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Info: The films of Sergio Leone - The best available versions... — Page 4

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Mike O said:

Man, oh man, does the amino transfer of GBU look rough. Shame it’s probably the best we’ll be getting for the foreseeable future 😦.

What amino transfer?

Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.

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 (Edited)

Kino. Damn iPhone 😛.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

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The Mondo transfer uses the same 4K master but it’s unfaithful to the original prints and looks too purple, the MGM BD from 2014 tries but fails to replicate the original theatrical color timing (which was extremely yellow) and instead looks more brownish than anything, Kino’s dials back the yellow but as a result what looks like a blue tint covers a lot of the picture and affects the black levels

Between these three though I’d say the Kino one is the best since it also has the original mono track and something at least close to the theatrical version

Raccoons

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The lossless mono track on the Kino release sounds nice, even through my TV speakers.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

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SpacemanDoug said:

The Mondo transfer uses the same 4K master

No it doesn’t. The Mondo uses a separate restoration created in 2006 or 2007 I believe, released as a Blu-ray in 2009.

Ultimately the Mondo is the best looking out of the available HD masters, because it retains all the existing color information, which the MGM master does not. Sadly, MGM’s 4K restoration looks a lot better besides the color issue, because the Mondo has some strange wobbling/warping, some highlights are blown out and clipped, and there’s blended frames that crop up every-so-often (there’s also missing footage but that’s a different problem).

The MGM’s color looks more green than it does brownish to me. If they would release the 4K restoration on UHD Blu-ray with HDR, I’d bet the color could be salvaged finally.

Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.

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 (Edited)

that LD from the 90s is overrated though, it of course has the theatrical version but the quality is terrible and for a long while the sound falls out of sync, very sloppy release

the Kino mono is superior

there was a planned 4K of this title from Kino but sadly it got cancelled a few months ago

Raccoons

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Unless of course, ahem, anyone wants to invite me to MySpleen should I join 😉. The Kino disc apparently has gamma problems. I’m not 100% sure what that means, but I do know that the disc I watched last night looked way too…muddy, for lack of a better term.

Incidentally, and I don’t know if it’s forbidden to talk about this or not, so any mods can feel free to edit my post, but apparently the guy who does those Hong Kong Rescue reconstructions did one for Duck You Sucker too. Apparently, though, with the exception of a horse fall, the UK Eureka disc is uncut and looks good. I wish Arrow could get the Dollars trilogy in the UK or something.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

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Apparently Kino announced a 4K release. No HDR because they couldn’t squeeze that out of Techniscope. The theatrical cut will only be in standard BD, but they’re claiming the color-correction is improved this time. Haven’t heard about the mono yet.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

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If Kino doesn’t fix the way the Theatrical Cut was cut this time around, too, I shall be very put off.

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Charles Threepio said:

If Kino doesn’t fix the way the Theatrical Cut was cut this time around, too, I shall be very put off.

If it’s not the same disc as was in the Blu-ray set, I’ll be very surprised.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

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Mike O said:

No HDR because they couldn’t squeeze that out of Techniscope.

I don’t even care about watching in HDR personally, but if that was their explanation then that seems like a load of crap. Techniscope is still film and would benefit from higher color depth. I’m assuming they mean the 4K version will remain 8-bit SDR.

I was waiting for a 4K of this to happen because the HDR might make color correction easier. I guess we’ll just have to hope they fixed the missing color information as it is then.

Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.

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Isn’t Techniscope sort of like 16mm? Could you squeeze HDR out of that?

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

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Mike O said:

Isn’t Techniscope sort of like 16mm? Could you squeeze HDR out of that?

The size of the film has literally nothing to do with whether or not HDR can be “squeezed” out of it. Techniscope is a two perf system that effectively halves the amount of film used, since you’re taking standard 35mm film and recording a widescreen frame to take up only two perforations rather than four. So as far as the negative is concerned, I’d say it’s comparable to any film shot on standard 35mm and matted to 1.85:1. Though the Techniscope process might ultimately produce a lower quality image than standard 35mm normally would, I’m not sure. As for you’re 16mm comparison, note that The Evil Dead, shot on 16mm, received an HDR presentation with Dolby Vision compatibility in its 4K release.

