THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY New Blu-Ray Word of Warning

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AndyDursin
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THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY New Blu-Ray Word of Warning

#1 Post by AndyDursin »

Just a word of warning for anyone considering KL's new Blu-Ray. This is a real mixed bag -- I wrote it up in my column this week, but the short of it is...

The Good:
-Tim Lucas' commentary on the theatrical cut
-Theatrical cut (more or less) on video for the first time in many years

The Bad:
-Tepid transfer goes too far in the other direction from the 2014 Blu, looks washed out and unimpressive
-All the featurettes from the MGM Blu-Ray are godawful, janky and borderline unwatchable

I recommend it for the commentary, but in all honesty, I prefer the 2014 MGM Blu-Ray transfer myself.

Eric W.
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Re: THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY New Blu-Ray Word of Warning

#2 Post by Eric W. »

Just shouldn't be happening.

Eric Paddon
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Re: THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY New Blu-Ray Word of Warning

#3 Post by Eric Paddon »

There should be a thread devoted to which Blu-Ray releases of vintage movies are NOT improvements over previous Blu or even more importantly previous DVD releases ("Greatest Story Ever Told" and "Enemy Below" come to mind).

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Monterey Jack
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Re: THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY New Blu-Ray Word of Warning

#4 Post by Monterey Jack »

God's sake...just after I sold the 2014 "Dollars" trilogy set, too. :x It ticks me off, because a big part of the reason I wanted this was for the theatrical cut of the movie, as I hate the extended cut of the movie (especially the distracting "old man" dubbing by Clint and Eli Wallach on the added scenes).

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AndyDursin
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Re: THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY New Blu-Ray Word of Warning

#5 Post by AndyDursin »

The 2014 Blu-Ray IS golden and yellowish, there's no doubt. But it is also saturated properly, richly so -- this transfer looks like they drained the color out, and also adjusted the "Warm/Cool" temperature setting of the color towards a blue-ish tone. Like you were tweaking your TV set. It's not very impressive. Maybe someone will prefer it, but it's pretty limp.

I still would recommend this to hadcore fans because of Tim Lucas' terrific commentary and the 162 min cut -- but there's a caveat even there.

Apparently there's also an edit in the shorter cut that is "inaccurate". I found it minor so I didn't mention it in my review, but there's someone over at the Blu-Ray.com board who posted a video of a sequence from the MGM DVD of the theatrical version, and there's at least one bit that was re-edited by MGM (for no apparent reason) in that release with shots in a different sequence from every other release print of the film. Despite having been told beforehand that it's inaccurate, THAT EDIT is what Kino used as a guide to piece this theatrical version together -- and so, technically, it is "wrong". Not that it makes a lot of difference, but it makes you wonder what else was slightly mucked up.

The documentary featurettes from the MGM releases are nearly unwatchable. Again, I realize this won't be a dealbreaker onto itself, but it would be an insult to Youtube videos to say they look like Youtube videos. How does this happen -- did nobody watch it? I just don't understand it. The Kino rep who posts on that board was very defensive at first and they had to delete even some of his posts -- but, even now, his explanation doesn't make a lot of sense. You can compress videos and put them at a really low resolution without having massive frame-rate problems like these featurettes do. :twisted:

On the one hand, I feel for small boutique labels -- and Kino has done some marvelous work and things like give you the option of watching HELL IN THE PACIFIC with its alternate ending attached properly. Still, there are times when these labels bite off more than they can chew on certain projects. This is probably one of those instances. When it comes to doing "clean up" or restoration work that's more like placing band-aids on certain things (like adding in MANHUNTER's added scenes from standard definition, or the MOBY DICK color re-timing, etc.), sometimes there's only so much you can do with small budgets and limited resources that only the larger studios can provide to "do it right". The problem is -- those studios no longer want to spend that kind of money.

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