Peeping Tom: Not much love from el Beav

There's a reason for that...
 


Love the Optimum artwork.

Hmmm. Those first couple of captures look grain-less but I have to say I love the later ones as the reds (so important to the director) and strawberry blonde (ginger) looks beautiful. Very rich. A revelation.

A revelation the DP, the director, film colourist and film lab did not intend? I dunno.

We'd need to ask some experts on the director's work.

Is there a doctor in the house? :D
 
Gary Tooze is a crap reviewer.

Mentasm, I've checked the caps there, and from those caps (please note my emphasis) it does look a bit de-grained, at least they did when I gave them a once-over earlier today.

I don't have the Blu-ray Disc - can anyone please check the caps against what their disc and comment accordingly?

Cheers.

Steve W
 
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Just because something's not swimming in grain doesn't mean it's been DNR'ed. Some of those caps look like dupe sections anyway, and it's sad that certain reviewers still can't tell the difference.
 
I have the BD; I haven't watched it through as yet, but on a cursory run-through I see no evidence of intrusive DNR, and certain scenes look absolutely groin-throbbingly gorgeous. IMHO.
 
What annoyed me about his comments is that he focussed too much on the perceived use of DNR (which, if it was used, was applied judiciously) and ignored all of the problems that the BD corrected. A lot of what he calls 'grain' in the Criterion transfer looks more like noise to me. There are a lot of compression issues on the DVD and it's zoomed/cropped. I prefer the colours on the BD as well.
 
I agree with mentasm and I find Tooze's assessments of films and PQ frequently just plain weird.
 
Sponsored By Momitsu. ;)
 
Sponsored By Momitsu. ;)
LOL. I meant to add that to my last post. I wish he sent half as much time brushing up on the technicalities as he does linking to that damn Momitsu.
 
I thought Momitsu was his Japanese man-servant or something? I didn't realise it was a Blu-ray player :p

To be fair to Gary (always nice to be fair and he seems a nice guy) is he really a reviewer at all? Reviewing (the art of keeping readers' interest for an entire article) is quite an art and something I cannot do nor claim to do. It ain't easy.

I think Gary and his great site is about comparing. He's a comparer and a very technical comparer at that. Right or wrong we don't need to agree or disagree but just do more comparisons when/if we get the disc.

Just try and draw from his site and get what you can.

DNR? I thought that was a London tube service or something.
 
A big thanks to everyone for their replies.

As I say, I don't have the disc, but my first thought was that the 'grain' he mentions on the DVD may actually be video noise (on oft-made error).

I know the film has been shown theatrically in the UK recently to promote the Blu-ray Disc, and every PnP fan I know who has seen it says it looks wonderful - they also note that Optimum's logo comes up at the start, so it's clearly the same version.

I think that Thelma Schoonmaker-Powell (Michael Powell's widow and Scorsese's editor) introduced one of the showings and commented on how good it looked.

Of course, plenty can go wrong in the stages between making a print for a limited cinema release and transferring to BD, but I would imagine Optimum would try to get the BD looking as close to the film as possible. This is not action blockbuster fanboy fare, and I don't see why they'd have felt it necessary to de-grain it in the first place.

It certainly looks like Optimum 1 Tooze 0.

Steve W

ps. It has been noted that GT frequently gives poor(er) reviews to the UK releases of Powell & Pressburger films (and those by others), almost always preferring the American editions.

On one occasion he compared the two, but posted screen caps which were smaller for the UK release than the US one. Once blown up it was pointed out that they looked absolutely identical. He then said they looked different in motion and referred to the higher bitrate.

SW
 

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