Movies that now look terrible (in HD)

Wow, I just got a 1080p copy of “Out of Africa” and the compositing is the worst! Downright horrifying. Haha! Please George Lucas, remaster “Out of Africa!” Any others that really suffer in HD? This is the worst I’ve ever seen.

 

Jurassic Park looked terrible on HD cable. And my six year old is just about old enough to handle it. I’ve actually been reading BluRay reviews today to see if maybe TV just used a bad transfer

 

I was shocked at how mediocre the Criterion Blu-ray of HEAVEN'S GATE looked. I twice checked to make sure I hadn't accidentally purchased the DVD. Apparently this has to do with missing footage, as the film was quickly and mercilessly re-edited after its premiere, without careful archiving of the excised scenes. At times it seemed as if the disc jumped between DVD and Blu-ray resolution.

While the movie certainly has narrative problems, HEAVEN'S GATE was at the time one of the most sumptuously and meticulously photographed films in history. It's a shame we won't be able to enjoy the highest resolution of Vilmos Zsigmond's work.

 

Out of Africa is owned by Universal and so would be remastered by Universal Digital Services on the studio lot in North Hollywood. Generally what's done is they match a new 2K or 4K transfer to the same color decisions made on the last version approved by the director or DP. Since both of the latter are dead now, that would be the best course: just make it look exactly the way the DVD did in the 1990s, only with more detail from the increase in resolution.

Are you sure you mean "compositing," BTW? I don't remember that many VFX in the film. Bear in mind it's a 1985 film, so you're seeing the best they could do on an optical printer more than 30 years ago.

I can tell you that even on fairly crappy low-budget cult films, we will often go back and use the last decent transfer as a reference so that during remastering we don't steer it too far away from the original intent. I concede there are some judgement calls that need to be made, but we do our best. My goal is always to try to give the viewer another 5% in terms of black detail and white detail, and also to throw a little light in on scenes where an actor didn't get enough fill (and the shot doesn't match a close-up), and I'll sometimes flag off excessive light in the background when it just looks cheap and crappy. But again, I try to use a modicum of taste and not start relighting the film from scratch.

 

I'm pretty sure there are 2 Blu-rays of "Out of Africa" that've been released. The first sported a bad transfer so Uni remastered it a few years later - IIRC, that is.

OP might've seen the original ugly BD...

 

Not a movie, but awhile back I caught an episode of Doctor Who Season 3 ("Blink") in HD on BBCA.

Wow, did it look fake. The HD image made all the sets look like the cardboardy sets people love so much about the 60's series - except without that charm.

It's one of my favorite episodes, and yet I had to turn it off.

 

Very possibly. Bad decisions get made sometimes, and you just go "WTF?" when they come out.

On the other hand: when I spoke to DP Dean Semler about the new HD version of Dances with Wolves we were working on in 2004, I told him, "hey, we have the 1990 home video version up for comparison -- do you want me to match to it?" And he said, "god, no. Do me a favor and just make it look reasonable. I always hated the way that looked." So I just did it more or less my way, what we call a "down the middle" correction, and both he and Kevin Costner approved it. This was the first version that actually had blue skies. The original was extremely yellow. This was all from the camera negative, and it gets no better than this.

I know of cases where ugly versions of movies were shipped simply because all they could find were substandard film elements, and they couldn't change the schedule to locate good ones. This happens more often than you might think. Or somebody with no taste comes in and makes bad decisions as to how the project should look, because the director and DP are not available (or dead).

 

That's correct. The original Blu-ray had an ugly transfer, while a reissue improved upon the video quality.

The ugliest movies I come across on Blu-ray almost always have been handled in Italy by their video labs. Hollywood films usually have top-notch professionals working on them with the latest scanning technology. By comparison, a wide array of vintage Italian films have been butchered in the past decade. I wouldn't trust an Italian lab to even handle a competent telecine film transfer.

A couple of the genre distributors finally wised up and started doing their own transfers instead of relying on the Italians to handle them.

 

Dances With Wolves looked stunning in the cinema when it came out, not so much the mullet, love interest.

 

I have the Blu-ray set with Jurassic Park I, II and III, and I think it looks great. The DTS-HD sound is awesome as well.

 

Given that this is a world that thought it perfectly reasonable to touch up repaint and redo paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, I think we should marvel at anything which escapes the sledgehammer or spraypainter or computer hacker.

 

Yes, there are two versions.

Several releases of the first master from 2010-2011.

Out of Africa Blu-ray

Out of Africa Blu-ray (Review)




And a "digitally remastered and fully restored" master from 2012.

Out of Africa Blu-ray

Out of Africa Blu-ray (Review)




Out of Africa - March 6th, 2012 - Remastered Review - Blu-ray Forum

2010-2011




2012




This is why I always recommend checking blu-ray.com before buying older films to see if there have been more than one version released with drastic restorations such as with this film and Spartacus.

 

Which is supposed to look better or be more accurate?

 

The newer one is supposed to be a big improvement - those screencaps don't really indicate it, though!

 

Blu-ray (standard HD or 1080P) is seeing its last days at the top, so this thread is a few years late.

Yes, there are any number of Blu-rays where the transfer work is undesirable. Many have been reissued and now look pretty good. The Terminator is one example of many where the consumer must know how to identify the "remaster". Rain Man. Rocky. One of the most noteworthy is Patton. Wow, I can't wait for that to hit 4K UHD|HDR!!!

Anyhow, there must be hundreds of movies on blu-ray which have terrible image quality. Ocean's Eleven is an example of a major film which is an embarrassment on blu-ray. Honestly, whoever had a hand in that should live in shame.

It's pretty easy to stay informed. Always check blu-ray.com.

 

Don't rely on screen caps. Read the review. Read forum member comments. Never buy crummy blu-ray! (Same can be said of 4K discs. Upcoming T2 is causing heads to explode)

 

That's a soft shot, but if you look around Meryl Streep's blouse in the top image, you can see a contrasty halo around her. You can approximate the same look if you turn up the sharpness on a TV. It's an artificial look. The bottom image, while still not very sharp, has a more natural look.

This about TV controls, but it explains what I'm getting at:

Why you need to turn down your TV's sharpness control

Also, there's more detail in the gentlemen's faces that gets lost in that top image.

 

I was looking forward to this one. What's the issue?

 

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (The Jim Carrey one) has a horrible BluRay. And it had a Horrible DVD. The blacks never get darker than grey, the picture is fuzzy and soft and all the colors are muted. It’s a Dr Seuss movie from 2001 and looks like a VHS from 1986.

 

Home Cinema Choice reviewed an advance copy and rated it 2/5

 

#buyalaserdiscplayer

 

Maybe Africa was having an off year when they filmed it. You can't always blame the post production.

 

Right-click those images and load both in separate tabs. Then alternate. The 2010-2011 one has a lot of video noise that looks like it was mastered for NTSC CRT TVs (it could be an early 2k master for DVD from the late 90s) with artificial sharpening and an overall green tint. The 2012 one, while softer, looks more film-like as it's a modern transfer with less edge enhancement and a warmer tone with more detail as Pinknik commented.

 

"Blink" was shot SD, so whatever BBC America is using its an up-convert of some kind. (new-Who didn't go HD until 2009)

 

Does anyone have Caddyshack on BD?

I have the DVD, which looks awful, and was wondering if the BD is any better.