The point I’m trying to make is that there’s just as much usable color information in GBU’s Techniscope negative as any other color film negative. HDR is just a digital system that delivers a higher digital dynamic range than previous formats do. It’s up to whoever is creating the HDR grade how much the dynamic range is expanded.

None of that even matters though, since I’ve read Kino’s actual explanation for the lack of HDR and that isn’t it. Apparently the 2014 restoration was finished as a 4K SDR master (I’m still unsure if this means it’s 10-bit SDR or 8-bit SDR), and when Kino considered releasing the film in 4K HDR, they claim the prospective cost of creating a new HDR master was too expensive so they decided against it.

Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.

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Apparently Kino had a vote on their Facebook page, and the fans chose the theatrical cut over the extended for the 4K. Damn. Ah, well.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

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Mike O said:

Apparently Kino had a vote on their Facebook page, and the fans chose the theatrical cut over the extended for the 4K. Damn. Ah, well.

what do you mean?

Raccoons

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Kino ran a Facebook poll to determine which cut they would include on the UHD disc in the upcoming release, since people complained that the US theatrical cut was being left on the bonus Blu-ray. US theatrical cut won the poll, so they’re going to drop the extended cut altogether and only include the extended scenes in the extras of the UHD disc, with both discs featuring the US theatrical.

Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.

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Time
 (Edited)

If you mean color correction, yes. Everything will have the new color correction.

So in theory, we can put the extended cut back together ourselves if the new color correction is worth it, or just to have it in 4K.

Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.

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Time
 (Edited)

The top fan choice for GBU can now be the 4K from Kino Lorber

With the exception of the opening producer credit (altered in 1998 for legal reasons) it is 100% the original US theatrical version, thankfully it also fixes the issue from the 1993 LD where a shot of an exploding wall was missing

Kino went as far as to use a 4K scan of a 1967 print and use the mono track from the laserdisc to restore the audio and missing shots (I’m sure they used a different source for the missing shot though)

Raccoons

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 (Edited)

SpacemanDoug said:

The top fan choice for GBU can now be the 4K from Kino Lorber

With the exception of the opening producer credit (altered in 1998 for legal reasons) it is 100% the original US theatrical version, thankfully it also fixes the issue from the 1993 LD where a shot of an exploding wall was missing

Kino went as far as to use a 4K scan of a 1967 print and use the mono track from the laserdisc to restore the audio and missing shots (I’m sure they used a different source for the missing shot though)

Agreed.

A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More 4Ks are great too. The included BDs are new, and aren’t the same BDs from 2018, and 2019, respectively.

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AdmiralWasabi10191 said:

SpacemanDoug said:

The top fan choice for GBU can now be the 4K from Kino Lorber

With the exception of the opening producer credit (altered in 1998 for legal reasons) it is 100% the original US theatrical version, thankfully it also fixes the issue from the 1993 LD where a shot of an exploding wall was missing

Kino went as far as to use a 4K scan of a 1967 print and use the mono track from the laserdisc to restore the audio and missing shots (I’m sure they used a different source for the missing shot though)

Agreed.

A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More 4Ks are great too. The included BDs are new, and aren’t the same BDs from 2018, and 2019, respectively.

I do agree for Fistful and Few Dollars More they’re the best but sadly not perfect

For Fistful there are some issues with the audio tracks included and Few Dollars More has not only a horrible sounding mono track but is also missing about two seconds of footage in a couple of scenes, but still they’re the best versions available

Raccoons

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I wonder if we’ll ever get the extended cut on 4K? I know it has its detractors and that grotto scene shouldn’t be there, but I kind of love it anyway and wish that it was there for those of us who want it.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death