Shout Factory / Arrow releases
I'm a little confused - are the Shout Factory and Arrow blu ray releases one and the same - I know Arrow says the extras on their set is fromShout Factory
shareArrow and Shout! have shared content before. I haven't paid much attention to the Shout! release, but Arrow remastered the film in 4K from the original negative, so I imagine they struck a deal to licence that to Shout! in return for the extras etc. I actually received a check disc for the film today and it looks a hell of a lot better than the existing US release.
shareJust to be clear, it's the Arrow DVD that just came out that we should buy?
shareThanks for the info - I like Arrow product so will get that one
shareYou think the Shout BD looks better than the older MGM BD, huh? That's cool, and I'm glad you like it, but I respectfully disagree. The intense color hike on both the Arrow and Shout discs is ridiculous, to my eyes, and is another example of Friedkin's revisionist color alterations. While not as extreme as his first botched BD of THE FRENCH CONNECTION (which was subsequently redone), it looks pretty strange, with flesh tones ranging wildly between realistic but hot and flat out strange. Meanwhile, the MGM BD has the same muted, subdued color scheme that it had in the theater. I saw this in 1985 and recall noticing that the film had significantly less vibrant color than the movie trailers that preceded it. Also, I'm not seeing any increase in detail or image depth on the newer 4K sourced releases.
Again, I'm happy that you love the new Shout release, but you should know that it's not an accurate representation of how it looked on the big screen. Director involvement in restorations isn't always a good thing.
I agree with you - just watching the first scenes on the hotel roof show how much the color hike is out of whack - kind of disappointing - and you are also correct in that there doesn't seem to be much in the way of an increase in detail - I thought the actual counterfeiting scenes would be much better with more detail but this doesn't look much different that the earlier BD release in that respect - I know it's not the fault of Arrow/Shout Factory but still a pretty disappointing update
shareI can tell you that the film had noticeably more prominent film grain on the big screen than other studio films of the time, and all movies in '85 had far grainier stock than we have today. I remember seeing the trailer for YEAR OF THE DRAGON just before the Friedkin movie started, and when the pre-credit sequence with the President's motorcade came on, it looked significantly grainier and far less colorful than the Cimino trailer. In fact, I recall wondering why Friedkin opted for such a rough, drab look and wound up assuming that he was aiming for a FRENCH CONNECTION vibe. Personally, I think the 2011 MGM BD is the most accurate representation of my 1985 theatrical experience, and it's the disc I'll be watching in the future. Frankly, it didn't need to be "upgraded". We should have been given a BD of CRUISING instead.
share