{"id":42183,"date":"2012-10-12T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T19:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=42183"},"modified":"2017-03-09T14:06:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T22:06:00","slug":"roundtable-bluray-double-dips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/roundtable-bluray-double-dips\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Roundtable: Blu-rays That Need Double-Dips"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blu-ray collectors often bemoan the dreaded “double-dip,” in which a studio will re-release a movie already available on the format with a new five-minute featurette, an extra photo gallery or lenticular cover art in the hopes of bilking fans into a second purchase of essentially the same product. Fair enough, those are obnoxious. However, truth be told, some movies actually need<\/em> a second shot at redemption if an inadequate first Blu-ray release suffers from a poor video transfer, a lack of bonus feature or some other glaring flaw. In today’s Roundtable, we discuss the movies that we would gladly buy again if only we had the chance.
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Today, we also welcome one of our site’s newest Blu-ray reviewers, Dan Hirshleifer. We’ll let him start things off. <\/p>\n

Daniel Hirshleifer<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

To me, an obvious choice would be ‘RoboCop<\/a>‘. While the existing Blu-ray isn’t nearly as bad as the unreleased Sony disc<\/a> from the days of the format war, it still suffers from uneven picture quality and a complete lack of extras. I’m still clinging to my out-of-print Criterion DVD, and would love to see a Blu-ray release that does the film justice. This year, the film’s 25th anniversary, would have been the perfect time to do it. With unmanned drones employed by our government that feel disconcertingly similar to the automated ED-209, and draconian legislation coming out of Congress, the movie’s satirical themes seem more applicable than ever.<\/p>\n

Shannon Nutt<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

OK, I’m going to get myself into trouble with this one, but I feel passionately about it. My choice for a Blu-ray that needs a double dip is ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula<\/a>‘. The movie was released on Blu-ray in 2007 with a transfer that’s so grainy, so dark and so lacking in definition or detail that I dare say the old DVD version of the movie looks better. The Blu-ray’s picture has also been drained of color. There was a HUGE debate at the time of release over the transfer that led to people like Kim Aubrey (who worked on the disc) actually emailing reviewers (I was the recipient of one such mailing) to tell us that we “got it wrong”<\/em> and the Blu-ray edition represented how the film originally looked in theaters.<\/p>\n

Well, I saw ‘Dracula’ numerous times in theaters, and still own the behind-the-scenes coffee table book. Neither the theatrical prints I saw nor the photos in the book suffered the lack of color and detail that the Blu-ray does. I fear that we’ve all been suckered in to a bit of revisionist history here, much like William Friedkin’s first Blu-ray release of ‘The French Connection<\/a>‘ (which, thankfully, has been corrected in the new Filmmakers Signature Series release). I doubt that we’ll ever see a corrected version of ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ on Blu-ray, but I stand by my opinion that the transfer is mucked up and not a reflection of the theatrical presentation.<\/p>\n

Brian Hoss<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

While it may be a flawed movie, ‘Sunshine<\/a>‘ deserves an excellent Blu-ray. Unfortunately, due to an annoying bug that forces the Picture-in-Picture commentary on an array of Blu-ray players (most notably Sony models such as the PS3), what should be a go-to demo disc is marred by technical glitches. (The disc used to play correctly on PS3s, but a later firmware update for the console began enforcing some PiP commentary standard that ‘Sunshine’ has incorrectly set.) Fox claims to have a disc replacement program. However, despite multiple pleasant phone calls and promises, the studio has never bothered to send me a replacement disc. Please bring on a “Special Working Edition.” In the meantime, I’m forced to use my laptop to play this Blu-ray.<\/p>\n

Mike Attebery<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

You’d think that the recently announced ‘Best of Warner Bros. 50 Film Collection<\/a>‘ would include, you know, some of the studio’s best films, right? And yet, the set includes ‘The Blind Side’ but not ‘The Fugitive<\/a>‘? Both films were nominated for Best Picture, but come on, ‘The Fugitive’ is clearly the superior film. Unfortunately, despite a stumble in its initial Blu-ray release<\/a> from 2006, the movie has yet to get a worthy remastering. My pick for a much needed double-dip is therefore ‘The Fugitive’, which also happens to be one of my all time favorite movies.<\/p>\n

