Tweet Universal Restorations coming this year

Derek

Dang, not what I was hoping for...I thought that maybe Universal had found a hidden cache of silents that Junior didn't toss on the bonfire...am I a dreamer or what?!?

How did we ever manage to enjoy a film with that darn flicker?

The "restoraions" look WORSE!

A lot dimmer and darker than the "before" compairisons. What is up with that???

At least we can look forward to Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and Dracula on Blu-Ray. To bad they cleaned up the sound. They were fine the way they were.

Very, very impressive. I'm quite excited... the titles with which I'm most familiar, the B&W films shown, look 100% better. Very thrilling!

I'm with Darren. Since when does "restoration" mean darkening the image to a tangle of dense shadows?

The "after" is darker because the "before" is too bright! Look at it closely. All the highlights are blown out in the "before" images - so much detail was being lost.

The Restorations look magnificent. HighHat is correct, the "before" shots are way to bright and blown out. The contrast was completely off. And whats the problem with cleaning up the sound track?

Perhaps it may be my screen but I can't see what is going on on the "after".

They did the same thing with 60s Star Trek show. Darkened everything to the point it does not look like the original show. Changed it for modern audiences.

Without exception, the restorations of the black-and-white titles look superb. I've never seen Dracula and the Frankensteins looking so good, and I've been watching various incarnations of them for decades. They don't look murky at all to me, but instead have a much richer range of values. I'll have no hesitation double- or triple-dipping (or more!) on these if they make it to Blu-Ray.

Phooey, No, Silents? Not even LONESOME? A film just inducted into the National Film Registry in 2010. THE GOOSE WOMAN would be another good choice.

Why complain? We should be happy they're putting anything out at all.

It's probably doubtful, but I wonder if Universal will make some kind of arrangements to highlight pictures that they made, but over the years were sold to other studios for remakes. For instance, James Whale's 1936 SHOW BOAT, also the same director's 1931 WATERLOO BRIDGE. Both of these are now owned by Warner Bros., via the MGM remakes.

At the Academy's showing of WINGS last week, the pre-show slide presentation included a number of pre-1948 features now owned by Universal (just stills, but they had pride in the fact they were produced by Paramount)

DM

Why complain? We should be happy they're putting anything out at all.

By having nothing of their early years, Universal is basically saying that everything made prior to ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is irrelevant. If it were irrelevant they wouldn't have still been in business at that point.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Why complain? We should be happy they're putting anything out at all.

By having nothing of their early years, Universal is basically saying that everything made prior to ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is irrelevant. If it were irrelevant they wouldn't have still be in business at that point.

Well, Universal already made that decision back in the 1940s when they burned their silent films. They simply don't possess any of their silents unless someone on the payroll happens to have an old Show-at-Home print. And of course we are getting the superior silent version of ALL QUIET along with the talkie version.

I'm with Jack on this, although it's frustrating in light of the amazingly diverse and large sampling of their 1930s-1950s library they issued in lovely DVD editions that have been completely ignored so far on Blu-ray. The answer is: buy every single pre-1980 film they issue on Blu-ray, more than one if possible, and tell all your friends to do likewise. Money talks.

Of course there have also been issues with Universal's use of digital grain reduction in most of their Blu-rays, giving soft pictures often barely any sharper than their old DVDs. Maybe that's why they think their DVDs are good enough (because many of them turn out to be, when compared to their mediocre Blu-ray record). We'll have to wait and see if they've figured out that Warners, Fox, and lately Sony and Paramount have usually been doing it right (like Criterion, Kino, and Twilight Time).

By having nothing of their early years, Universal is basically saying that everything made prior to ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is irrelevant. If it were irrelevant they wouldn't have still been in business at that point.

I don't see it as that at all. They have few, if any, elements on few titles that they may or may not own the copyrights to still, that probably won't sell ten if they released them. Harsh facts, I know, but why not enjoy what you've got when you've got it rather than wishing for more?

