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Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) — Page 116

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none said:

How hard is it to also post the link:

http://starwars.com/movies/saga/bluraymay4/index.html

Apparently not hard at all.  Look!  You just did it!

Seems more like you are being highly selective.  5 selected negatives out of 132... (and there's so many double posts...)

I never said there weren't positive comments.  I was merely surprised that the first comments I saw were negative, and that such comments were being left there as opposed to being deleted or bumped down.

And to be clear, there are about an equal number of negative posts as there are positive.  I would say that indicates a less than positive response to this release.

  How could you gloss over post 2?

Easy, I just kinda let my eyes slowly descend past the writing without reading it.

“It’s a lot of fun… it’s a lot of fun to watch Star Wars.” – Bill Moyers

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xhonzi said:

Fair enough.  I have no disagreement here.  Their LD work was extensive.  It seems it took them a long time to produce DVD quality DVDs...  

I just don't know of any Criterion DVDs that are 'reference' quality when it comes to A/V.  I only have 4 of them (two Terry Gilliams, and two Wes Andersons).  The first two have crap A/V, and the other two are "pretty good" but nothing that would make me say, "Holy Crap!  Get these guys to do all of my movies!"

 

This seems very strange to me. I have never had a Criterion DVD that wasn't reference quality. That is what they are known for.

I will conceed, however, that they didn't get their act together until around 2001 or 2002. Their transfers before this sometimes used material that by todays standards was not so impressive, and their early discs sometimes re-pressed their Laserdisc releases. This was standard practice for everyone mind you, as DVD in general from before 2001 or so is poor by todays standards, from the special features to the re-used LD masters, to non-anamorphic presentations of release-print sources, to EE and other problems that encoders struggled with. There were few releases that hold up today, which is why every company re-released their early DVDs in new editions--including Criterion starting in 2006.

It just seems to me that people continued to go nuts over Criterion stuff on DVD merely due to what they did for LD.  Even when their DVD stuff was sub par. 

Rather the opposite. No one had LD players, so most people don't know Criterion LDs. Criterion is known for doing custom restorations on all their releases.

I guess you have just had bad luck. I would encourage you to give them a second chance. They are the absolute best company in home video history as far as quality control goes, in my opinion, up there with Warners.

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zombie84 said:

It just seems to me that people continued to go nuts over Criterion stuff on DVD merely due to what they did for LD.  Even when their DVD stuff was sub par. 

Rather the opposite. No one had LD players, so most people don't know Criterion LDs. Criterion is known for doing custom restorations on all their releases.

While the vast majority of DVD owners didn't do LD, I think the 'core' of the DVD 'enthusiast' market did.  That is to whom I referred.  And I think their opinions can be somewhat infectious and spread to people that never had LD.

I guess you have just had bad luck. I would encourage you to give them a second chance. They are the absolute best company in home video history as far as quality control goes, in my opinion, up there with Warners.

Can you make some recommendations? Either for DVD or BD?  I have seen some pretty stellar DVDs in my time (and quite a few 'shops') and I'm not sure if I'm missing anything.

Although I think it's also worth being said, it seems that Criterion specializes in films that are below the demarcation of "common interest"- that is to say that most of their DVD's and whatnot could be considered "special interest".  Most of these films couldn't be turned into 'reference quality' DVDs due to poor source material.  Criterion in these cases should be championed for doing "the best that can be done" but it would be a mistake to compare it A/V wise to a well done DVD of a modern blockbuster.

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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Makes me think of Dune...

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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xhonzi said:


I just don't know of any Criterion DVDs that are 'reference' quality when it comes to A/V. 

I have their entire Akira Kurosawa collection (almost 20 discs), as well as several of their Ingmar Bergman releases, and they are reference quality. Criterion is the industry leader in reference-quality when it comes to old films.

xhonzi said:

Criterion in these cases should be championed for doing "the best that can be done" but it would be a mistake to compare it A/V wise to a well done DVD of a modern blockbuster.

