BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

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tenia
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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#101 Post by tenia » Mon Feb 08, 2016 2:23 pm

There are 2 weird things about this release (and others) which make me have the same questions than Svet regarding the color grading :
- the look is nothing like we ever saw before the past 4 years with a restricted color range.
- A Touch of Zen isnt the only movie to have this look. There also many very different movies from different eras, directors and DoPs such as What have you done to Solange, Deep Red, Pane e Chocolatte, Once upon a time in America... and they all went through L'immagine Ritrovata for their color grading.
Investigation of a citizen above suspicion was scanned and restored there but the grading was done at Colorworks : no weak blacks and yellow bias.
Sure, Digimages and Eclair also produce restorations with weak blacks and a yellow bias, but it's a look I've never seen prior to these restorations hitting the market circa 2011 2012.

So yeah, it's weird, no matter who approved what.

Remember : Criterion's and Pathe's The Leopard restorations are both DoP approved, and they dont look alike at all.

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Finch
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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#102 Post by Finch » Mon Feb 08, 2016 5:55 pm

Until such time that SA presents incontrovertible evidence of how Touch of Zen and Dragon Inn should have looked instead, I don't care about what he thinks of the colour grading.

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domino harvey
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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#103 Post by domino harvey » Mon Feb 08, 2016 6:02 pm

MoC's biggest mistake was not being a Criterion release, what else did they expect from Pro-B?

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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#104 Post by criterion10 » Mon Feb 08, 2016 6:08 pm

domino harvey wrote:MoC's biggest mistake was not being a Criterion release, what else did they expect from Pro-B?
+1

Let's also not forget that with regards to color timing, Pro-B is willing to defend the revisionism of Thief and Criterion's compression on recent titles over something like Dragon Inn, which has been supervised by the DoP.

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ermylaw
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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#105 Post by ermylaw » Mon Feb 08, 2016 6:14 pm

I watched A Touch of Zen yesterday, and it looked amazing projected on my 110" screen. There are moments where one wants to pause the film to take in the beauty of the shots, both those of nature and of the characters.

At any rate, the colors appeared to be in the the same realm as the colors on the release of Dragon Inn, which I watched a few weeks back. Are we to believe that both these releases are flawed? Or is it more likely that their similarities are evidence of the accuracy of the colors? I find the latter more convincing in light of the involvement of the DoP and MoC's usual minimalist practices with regard to the presentation of the films in their collection (as opposed to Criterion's practice of making changes).

Aside from the color issue, A Touch of Zen is a truly remarkable film. While I enjoyed Dragon Inn, I loved A Touch of Zen.

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Charles
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BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#106 Post by Charles » Tue Feb 09, 2016 11:51 am

Not a huge deal, but is there a reason some people are calling this a slipcase? It's a slipcover. Two different things. (I just happen to love slipcases, for books and anything else - so it caught my eye.)

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tenia
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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#107 Post by tenia » Tue Feb 09, 2016 12:26 pm

I've had my share of strong disagreements with Svet lately, but people need to remember the difference between being to say "I feel it's wrong" and "this is how it should look like". The first one is easy to do, the other one not so much. But isn’t the first one already enough of a concern to be at least debated ,

Should we (viewers / reviewers) be able to pinpoint precisely what should be the correct look to be allowed to emit reservations ? I don't think so, though it’s obviously much better for the sake at least of the argumentation.

But in the present case, I do believe there is something weird going on for some years now. It was Digimages with L'homme de Rio and Les demoiselles de Rochefort and Les parapluies de Cherbourg. I especially remember watching L'homme de Rio's French BD a few years ago and thinking "Gosh, were they REALLY making movies that yellow at that time ?" It was so intense and so unlike anything I ever saw before I couldn't help but wonder whereas it was right or not.

Then, there was Gaumont with Eclair and their yellow bias + incorrect color range on many of their Découverte titles (Il était une fois un flic, La valise, Laisse aller c’est une valse, ...) and a few of their Classiques titles (Marie Antoinette, ...).

But all along, there was Bologna, with all the color titles I stated above, plus many others. When they don’t do the color grading themselves, you get Investigation of a citizen above suspicion, or The Vanishing, and both (and others) don’t show this yellow bias + weak black levels. But when they do, well...

I'm not sure what Bologna is doing, and I don't know what Dragon Inn's DoP has approved exactly and how much he was involved, but I can't help but feel something's off. I mean, what are the odds for all these movies, Taiwanese, Italian, US, etc, ranging from the 60s to the 80s, to all have photographies relying on weak blacks and a yellow bias ?


And please : don't jump into sophisms. Thief’s new color scheme (which has been clearly 100% supervised by Mann himself) and especially Criterion’s compression issues have nothing to do with weak black levels and yellow bias. Just ask Arrow how were Solange and Deep Red looking like before the color-corrections. I’ve seen Deep Red in theater last year : the new restoration looked exactly like Your Vice is a Locked Room, Once Upon a Time in America (long cut), Pane e Chocolatte and Dragon Inn / A Touch Of Zen. Which doesn’t look right to me.

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jedgeco
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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#108 Post by jedgeco » Tue Feb 09, 2016 4:44 pm

FWIW, David Bordwell has some (small) frame captures from 35mm prints of both films on his blog for comparison purposes, http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2013/ ... -jump-cut/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

jojo
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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#109 Post by jojo » Wed Mar 02, 2016 4:56 pm

I can't speak about Dragon's Inn, but for what it's worth, I've seen Touch of Zen in many incarnations over the years and the look of the new restoration isn't a huge departure from my memories. The slight yellow tinge was in every copy I've seen.

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Trees
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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#110 Post by Trees » Sun Mar 06, 2016 12:17 pm

It seems like the yellow cast must have been intentional Does anyone know why these films were colored this way?

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Trees
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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#111 Post by Trees » Sun Apr 03, 2016 8:09 pm

Just a reminder that the newly 4K-restored "A Touch of Zen" will screen in New York later this month:
1971’s A Touch of Zen will open at the Film Forum in New York on April 22, while 1967’s Dragon Inn will open at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (also in New York) on May 6.

http://www.denofgeek.us/movies/martial- ... rts-action" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#112 Post by What A Disgrace » Fri Aug 26, 2016 1:15 pm

Looks like the non-limited edition of Touch of Zen will be released in November.

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A
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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#113 Post by A » Thu Nov 17, 2016 4:01 pm

tenia wrote:A Touch of Zen isnt the only movie to have this look. There also many very different movies from different eras, directors and DoPs such as What have you done to Solange, Deep Red, Pane e Chocolatte, Once upon a time in America... and they all went through L'immagine Ritrovata for their color grading.
Exactly. And no matter who approved what: the colorgrading on These films is shit and is wrong. That is in now way how those films looked back when they were made.

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A
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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#114 Post by A » Thu Nov 17, 2016 4:08 pm

jedgeco wrote:FWIW, David Bordwell has some (small) frame captures from 35mm prints of both films on his blog for comparison purposes, http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2013/ ... -jump-cut/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
THAT'S way more of an accurate look!!!
Now compare those 35mm screencaptures with with the 4k Color scheme... ](*,)

For example look at the blue sky in those Bordwell screengrabs from Dragon Inn!!! \:D/
And now look at an example for a "blue" sky from the "restoration": http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screensho ... osition=20" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; :-#
Last edited by A on Thu Nov 17, 2016 4:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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rapta
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Re: BD 129-130 Dragon Inn & A Touch of Zen

#115 Post by rapta » Sat Dec 22, 2018 12:23 pm

The Fate of Lee Khan coming to MoC in 2019. :)

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