UHD Titles Worth/Not Worth Upgrading

[nicolas]

Also added Second Sight's new release of Possessor as a better import over the Well Go USA 4K. I think Second Sight were advertising their edition as the only one where the Dolby Vision was officially approved by Brandon Cronenberg. I don't know whether Turbine consulted him or not, but both imports advance over the US version with the inclusion of DV, more extras and a booklet each (I believe in German only with the Turbine).

The German Turbine also has an (likely) exclusive Atmos mix in addition to a 13.1 Auro3D mix, which is a competitor format that never took off and recently shut down if I remember correctly. Turbine heavily leaned into Auro for years but they’ve now fully shifted to Atmos again. I have the Turbine Steelbook (no booklet with mine) and the film looks very good in DV and the Atmos track is excellent. Turbine got deserved criticism for altering director-approved HDR grades without communicating this to the public, as well as upscaling HD masters to 4K but Possessor is an excellent edition and looks adequate to the source. I can’t imagine the SS having a significantly different HDR / DV grade but I’m open to hearing opinions and ideally side-by-side comparisons. Encoding on the Turbine is also excellent with the sometimes heavy digital noise resolving nicely.

Regarding Second Sight’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. Encoding & QC was done by people at The Grainery, the facility that did the restoration. Credited for the encoding are the restoration producer and a person that did additional restoration.

[nicolas]

Received Second Sight’s Green Room 4K today. I’ve no idea who did the encoding as I only got the standard edition but FiM seems likely. The film looks good in 4K but it’s not a jaw-dropping demo disc due to the digital cinematography and the mostly low-light setting of the film. The US Lionsgate and German Universum BDs are BD-25s, the UK Altitude BD-50 and all three have very little bonus features. I can’t compare with any of these as I never owned the film before. Maybe someone can chime in whether one of these BDs has encoding issues. The Second Sight is a BD-66 and definitely enough even with more bonus features, such as the Jeremy Saulnier audio commentary and a new 37-minute interview with him. I think this is a solid upgrade overall.

[therewillbeblus]

Unsurprisingly, Contagion looks fantastic in HDR. Looking forward to more Soderbergh 4Ks - will the Oceans UHDs ever get non-steelbook exclusives, or is this another Columbia box thing to jump on? And will Soderbergh's box ever materialize, and will they be in 4K or blu-ray or even DVD?!

[swo17]

Is this a steelbook?

[therewillbeblus]

Nice!

[rrenault]

I’m surprised someone in Europe like Eagle Pictures or even ESC in France hasn’t tried to port over individual titles from those Columbia sets. It’s a farce only Dr. Strangelove has gotten a proper standalone release so far(from Sony themselves that is), unless some of the others have been farmed out to boutiques for standalone treatment.

[EddieLarkin]

All of the titles from the first Columbia set, save A League of Their Own, are available in individual Sony euro editions, though of course Lawrence for some reason only ever got limited steelbook prints and so is typically unavailable. But Dr Strangelove, Jerry Maguire, Gandhi and Mr Smith Goes to Washington are all easy to come by between Amazon.de and Amazon.co.uk.

[nicolas]

Brief new 4K updates:

- I received Quigley Down Under from Shout. This is a blind buy for me and nearly exclusively based on Shout‘s continuing incredible track record on 4K. This release is no different. Exceptional in every way. Beautiful, naturally rich colors, detail and very strong encoding. Even tricky things like fire look wonderful. I read that all older BDs were sourced from the same ancient master - this should be quite the upgrade for everyone.

- Gunfight at the O.K. Corral by Kino. Even with lowered expectations, Kino still manage to surprise me negatively with their bad encodes. The film is an old favorite of mine and the previous Paramount BD is disappointing (encode). The new master is much better and does justice to the VistaVision source. The typical anemic Paramount colors are thankfully absent (I can confirm the occasional green-ish clouds but it’s nothing extreme), the OAR has been restored and the film looks better than ever. I’m torn about the rank of the release due to the encode but as the older BD isn’t particularly great, I’d actually rate this a solid upgrade with caveats (encode and as usual with the best label, OG audio).