[Christopher Jacobs]

Exactly. Maybe you could write to Twilight Time and ask them to try licensing some Universal titles, as they've done with Fox and Columbia (Sony). They release only 3000 copies of each title and sell them for $30-$40 apiece, but the picture quality is virtually guaranteed to be the best possible, whereas major studios, especially Universal, either rush things through to get them on the market and/or apply excessive digital noise reduction and other video tampering that degrades the image so it's barely as sharp as a regular DVD.

Better yet, get some people together and some investors, and start your own DVD/Blu-ray label in your spare time (like the people at Twilight Time did), and license all the titles you've ever wanted to see on video (and then listen to all the complaints from the customers about what you haven't released or what bonus features you didn't bother to include or that there's too much or too little digital restoration to the picture, and of course how high your prices are).

Well, Twilight Time doesn't do the restorations and film transfers; the quality we're seeing from them is due to work done by the studios - so far, Paramount and TCF - themselves. See the Home Theater Forum interview with one of the two guys who are Twilight Time:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/317186/interview-with-twilight-time-nick-redman-on-who-they-are-their-business-model-and-more

[Christopher Jacobs]

Well, Twilight Time doesn't do the restorations and film transfers; the quality we're seeing from them is due to work done by the studios - so far, Paramount and TCF - themselves. See the Home Theater Forum interview with one of the two guys who are Twilight Time:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/317186/interview-with-twilight-time-nick-redman-on-who-they-are-their-business-model-and-more

Yes, I'd seen that article (and it's a great one, with some good user comments after it). It's actually Fox and Sony/Columbia who are doing the transfers, but Twilight Time evaluates them to decide whether to release a DVD-only or to put a certain title on Blu-ray. They also do not introduce additional digital noise reduction to the HD transfer when they have the Blu-rays authored. Olive Films, Legend, and other small labels have been licensing Paramount titles, but either they're sometimes adding lots of grain-reduction or the transfers they got are sometimes pretty soft (such as Olive's HANNIE CAULDER especially, and Legend's HOUDINI looks nice but just a tad soft), whereas Paramount's own recent classic releases like BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, WHITE CHRISTMAS, and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS have been incredibly crisp, film-like, and what one should expect from a Blu-ray presentation.

Universal did some really nice transfers for most of their DVD classics (both the Universal and 1930s-40s Paramount titles), even obscure niche-market ones (I've been recently working my way through the Deanna Durbin set, which sometimes rivals Blu-ray quality in clarity but without the sharp-as-a-tack crispness that Blu-ray can deliver when done properly). However, for some major catalog titles (like SPARTACUS and DO THE RIGHT THING) the Criterion DVDs look vastly superior to Universal's own DVDs and in many ways look better than Universal's Blu-rays of those titles. Whether Criterion has entirely new HD transfers made, or merely treats the same transfer differently in their mastering, I don't know, but somebody at Universal should study how it's done from distributors who have released showcase-quality product in the format.

Whether Criterion has entirely new HD transfers made, or merely treats the same transfer differently in their mastering, I don't know, but somebody at Universal should study how it's done from distributors who have released showcase-quality product in the format.

But even Criterion isn't perfect sometimes. Their current Blu Ray release of Erle C. Kenton's "Island of Lost Souls" is generally well-received, but - according to reports in some US forums - recent showings on TCM proved that a much better version still survive. And remember, their edition of Robert Day's "Corridors of Blood" is cut, when the much older VHS British release was complete. Nobody's perfect!

The image it's not worse after restored, but just corrected and not overbright. The put the Before overbright to try to make the flicker look worse than it reality, to make their work of restoration more impressive.

AND REMAMBER THAT ALL VIDEOS TEND TO LOOK DARK AND FADED ON COMPUTER SCREEN, SINCE dvdS AND bLU rAY ARE MADE FOR tv CONTRAST AND NOT FOR THE MONITOR GAMMA/CONTRAST. If we loook screen captures from DVD we see how almost all films look faded.

ABout remove the large grain resultant fom original blow-up (present on film since first run), I think it's not right, since the large grain was a characteristic from blow-up technic with film emulsions of old times. The example form To KIill a Mockinbird show fuzzy result of such grain removing in the scene example in this video.

Some near modern films have large grain from blow-up moments...

