Harmy said:
Hang on a second there dlvh - we were never talking about what looks better (that is very subjective) but what is more accurate to the original. Now, you claimed to remember the colors looking more like the DVD version, so basically you claimed not that the DVD version was better looking in your opinion but that you thought it looked more like the original.
But even if you did remember the impression you got from the colors in 1981, you must take into account that the brain automatically adjusts for visuals - if you're sitting in a dark cinema and then the film starts and it looks consistently warm from the beginning, your brain automatically adjusts to it and you perceive it as natural colors, unless of course you consciously take note of the color timing, which no one normally does, especially not on the initial release of the film, so you came out of the cinema, remembering natural looking colors.
I looked at the DVD shot you posted and sure enough, it registered as pretty natural, so when I switched to the warmer BD shot, it of course seemed too warm to my brain, but I kept looking at the BD shot for a few more seconds and then switched back to the DVD shot and suddenly the DVD shot registered as too cold.
This works pretty much the same way, only over a longer period of time - you were used to watching the DVD colors for years, so the colors on the BD register as wrong regardles of whether they are closer to the original color timing.
Harmy, I mostly agree with your statements here about how the brain remembers visuals, except for the fact that, ever since I saw Star Wars in the theater in 1977, I became used to the fact that theaters show movies in what I, and now you, call NATURAL colors (like IMHO the 2003 DVD) are. IF I were to have gone to another movie and saw it in what you call WARM colors, I would have wondered why that movies colors were so...off compared to what Star Wars (and now ROTLA) was.
I very much enjoy old movies that are broadcast, that are of the vintage era...the later 30's - the 50's. It was the golden age of Technicolor, and although I love the color of those movies, my eyes and brain realize that those are completely different than anything you might see in the theaters now days, but it is beautiful none-the-less, but certainly not Natural compared to modern-day (post Technicolor era) movies.
Just the look of this Bluray release immediately registered to my brain as...WRONG...too Warm, from what I remember seeing in the DVD and in the theater, and yes, unnatural, to me. I cannot speak to what you may have perceived if you were to have seen this in the theater in 1981, but if you did, I would likely say, that you would have called the color timing "Natural", but depending on what you may have been used to, it could have been considered to COLD as well, compared to the Blu rays "Warm" look is... IMO anyway.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding what the original color timing is, if it's not what was displayed in the theater in 1981, and in the 2003 DVD, and then to what I perceive as Natural vs the Blu rays Warm color timing?
Hope that clears somethings up.
dlvh