820 Fantastic Planet

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cdnchris
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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#26 Post by cdnchris » Sat Jun 04, 2016 11:17 am

It's an odd presentation. It actually doesn't start out all that bad. The tone is "cooler" which is fine, but yellows still look yellow and skin tones still look pinkish. I always thought the colours looked washed out and faded in every other previous release I've seen (and I certainly wouldn't say any of those previous releases, like any home video release, should be held as reference when it's more a matter of what people got used to) and saturation is certainly better here. But then the blue tone gets far heavier and most of the film is doused in it, the skin tones look more pale/bluish and everything is far colder and darker. It's odd.

Since their notes mention the work was done by Argos and make no mention of "color correction" or anything of the sort it's safe to say this is what they got from them. So anybody hoping for a "fixed" version they are pretty much SOL I'm sure.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#27 Post by djproject » Sat Jun 04, 2016 3:34 pm

Manny Karp wrote:
cdnchris wrote:This is what the notes on the transfer say:
This 2K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative at Eclair/Groupe Ymagis by Argos Films, with the support of the CNC, under the supervision of Florence Dauman and Fabrice Blin, who got like, totally baked watching this tripped-out flick, dudes, and were convinced the world was greeeeen, man!
We were going to restore this film ... but then we got high.
Last edited by djproject on Mon Jun 06, 2016 11:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#28 Post by jsteffe » Sat Jun 04, 2016 4:25 pm

I have the 2012 Masters of Cinema Blu-ray, and the color is certainly better than the faded DVDs. If you look at the DVD Beaver caps for the older DVDs, the Draags do not have sufficiently blue skin, and the Masters of Cinema Blu corrected that. But it also lacks the heavy blue tint that others have noted with the new 2k restoration on the Criterion edition. I'll stick with the MoC.

[Corrected: 2k instead of 4k]
Last edited by jsteffe on Sat Jun 04, 2016 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#29 Post by peerpee » Sat Jun 04, 2016 4:59 pm

cdnchris wrote:This is what the notes on the transfer say:
This 2K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative at Eclair/Groupe Ymagis by Argos Films, with the support of the CNC, under the supervision of Florence Dauman and Fabrice Blin.

I visited Argos Films in Paris in 2009 and looked at their new 2K digital restoration of FANTASTIC PLANET. This is what MoC licensed from Argos and released on Blu. So, either they've done another one (why would they do another 2K?) or someone's had a play with the colours somewhere along the line.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#30 Post by Calvin » Sat Jun 04, 2016 5:10 pm

peerpee wrote:
cdnchris wrote:This is what the notes on the transfer say:
This 2K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative at Eclair/Groupe Ymagis by Argos Films, with the support of the CNC, under the supervision of Florence Dauman and Fabrice Blin.

I visited Argos Films in Paris in 2009 and looked at their new 2K digital restoration of FANTASTIC PLANET. This is what MoC licensed from Argos and released on Blu. So, either they've done another one (why would they do another 2K?) or someone's had a play with the colours somewhere along the line.

The CNC funded a restoration in July of last year

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#31 Post by cdnchris » Sat Jun 04, 2016 6:29 pm

Since the booklet mentions the "support" of the CNC I'm assuming that's the one they used then.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#32 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Jun 07, 2016 3:33 pm

Discussion of everyone's favorite pro bassoonist has been moved to the appropriate thread

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#33 Post by domino harvey » Tue Jun 07, 2016 4:33 pm

Thanks

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#34 Post by ambrose1am » Mon Jul 04, 2016 3:44 pm

This is the kind of release that used to make people on this board apoplectic. LOL. Does anyone have info on the restored print aside from Criterion's info and some random poster on a forum page? Is the blue tint present? Which color tint is correct for this film? The Criterion is so blue, but I can see why that makes sense given the themes of the film. I have the MOC Blu and am wondering if I should double dip.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#35 Post by Orlac » Fri Jul 15, 2016 6:46 am

Twilight Time's BFF sticks his oar in - http://www.hometheaterforum.com/communi ... et.348477/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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#36 Post by tenia » Fri Jul 15, 2016 8:30 am

Orlac wrote:Twilight Time's BFF sticks his oar in - http://www.hometheaterforum.com/communi ... et.348477/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Straight from his 2nd post : "I will not look at those caps because they do not resemble the movie I watched."
You can disagree with people's impressions over the new color timing, since it very much is a personal impression : it feels correct or doesn't, but we viewers don't have any factual reference to state what is correct and what's not.

