The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015)

[Michael Kerpan]

Anyone know who SHIH Chun (lead actor from Touch of Zen) played in Assassin?

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I don't have my copy at hand, but I think he's the man with the long white beard accompanying Yinniang and the Mirror Polisher at the end of the film. IIRC he also shows up earlier, but I'm not sure.

[Michael Kerpan]

I don't have my copy at hand, but I think he's the man with the long white beard accompanying Yinniang and the Mirror Polisher at the end of the film. IIRC he also shows up earlier, but I'm not sure.

Could be. Not sure I could recognize him with a beard.

[jsteffe]

It's not simply the blu-ray. The DCP of this film was quite poor as well. It didn't retain nearly the detail that a 35mm print would have in the highlights (noticeable particularly in Knives's reviled exteriors) and the colors often looked flat and garish. Moreover, there are problems here and there with what looked to me like sloppily executed digital reframing (e.g. the flashback, a few of the landscape shots, moments in the fight sequences), a lot of ugly digital noise popping up. Speaking as someone who admires the movie a great deal, I must admit that each time I saw it (four times in theaters, a couple times at home) I felt I had to imagine what the film would have looked like if it had been given a film out, or at the very least a higher quality post job. It's not just me though! Mark Lee Ping-bin noted Hou's dissatisfaction with the color correction process when he visited MoMA in May, and Hou himself complained about the DCP in interviews around the film's US release.

Wow--that really makes me feel badly for Hou and Lee Ping-bin. And a little less badly about fixing the gamma levels.

UPDATE: Out of curiosity, I spent some time tonight recalibrating my TV. It has been a while since I've done that, and in the meantime I had purchased a new Blu-ray player. (An Oppo.) After going through the entire process and making some slight tweaks to the settings, I tested a few Blu-rays including THE ASSASSIN. It looks better now, but the black levels are still on the milky side, and overall the transfer is relatively disappointing.

I think part of the problem is that if an image has some underlying technical deficiencies such poor contrast or faded color, you have much less latitude to introduce adjustments without also introducing visible distortions. At least that has been my subjective and limited experience with color correction.

I hope that Hou and Lee Ping-bin have the opportunity to revisit the film someday and fix the color problems.

[hearthesilence]

Amazon doesn't appear to be selling brand new copies of this anymore, not unless you buy from a third-party on their marketplace. I'm wondering if this is falling out-of-print here in the U.S.?

[Never Cursed]

It's still available on Walmart's and Target's US websites new. Though, if it is going OOP, I wonder if Hsien's phantom pages might be for more than just The Boys From Fengkuei.

[hearthesilence]

As mentioned, the transfer can be improved - it was shot on 35mm film, and both Hou and the DP hated how the DCP looked.

[dda1996a]

It was shot on film? I could swear it looked 100% digital.

[hearthesilence]

It was shot on film? I could swear it looked 100% digital.

I did too, I was very surprised how badly they messed up the DCP.

[dda1996a]

But is that a fault of a DCP? I saw the film at home, but the way it looked, how characters moved looked very digital to me. I find it hard to understand how a DCP can cause that.

[tenia]

That would be 2 different things : on one hand, the possible visual render of a digital shoot regarding movements and such, and color grading on the other hand.

For all I could find so far, it seems like both the DCP and the BDs released all over the world are not graded properly, and are notably displaying black levels which are way too weak.

[dda1996a]

I was referring to the fact it was shot on film and not digital. That's what surprised me

[hearthesilence]

I finally looked at the Well Go Blu-ray, and the black levels are indeed as weak as everyone has said...I find it hard to believe that the extreme milkiness of the blacks on the Blu-ray was something that they wanted, because makes the film almost unwatchable.

I finally saw the BD as well - this is NOT what it looked like when I saw it in its original theatrical run. (FWIW, I saw it the week it opened at IFC Center here in NYC.) I tried dropping the brightness level on the monitor but a good bit and it definitely improved things, but something's definitely off with the black levels.

It's not simply the blu-ray. The DCP of this film was quite poor as well. It didn't retain nearly the detail that a 35mm print would have in the highlights and the colors often looked flat and garish. Moreover, there are problems here and there with what looked to me like sloppily executed digital reframing, a lot of ugly digital noise popping up.

I do indeed remember the garish look of the colors when I saw it at IFC, and the blown out highlights as well. This is a glaring problem (no pun intended) on the BD. Skipping through it a bit, the whites on clothing during exterior daylight scenes are all clipped and blown out (and FWIW, this is after I dropped the brightness setting - I wonder if it's worse on the Blu-Ray because they made everything so light?). Also on the BD, there's a shimmer in the leaves and the grass of exterior daytime wide shots. This is especially visible when the camera pans (not quickly, but slowly). Even when there's no movement, it's there. Can't remember if this was on the DCP but regardless, I wonder if the picture was sharpened as well. This is a pretty horrible looking finishing job, I wonder if they got someone who's used to working on video games than actual films, because it looks like they were trying to bring that etched, ultra-sharp look to what should be a "softer" (for lack of a better term) looking image.

[jsteffe]

It's still available on Walmart's and Target's US websites new. Though, if it is going OOP, I wonder if Hsien's phantom pages might be for more than just The Boys From Fengkuei.

His family name is Hou pronounced approximately "ho" - think "He's a Ho."

[Michael Kerpan]

Ho Show (as in "shower") Shen (more or less).