Opening titles are very blurry and smoothed, as if de-grained and filtered to death. However, the video soon clears up and is generally very nice all the way to the end.
Clipped directly from the BD.
The notes say that the primary source is the original reversal negative, which looks like it could benefit from more physical cleaning. I’m fine with dirt, but there comes a point when I’m sitting in a theater watching a fine but dirty print, and I want to yell to its owner, “Clean your print!”
I complain, but I still prefer to see dirt instead of artifact-inducing temporal cloning.
There weren’t any repairs that made me stop the disc, but I did catch this spot where a frame was held for the duration of three extra frames:
Frame number in yellow.
Instead of freezing, I’d much prefer to edit the sound, see black frames inserted, or, best, see the original damaged frames.
A light touch, but there’s so much damage, that it would’ve looked fine without any repairs. This is a bad restoration not because damage remains, but because the repairs are ugly, creating their own artifacts.
Interpolation:
Hideous interpolated eyes.
Interpolated spot repair. These scenes are over an hour into the movie. Up to this point, I wasn’t even noticing repairs bad enough to take notes until large areas of grain suddenly started warping as if due to terrible compression:
Frozen temporal cloning:
Opening and end credits use some other source, which looks like a recreation, de-grained and filtered to death. Check out that aliasing!
The included interviews use clips from this older, altered source. First, a sample from VS’s version:
Vinegar Syndrome BD
Now, this older version, clipped from the Wen Chao-Yu interview. No wires and no grain:
Processing on Eolomea (1972) was so bad that it deserved its own post. See here.
The Silent Star (1960)
I found a tiny bit of interpolated cloning while looking for a sample, but it’s minor. Looks good overall. The only feature in the set that didn’t have any jarring repairs.
Clipped directly from the BD.
Signals (1970)
Filtering leaves residue from previous frames:
Bad splice handling that uses Interpolation, microloops, and appalling pixelation. How is this better than visible cement splices (which are mostly masked out during film projection)?
Frame numbers in yellow.
General interpolation and misalignment:
In the Dust of the Stars (1976)
There’s some weird masking and screen tearing going on, but I can’t tell if it’s original. Overall ok.
Edit: Turns out, some of the weirdness I was noticing is AI upscaling dreck. Lots of examples in this thread at Blu-ray.com. Deaf Crocodile’s disc apparently is better. Maybe I’ll get it. Still…
Sloppy repairs are few, but present:
Frame numbers in yellow.
Love 2002 (1972)
Very rough, but natural.
Edit: Or is this also an AI upscale? I initially thought the source was 16mm, but those edges and the dull color is very suspicious.
Clipped directly from the BD.
The Robot (1968)
The best looking film in the set.
Clipped directly from the BD.
Pleasingly, the features aren’t overly scrubbed, which makes the repairs all the more frustrating. There are enough remaining flaws that no one would have noticed their presence had they been allowed to remain.
And a pet peeve: these features don’t have end credits, but DEFA added new end screens immediately upon fadeout, destroying what I consider a cool effect, akin to seeing a play without a curtain call. How often do you see movies without end credits?
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.
The restoration isn’t heavily scrubbed, but the beginning has a flurry of interpolated repairs. You can see the picture slightly freeze in this brief clip (slow playback to .25x and it becomes obvious):
Clipped directly from the BD.Fully interpolated frame.Splotchy interpolated cloning.Fully interpolated frame.Interpolated screen tearing at top of frame to “repair” messy splice.
Interestingly, while the above splice got a sloppy repair, lots of messy original splices later in the movie were allowed to remain.