But screen captures, providing they’re properly taken, can perfectly allow to assess a color timing as well as other things (compression for instance). If these caps don’t resemble the movie he watched, either they haven’t been properly captured (some of them are straight from blu-ray.com, it would be surprising for them not to be properly taken), or the guy hasn’t properly watched the movie.

The third option is that he has made up definitely his mind and whatever factual but contradictory element brought to him will only be discarded because it doesn’t fit his rational. Which is merely human nature, mind you, but at least, he could be a bit more subtle about it.

He also originally states that the restoration was done in Italy, which is wrong.


Anyway, there's a stance against screen captures I don't understand. Sure, you don't get the psychovisual effects on your brain because it's motionless in opposition of watching a "motion picture", but still : a movie remains litterally 24 (usually) still frames per second. Of course, they need to be taken properly (which is the main culprit here, most of the time) but it's a bit easy to rebuff any screen capture by saying "oh but it's not reliable !".
And even if you're not watching them on a calibrated monitor, take a software like Paint Shop Pro and it will give you RGB values nonetheless.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#37 Post by cdnchris » Fri Jul 15, 2016 12:22 pm

Not sure why I feel the need to do this but just want to clarify one thing:

The one user mentions how I refer to "inconsistencies" throughout and keeps mentioning the two council scenes and how they differ, and I'm not sure if they think I'm referring to this or took this into account. I actually never noticed this as the scenes are far apart. If they were one right after the other I probably would have noticed (doing a check and jumping between the two directly, yeah, the one is darker I would say) but as they are it's possible they were graded differently for tone of the scene (another user points this out). What I meant is the level of coolness (blue) varied from scene to scene, getting heavier in some, toned down in others, but there was always a cooler look to the film, far more than what I was used to, which did throw me off, a lot actually. Otherwise it's a good looking transfer, very smooth and filmic and ultimately I do like it. Not sure if I stressed that enough.
The third option is that he has made up definitely his mind and whatever factual but contradictory element brought to him will only be discarded because it doesn’t fit his rational. Which is merely human nature, mind you, but at least, he could be a bit more subtle about it.
I would go with this. I understand where he's coming from because it was completely blown out or proportion by people who hadn't seen the disc, and I again may have inadvertently fed into this. But he seems to be just coming in from the other side way too hard, probably in an unconscious attempt to level things out. He had the advantage of having all of this prior knowledge, too, before seeing it, so he was pretty much prepared to blow it off and look at it a certain way. I had avoided Beaver and other reviews before looking at it, and even though I caught wind of the colours I was still taken aback by the difference. What's annoying personally is the fact he actually blows both Svet and I off completely (as well as every other review on the disc that mentions the difference), even though we both actually gave very favourable reviews (again, the transfer is excellent), we just happened to mention it leans more blue, which it does.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#38 Post by _shadow_ » Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:37 am

I'm suprised the thread hasn't been updated to note that Camera Obscura released a BD with correct color. The scale of difference varies between shots but the range of tonalities is consistently far superior to the Criterion. In addition, there is less cropping and finer grain, so overall a clear improvement. It's relatively rare to have an HD release that corrects a prior jaundiced "restoration" - maybe that will be the next trend in upgrades once we get past 4K remasters.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#39 Post by Cronenfly » Thu Jul 18, 2019 6:42 pm

How does the MoC stack up? I’d rather go with an entirely English friendly version if possible.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#40 Post by tenia » Fri Jul 19, 2019 2:34 am

Possibly more faithful colors, older transfer.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#41 Post by RIP Film » Fri Jul 19, 2019 7:48 am

Camera Obscura left a lengthy post on the bluray forums that adds some context.

“Hi,

we're happy about your interest in our release and would like to answer some questions.

First off, we tried to acquire English options but sadly it just wasn't possible, which we completely understand. This might as well happen to other releases we are planning in the future, so be warned...

