Day 9. I've reined in my opinion of THE BIRDS. It's not horrible, and nowhere near as bad as MARNIE, TORN CURTAIN, FAMILY PLOT, and FRENZY, but it looks like it's had a lot of work done on it. The mixture of different process shots, the levels of grain from shot to shot, and how they've managed that, is sometimes jarring. Static shots look fantastic. Shots with movement can draw attention to the molecular make-up of the image (which appears to be more digital to me, than filmic).
Here's my rough tally so far:
PRETTY BLOODY GOOD:
REAR WINDOW (seen in full) 8.5/10
http://enthusiasm.org/post/31183475187
SHADOW OF A DOUBT (seen in full) 7/10
http://enthusiasm.org/post/31153014639
ROPE (seen in full) 7.5/10
http://enthusiasm.org/post/31250496642
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (seen in full) 6.5/10
http://enthusiasm.org/post/31588885209
THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (seen in full) 7.5/10
http://enthusiasm.org/post/31581658062
SABOTEUR (seen in full) 8/10
http://enthusiasm.org/post/31577861919
TOPAZ (seen half an hour) no score yet, currently a 7/10
THE BIRDS currently a 6.5/10
NOT GOOD:
FRENZY 3/10
http://enthusiasm.org/post/31285985246
FAMILY PLOT 4/10
MARNIE 3/10
TORN CURTAIN 4/10
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Still working on VERTIGO. First impression: very, very good resolution. Detail looks absolutely incredible. Nice encoding. No original mono track though (UK
BD). There are lots of folk strongly murmuring about the colour scheme. I'm having difficulty knowing one way or the other what the colours ought to be. Jimmy's suit looks dark aubergine when it's supposed to be "brown" apparently. There's a rumour that the 5.1 is actually a new 5.1 that is a bit more toned down than the old 5.1.
Ostensibly, VERTIGO looks like an 8.5/10 -- but there's too many murmurings from other folk about the colour scheme for me to knowingly give it such a high mark.
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What *really* needs fixing so far?
1.) The credits on FRENZY
http://enthusiasm.org/post/31104514441 and if at all possible a new FRENZY encode without DVNR (it's the only film in the entire box that has this level of paralyzing DVNR, and it's lazy). If they're redoing the credits they'll have to do a new encode anyway. Turn the DVNR box off.
2.) MARNIE and TORN CURTAIN have really fuzzy, crap encodes. The films look like DVDs playing through a 1080p fuzz filter. I'd redo both encodes.
3.) FAMILY PLOT is a bit of a mess. Don't really know what's happened to this one. Parts look awful, parts look okay. Look into this and try and redo?
Issues with VERTIGO's colour? I'm not qualified to judge that, but would take much longer to fix than the 3 points above. Need to finish watching TOPAZ. Phew.
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DISCLAIMER: I'm not making any claims about the colour fidelity on any of these Blu-rays. I'm not qualified. All I can do is describe what I see, whether it's faded colours, or strong colours, or whether there are colour temperature fluctuations, etc. There are tons of issues to do with VistaVision negs, direct positives, optically reduced 35mm dye transfer prints, etc - It's a rat's nest of possibilities.