- Fear and Desire and three Kubrick shorts, also Kino. Abominable release and the worst encode I’ve seen on the format yet. I’m not exaggerating. I adore Kubrick, so it pains me to see how they ruined the premiere version of Fear and Desire even though it’s not the greatest film ever made. Still, no film deserves to look as bad as it does on that UHD. Leon Vitali would have never approved of this had he seen the result. Two of the three bonus shorts look better than the main feature, the third one is just as bad. I’ll have more details on this soon as I’m preparing a lengthy post with caps for everyone to see KL’s masterpiece of sh*t.

- Ferrari (Eagle Italy 4K). I don’t have it myself but reports on the other forum have confirmed that the master has localized Italian text cards in the beginning and end. No English subs but the film is fully English. Italian is Atmos, English only 5.1 but if Killers of the Flower Moon’s 5.1 is any indication, Ferrari’s 5.1 could be a strong track as well.

- Barb Wire (Turbine 4K). Hedrox on the other forum mentions the grain has an artificial look. Turbine apparently did a new restoration of the OCN but then employing digital tools to "enhance" the image isn’t anything new sadly. I wouldn’t be surprised to read more negative takes as people receive their copies.

[Finch]

Updated the OP. I'll add review links tomorrow as it's easier to do on the desktop than the phone. Stuck Gunfight in the disappointing column: if we moved this into the Solid upgrades, we'd have to be equally forgiving of other titles with a good restoration but botched encodes and audio downmixes; and its also wouldn't be fair on the other labels that have actually done solid work with their releases.

Fear and Desire doesn't bode well for Nostalghia. If they don't care to ask their authoring house to try harder for a Kubrick title, they're not going to treat Tarkovsky any differently.

nicholas, do you know if Turbine have exclusivity on some titles? It feels like they do with The Frighteners which still hasn't seen a release elsewhere and it's been over a year now, no?

[therewillbeblus]

Fear and Desire doesn't bode well for Nostalghia. If they don't care to ask their authoring house to try harder for a Kubrick title, they're not going to treat Tarkovsky any differently.

What's the basis for this connection?

[Finch]

Really just supposition on my part based on Kino's mixed to bad encoding record for the last few months if not longer. If Kino cared, I would have thought that they wouldn't have deemed the Fear and Desire 4K fit for release as it is. Shout appear to have turned things around and there is no evidence of that yet with Kino. But as it's theoretically possible that we may get a good Nostalghia upgrade, I shouldn't dismiss the release before anyone has even seen it. My frustration with Kino got the better of me.

[nicolas]

Updated the OP. I'll add review links tomorrow as it's easier to do on the desktop than the phone. Stuck Gunfight in the disappointing column: if we moved this into the Solid upgrades, we'd have to be equally forgiving of other titles with a good restoration but botched encodes and audio downmixes; and its also wouldn't be fair on the other labels that have actually done solid work with their releases.

Fear and Desire doesn't bode well for Nostalghia. If they don't care to ask their authoring house to try harder for a Kubrick title, they're not going to treat Tarkovsky any differently.

nicholas, do you know if Turbine have exclusivity on some titles? It feels like they do with The Frighteners which still hasn't seen a release elsewhere and it's been over a year now, no?

It seems like Turbine have exclusivity on certain titles. They confirmed that they have the rights to their The Frighteners restoration for the next 10 years if I remember correctly and all other labels would have to license it from them in addition to shepherding the license of the film itself. I guess they’d charge quite a bit for what may be the best-looking Peter Jackson film on the format. Other restorations were done with Arrow on a collaborative basis, such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Naked Lunch and The Last Emperor. Barb Wire is currently unknown but I wouldn’t be surprised. It may be cheaper for a label like VS (seems like they’d be the only other label interested in this film) to do a new restoration themselves.

Re. Nostalghia. I’m not too worried myself as we’re getting the first SDR UHD from KL’s new authoring house. As with Criterion, SDR content appears to be much easier to encode (Geoff D on the other forum confirmed this as well). In my eyes, the Apu Trilogy was a candidate for set & forget encodes because of the niche appeal, yet it turned out to be one of NexSpec’s finest efforts. Nostalghia is the first 4K restoration they fully licensed from a licensor that isn’t a big Hollywood studio, which gives me hope for the audio in particular. Thankfully it’s only a month to the release, although there may be delivery delays due to the insane pre-order situation.