Regarding the color grading: We asked the lab for the 2K version of their restoration as no other/better elements were available. We knew we wanted to provide a different color correction for a simple reason: the lab that did the restoration has a track record of tealing basically every restoration they do to varying degress, and FANTASTIC PLANET is no exception. You can see this for example in our bonus feature "Topors Träume" where Topor watches a theatrical screening of the film and there is no trace of teal to be found. Also, if you followed the discussion in this forum, you will find several other evidences produced by users that indicate how the film originally looked. Plus, there is the Eureka version that, according to the producers, was struck from an interpositive (or internegative -- I can't remember which right now). Anyway, we wanted to give the fans a choice while not disregarding the work of the lab and the people involved from the producer's/licensor's side, and hence opted to include both versions. So I painstakingly (and this is not just a matter of speech...) color corrected the tealed version to what we have now.
As for the framing: This is the unchanged framing of the 2K master as provided by the lab. We inquired about the different framing and and production company Argos Films' Florence Dauman confirmed that it's legit. We really hoped they would say so because it obviously doesn't crop picture information (like people on the sides of the frame, and so on), keeps objects that should be centered in the center and looks overall more balanced -- at least to our eyes. One or a few instances of print damage surely wasn't the reason for cropping an entire film. If we would have spotted this instance of damage, we would have removed it as we have done on several other spots especially during the credits sequence which still presented many instanced of dust speckles that are now gone. Sorry for not seeing it!

So this is more or less the whole story. It's something I hope I'll never have to do again, but FANTASTIC PLANET is one of my favorite movies and it just had to be done (at least for our own sake). We wanted to give it the ultimate release and make as many fans happy as we possibly can. Some people actually like the somewhat otherworldly look (if you can say so in case of FANTASTIC PLANET...) of the tealed version, which is fine with us and which we didn't want to take away from them. The way we see it, it's always nice to have a choice when it comes to things as controversial as this topic.”

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#42 Post by Never Cursed » Tue Aug 04, 2020 12:52 am

I finally got around to this for the Sci-Fi list and I'm sad to say it, but I found this rather tedious in spite of the lush animation and weirdo jazz score. Even in as short a feature as this, the parade of (again, beautifully realized) alien beings and behaviors felt endless without much tying these things to a narrative or specific themes/points beyond the most obvious re: man’s inhumanity (in-om-anity?) to those he sees as inferior. Certainly I can think of another aesthetics-conscious auteur who, a couple years ago, nicked a lot of individual ideas from this for his pet-and-language-centric animated sensory odyssey across strange and species-segregated terrain, but those appropriations were made in the service of actual characters engaging in a much more involving and cathartic story than that of the Laloux. Fantastic Planet works decently well as a filmed acid trip (though even on that level I’ve seen better), but narratively and structurally I think it leaves too much wanting.

All that said, MichaelB’s essay on the movie is a very good read and helps to put a lot of it in context - I recommend it more highly than the film itself (ditto for the soundtrack).

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#43 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Aug 04, 2020 12:57 am

Never Cursed wrote:
Tue Aug 04, 2020 12:52 am
Certainly I can think of another aesthetics-conscious auteur who, a couple years ago, nicked a lot of individual ideas from this for his pet-and-language-centric animated sensory odyssey across strange and species-segregated terrain, but those appropriations were made in the service of actual characters engaging in a much more involving and cathartic story than that of the Laloux.
And just like that, I realize Isle of Dogs is eligible as a sci-fi movie

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#44 Post by Never Cursed » Tue Aug 04, 2020 12:58 am

Oh, I was already planning on voting for it in the top half of my list at least

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#45 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Aug 21, 2020 1:39 am

Never Cursed wrote:
Tue Aug 04, 2020 12:52 am
I finally got around to this for the Sci-Fi list and I'm sad to say it, but I found this rather tedious in spite of the lush animation and weirdo jazz score. Even in as short a feature as this, the parade of (again, beautifully realized) alien beings and behaviors felt endless without much tying these things to a narrative or specific themes/points beyond the most obvious re: man’s inhumanity (in-om-anity?) to those he sees as inferior. Certainly I can think of another aesthetics-conscious auteur who, a couple years ago, nicked a lot of individual ideas from this for his pet-and-language-centric animated sensory odyssey across strange and species-segregated terrain, but those appropriations were made in the service of actual characters engaging in a much more involving and cathartic story than that of the Laloux. Fantastic Planet works decently well as a filmed acid trip (though even on that level I’ve seen better), but narratively and structurally I think it leaves too much wanting.
I like this one, but it's the kind of film where if you're not engaged in trusting the film to develop in the specific way it functions, or interested in that offered process, I can't blame anyone for tuning out. The aesthetics and splashes of eccentric details pilot a gradual momentum of world-building through the eyes of a limited perspective from the outsider Om, without the need for a fully fleshed-out arc as we would normally get to establish narrative in a sci-fi film. I'll cosign that as far as character investment goes, this film doesn't really feed the expectations -or even needs- of how I want to engage in a narrative, and that definitely stops it from being the masterpiece it's swimming towards in other aspects. Beyond the comfortable tone and visually-arresting ideas, I think the concept is a profound depiction of power dynamics amongst sentient beings, that wisely doesn't venture into didactic moral teachings. The film could have easily focused on a Twilight Zone setup of "what would it be like if we humans were pets!?" but instead balances equitable perspective-taking across two groups who are both very humane.

