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I disagree though. They are trying to rebel, and since they function as a group rather as one small individual they have more courage and strength to break the rules.

dda1996a wrote:I disagree though. They are trying to rebel, and since they function as a group rather as one small individual they have more courage and strength to break the rules.

I agree. The girls in Mustang _know_ "the rules" but do not want to be smothered by them (as they correctly perceive they will be). I found very little to criticize in that film.

BEAVER is out and I already am getting emails by friends saying Sofia messed up the color. :-k

Huh. Had no idea you knew Ms. Coppola personally.

CSM126 wrote:Huh. Had no idea you knew Ms. Coppola personally.

Direct quote from my friend. I should add "s.

How does someone "mess up the color" of their own film?

Happens all the time. See the French Connection, which was so bad Fox actually admitted their mistake in listening to Freidkin and redid the Blu

French Connection is even funnier than this : Fox released the first BD with Friedkin's endorsement. Roizman said it was a travesty. Then Friedkin said that the result on the BD isn't what he supervised, so Fox must have screwed it up when porting it on the support. Yeah, sure...

Another one I like is The Leopard : Rotunno has supervised both the older restoration used by Criterion and the newer one released by Pathé. The results are quite different (though not as much as French Connection) and they're not even the same AR (since different elements were used for each restoration).

I saw a 35mm print of Virgin Suicides last night and the caps of the Criterion release from DVDbeaver look closer to what I saw, for the most part.
I looked at the caps just beforehand and noted a few particular things that would be easy to remember/compare in the shots of Cecilia in the tree and the dad in the classroom, both of which were much closer to the CC image: the leaves in the tree behind Cecilia were closer to the vibrant green of the BD caps, and the white levels for the window and curtains behind the father were more uniformly washed out yellowish, as opposed to the three distinct shades of the DVD caps. The shot of Dunst laying in the field about split the difference between the two gradings. Overall, the film definitely had a fairly consistent filtered look throughout, so if the CC BD is sometimes a little bit off in one direction of being too colored, then the DVD, with a comparatively more neutral grading as shown in the DVDbeaver side-by-sides is very off in the other.

I just watched this Blu-Ray, and if I can't really judge the accuracy of the color timing (my only exposure to the movie was through DVD), I will say that the heightened greens in this transfer (which is otherwise a complete stunner) really made this look like Ed Lachman's later work on Carol. Whether that's revisionism on his part or just stylistic consistency that's finally being fully revealed (The Limey, made the same year as this, has much the same look, so I'd guess the latter), I dunno, but I definitely didn't think this was an egregious recoloring by any means.

Looking at the screen caps again, I think the end goal was to make something like moving Kodachrome pictures where it is still vivid and hasn't faded yet.

Just to be safe

After all, this is ultimately a *remembrance* of things past rather than seeing them play out as if it were happening right then and there.

Lachman and Coppola mention in the interview they were going for an "older" look for the very reasons you state there.

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Not the most constructive comment, but I was shocked on rewatching this recently how little Devito is in it. For some weird reason I thought he had Woods' role.

To be a little more constructive, alongside Marie Antoinette this strikes me as the best use of the enigma that Coppola has used as her key mode of characterization. Not even just with the girls, but even the boys with stuff like the flash forwards or the Wonder Years narration forcing questions on them that are outside what the narrative can say.

I had never seen this (and picked it up specifically for this Film Club selection, actually) and came away very pleased that it featured both a much stronger sense of humor than I'd anticipated and a much sharper perspective on the men and boys narrating and populating the film than I had been led to believe by complaints that the film prioritizes their gaze on the girls over providing any deep insight into the titular characters themselves. Coppola's script (and her often playful direction) does foreground the boys' perspectives, and in doing so it keeps the girls enigmatic and distant, but also highlights the male characters' immaturity, confusion, dishonesty, and impotence. The scene with the neighborhood men struggling to remove the fence Cecilia died on is as darkly hilarious as Kirsten Dunst's abandonment on the football field is tragic; I don't know that Coppola has juggled tones this extreme since (I haven't seen Somewhere yet), but her ability to do so as successfully as she does in her debut makes the movie.

My other major takeaway from the film is Ed Lachman's cinematography, which drifts between lighting/color schemes for dreamy fantasy images, stark and straightforward depictions of reality, and something in between for key scenes - like the prom night - that seem so soaked in almost mythical remembrance that they teeter on the edge of unreality. I saw a tribute to Lachman's career last year that highlighted his range in working for directors with as disparate sensibilities as Haynes, Herzog, Wenders, Soderbergh, Solondz, and Schrader, and his work on this film stood out in his compilation reel even among those other great works (his best work is still Carol, though).

A note on the time frame: while I quite liked the use of the removal of the neighborhood's blighted elms as a way to mark time in the narrative and further underline the period setting, there's a slightly sloppier element of the production design in a shot of a cemetery with several gravestones with military markings from 1940 and 1941, when the United States didn't enter World War II until December 1941. I feel like this is the kind of detail James Woods' airplane modeling character would have noticed - while still failing to grasp what was happening with his children right under his nose.

Ribs wrote: Tue Jan 16, 2018 10:05 pm ... Tavi Gevinson?

Finally revisited and watched all the extras and I thought the inclusion of this one was inspired: who better than a (then-) teenage girl to talk about a movie about teenage girls? It's interesting how a film that, like the book, is seen from outside, still resonates so strongly with those witnessed within it. It also helps that Gevinson was a ridiculously articulate and perceptive teenager and her thoughts on the film were elegantly considered and relayed in her zine. Kudos to whoever at Criterion came up with this extra!

In weird and sad synchronicity news, Gevinson just announced that Rookie is shuttering effective today

Just revisited this and was delighted by two casting discoveries: the kid who sort of hits on Kathleen Turner at a party ("what's in this punch?") is Jason Schwartzman's kid brother and one of the group of boys who takes an interest in the Lisbon girls is Boon from Justified!

I still have yet to make my way through the last decade-plus of her filmography (save for A Very Murray Christmas), but this is still my favorite work by Coppola and one I neglected to purchase when it first came out. The supplements on here are all excellent, so picking up the UHD blu of one of the most visually striking directorial debuts of the last quarter-century seems like a no-brainer.

Someone on the Blu-ray forum asked about HDR on the UHD and Criterion responded

Thank you for writing and for your interest in our upcoming 4K UHD release of VIRGIN SUICIDES!

This release is HDR10, not Dolby Vision.

For added reference I wanted to note that this 4K maintains the wide color P3 gamut but does not contain true HDR highlights. This is at the filmmakers' request, since the muted highlights are a stylistic choice that they did now want to alter. As always, we worked closely with the creators of the film to preserve their vision for this release.

So it has HDR but it doesn't actually have HDR? :-k

I suppose it means the luminance peaks just aren't very bright.

yoloswegmaster wrote: Thu Apr 21, 2022 8:53 pm So it has HDR but it doesn't actually have HDR? :-k

If it's graded in PQ, it is HDR. There is no set look or definition as to what counts as HDR. Think of HDR, along with WCG, as merely a wider toolset for a colourist to use, compared with SDR and Rec.709. Criterion are merely saying they are making limited use of one aspect of this wider toolset, so as not to disrupt the intended look of the film. This is a very good thing.

there is a review at blu-ray.com

the captures (is it the UHD downscaled to 1080 ?) looks really dark.
To be sure that I'm not mistaken, the Blu-Ray from the previous Criterion release (which I have) is the same ? (or is it darker now) ? I was really pleased with the color grading of the transfer (in comparison to the Pathe French BR. That's really different, but it looks like it's more Edward Lachman's style.