Who's comparing a 60-year old Kurosawa movie to Transformers? No one. Criterion is championed as the best restoration house in the business. They track down original prints and negatives, meticulously restore them, and release them in high bitrate with incredible special features including custom commentaries from the best film experts in the business. Criterion should be championed for all that. No offense, but if you're basing your opinion on their Gilliam and Anderson discs, you really don't know Criterion.

Get Seven Samurai on BluRay and then we'll talk. ;)

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Bingowings said:

After Jurassic Park he came to the conclusion that puppets were so 20th Century and farts and poop were funny.

But farts and poop are older than Methuselah. The logic doesn't wash! It just doesn't wash!!!

;-(

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asterisk8 said:

xhonzi said:


I just don't know of any Criterion DVDs that are 'reference' quality when it comes to A/V. 

I have their entire Akira Kurosawa collection (almost 20 discs), as well as several of their Ingmar Bergman releases, and they are reference quality. Criterion is the industry leader in reference-quality when it comes to old films.

xhonzi said:

Criterion in these cases should be championed for doing "the best that can be done" but it would be a mistake to compare it A/V wise to a well done DVD of a modern blockbuster.

Who's comparing a 60-year old Kurosawa movie to Transformers? No one. Criterion is championed as the best restoration house in the business. They track down original prints and negatives, meticulously restore them, and release them in high bitrate with incredible special features including custom commentaries from the best film experts in the business. Criterion should be championed for all that. No offense, but if you're basing your opinion on their Gilliam and Anderson discs, you really don't know Criterion.

 Amen.  Their early dvds were pretty bad (the Samurai Trilogy is one I'm hoping they eventually redo, hopefully on bluray - the laserdisc ports of it that they put on dvd are pretty bad).

But the ones they have gone back & redone are fantastic.  The new transfers of Yojimbo & Sanjuro they put out on dvd & bluray look incredible.  And the newest restoration they did of Seven Samurai even blows Toho's own in-house restoration away!  And, yeah, the commentaries they do with film experts/historians are some of the best bonus features ever put out.  Ever.

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Of course they would. they would make gadrillion dollars in money.

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canofhumdingers said:(the Samurai Trilogy is one I'm hoping they eventually redo, hopefully on bluray - the laserdisc ports of it that they put on dvd are pretty bad).

 Agreed. In 2005 I found some discount release that had all three Samurai films in an extra-fat case on 3 discs. The quality was worse than Criterion, but only by a bit. However, the discount release was $19--a steal back in 2005--while the Criterion set was $100. The discount release even had a short documentary (on how swords were made) while the Criterion version just had a trailer. I don't have to tell you I've never owned the Criterion set. Shame, because those films are as good as any of Kurosawa's, but I've never seen them look good. All murky and scratched up. I guess the colour will always be a bit dull because of the photography, but these films deserve to be seen.

Xhonzi: I would pick up any disc that was released after 2006 without worry. So, if you see a Criterion Blu Ray, don't worry about it, because they are all excellent as far as I can tell. You'd probably be very impressed with their Seven Samurai BD. I'm waiting for them to re-do Rashomon--it is probably their best early release (from 2000 I think?) and holds up well on DVD if you were to give it a shot, but I know if they tackled it again they would blow everyone away. There was a fully restored print of it touring in 2009 that I saw theatrically and it was breathtaking.

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asterisk8 said:

Criterion is the industry leader in reference-quality when it comes to old films.

When you say 'reference quality' do you mean

1. The Best PQ/AQ to be had.

or

2. The Best PQ/AQ a particular film can have.

?

I've never seen it used to mean definition 2.

In summary- I'll give in.  I own 2 crappy Criterion DVDs and 2 decent ones.  I don't really know enough about their library to comment further.

 

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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xhonzi said:

asterisk8 said:

Criterion is the industry leader in reference-quality when it comes to old films.

When you say 'reference quality' do you mean

1. The Best PQ/AQ to be had.

or

2. The Best PQ/AQ a particular film can have.

?

 

Huh? What's the difference?

The best picture/audio quality to be had means going back to original negatives for a new transfer followed by meticulous restoration resulting in a clean master with original grain that can be used to create DVDs and BluRay discs. That is reference quality. It means that the particular transfer is the reference by which all other prints of that film are judged. There is no such thing as an umbrella reference by which all films ever made can be judged. How could there be? There are too many variables. There are sites like avsforum that ascribe ratings to film releases, based on criteria they've established, but that's subjective.

