Bizarre experience with The Aviator BD

[Rusty James]

I'm watching the movie and listening to the Scorsese commentary and everything is fine, up until the scene where Howard Hughes goes golfing with Katherine Hepburn. The scene appears to have really bizarre colors - like the grass is practically blue - and I write it off to some kind of stylistic choice, even though I don't remember it looking like that in the theater.

Then, a few scenes later, when they're in the nightclub and Hughes does that thing with the peas on his plate, the peas are an ocean-blue color. At first I fear something is wrong with my TV set (a Sony 42" plasma) but I switch to cable and everything looks fine.

Then I figure it's my PS3 acting weirdly, but I put in another disc and grass looks green like it's supposed to. Put The Aviator back in and sure enough, from the golf scene on, green hues are suddenly blue.

Anyone ever encounter this kind of defect on a BD?

[BuckNaked2k]

That's how it's supposed to look. Scorsese chose to emulate the way film looked at the exact periods depicted in the film, although I wonder why he didn't choose B&W for the 1920's.

I am surprised he didn't mention this in the commentary track you were listening to.

[Rusty James]

Huh. I could have sworn the grass was green when I saw it in the theater. And no, he hadn't mentioned anything in the commentary up until that point, although I was switching back and forth between it and the film to hear Cate Blanchett's Hepburn imitation.

Allrighty then. Never mind.

[BuckNaked2k]

I found this on Wikipedia:

For the first 50 minutes of the film, scenes appear in shades of only red and cyan blue; green objects are rendered as blue. This was done, according to Scorsese, to emulate the look of early two-color movies, in particular the Multicolor process, which Hughes himself owned. Many of the scenes depicting events occurring after 1935 are treated to emulate the saturated appearance of three-strip Technicolor. Other scenes were stock footage colorized and incorporated into the film. The color effects were created by Legend Films.

[Rusty James]

Interesting. Gonna go back and watch it again tonight. Thanks, man!

[Abe.]

I noticed the color of the peas... nice to know, thanks!

[rexinnih]

The "blue" grass was striking to me at first and had to research the reason. Thought it was a nice addition from Scorcese.

[True_Story1011]

that wacky Scorcese! What will he think of next? DiCaprio as Rosevelt?