The Draag kids play rough or kind, but in no way different than human children, and the reasoning of the elders is about as sound as what familiar parenting or governing humans would profess- or better! In several ways this film's projected 'oppressors' live as many of us may imagine our utopia to be, where meditation and mindful practices of oneness trump capitalist individualism. By drawing the dominant alien group as possessing empathic human traits, and having the foreign ones be those we wish we had, they can't be easily dismissed and must be dignified. Of course the Oms are too, and so the plot becomes a survivalist narrative but where there is no moral villain. We can briefly look at ourselves in the mirror for having pets or enslaving people in our history, though if we want to follow that theme, this film is more of a demonstration for how possessing traits of severely skewed dominance and not having the capacity to recognize the worth of -or communicate with- significantly-different beings, begets harm without diffusing responsibility.

Our objectivity can see the struggle of the Oms across a cruel landscape as well as the confusion and virtues of the Draags, but their values are mutually exclusive from each other, and does the film necessitate a finite amount of 'value' to split or compete between groups. I find the narrative somewhat engaging, but it's the feeling of community and mastery over space that give me the greatest pleasure. I love watching the Oms unionize and face challenges together, exploring terrain and besting opponents while taking the time to admire their cave as a transient home or look out over the horizons and gaze at their world the way we (who don't face any daily threat from other breathing beings) do at the cosmos wondering about science and God. I appreciate how the pacing pauses in some of these moments to imbue a meditative practice for the Oms in their lives, a passive link of spirituality between the two races. I love how the Draags cherish knowledge and higher hopes of actualization as we do since we've evolved from the fight/flight times that the Oms live in, and I appreciate how the film rhetorically asks if, even though the focus between groups' concerns are completely opposite, there is actually mindfulness occurring in both circles.. if perhaps actually being desperate and hypervigilant allows for a greater perceptiveness towards insight. Well not necessarily "greater," but different.

The best postulation this film makes is: if you strip someone of their comfort reinforcing complacency to provide the 'gift of desperation,' do high-functioning beings actually reach a more pronounced level of appreciation for life? Imagining Neanderthals as 20th century humans with strong executive functioning is fascinating on its own, though looking at us as more flawed Draags holds a mirror up to our own limitations to flex our perspectives. When the Draags logically declare the Oms as dangerous they aren't wrong, and I always find myself empathizing with their position much like I would affirm someone's ethics for killing a spider, especially if it bites them (and if it killed their friend, I mean...) Yet outside of philosophical musings, this is a movie about feelings: distress, concern, vitality, affinity, and serenity, which nicely juxtaposes with the stressors of life-threatening fear. The tones are so versatile and layered across a simple design that the film essentially functions like a meditation exercise, where one holds onto a moment of calm before slipping back into a wandering mind and then regaining that fleeting peace, in an ebb-and-flow motion. The final harmony is what one hopes to achieve when their wild uncontrollable Oms (or intrusive thoughts and feelings) become one with their Draags (or spiritual base). It's a utopian contrivance to reflect on our own positions through metaphor, and a psychedelic exposition on what it means to be alive.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#46 Post by yoloswegmaster » Mon Nov 20, 2023 6:01 pm

New 4K restoration has been performed (is this the third time this has received a restoration?), and Potemkine have posted a video showing the differences between the 2016 and 2023 restorations.

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Re: 820 Fantastic Planet

#47 Post by tenia » Tue Nov 21, 2023 2:43 am

It's not that new, it's the 2016 one (released by Criterion for instance) but with again a new grading.

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