{"id":8718,"date":"2010-11-19T06:00:22","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T14:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=8718"},"modified":"2012-06-13T14:29:45","modified_gmt":"2012-06-13T21:29:45","slug":"alien-resurrection-transfer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/alien-resurrection-transfer\/","title":{"rendered":"Jean-Pierre Jeunet Is Unhappy with the \u2018Alien Anthology\u2019… Maybe"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the ‘Alien Anthology<\/a>‘ box set was released on Blu-ray a few weeks ago, most reviewers (and many fans) pointed out that only the first two movies in the series had been freshly remastered for optimal picture quality. The latter two entries were sourced from older high-def transfers prepared for the last DVD release. Now, director Jean-Pierre Jeunet has spoken out about his disappointment with the treatment that his film, ‘Alien Resurrection’, received. <\/p>\n

<\/h6>\n

On his official blog<\/a>, Jeunet writes:<\/p>\n

Quand on retravaille les masters num\u00e9riques, se pose toujours la question de la r\u00e9novation. jusqu\u2019o\u00f9 aller pour am\u00e9liorer l\u2019image, quitte \u00e0 d\u00e9passer la qualit\u00e9 d\u2019origine. Sur Delicatessen, nous avons ‘d\u00e9grain\u00e9’, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire supprim\u00e9 la presque totalit\u00e9 du grain sur la majorit\u00e9 des s\u00e9quences. Il en reste un peu sur quelques plans qui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 tourn\u00e9s en 400 asa, et qui seraient devenus anormalement soft si on avait pouss\u00e9 plus le d\u00e9grainage. Les couleurs sont celles que l\u2019on avait toujours souhait\u00e9, et le r\u00e9sultat est, m\u00eame s\u2019il est imparfait, magnifique par rapport au support de d\u00e9part.<\/p>\n

Quand au Bluray ‘ALIEN ANTHOLOGIE’, la pub dit ‘En Bluray, tout le monde vous entendra crier’. Pour \u00e7a, ils ont raison ! Crier de rage ! Contrairement aux infos diffus\u00e9es deci del\u00e0, non, les r\u00e9alisateurs n\u2019ont pas \u00e9t\u00e9 concern\u00e9s par la remasterisation, en tout cas pas moi. Il parara\u00eet que la Fox y a consacr\u00e9 deux ans de travail. Visiblement, les Am\u00e9ricains n\u2019ont jamais entendu parler de d\u00e9grainage. Ce bluray a, disons, la qualit\u00e9 d\u2019un DVD tr\u00e8s moyen.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s in French, obviously. Since I speak about 5 words of French, and Jeunet didn’t ask where the biblioth\u00e8que<\/em> is, I’m going to have to rely on a messy Google auto-translation:<\/p>\n

When reworking the digital masters, there is always the question of renovation. go far to improve the image, even exceed the original quality. Delicatessen on, we have “finger drop”, that is to say, removed almost all the grain on most sequences. It is a little on some planes had been shot at 400 asa, and who would have become unusually soft if it had grown more d\u00e9grainage. The colors are those that we had always wanted, and the result is, even if imperfect, wonderful support from the start. <\/p>\n

As for Bluray “ALIEN ANTHOLOGY,” the ad says “In Bluray, everyone will hear you scream.” For that, they’re right! Scream with rage! Contrary to news broadcast deci than not, the filmmakers were not concerned with the remastering, certainly not me. It Pararas that Fox has devoted two years of work. Obviously, Americans have never heard of d\u00e9grainage. This has bluray, say, a DVD quality very average.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If any of our readers are fluent in the language, perhaps one of you can clean this up for the rest of us?<\/p>\n

[Update: The following is reader EM’s stab at it.] <\/em><\/p>\n

When one is redoing digital masters, there’s always the question of renovation: how far to go to improve the image, even if it means exceeding the original quality. On Delicatessen, we “degrained,” i.e., removed almost all the grain on most sequences. There still is a little in some shots which had been filmed at 400 ASA and which would have become unusually soft if further degraining had been applied. The colors are what we had always wished for, and the result is \u2013 even if imperfect \u2013 magnificent when compared with the original material.<\/p>\n

As for the ‘ALIEN ANTHOLOGY’ Blu-ray, the ad says, “In Blu-ray, everyone will hear you scream.” On that, they’re right! Scream with rage! Contrary to the information circulated here and there, no, the filmmakers were not involved with the remastering; in any case, I wasn’t. It seems that Fox has devoted two years of work to this. Obviously, the Americans have never heard of degraining. This Blu-ray has, shall we say, the quality of a very mediocre DVD.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It appears that the gist of Jeunet’s complaint is that Fox never consulted him about remastering the movie. He also seems upset that the Blu-ray hasn’t been “degrained” enough. That’s a very troubling phrase that tends to strike the fear of DNR into home theater fans, but I’m not going to jump the gun with outrage until I can read a more accurate translation to see what Jeunet actually said. Also, as we recently<\/a> learned<\/a>, directors sometimes throw around inaccurate buzzwords that they think will appeal to a non-techie audience. <\/p>\n

I’ve watched all four of the movies in the ‘Alien’ set for my review in ‘Home Theater’ magazine, and it’s clear that the last two aren’t up to the same transfer quality standard as the first two. With that said, I think that ‘Alien Resurrection’ looks decent enough overall, and is a step up over the ‘Alien3’ transfer. The grain levels look fairly appropriate considering the dark and dank photographic style of cinematographer Darius Khondji. I’m sure that it could look sharper, more detailed, and perhaps a little less grainy with a new scan on state-of-the-art equipment, but it’s not terrible by any means.<\/p>\n

(Also, at least the movie hasn’t been tinted teal<\/a> in every scene.)<\/p>\n

However, I certainly agree in principle that Fox should have<\/em> consulted all four directors (assuming David Fincher would take the call) and struck new transfers for all of the movies in the expensive ‘Alien Anthology’ set, not just the first two. That’s a pretty glaring mistake in an otherwise stellar Blu-ray release. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the ‘Alien Anthology‘ box set was released on Blu-ray a few weeks ago, most reviewers (and many fans) pointed out that only the first two movies in the series had been freshly remastered for optimal picture quality. The latter two entries were sourced from older high-def transfers prepared for the last DVD release. Now,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8715,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[159,67,1083,1703,363,1974],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8718"}],"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=8718"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36513,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8718\/revisions\/36513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}