About stabilize scenes from Out of AFrica... THE MOVIE WAS MADE THAT WAY, LITTLE IMPERFECTION OF THE ERA. It should be respected.

Some hiss was present even in the original sound negative, as it was a limitation of technology itself. But the surviving master could have more hiss than the original sound negative.

What about digitally equalize the sound, do you approvw???
I refer to the typical nazal sound of early talkies.

At least we can look forward to Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and Dracula on Blu-Ray. To bad they cleaned up the sound. They were fine the way they were.

The only reason old movies sound "tinny" is because the soundtracks to movies are NEVER as carefully transferred as the picture is. Listen to the soundtrack to FRANKENSTEIN sometime off of a 35mm print (although the DVD wasn't half-bad) and you'll hear how incredibly wide-range a Western Electric noiseless variable density track recorded from condenser microphone can sound.

The problem is when you START EQing these things for the speakers built into TV sets, or to smooth over for compression, or because the track has been read from a track negative and is completely distorted.

Absolutely Jack! This is my biggest bugaboo with modern film restoration and transfer.

I have a 1955 Film Classics printdown of WAY OUT WEST. The variable density soundtrack is probably the best film recording you will ever hear. It is nothing short of astonishing. And yet, by the time the film gets to DVD, or worse, TCM, the sound is filtered to the point of being either average or downright dull (aurally).

Go back and listen to your VHS Key Video or CBS/Fox releases of the Warner Classics. You'll hear clarity, presence and ambience like you haven't heard since. Sure, you may hear some of the originally inherent noise. But that's original noise. Not topsoil picked up over the years.

Very interesting...not sure what it means but...

Went to the Universal 100 site to see what titles they had listed. Went down the list and selected the following titles:

Creature From the Black Lagoon, Double Indemnity, Dracula, Frankenstein, Jaws, Phantom of the Opera (1925), Vertigo, The Invisible Man, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Birds, The Mummy, and The Wolfman. Below each of the films was a "Buy Now" button but below some of the films (this is the interesting part) was another button which says "Notify Me of 100th Anniversary Release." I have indicated the ones with "Notify Me..." above in bold. Anyone else find this interesting or is it just wishful thinking on my part? BTW, clicked on All Quiet on the Western Front and it also had the "Notify Me..." button.

I find it interesting that Universal is interested in doing some sort of release of HUNCHBACK and PHANTOM, given that they lost the rights (and the elements) to those films years ago and couldn't possibly bring something to the table that hasn't been seen before.

[Christopher Jacobs]

I find it interesting that Universal is interested in doing some sort of release of HUNCHBACK and PHANTOM, given that they lost the rights (and the elements) to those films years ago and couldn't possibly bring something to the table that hasn't been seen before.

I vaguely recall that those two titles along with FOOLISH WIVES (the 7-reel version) were the only silents in the old Universal-16 rental catalogs back in the 1970s. I never saw their prints but doubt that they were up to any of the recent restorations that have shown up on DVD. All of the films in their 100th anniversary classics list have been on DVD. It would be nice to see them all get to Blu-ray in Paramount/Fox/Warner/Kino/Criterion-quality transfers, but I'll believe it when I see it.

On Dec 3 last a one-time poster on criterionforum leaked an almost complete schedule of Universal's 2012 releases (it was replicated on other forums - can't recall if it made it here). So far it's turned out to be very accurate, and the October slate includes:

Blu & dvd classic monsters set (10/23): Not sure, but think this will have Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy '32, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Creature From The Black Lagoon and possibly The Hunchback of Notre Dame '23 and The Phantom of the Opera '25 & '43

On Dec 3 last a one-time poster on criterionforum leaked an almost complete schedule of Universal's 2012 releases (it was replicated on other forums - can't recall if it made it here). So far it's turned out to be very accurate, and the October slate includes:

Blu & dvd classic monsters set (10/23): Not sure, but think this will have Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy '32, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Creature From The Black Lagoon and possibly The Hunchback of Notre Dame '23 and The Phantom of the Opera '25 & '43

Cool, looks like Universal is finally gonna put out HD transfers of those pristine original negs of HUNCHBACK and PHANTOM they've been sittin' on for so long.