[therewillbeblus]

Really just supposition on my part based on Kino's mixed to bad encoding record for the last few months if not longer. If Kino cared, I would have thought that they wouldn't have deemed the Fear and Desire 4K fit for release as it is. Shout appear to have turned things around and there is no evidence of that yet with Kino. But as it's theoretically possible that we may get a good Nostalghia upgrade, I shouldn't dismiss the release before anyone has even seen it. My frustration with Kino got the better of me.

No, that recency bias makes sense, and it’s probably a good move to expect the worst. I just didn’t know what you meant and thought it might be something like ‘Kino doesn’t care about cult arthouse directors’ when it comes to encodes

[rrenault]

I’m guessing Criterion and Kino simply can’t afford to have every UHD release be up to the standard of BFI’s Get Carter, Arrow’s Carrie, or even Criterion’s own Thelma & Louise while releasing films on the format at the pace they currently are. And they’ve clearly chosen the “just get them out there and make ‘em available” approach.

For Eureka, BFI, and Carlotta a UHD title is very much an “event”.

[nicolas]

I’m guessing Criterion and Kino simply can’t afford to have every UHD release be up to the standard of BFI’s Get Carter, Arrow’s Carrie, or even Criterion’s own Thelma & Louise while releasing films on the format at the pace they currently are. And they’ve clearly chosen the “just get them out there and make ‘em available” approach.

For Eureka, BFI, and Carlotta a UHD title is very much an “event”.

I wrote a lengthy answer to that question on the other forum. I hope you don’t mind me simply copying it in here:

“ALL labels could very well afford better authoring houses if they only wanted to. Carlotta Films in France handed over the vast majority, if not every single BD release of theirs to David M for years by now. Their UHDs are sometimes FiM, sometimes LSP in Germany, another one of the top authoring houses. Carlotta exclusively cater to the French market as they never include English subtitles even for the films they have multi-territory rights to. Therefore, they obviously have an infinitely smaller reach than a label like Kino or Criterion or any other label that does English-friendly releases. If David would be so expensive, Carlotta would certainly not hire him over and over again and especially not for near-barebones, BD-25 releases of films like Smooth Talk which they just released.
Other US labels like Deaf Crocodile, a small Vinegar Syndrome partner label, or the similarly niche Arbelos always hire FiM as well. Subkultur in Germany is exactly the same and all their BDs and UHDs are LSP-encoded.

The list goes on and on. If Kino & co. wanted to have top authoring, optimal audio etc. etc. they could get it done but this is not part of their philosophy. Kino's authoring house would still crap out an encode of a 90-minute film if we had 200 GB discs, so I'll gladly take their BD-100.”

What I’d like to add here is that particularly Criterion is the “king” of boutique labels with the biggest influence and reach within the cinephile circle. They probably sit on hundreds of unreleased films which cost quite a bit of money to acquire and renewing the in-print titles likely isn’t that cheap either. (For comparison, Kino regularly offload poorer sellers which keeps costs down). If one label could afford better encodes, it’s Criterion.

Kino started their UHD journey with more good video encodes than bad ones. (Audio problems have always been frequent). Despite the higher cost for each title, they sold enough to justify more investments into the 4K sphere as confirmed by their boss Frank Tarzi and palpable when seeing the kinds of titles they’re doing now. His / their greed meant that they figured out a way to save more while keeping prices up and evidently at the expense of overall quality.

[Finch]

I also think considering how the extras on most Criterion releases pretty consistently only get middling marks from Chris as well as frequently expressed disappointment with the extras by a lot of forum members on top of the inconsistent 4K and Blu-Ray encoding, Criterion aren't really doing all that much to continue earning the best of the boutique labels moniker. And I'd agree with nicholas that considering how much they're charging for the encodes and extras, they really ought to be hiring FiM. David MacKenzie lives in NY, too, for heaven's sake.

[mfunk9786]

Have now watched all films in the Ring Collection set from Shout! and the video encodes are great. And yes, The Ring Two is still a terrible, terrible movie. Would say the original film is an especially huge upgrade from the Blu-ray, the green/blue saturated low light level scenes benefit greatly from the format bump.

[Finch]

Quick audio-related notes:

A24's 4K of Pi only has a remix (since Aranofsky and the sound team apparently weren't completely satisfied with the OG mix). Still, they should have given consumers the choice of both.

88 included the Laserdisc mono track with their new 4K of The Amityville Horror which should make this blogger very happy!