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TV's Frink said:

http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2011/5/5/3b7cbce7-c4cd-410a-887f-f11bc2d4058a.jpg

 

Seriously, could we get back to SW on Blu?  Someone could easily open up a "What if Criterion did SW" thread here, or a General Criterion thread in off-topic.

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TV's Frink said:

Seriously, could we get back to SW on Blu?  Someone could easily open up a "What if Criterion did SW" thread here, or a General Criterion thread in off-topic.

What more is there to say? I hate the list of features. I love the list of features.  /thread

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Then let the thread die.  I'm not interested in Criterion discussion, so I'd prefer it be in a thread I can safely ignore.

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Then don't view the thread if you don't like the current subtopic. There would be no activity here otherwise so it makes no difference.

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Subtopic?  This thread is about Star Wars on Blu.  It's not about a hypothetical Star Wars by Criterion, and it's certainly not about how Criterion has treated their actual, non-SW content.

I have to keep checking the thread if I want to see if anyone is actually posting something about SW on Blu.

Should I start posting duck pictures in adywan's ESB:R thread?  There's no activity there either...would that make a difference.

This is so obvious, even Ric Olie wouldn't need to state it.

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TV's Frink said:

Then let the thread die.  I'm not interested in Criterion discussion, so I'd prefer it be in a thread I can safely ignore.

You could, theoretically, ignore individual posts, right? When I see something I don't want to read, I don't read it.

!! INCOMING CRITERION COMMENT !!

I do see people referring to "reference quality" as meaning "the best blu-ray has to offer" which I think that Criterion has achieved on every blu-ray I've seen. I think xhonzi is underestimating how good a film from 1954 can look on blu-ray when a quality print is properly transferred and restored. I think Seven Samurai looks better than most modern films shot in HD.

!! INCOMING STAR WARS ON BLU-RAY COMMENT !!

I am very curious to see how SW looks with regard to film grain on Blu-Ray.

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What more is there to post about? We don't control the details. Lucasfilm released the details, so there is nothing to add, there is only discussion and opinion on the details. One opinion was that the details suck and Criterion should handle it; Criterion's capability was then questioned, and then this was resolved with examples. Thats it. It's the topic--the topic of Star Wars on Blu Ray, what the details are, whether this is good or bad, and any other opinions related to it. The thread was never specified as being specifically about one aspect of it, but simply the release in general.

You'll probably know if there are more details released because everyone will be talking about them then, so come back when that happens if you don't want to hear about a Blu Ray restoration company that could have or could have not handled the job better than Lucasfilm.

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Who are you and what did you do with Frink? The Frink I know would rejoice at a thread being derailed and pour a few barrels of gasoline in the fire :-)

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He's clearly racist against Criterion. Clearly.

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TV's Frink said:

This is so obvious, even Ric Olie wouldn't need to state it.

Blasphemy!!!

<span style=“font-weight: bold;”>The Most Handsomest Guy on OT.com</span>

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Harmy said:

Who are you and what did you do with Frink? The Frink I know would rejoice at a thread being derailed and pour a few barrels of gasoline in the fire :-)

I'm surprised it took so long for this point to be made.  For better or worse, my derailments are meant for my own amusement (and others if they are tickled in a similar manner).  But hopefully they don't lead to pages of off-topic discussion...especially since the new rules came down (or the old ones were reinforced, I can't remember).

I'm shocked anyone thinks a discussion of Criterion quality, especially in relation to previous/current NON-SW work, is in any way on-topic.  Yes, I can ignore the posts, but then why do we need rules here?  Can't everyone ignore my Deal With It gifs just the same?

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asterisk8 said:I am very curious to see how SW looks with regard to film grain on Blu-Ray.

 Well, you can see the HD broadcasts, which is basically the same master we're gonna get. Which is, most of the o-neg grain is scrubbed out, although not quite all of it, and thankfully it at least wasn't done through DNR.