Studio Canal / Kinowelt / Optimum

[swo17]

Am I missing something, when was The Servant with Criterion?

See here

[FrauBlucher]

Thanks for the clarification. I misunderstood.

[Stefan Andersson]

Studio Canal has received a French grant ("aide for digitization and showing of films on video and VOD) for Les Carabiniers. Could mean a Bluray is upcoming:
https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/aides ... 19_1258527

[domino harvey]

Nice! We know Criterion has the rights, so I imagine we’ll get the resto from them

[JSC]

4K/Blu-ray review of StudioCanal's release of Le Cercle Rouge. It looks kind of... whatever.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Le-Cercl ... 27/#Review

[tenia]

Svet doesn't help by excessively bashing the release because of the color grading. I understand believing the new grading is wrong (which is possible) and degrading the score accordingly but this is very unlikely to deserve halving the score. It's unfairly excessive, but quite in line with how Svet can be excessive so it's nothing new.

What's interesting though is that, outside once again writing a UHD Dolby Vision review without refering once to the added value of HDR or Dolby Vision, is that his conclusion seems to suggest his issue simply is that it "does not look as it did in the past". But the past BDs (whether it was the SC disc or the Criterion ones) certainly had gradings which were products of their time, but these kind of issues, despite being as systemic and probably as unfaithful than the current grading issues are, didn't seem to bother him (and still don't seem to).

Oh well.

[Ribs]

Lee Kline specifically said he had been told the extant Blu-ray flat out had a wrong grade on the Deakins podcast, so I would hope it looks different - though I don’t recall exactly what was the issue...

[tenia]

Lee Kline specifically said he had been told the extant Blu-ray flat out had a wrong grade on the Deakins podcast

I'm not surprised to learn this. His 4 color movies have been problematic on BD to some extent anyway, especially in terms of color grading, either because the BDs are derived from older HD masters that were graded in ways that were the usual one back then, or because they were graded with a certain idea of Melville's body of work rather than how the movies did look at the time (that's the case for Le samourai and L'armée des ombres, in both cases with Pierre Lhomme's input).

There's the idea Le cercle rouge, Le samourai and L'armée des ombres are supposed to be extremely cold blue-ish greyish monochrome but I wonder how much of this idea comes from the reference prints themselves and how much comes from some kind of myth around Melville's work. It's especially the case for L'armée des ombres, which had a restoration (used for the DVD) supervised by Lhomme (which, at least this time, he actually photographed and isn't just the technical referent imposed by the rightholder like on Le samourai) and then the Criterion disc also uses a restoration supervised by Lhomme but both actually have different gradings (they talk about this movie in the podcast around 41 min). About Le cercle rouge, they say it's "too colorful", but that's because Coutard told Kline he knew Decae and Melville and they would never have shot the movie like this, so again, this is not based on a reference print (Kline actually say they used a reference print for this and matched it), so who knows.

There's also Un flic, which simply is in dire need of a remaster to replace the current made-for-cathode-tube-TVs HD master.

[david hare]

I last saw a 35mm screening of CERCLE Rouge in the eighties. Since then I’ve watched and rewatched the “original” Canal Blu Ray which was released in that first wave of early Blu Rays. It looks very much like the way I remember the screening. But of course that’s a long time ago. One thing that stands out is the club scene with the girls. The whites in this were “pure”, they are definitely not in the caps from Bluray.com. Not having seen the UHD or the new DCP I can’t comment but I think it looks totally wrong. Tainted whites, deeper reds than one is used to in Melville’s palette. If I didn’t know better I would have suspected Eclair antic were at work on the 4k.

[therewillbeblus]

I prefer the look of the Criterion, but maybe it is intended to be colder. David, are you saying that the StudioCanal blu in the Melville set is optimal in your opinion? That's the only one I own, and I haven't watched it yet, so looking forward to seeing it in motion if that's the case

[david hare]

It's the disc that was released in ca. 2007-8. The cardboard slip cover with the booklet. Obviously it's technically inferior to anything they put out today, viz. encoding, compression etc.

