2001 A Space Odyssey is supposed delayed till 30 Nov. Amazon just shipped me a copy

Opening up a can of worms are we?

Doesn't 70mm film have less grain than 35mm

 

Well, the relative frame size area is about 3 times bigger than 35mm:


You can assume that the grain would be 1/3 as great in the 65mm negative. Nonetheless, what I saw on Close Encounters and Starship Troopers was ten times more grain than what I usually see in a film scan. We're talkin' grain the size of canned hams. 2001 was relatively clean as a whistle.

 

Doesn't it all come down to different filmstock and different grain management from studio to studio?

I haven't seen Starship Trooopers in years but there are lots of CGI and the movie is from '97 I think.
Maybe they decided to leave a lot of grain in to mask the low resolution of the CGI? If that even makes any difference...? I'm just guessing here

 

Ummm, I'm not a pro Mark and you know that I use to agree with you 100% of the time (I had a previous profile here, won't say who I am) but comparing CEOT3K shot on 35 mm film stock of the mid/late 70's and Starship Troopers was shot to Super35 which is very grainy while 2001 A Space Odyssey was shot to 65 mm which is a bigger film format so it has less grain. In addition to that there's the urban legend that I believe to be true, that despite Kubrick's film stating having a DP Kubrick doubled as DP himself and we all know how picky and perfectionist he was. Compare how A Clockwork Orange Looks next to other 35 mm shot movies of the time...

 

You made a good point here.

 

Grain management = fake digital tinkering.

Sony has done a WONDERFUL job.

Haven't we been through this all before?

The drum has been banged till it has bee worn through.

 

Grain management, color correction, new sound mix, fixing missing frames, changing aspect ratio from 1.85 to 1.78 etc
- it's all different tools

 

I work with restoring 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s films (shot on film) all the time, and they don't have to look as grainy as Close Encounters or Starship Troopers. It's a failing on the part of Sony, a philosophy against grain reduction of any kind -- even when done with good taste.

 

There is no "good taste" when it comes to the horrible crap that has hit many blurays and streams.

Close Encounters 4K has been applauded by major reviewers and for people that love the look of film as it should be presented have zero problems with the release.

It is the best it ever looked.

 

There is nothing wrong with Close Encounters and we are fortunate whenever the grain management technicians are kept far away from any home video release.

Few care, but if anyone wants to see a standard for blu, then check out releases by Arrow. Revelatory.

As for 4K, I usually think of Leon or A Few Good Men for 35mm anamorphic.

I'm no expert, but there are no others posting here with the authority to set this whole thing straight. Beware.

(SONY dominates 4K quality. Let's put away any notion to the contrary.)

 

I was a bit amazed that the 3M reflective material that was used on the backdrops for the Dawn of Man sequences, that was very apparent on the old Blu-ray, was gone. I wonder how difficult it was to remove it?

 

I suspect that perhaps what you were seeing was an issue with the low bit rate and the transfer itself with artifacts. The goal wasn't exactly to remove the 3M reflective material used as the backdrop with the restoration. That wouldn't have been the goal here as it would have altered the look of the film itself. It wasn't noticeable in the theatrical versions I've seen over the years.

 

My guess is that they may have used some very subtle defocus just on the screen itself and not the actors in the foreground, just to "take the curse" off of it. I do this kind of thing all the time in mastering when the seams are showing too much in HD or 4K films.

Well, bear in mind you never saw a theatrical version projected from the camera negative. You can make a good argument that the camera negative is "too clear" in revealing a lot of details that perhaps the filmmakers never wanted the audience to see. We noticed that I could tell for the first time that the foreheads of the "apes" in 2001 was kind of plasticy and shiny, giving away that it was just makeup, and I never saw that before. Handling negative is very tricky; I think it requires some experience and good judgement to reveal what we need to see, but not show too much if it spoils the show.

