captainsolo said:
Pretty sure the Leone films are wrong on MGM's transfers with FAFDM may be the closest to intended composition and color. Duck You Sucker is very green/brownish and washed out looking. GBU SE is a travesty all around and the 35mm looked washed out.
Keeping in mind that I just got into these movies recently, the MGM Transfers look pretty uniformly bland (dull color timing), processed (EE, DNR, or both), and old (definitely pre-2006, for all of them, I would say...). Though I admit that I've a) never seen a low-fade print of a Leone film and b) have not seen film cel scans, the color timing of the foreign BDs for The Dollars Trilogy seems more right to me-- it's saturated and doesn't look like it's been "normalized."
FAFDM is something I'm not 100% on. Neither the IT transfer or the US/DE transfer seems perfectly satisfactory for me. Though the US/DE transfer was taken from the neg, the scan is old and it shows. EE exacerbates the grain, while creating an illusion of higher detail, and color timing is dull. The IT is only trimmed by a second from the DE, and, though being DVNR'ed and lacking some ultra-fine detail from being VC1-encoded, it seems like a newer transfer and more film-like. I kind of look at it like the Jurassic Park 2D BD vs the 3D one...
The modern Bond transfers are all wrong for color.
These need fixing, especially OHMSS.
I think Hammer has ruined Horror of Dracula by going this colder color route.
Actually, the BFI ruined Dracula :) Hammer just dealt with the master they were given. Just to be clear though, this wouldn't be an ideal candidate for a restoration project ala The Thing since no video source is quite accurate in its color timing. The Warner Bros DVD is probably even farther off.
The BD is too blue-shifted and saturated; there was a 35mm frame and the color timing was far more subtle. Flesh tones were not blue nor red; they were greenish/natural. The unrestored Japanese reels if red-shift corrected and boosted a bit in saturation look pretty dead on, I think, if dirty.