782-785 The Apu Trilogy

[hearthesilence]

I may have been living under a rock, but did these get newer restorations from what's on the original BDs? cause this was a legitimate surprise to see on the coming soon page. given India's licensing methods, I would have to imagine the original BD box sold extremely well for them to take a punt on these for 4K

would be nice to see more/other Ray films that haven't gotten any BD love. Distant Thunder, Abhijan, The Chess Players, etc...

They are probably the same restorations, which were indeed done in 4K. Given what they went through to create a new negative, I doubt these will have Dolby Vision or HDR. I'll probably get these, but the upgrade should be fairly uneven - thanks to that catastrophic nitrate fire in 1993, the original negatives were badly damaged. Fortunately, they had the foresight to save every scrap rather than trash it all, and with the technological advances that happened in the interim, something like half of the original film was actually salvageable. According to Kline the breakdown was something like "nine reels of Pather Panchali, 11 reels of Aparajito, and just two reels of Apu Sansar. That’s out of maybe 13 for Aparajito, since you assume 10 minutes a reel...By using film from multiple sources, it will never look like the original camera negative. In Panchali there are scenes I wish we had been able to get the negative for, but those were burned in a fire. There wasn’t anything we could do about that." (Read more here.)

[mteller]

I would have preferred a double feature of Pratidwandi (The Adversary) and Aranyer Din Rātri (Days and Nights in the Forest) to a 4K upgrade of The Apu Trilogy, though the latter is an acknowledged masterpiece and deserves the best possible presentation.

While I would love both of those, I'd be disappointed if Pratidwandi wasn't released with the other films in the trilogy.

[senseabove]

Have there been any reputable reviews of the UHD set?

[ryannichols7]

Have there been any reputable reviews of the UHD set?

nicolas and Robert Harris. I'm still weighing whether I should upgrade too, may just wait till the B&N sale

[senseabove]

Thanks. Not sure Harris counts as reputable for UHDs, but I'll take nicolas's word for it that it's worthwhile, especially since my favorite reportedly benefits the most.