I never bought the Criterion so cant comment but from the caps t looks "warmed up" as well.

[therewillbeblus]

Interesting, hopefully it's roughly the same transfer as the StudioCanal set that I think came out a few years later

[Rupert Pupkin]

amazing X4 restoration... times are very far away were the only existential matter was if the billard Pool was more greenish than blueish.
Now it's another movie "The Yellow Circle" or "The Greenish Circle".
I even have some horrible flashes now about how "Army Of Shadows aka L'armée des ombres" could look with such "color grading"...

[david hare]

Army was the one film I believe that's well documented as having both L'Homme and Melville going for a desaturated winter color. But I think it's safe to believe that both Samourai and Cercle have Delon and DP Decae, and to me they form a pair, so I find their aesthetic similar.

[tenia]

Le samourai's Pathé restoration was overseen by Lhomme and I've been told he didn't care for the grading prepared by the lab based on a reference print and changed everything to the point it was a completely different movie and didn't even have photographic continuity between shots. The lab had to dial back the changes behind his back because it was so bad but he actually never realised that, including when watching the finalised result to give his approval, which is quite telling.
It's unfortunate that now that he's not around anymore to pull stuff like that, labs are doing other shenanigans.

[whaleallright]

Shades of William Friedkin approving an objectively botched transfer of The French Connection and then blaming someone at the studio when reviews pointed out how miserable it looked. He probably has little idea, at this late date, of how his film should look. Telling someone they're watching a "restoration" probably goes a long way (more than half?) toward convincing people (even the film's director) it's a "better" version regardless of how it looks.

Sometimes I feel that consulting DPs and directors etc. decades after they made a film is a bad idea more often than not, and that it's best to rely instead on reference prints, historical records, etc. But I understand the deference they are afforded--borne of respect but also the desire to keep them in a label's good graces (who wants a situation, like the one Kino experienced with David Lynch, where a famous director is badmouthing your release of his/her film?).

[tenia]

I think this is a different issue at play here, in part because currently, you could give to different labs the same movie to grade with the same reference print and the same referent person and they would still yield very different gradings. If Ritrovata or Eclair or MPI or Silver Salt or whatever is the lab now employing the people from Colorworks Burbank were to do Le cercle rouge with the exact same print used by Hiventy, you'd get 4 very different results, all different from what Hiventy has done.

As I often wrote, I saw Deep Red's new 4K restoration in theater and it definitely looks first and foremost like a Ritrovata job rather than a silly Tovoli's supervision. At the time, many thought this was some kind of Tovoli's follies, but it turned out it's not : Ritrovata only knows what he saw and what he supervised vs what was the lab's final file and it turns out, it most likely looked closer to what Arrow managed to obtain after further color-correction than the DCP I saw. There's also the story about The Color of Pomegranates : if you match a reference print AND THEN apply a LUT that modifies your grading, then, it doesn't match the print anymore !
Same goes for Eclair : I've just watched Thérèse (which is another tell-tale Eclair job) and it says the restoration was supervised by Alain Cavalier and Bruno Patin (Eclair's main colorist), but I can't help but wonder if Cavalier approved the grading of the final file because as it stands, it now looks like L'enfance nue (Pialat/Beausoleil) or Rien ne va plus (Chabrol/Serra) or Lacombe Lucien (Malle/Delli Colli) or Une histoire simple (Sautet/Boffety) etc etc.

I'm also wary of Svet caps, because in his review, the 2nd set of caps look way less worrying than the 1st one, and this 1st set is actually downconverted from UHD DV BT2020 to HD SDR Rec709, while the 2nd set is taken straight from the BD, so I'm currently wondering how much of the worries from his caps are coming from the caps themselves.

