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.
L’Immagine Ritrovata did this restoration of The Kid Brother (1927). Compared to some of their other work, they used a light touch this time. However, they used interpolation, and I consider even a single instance too much. On the whole, though, it looks ok, if suspiciously clean.
Clipped directly from the BD.
Interpolation at the bottom:
Fully faked frame. It’s easy to tell which one by how ragged it looks:
Interpolation is subtle here, but view this full size, and you can see how it destroys vertical lines and fine fabric patterns:
On the other hand, the shorts have fantastic presentations. Looks like basic transfers, tasteful stabilization, with no obvious processing artifacts. Best of all, they’re encoded at 1080i to accommodate the slower frame rate, meaning the motion is perfect!
(Downscaling does no favors for interlacing. Expand the following clips to full screen, and they’ll look much better. TVs display interlacing just fine.)
Over the Fence (1917). Clipped directly from the BD.That’s Him!… (1918). Clipped directly from the BD.
The Kid Brother is transferred at 24fps. Gaylord Carter’s organ score is wonderful, as are many of the supplements. Skip the uninformative commentary, unless you like listening to people describe what’s happening on screen. I still prefer seeing one of UCLA’s 35mm prints.
For a 2013 movie, I expected this to look better. My guess is an inadequate camera. Look at that aliasing!
Clipped directly from the BD.
The running time is 141 minutes, not the 134 stated on the box.
Invasion (2017)
The first movie in the set that looks good.
Clipped directly from the BD.
However, the subtitles are horrible. There are typos throughout the set, but those for Invasion are the worst.
Later spelled “Daniel.”Plus inconsistent placement of quotation marks.
Careless Crime (2020)
Another nice transfer.
Clipped directly from the BD.
These are probably fascinating in Farsi, but I was bored, and not having any of it by the time I got to Careless Crime. All the walking, monotonous dialog, and reading was just too taxing. I would be very interested to see Invasion, maybe even Fish & Cat, dubbed in English.
Good grain, natural stabilization, nice grading, few noticeable processing artifacts. Overall good presentation of The Spanish Dancer (1923).
Clipped directly from the M2TS.
Alas, it has some errors.
Quick-reverse:
Quick-reverse on the left, fixed on the right. Both sides corrected to 60fps.
Mindless spot repair:
The full shot also combines frozen temporal cloning and quick-reversing, mostly on the left side. There’s still so much damage. They should’ve left it alone.
Quick-reversing, frozen temporal cloning, and workflow errors. Clipped directly from the M2TS.
Editing error at 47m43s, where eight frames repeat:
Editing error, followed by fixed version. Corrected to 60fps.
Bill Ware’s music is wonderful. It includes a light touch of sound effects, too, but…does every door have to squeak?
The Spanish Dancer is transferred at 18fps and encoded at 24fps with an uneven pulldown. Frequently, a frame gets repeated twice.
