Brad Stevens responded that he finds that setting sharpness to 0 helps "not enough to prevent the Blu-rays looking grainier than the standard discs".

No shit.

I come across this at least once a month: "But it wasn't filmed in high definition".

Historically these controls were used to compensate for poor resolution/definition in older CRT designs. Nowadays it's just there to serve people who are used to looking at manipulated video.

Thanks!

All HD TVs should come with guides that provide simple language explanations of all the image-related controls one finds on the TV. ;~}

They should, but often they're translated from Japanese or Korean with interesting language.

The best advancement lately has been the THX Certified Display program. TVs that have gone through this have a "THX" picture mode, which attempts to hit studio standards for Greyscale, Colour gamut and Gamma. It also turns off the wacky motion smoothing tools. I'd prefer it went further and locked out the Noise Reduction feature, but hey.

Of course, even the manual writers managed to mis-describe this! Panasonic says it should be used with discs that have the THX logo on the box - when in reality it's the best mode to use if your TV hasn't been fully calibrated, because it attempts to hit industry standards that *ALL* professional content (not just stuff with George Lucas' blessing) is mastered to. Yet more confusion!

The Fanciful Norwegian responds that the Baird 30-line televisor resolves even less grain than DVD, clearly it is the ideal format for these films

Agreed - plus the better reaction to a release like this (as Bill Morrison's Decasia or Wong Kar-Wai's Hua Yang De Nian Hua short demonstrate in a more extreme fashion) is surely not depression at how many of the flaws of the original negative are more apparent with the greater resolution, but to say that the Blu release acts as an even better demonstration of the vital importance of film preservation. In other words it a problem with the negative rather than the home video format.

(Though Decasia is also getting at another issue, one of accepting the flaws, marks, scratches and deteriorations as being new additions to the pre-existing material!)

But, for the record, all 35mm prints of THE WORLD were screened globally at 24fps, so we went with 24fps on the MoC BD to recreate the theatrical experience, instead of making the BD 1080i 25fps to recreate TV screenings. This seems like a complete no-brainer in retrospect, but something which could easily go awry in Blu-ray/DVD production because the master was supplied at 25fps.

Schleinzer's MICHAEL and Sokurov's FAUST announced for Blu-ray release by AE!

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=8595
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=8598

Woohoo for 1080p!

Two definite purchases here also.

Would have already bought Michael on DVD if my discount code had worked the other day.

Me three. Now I won't have to wait months for an indifferent Strand Releasing dump of Michael straight to standard def. And Cinema Guild has been teasing Faust in the U.S., but who knows when that will happen. Thanks A.I. for this double feature

Great news about Michael - I feared it would be DVD only - but the trailer for Faust is appalling. Hopefully the film's better.

Faust the film is simultaneously appalling and beautiful. That trailer is preposterous though.

I pity anyone who has to turn a Sokurov film into a trailer.

Forthcoming releases:
La Cérémonie (DVD only at the moment) [June 11th]
Corpo Celeste [DVD Only?) [June 25th]
Fallen Angels [July 9th] - The two amazon links each state DVD but I guess it's safe to assume one was meant to be Blu, and the price discrepancies back this up.
Faust (Blu-ray & DVD releases) [July 23rd]
Elles (Blu-ray & DVD releases) (August 23rd)

Just as I was away to purchase the Kino editions, AE announces their Fallen Angels Blu. Doesn't look like they're going to upgrade Happy Together though so I might as well get the Kino. I wonder if AE got the Blu-Ray rights to Tartan's Kar-Wai titles, like they seem to have with (at least some of) their Bergmans?

Whoa, great news!

Ingmars, surely?

Less pedantically facetiously, which of Tartan's Bergman titles has Artificial Eye picked up? The ones they announced were among the few that weren't in Tartan's famous box set.

Sawdust and Tinsel was a Tartan DVD release. I don't think any of the others on the Artificial Eye box set were.

Dreams was too, but like Sawdust and Tinsel only part of that massive (and prohibitively priced) Tartan set. It Rains On Our Love, A Ship Bound for India and So Close to Life are all making their on-disc debut in the UK.

Sorry, I find Asian names very confusing (as in which is forename and which is surname)! Your question has already been answered but the AE "Classic Bergman Collection" is quite intriguing. Three of the titles weren't released by Tartan but what would make AE pursue Dreams and Sawdust and Tinsel? There isn't an immediate link between the included titles that jumps out at me. However, when I made my earlier comment I didn't realise that AE are releasing the set on DVD as well. Now I'm even more confused.

I'm speculating but I imagine Dreams was attractive mainly because it was only previously available in the UK within the big Tartan box, so many potential buyers had to skip it. Sawdust and Tinsel did have a separate release but it was one of the last Bergmans Tartan issued (so perhaps fewer copies around) - and, at least when I was getting to know Bergman, it was regarded as one of his best films.

Perhaps AE bought up all the Tartan Bergman titles rather than those two specific ones. Perhaps some are deemed worthy of standalone releases and others will be put into box sets.

Pure guess, mind.