As a side note: I've worked with many DPs over the years who go nuts when they see that we can open up the negative to see all the details in the dark parts of the frame. Many times, they'll say "no, no, no -- we've gotta crush that way down to not see that. I never intended for anybody to see any detail in the blacks." So sometimes seeing more is not the intention. Me, I try to walk a line and give a hint of what's there, but at the same time not make it look like a sitcom.

 

Those screen shots are very telling... should the 4K UHD be that dark, relative to 2007's 1080p release???

The 2007 release had bright, vivid, vibrant colors, and was a reference-quality transfer to my eyes... the 4K UHD looks like someone's forgot to put a coin in the meter...

 

Are we seriously saying that 70 mm has less grain than 35 mm?

There me be a perceived value but it doesn't change what is physically there.

It is one thing to make a statement that something is less (FALSE), but to assign a "1/3" less makes no scientific sense?

 

Curiously, there are sections that look like they aren't quite from the same source i.e., there's a very minimal quality drop (although they did a great job of keeping things consistent and looking as close as possible) so I have to wonder also what condition the original negative is at this point particularly given how many prints were supposedly struck from the original negative back in the day (rather than use an interpositive). What are your thoughts on this?

 

I have seen this UHD BD twice since I got it but both times I played it with the original audio track reformatted to 5.1 and not the "remastered and restored" 5.1 track. My question is, is the so called "remastered and restored" 5.1 track actually the same mix done for the 1999 DVD and later reused on a lossless form on the 2007 BD, or is it a new remixed track unique to this 50th anniversary release?

 

1999 mix

 

I think 2001 was put together with the best possible pieces of film that survived today, and they had no choice but to go with dupes and other elements because the original shots were thrown out or damaged to the point that they couldn't be used. Restoring a 50-year-old film winds up being a detective case, where they search high and low to track down every film element they can find, then evaluate them all, and finally figure out how to put the pieces together. To me, I'm astonished it looks as good as it does -- I can't criticize any particular shot for being a little soft or a little off.

 

I find its picture quality outstanding, you're gonna think I'm crazy but I watched it again this evening, that'smy third since I got my set. I watched it again playing the original multichannel mix reformatted to 5.1, I much like this mix even if it's not as clean and dinamic sounding as the 1999 remix, which I find boring and uninteresting.

 

I think he has mentioned getting accurate 4K screenshots to be a bit of a problem.

 

I missed where this came up first, but "Close Encounters?" Yeah, I was so excited to see my first Blu-ray: Close Encounters, and it looked like GRAIN FEST. Why was that? I thought maybe they upped the grain so the SPFX could be more easily masked.

 

Huzzah! I love that movie. Yep, Spielberg (and Williams, more and more, I think music -- well, maybe not around here -- is under-valued as a HUGE component of a film's emotional resonance. I just made this dumb haunted hotel walk around video and just laying a Wendy Carlos track on it made it come to life.), yep, he knows how to tug the heartstrings -- but WTF, I LIKE having my heartstrings tugged. Close Encounter is also just THE BEST (except for E.T.?) ALIENS IN AMERICA ever made. Period. It can't top "2001' for first encounter, or "The Thing" for alien monster, or perhaps even "Contact" for making contact, but for a semi-doc, naturalistic feel-good alien movie? Can't beat CE. It's gorgeous with all those glowing orbs. Richard Dreyfus in top form. The whole SPIELBERG damn cleverness...! I love CE.

 

Sony is the indisputable king of 4K home video releases and that includes Close Encounters. I'm no Sony fanboy, to say the least, but their home video department is wiping the floor of all others in 4K UHD/HDR. Sincerely, don't pass up any of their 4K releases if you like the movie.

 

I tend to agree. I was impressed when Sony didn't wash all the grain away on Starship Troopers. They left all the detail in by not doing so. Fox is the studio that I don't trust doing 4K. They botched the Die Hard release. They went hog wild removing grain. They washed away a lot of detail. There's scenes that look awful because all the detail in faces is eroded away.