World of Wong Kar Wai

[hearthesilence]

At least there's already a good BD of Days of Being Wild. That doesn't make things better, but it's enough for me to move on rather than sulk over the whole thing.

[swo17]

cowboydan, in your opinion, which is more distracting--the bad subtitles on the Megastar or the new colors of the restoration?

[RIP Film]

Enter the matrix... As someone deeply nostalgic of the 90s, it’s a shame we’ll probably never see a true restoration of these. Art is always a product of its time, and to be uprooted like this and placed in a new modern context, almost never benefits the artist in the long run.

Anyone posted caps of 2046? That’s the one I have at least some hope for.

[cowboydan]

cowboydan, in your opinion, which is more distracting--the bad subtitles on the Megastar or the new colors of the restoration?

Tough call. I would say the new colors are more distracting, especially if you've seen the Megastar already. There's a lot of times when the colors are shifted relatively subtly (IMO) and it doesn't ruin the experience. The staircase shot with Carina Lau fixing her shoe, and the shot of Maggie Cheung with her head down taking a nap, both change the colors only mild-to-moderately and generally retain the same mood as the original. If the whole film was like this, it would've been great. But some scenes just look way too different. Evidenced by the shot of Jacky Cheung where he is very green, as well one of Leslie Cheung where he is way too green. There is another shot of Leslie on top of Carina Lau, and their skin tones are way too yellow and saturated, as if trying to make it look like skin tones shot in daylight. The scene took place in a dimly lit apartment during night time! The light is probably supposed to be moonlight or lamp light.

From what I remember, the Megastar's subtitles felt clunky and contained typos, but you could still get the general meaning, even with the mistakes. The new subtitles (from what I recall) only fixed the typos. They didn't revise some of the odd word choices and sentence structures. So I'm not so sure that the subtitles are a major upgrade. Just a moderate one.

These new grades are a bigger headache than I was expecting. I think the coloring was done at "One Cool" productions, even though scanning happened at L'immagine Ritrovata. I remember when watching the Criterion editions of Dragon Inn and A Touch of Zen, being upset at the clearly incorrect yellow tint that laid (mostly) uniformly over the whole films. Luckily, an easy satisfactory fix for this was to change my TV's color temperature setting to "Cool". Of course it's not a perfect fix, but it improved my viewing experience enough. With these Wong films, the grading it too different scene by scene for any simple adjusting. On top of that, it's not a simple "warm" vs. "cool" issue. It's more of a "green" vs "blue" vs "yellow" vs "neutral". My TV's tint setting can't adjust correctly for this. and the yellow seems to be more greenish than past restoration color revisions from Ritrovata. I'd guess that it is specifically Wong's color choices.

[Drucker]

At least there's already a good BD of Days of Being Wild. That doesn't make things better, but it's enough for me to move on rather than sulk over the whole thing.

Which label? AE?

[swo17]

The Megastar BD shown in earlier comparisons

[artfilmfan]

Simply Irresistible! I change my mind again about buying this set.

Oh, I’d say only including the tinkered versions qualifies this as quite resistible

Seeing these screenshots from Days of Being Wild makes me re-consider. Can I change my mind again?

[feihong]

Megastar BD



Restoration

Looking at these two, it's incredible how many colors are in the shot on the Megastar disc, and how all those colors get pulled down to some tone of Cyan in the restoration. Also, what is generally a pretty nice exposure on the Megastar disc looks extremely dark on the restoration. When you look at the curtains in the back it's pretty obvious the white highlights in this scene of the restoration are not balanced towards anything realistic–looking.

It looks like we mostly see more image in the new restoration, and there are a few shots there where there is clearly more visual info available that is visible with better contrast––but the colors in those screenshots look creepy, and in some cases downright crazy. The closeups look sweaty and treacly and miserable in the restoration. This whole restoration project gets so much wrong.

All Hong Kong movies used to have terrible subtitles, so I don't feel like an improvement there is so urgent. But I'm seeing no compelling reason to get the Criterion set based on the restoration material we're seeing. Clearly these are not even close to the way these movies were originally presented––whether they are cut and cropped and reframed or just color-corrected in a weird, new way. And I feel more than ever that buying the set would just be supporting Ted Turner–colorization–style goosing of older movies for a new audience. Filmmakers and film-businesspeople need to really internalize the idea that this sh*t is not okay.

[cowboydan]

Even if the better compression on a pressed disc with healthy intact grain helps to improve the various qualities of the image, it won't be enough to redeem the color differences. I'm still curious to watch these restorations with better compression and on a large display though.

[Ivy Mike]

How do you (or anyone else who has heard them) feel about the 5.1 remixes on the original blu-rays for As Tears Go By and Days of Being Wild? That's certainly a point in favor of the new restorations for those two including mono, assuming they truly are the original mono. Of course I can understand a lot of people probably would find the new color changes more distracting than any perceived differences or issues with going back to the remixes on the previous discs.

[artfilmfan]

Days of Being Wild: This is frustrating. Compared to the MegaStar Blu-ray, some of the screenshots from the new restoration do look better to me (the first, with Leslie Cheung at the drink cooler and the third, with Carina Lau at the staircase), while some others do not look as good.

[tenia]

When you look at the curtains in the back it's pretty obvious the white highlights in this scene of the restoration are not balanced towards anything realistic–looking.

Except if we have definitive proof that the Megastar disc is extremely accurate in terms of grading, I'd be careful judging highlights from an old master. It was frequent in the past to handle brightness and contrast in a certain ham-fisted way that would routinely end up with very pure blown highlights, like it seems to be the case on this shot.

Not saying the new resto is more faithful (I don't know) but I'm wondering how much of a trustworthy reference the older disc is.