Tom Landy<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Pssst… don’t tell Josh (I know it’s not his favorite movie by a long shot), but I’m picking the cult sci-fi actioner ‘Equilibrium<\/a>‘. There must be some kind of conspiracy with this film, since every North American Blu-ray release has something drastically wrong with it. The Alliance release (in Canada) looks the best, However, the movie’s original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 has been cropped down to 1.78:1 for some inexplicable reason, which practically ruins the experience. Worse, the Echo Bridge release in the U.S. has the proper aspect ratio, but only 2.0 audio (as opposed to 5.1). Its video looks utterly hideous, to say the least. I thought that Alliance might eventually come around and fix its error like happened with ‘Outlander’, but sadly our cries seem to have fallen on deaf ears.<\/p>\n

M. Enois Duarte<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Changes in the color timing are on very rare occasions permissible or simply easy to overlook. The ‘Aliens’ Blu-ray is a perfect example of such an obvious change, but one that’s overall acceptable. Personally, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ is still up in the air. The looks fantastic, but the changes can at times seem a bit drastic. Yet the one Blu-ray release that most annoys me (especially since Anchor Bay has done nothing to resolve the problem) is John Carpenter’s seminal classic ‘Halloween<\/a>‘. The color changes in the Blu-ray transfer completely ruin the mood and atmosphere that the filmmakers originally tried to achieve. As I see it, the picture quality is basically a slap in the face to Dean Cundey cinematography. <\/p>\n

Josh Zyber<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Who you gonna call? If you want to watch ‘Ghostbusters<\/a>‘, don’t dial up the Blu-ray. It looks hideous. And no, that’s not because all movies made in the ’80s were badly photographed (which isn’t the case at all). The high-def transfer on this disc is a total botch job.<\/p>\n

Here’s the story on what happened to this one: Sony’s original DVD release from back in 1999 was drab and dingy, and certainly needed a remaster. For the double-feature DVD re-release in 2005 (the one with the green slime artwork), the studio struck a new transfer, but stupidly cranked up the contrast and colors to obscene levels. The picture was ridiculously oversaturated and had severe detail crushing in both the whites and blacks. It looked like a cartoon. When the time came to bring the movie to Blu-ray, rather than pay for yet another new transfer, Sony attempted to “correct” the problems with the last one by dialing down the colors and contrast electronically. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a real solution. The detail that was lost during the initial contrast boost is gone forever, and oversaturating then desaturating colors won’t make them look like they should if they’d been transferred correctly in the first place. The Blu-ray’s contrast range is still too hot, and its gamma curve is a mess. As a result, the picture is very flat, has serious white clipping, and the grain is overemphasized with a nasty electronic texture. The disc is just plain ugly. <\/p>\n

At the time of the Blu-ray’s release in 2009, some apologists attempted to defend it with a cover story that the transfer had been approved by cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs. The thing is, Laszlo Kovacs died in 2007. While it’s possible that Sony sat on the Kovacs-approved transfer for two years, I seriously doubt it. The much more likely explanation is that Kovacs may have approved the film elements<\/em> used for the 2005 transfer, but probably wasn’t in the room while the transfer techs started fiddling with the contrast and colors. And he certainly wasn’t there when the new transfer techs fiddled with them again for the Blu-ray.<\/p>\n

Sony generally has a good reputation for its treatment of catalog properties on Blu-ray, but this one is a mess. The movie needs a new film scan ASAP. <\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

What discs do you feel deserve a proper re-release on Blu-ray? Tell us in the Comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blu-ray collectors often bemoan the dreaded “double-dip,” in which a studio will re-release a movie already available on the format with a new five-minute featurette, an extra photo gallery or lenticular cover art in the hopes of bilking fans into a second purchase of essentially the same product. Fair enough, those are obnoxious. However, truth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":42273,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[67,460,1699,870,2807,2180,551],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42183"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43848,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42183\/revisions\/43848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}