[hearthesilence]

Sometimes I feel that consulting DPs and directors etc. decades after they made a film is a bad idea more often than not, and that it's best to rely instead on reference prints, historical records, etc. But I understand the deference they are afforded--borne of respect but also the desire to keep them in a label's good graces (who wants a situation, like the one Kino experienced with David Lynch, where a famous director is badmouthing your release of his/her film?).

Sad truth. When the whole idea of film preservation and restoration really took off, it seemed like a logical move to get the director or DP to oversee the process, and it made sense as a marketing tool that would always delight the average film buff. (When I first started renting or buying Criterion discs, the immediate reaction to a director-approved or supervised release was to believe unquestionably that it was the definitive presentation.) At this point, I think everyone's learned the hard way how easily it can go wrong. Star Wars is probably exhibit A thanks to its massive popularity - I'm sure Lucas's changes have done more than any other to make people understand how restorations can go wrong.

It's not always blatant revisionism either - most filmmakers don't revisit their older work, not unless they have a small legacy and their caretaking is all they have left. For any filmmaker that's still active, many of them don't look back and quite a few probably forget all the specifics as they move on to other jobs that take their attention. Add to that years, decades of time, and you can see why it may be problematic to bring them in for input.

You can see this happen even when reissues go right. Criterion's defunct blog talked about Days of Heaven and getting Terrence Malick to look at the grading. His immediate response was that the regular DVD seemed fine and asked if they considered using that as their guide. Criterion explained why they don't do that, so Malick agreed, and of course what they end up doing looks pretty different from the Paramount DVD because Malick informs them that the movie was never meant to look too "beautiful," they were very careful about avoiding that in the original post-production process. (His editor Billy Weber confirmed this over and over again as that concept was very much on his mind the entire time they made the film.) So it all worked out, but honestly, how closely did Malick look at the Paramount DVD? I get the impression he just wasn't the type of filmmaker who spent much time revisiting their work, but fortunately when Criterion made their pitch, he got it and understood that it was important to help them get the presentation right.

[L.A.]

La Grande Illusion Jan. 25th.

[Drucker]

Is this just a re-release?

[david hare]

FWIW I am in the process of watching the new BD only of Cercle Rouge. Can’t yet access the UHD. I have to eat my earlier words. To my eyes the transfer is dead right, clean whites, perfect skin tones, excellent color grading with no Ritrovata or Eclair bias problems. If you ever needed clear proof the whites are consistently clean wherever they appear. The “green” beize of the ppol table is shown within a composition including distinctive blue light fitting from the celing in the same shot which gives you I think a perfect reference for color for the rest of the movie. In fact it’s clearer than ever now Melville has employed shades of blue throughout the interiors from pale to dark, rather than employing the sort of general desaturation of the image he and L’Homme used in Armee,. This leads me to Svet’s caps which frankly are so far from my viewing experience I can’t reconcile them with what I’m seeing. This is odd because his 1080 caps at least are usually more reliable that Gary’s. Anyway I think this is the definitive presentation. You need to allow for far more grain than you’ve seen before in all the previous BD and DVD, but the grain is always resolved well. I can only imagine the superiority of the UHD encode. So in terms of purchase or not, just go for it.

[Tuppence]

The comparisons up at Caps-a-holic of the new UHD do strike me as pretty yellow-biased overall. But maybe the actual viewing experience is different.

[david hare]

If only I could ever work out how the fuck to use cap-a-holic screens I would be able to comment. I will have to wait until I can somehow get a copy of the UHD.

[EddieLarkin]

Whites defintely appear more yellow in the UHD caps vs the new resto BD caps from Svet, so it is almost certainly a result of the HDR>SDR conversion that has to take place to show the UHD caps. I'm sure the whites will appear far less yellow on playback in the HDR realm.

[tenia]

Is this just a re-release?

There has been a new 4k resto of a movie, so it might be more than just a repacking re-release.

I can only imagine the superiority of the UHD encode.

I wouldn't be so sure of it. Blu-ray.com's members' feedback mentions encode issues à la Total Recall.