Tag Archives: UHD

In the Realm of the Senses (1976)

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The New Beverly just ran a 35mm print from 2008, still in very good condition and with excellent color. Eclair’s restoration, on the UHD from Carlotta, has completely messed-up color. In screencaps here, you can see how it’s now tinged yellow and blue. Snow and geisha makeup should be white, not urine-colored. HD Numerique has a comparison between the UHD and Criterion BD here. Eclair’s skin tones veer purple (yikes!). In every instance, the Criterion disc has color that is a good approximation to the print that I just saw.

Burden of Dreams (Criterion)

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Occasional magnetic grain. For this sample, I had to convert from AVC to H265 to get a small file size, but it’s still visible. This was the most glaring bit of magnetic grain on the UHD.

Magnetic grain surrounds the plane.

Compression or bad restoration, it’s impossible to tell which. Still, watchable.

Most of the supplements, including Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980) are 1080i upscales.

Seven Samurai (BFI UHD)

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Slowpoke Pics currently has a comparison of all three UHDs of Seven Samurai (1954). The very first screencap, of the BFI disc, shows sloppy retouching:

Smeary retouching on BFI’s UHD of Seven Samurai (detail).

(Full image here.)

The Toho UHD looks the same, but with different grading, cropping, and filtering. The Criterion UHD doesn’t have these smeary spots, but I don’t know how it looks in motion.

The Little Mermaid (1989)

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Yesterday, the Academy Museum ran an original print of The Little Mermaid (1989). A very rare treat. I think the last time it ran in 35mm in Los Angeles was about 20 years ago at LACMA.

A few things struck me. It is VERY grainy and much of the movie has a haze over it, sometimes quite strong. Even the end credits—the blue lettering bloomed into the black.

Most surprising to me was that Ariel’s hair is red-orange, not red. It had been so long since I last saw the movie that I had come to think it was red.

There’s a nice comparison here, comparing the new UHD to the previous BD. In every instance, the UHD color is too saturated and seriously goosed. The BD more closely looks like the print I just saw. The colors were vibrant for the time, but duller than we’re used to seeing nowadays.