[nicolas]

Primal Fear by Paramount is another (HDR10) disaster as evident in the caps on this page: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.ph ... 845&page=3

Atrocious encoding and probably heavy low-pass filtering as well. These caps show a mild improvement with DV (FEL) enabled. https://slow.pics/c/xbWKlxBk, credit to TbeRw01 on the same page. Of course, with Primal Fear being a Paramount Presents title it’ll be sold for $35.

The old BD may actually be the better and cheaper alternative, as seen here: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0 ... 03&i=5&l=0, although cap 1 is problematic as well: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=2155& ... =0&l=0&a=0. It’d be very helpful if caps got more active again to get a better comparison but these BR.com caps should be sufficient.

[tenia]

David MacKenzie lives in NY, too, for heaven's sake.

When I saw Peter Becker and Fumiko Takagi back in 2019, David's office was like 3 subway stops away from Criterion. Not that it matters for all things digital, but it's indeed ridiculous they seemingly never considered just at least looking outside their historical partner despite its growing shortcomings.

[Finch]

K19 The Widowmaker was encoded by Shout (so far, there are none of the complaints that often if not always accompany a title that Paramount did themselves) which makes me wonder if there are other Paramount titles that boutique labels were able to do the authoring on themselves? Witness was done in-house at Paramount, I believe, before they handed it over to Arrow.

[nicolas]

K19 The Widowmaker was encoded by Shout (so far, there are none of the complaints that often if not always accompany a title that Paramount did themselves) which makes me wonder if there are other Paramount titles that boutique labels were able to do the authoring on themselves? Witness was done in-house at Paramount, I believe, before they handed it over to Arrow.

My Bloody Valentine is another Paramount master that would’ve looked horrible had they done the encode. Shout actually almost made the processed grain look like organic film. It’s best of these rescue efforts I’ve seen. I think Witness is fatally flawed from Paramount themselves with Arrow’s encode (Engine House IIRC) unable to salvage the master.

The Dead Zone is another Shout / Paramount release although the master itself is very good in addition to the encode. Days of Heaven appears to be a Criterion master as it’s free of Paramount’s processing. Kino licensed various of their readymade masters and encoded themselves as seen in the repeated blocking patterns in highlights and “okay” look in normal scenes. All in all, the list isn’t too long on 4K. Arrow got a few Paramount titles for BD.

[dwk]

It seems like Turbine have exclusivity on certain titles. They confirmed that they have the rights to their The Frighteners restoration for the next 10 years if I remember correctly and all other labels would have to license it from them in addition to shepherding the license of the film itself. I guess they’d charge quite a bit for what may be the best-looking Peter Jackson film on the format.

10 years seems a tad excessive. If true, and if Turbine asks for too much money, it seems it would be worth it for Arrow to get the raw scan and create their own master (assuming they still have it under license from Universal.)

[nicolas]

It seems like Turbine have exclusivity on certain titles. They confirmed that they have the rights to their The Frighteners restoration for the next 10 years if I remember correctly and all other labels would have to license it from them in addition to shepherding the license of the film itself. I guess they’d charge quite a bit for what may be the best-looking Peter Jackson film on the format.

10 years seems a tad excessive. If true, and if Turbine asks for too much money, it seems it would be worth it for Arrow to get the raw scan and create their own master (assuming they still have it under license from Universal.)

10 years appears to be wrong according to TheHutt, who is close to Turbine and an unofficial insider (https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... tcount=196), but I’m dead certain that’s the number I read in a lengthy German review of the UHD at the time. I remember this clearly as I was struck by that statement, too. I wasn’t actively reading BR.com threads at the time they talked about this. I only found the real number by searching in the thread just now. Sorry for the confusion! Four years is definitely less excessive but still quite the sales guarantee for their company. Not sure Arrow risk doing their own restoration and catch Jackson on a bad day with him suddenly demanding DNR.

In 2022 I watched an interview with someone at Turbine who participated in the process. Sending the final result to Jackson was obviously quite nerve-wracking. Based on how I grasped it from their statements, Jackson ultimately approved the entire thing without demanding DNR etc. because of how well Turbine handled the restoration. It seems they kept the grain fine and tight enough that he thought he shot the film digitally.

[dwk]

Yes, 4 years is still a long time, but far more reasonable as it allows Turbine ample time to make money on their work but not so long that Universal loses the opportunity to make money on licensing the film in other markets.