Author Archives: Nick

Playtime (Criterion)

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As part of the celebration of the reopening of the Egyptian Theatre here in Hollywood, the American Cinematheque ran a 70mm print of the 2002 restoration of Playtime (1967). Since Criterion released it twice on BD, each with radically different color timing, I took note of the color. A simple test: does it look gray, like metal, or brown?

Criterion’s first BD is close to the color you’d see if you went to a 70mm screening:

Notice how gray everything is. That’s the point. Paris’ colorful life obliterated by cold, drab, and homogenous modernism.

The 2002 version does have some computer repairs that I’d probably complain about if I got a chance to look closely, but I have yet to notice them during a screening, and I go nearly every time it plays in Los Angeles.

The 2013 version:

It now has L’Immagine Ritrovata’s characteristic urine-soaked color timing.

While the new version is sharper, less grainy, more stable, it’s ruined by the ugly color. Additionally, it’s riddled with interpolation that also freezes grain. It fakes frames that are intact in the previous version.

I first saw Playtime when the 70mm prints were still new, at least as late as 2004. It was stunning. Even with 20 years of wear, the print I just saw was still beautiful. All they needed to do was scan this negative, nothing more, and the BD would have looked wonderful.

Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories (Deaf Crocodile)

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[Ashkan] was shot on video at 25 frames per second. [This version was converted to 24fps] by removing 1 frame per second from the movie.

I initially misread that as “one frame per shot,” which would have been no big deal. So, to see such choppiness really caught me off guard:

Clipped directly from the BD.

It’s really noticeable and distracting throughout the movie, though the hand-held shaky cam helped hide some of it.

If this is the best version, I have some questions. Why couldn’t the 25fps original be used? Does it still exist? The video that remains is basically slowed down; slowing the original down to 24fps would be effectively the same. Why couldn’t it be a 25fps->1080i60 conversion? What about the sound? Is it slowed or pitch-corrected?

I’m not thrilled with the video compression, but it could be worse:

Clipped directly from the BD.

A poor presentation. Whatever the price is for this four-disc set, it’s 25% too much.

Ultra Q (Mill Creek)

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Good: Grain. Few obvious restoration artifacts. Customer service. Two of my discs were bad and Mill Creek sent replacements.

Bad: No original mono. The sweetened stereo remix is jarring, even when listening on headphones with a stereo-to-mono adapter.

The series is over-subtitled. Every word is subtitled, every time, including names. The first few times are ok, but it quickly gets annoying to see repeated things like names repeatedly pop up. “Jun-chan,” “Yuri-chan,” etc., over and over. I’m undecided about the use of honorifics, but if subtitles merely copy what’s being said, then they cease to be translation and instead turn into closed captioning.

The subtitles reach ridiculous lows near the end of the series. Episode 23 features characters speaking an obviously gibberish language. One of the characters is a translator. We’re clearly not supposed to understand the words.

Episode 27 features extended portions in English…which are subtitled:

Excessive subtitling robs us of the joy of viewing without words marring the picture and that we can understand the words being spoken. Subtitles are impossible to ignore and become a crutch. We look down and still read them, even when we can understand what’s spoken.

I didn’t really notice restoration artifacts overall. The transfer is clear, clean, and some damage remains throughout, which is ok. It looks nice and natural. Not suspiciously “pristine.”

However, episode 27 has a horrible stretch of frozen cloning and scratch removal. In the sample below, the first shot is splotchy, and then turns into a still. The left side of the following shots freeze up. The scratch removal left a smear. Play it at .25x and see how much you can spot:

I am not opposed to damage repair, but if attempted, it needs to be flawless. If it results in portions of the image freezing and smearing, then leave it alone. The watery scratch removal still left a scratch.

After that horrid repair, I was on high alert.

Interpolation:

How did I catch it? I wasn’t frame-stepping as if I was neurotic. I simply noticed that the picture seemed to freeze:

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Flicker Alley, Universal)

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Two BD releases of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), both riddled with restoration artifacts.

Flicker Alley (FA)

I like that it’s a color scan of a tinted print, which allows the subtle, imperfect color variations inherent in the process. The tints on Universal’s version are recreated.

The most common artifact comes from either poor compression or automatic spot removal gone awry (I’m guessing the latter):

Most of the time they look like specks of dirt, but if you look closer, they are hard tiny blocks.

In addition to damaging the text, the spot removal left an ugly retouched line at the top.
Watch Norman Kerry’s beads disappear.
Text disappears.
Obliterated text.

Also frequent is frozen temporal cloning:

There’s almost nothing left of the “restored” frame.
The top of the image suffers from misaligned frozen cloning and messy retouching. Spot removal was applied after stretching to 24fps.
This piece of frozen cloning in the lower right lasts three frames.

The next three examples each have multiple instances of frozen temporal cloning:

Sloppy retouching:

The retouching at top is misaligned, has a hard edge, and doesn’t even remove the cement splice.

Quick-reverse temporal cloning:

Quick-reversing is when frames are repeated in the manner of ABCDCDEF. It’s often applied to entire frames. For this edition, Flicker Alley combined it with temporal cloning. It’s no better than frozen temporal cloning, as you can see the picture “seize up.” Maybe not all the time, but done enough times, you’ll start to notice something’s off.

The top of this frame repeats.
Misaligned, hard-edged, quick-reverse temporal cloning at top.
Quick-reversing is easy to spot when it’s applied to motion.

One thing I’ve heard in commentaries and interviews from the people that produce restorations is that these artifacts aren’t visible in motion. Well, up next, straight-from-the-disc at 21.5fps:

Pay attention to the horse at top right. Quick-reverse in action.

Stabilization:

Stabilization was applied relatively sparingly. I don’t particularly care for stabilized silents; they have a tendency to float and rotate around the center. Here is an egregious use of it:

Lon Chaney was in front of a wall, facing a camera locked to a tripod. Stabilization warps every bit of this shot.

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