[feihong]

I understand that the Megastar disc isn't a reference for the true colors of the scene, but when you compare the two image side-by-side like this it seems visually clear to me that there are no true white highlights on the remaster. I mean, that remastered image might be closer to the intended color for the shot, but it sure doesn't look like it. Maybe they are going for a heavy blue filter, but it seems especially oppressive in that shot, doesn't it. And the screengrabs cowboydan has posted of the other restorations have a similar approach, with a lot of lower-contrast imagery and very few true white tones. I'm not saying it's definitive proof of anything. But the restorations so far don't look right to me.

[andyli]

I know it's just screencaptures off a heavily compressed streaming file. However, there is some Ashes of Time Redux level water-coloring in the pictures. I hope it's not indicative of what would look like on the Criterion disc.

[R0lf]

DVD Beaver has the answer re. the colour timing on DAYS OF BEING WILD:

“From a new interview with Christopher Doyle:
We began the interview looking over some DVDs of Chris Doyle's work with Wong Kar-wai. He picked up the Hong Kong import of Days of Being Wild, their first collaboration. "You have to get the Japanese version," he remarked. "The color is wrong on this one. It's not green enough. It was all green, but then they kind of 'corrected' it when I wasn't there. They took away the green because they thought I didn't know what I was doing."”

Beaver has caps from the original Megastar DVD which has the green colour timing before it was replaced with the blue lean on the blu ray while the other DVDs (including the second Chinese disc Doyle is referring to) are “natural” with no tint.

So that’s right from the horses mouth that green is correct and Beaver also has screen grabs from the previous correct green release if someone more savvy than myself wants to do side by side comparisons.

[artfilmfan]

I have been aware for quite some time now that Days of Being Wild is supposed to have the green tint and for all these times have thought that the image is supposed to look like that of the first Megastar DVD, with a lightly green tint (which I like). The new restoration seems to have enhanced the tint. The scene at the restaurant that feihong referred to is a good example of this enhancement. Also, they seem to have gone for the darker images in the restorations of these films.

[cowboydan]

I have been aware for quite some time now that Days of Being Wild is supposed to have the green tint and for all these times have thought that the image is supposed to look like that of the first Megastar DVD, with a lightly green tint (which I like). The new restoration seems to have enhanced the tint. The scene at the restaurant that feihong referred to is a good example of this enhancement. Also, they seem to have gone for the darker images in the restorations of these films.

Exactly. Like I said before, some of the scenes look great because the green tint is lightly used. But on other scenes it's way too strong. In some scenes it goes as far as destroying highlights, contrast, and any variance in color. Though, I would agree that the "correct" colors probably lie somewhere in between the Megastar BD and the restoration. I think the hue might be a little bit too "blue" or "cyan" at times in the latter.

[R0lf]

I’m going to guess it’s a similar situation to STALKER where the screengrabs look completely yellow but when you play the disc those scenes are a light sepia.

The DAYS OF BEING WILD transfer is not listed as “director approved” so I doubt there has been any tinkering at all on the transfer.

[derekbd]

You guys know so much about the HD versions previously available of Days of Being Wild, but this title in the new set is the most exciting for me, because I adore the film. ANY improvement over the video quality is extremely welcome.

I've not been a fan (or know much about him at all, really) of WKW for very long, so I don't have the history you guys do, and none of the attachment to the films as orginally released.

I'm looking forward to the set immensely!

[TheKieslowskiHaze]

In the Mood for Love Beaver Review

Screencap comparisons confirm what we already knew.

[bluesforyou]

At least it is deliberately green instead of a faulty LUT.

[Mr Sausage]

God, the tinting wrecks the composition with the tea cup. Before, the green of the cup balanced the cool tones of the rest of the frame. Now, it's lost in a soupy green haze. The cup doesn't even draw the eye anymore. I'm only supposed to look at a pair of hands, I guess.

[feihong]

I've seen In the Mood for Love 9 times in theaters (I was a big WKW fan in the 90s, and ITMFL was his key moment), and it's never looked in the theater the way it does in those captures. Whereas the previous blu ray looks very accurate in terms of the colors I saw theatrically. It looks like the new color grade is a huge visual adjustment, especially because the yellow-green tint casts a pall over all the other colors. You can see them all get flattened out in the screencaps of the new transfer, so that bright reds become dull mauves, blues become greens, and white tones all become yellow. It's quite a shame, because you used to be able to make out the individual colors in the patterns of Maggie's cheongsams, and now the whole dress in most cases looks a tamped down to a consistent shade, either green or muddled-brown. In the close-up on the plate of steak from the Beaver caps, you can see the linoleum pattern on the table get compressed so that it is one nearly consistent green shade, instead of the 2-tone pattern from the original blu ray. This reminds me a little of what New Yorker Video used to do with their VHS tapes––everything had a yellow tint to it. Perhaps not coincidentally, the majority of those films were non-U.S. features as well––it seems that if the film crosses a continent to get to you, it can look just any damn way anyone involved in the process pleases, and no one should object.

But it seems to me in an era where they can replicate the look of a film very accurately, and where we're watching a medium that can render the colors in a very true fashion, that it's real frustration when people won't render the images with any intention of reproducing the visual experience we had in the theater. And none of these changes feel anything but arbitrary revisionism––though I think they do reflect the aesthetics of current digital cinema, where the image can be color-corrected into a very stylized presentation. Errant colors can be replaced and the whole palette of a movie can be formalized after-the-fact. Whereas in the era these films came from, they had a very different aesthetic approach to moviemaking––one that is not being honored in this restoration.

[therewillbeblus]

Silver lining: the food pic is a nice nod to Green Eggs and Ham

[Murdoch]

Well, those caps definitely made me take the plunge on the old CC Blu before it disappears from shelves