth between them is quite shocking.

 

[OliverK]

It certainly still looks like an optical. It should be quite easy to tell; after the scene transition, does the image "pop" back into life after a few frames? If not, does the scene continue from the transition with no other shots edited in? If your answers are "No" and "Yes" respectively, it'll be an optical.

That wouldn't even matter that much as clearly it would have been an optical before and the previous versions were completely different with regard to colors.