Daimajin (Arrow)

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I initially thought that Arrow’s BDs of the amazing Daimajin trilogy looked great. However, when I went to grab a sample to post here, I found that the technicians tried to remove every cement splice, resulting in pervasive screen tearing. In comparison to most so-called restorations, though, it’s subtle and the repairs are generally aligned. Look closely at the very top and bottom edges, and you’ll see frozen temporal cloning, mismatched cloning, and interpolation.

Frozen rushing water.
Interpolation at bottom.
Top third of screen frozen. Yikes!

Mill Creek put out the trilogy years earlier. Apparently, the color isn’t as nice, but I wonder if it’s “unrestored” and how the audio compares. Leave a comment if you can fill me in.

Cat City (Deaf Crocodile)

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There’s typical frozen temporal cloning. The bigger problem is that there are about 100 freeze frames. Some have negligible clone repairs, but usually the picture simply freezes.

Frozen picture. Yellow number indicates frame number.
Picture is mostly frozen, with some misaligned cloning.

The shorts got worse processing, especially at splices.

Let Us Get a Dog (1974)

Freeze frame:

Interpolation:

Frozen cloning, screen tearing, misalignment:

Can you spot it?

Where is the Limit? (1975)

Frozen cloning:

Screen tearing:

Interpolation:

This interpolated frame includes a microloop.

Restoration processing by Hungary National Film Institute Filmlab.

Samm Deighan’s irritating uptalk-filled commentary approaches the movie with the assumption that animation is for children. It sounds like a dry book-report academic lecture, instead of someone who is an expert in Hungarian cinema. Skip it.

Benny’s Bathtub (Deaf Crocodile)

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Deaf Crocodile’s BD of Benny’s Bathtub (1971) does not have a proper subtitle track, only closed captioning:

Typos:

Poor placement:

Additionally, the timing is poor. Lines appear too early, stay too long, and overlap dialog. All this makes following the movie very difficult.

The included episodes of Cirkleen suffer from the same subtitle problems.

Video quality, though, is very nice.

Meyer from Berlin (Kino)

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Very nice color scan of a tinted print. In rough shape, but grain looks natural and no restoration artifacting. No complaints about the encoding. Looks great!

Clipped directly from the BD.

I already had the Eureka release of The Oyster Princess (1919), so I didn’t watch Kino’s encode, but it has the same wonderful score.

Meyer from Berlin (1919) is transferred at 18fps and encoded at 24fps. From EYE Filmmuseum.

Madame Dubarry (Kino)

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Some pretty ugly repairs-frozen cloning, interpolation, microloops-but they’re not pervasive. For the most part, though, it’s not excessively processed. Grain is intact and it looks ok. Given that the final result still has lots of damage, the repairs were a waste of effort.

Misaligned, frozen cloning:

Wall texture retouched to oblivion:

Nearly a freeze frame:

Interpolation and disappearing rope:

Madame Dubarry is transferred mostly at 20fps and encoded at 24fps.