I got a Region 3 color copy of The Man Who Wasn't There out of curiosity. It's so subdued, only occasionally do you see a touch of color here and there. Like in the barber pole at the beginning, the logo of a Life Magazine, blood in one scene or the American flag in the courtroom. And even those are subdued. Otherwise you really have to strain to see much of any color. Much of it looks more like sepia tone. Of course, that's actually the way it was filmed and then the color was taken out, rather than colorizing a movie filmed in black & white. The main difference is that the film looks much sharper in black & white.

It's interesting looking but not essential for any reason. But contrary to some reports that the Coens used garish colors because they knew they were just going to remove them anyway, it would have been about the least colorful color movie ever if it had been released that way.

No.

It's a pity they didn't colorize The Jazz Singer. Al Jolson's faux pas of forgetting to paint around the lips has always bugged me. WB and Legend Films would finally fix that mistake and make Jakie a more authentic darkie.

2008 off with a bang.

Hi,

I'm brand dang new to this forum and just thought my first posts would be around colorizing legendary films.

Really. I don't have any agenda. Promise.

I'd like to get:

b&w versions of Singin' in the Rain, The Searchers and Finding Nemo.

And colorized versions of Eraserhead, 8 1/2, and Good Night and Good Luck

Also, I like pan & scan. Any help finding a pan & scan version of Lawrence of Arabia, Vertigo, Rear Window and Dr. Zhivago would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

p.s. I also have the only remaining master of The African Queen which I like to bring to the beach with me when I sunbathe.

No love for Schindler's List? Is it not good enough for colorization? Imagine it... concentration camp victims with orange faces and pastel clothes.

People in colorized films always look like cadavers to me made up for their viewing at a funeral. It looks horrifying. Much like the characters in Polar Express look to me.

Are you F-ing KIDDING me? Did you really type that?

It's JACKIE...not Jakie....

Orson Welles actually sent a letter to Turner Home Entertainment shortly before his death. At the time Turner had annouced his "color" process. I'm not sure if any of the films had been completed yet. Anyways Welles' said this in regaurds to Kane" Keep Ted Turner and his Goddamed crayons away from my picture."

I've tried to give Legend films a pass on this because they mostly colorize public domain stuff and I liked that they included the B&W version and the occasional Mike Nelson commentary.

However, even their process (which is much more advanced that the god awful Turner stuff) looks like crap on most of the films they have colorized. I don't care if Harryhausen wanted it or not.

Now I'm sure they will rush in to once again defend their state of the art process, but it looks completely unnatural no matter how much they defend it. The only film they did that impressed me was Reefer Madness because instead of trying to go for natural and failing they went for over the top and succeeded greatly.

The Legend process has a benefit because it can get really obscure films a halfway decent restoration and a release on DVD. The classics from major studios don't need this help though and I hope Warner never even considers bringing those awful Turner colorizations to DVD. It is bad enough that many film elements were ruined making those abortions.

So....I can't help it if those WB idiots didn't know how to spell back then...

Thannx four thu corecktshun...eye apreesheate it.

New colorization but with weird skin color:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDRe...ng_saucers.htm

Legend tends to get weird skin color for B Films. I don't know why.

I did a modification in this capute to try get a bether skin color for the women on the left.



The DVD authoring seens wreong since the image detail levels seens lower compared with the anterior version. But the authoring wasn't made by Legend Films. I presume the colorized master HD from Legend films have the bether image quality than any other.

i can't find a full list of the Turner colorized films on the net. seems like someone would have a full list breaking down what was crayoned, and in turn what was released on vhs/laser

The Man Who Wasn't There was in fact photographed with garishly colored sets and costumes. This is a common practice when shooting for black & white. Garish colors are often needed to register a proper shade of gray in b&w.

The color version of the movie on that Region 3 DVD was desaturated to make it look less gaudy. It just wasn't desaturated all the way into black & white.

There are a hell of a lot of sarcastic people on this forum.

The guy was only asking for God's sake!

and no, I don't believe in colorisation either, but at least I'm not going to make him out to be some brainless cretin...

This is a forum made up largely of movie enthusiasts, and we tend to be purists (although some cretins refer to us incorrectly as elitists).

I have been on this forum long enough to know what it is made up of thank you.

It's one thing to be a purist, but quite another to be purely ignorant.

Get used to it my friend, there is a lot of ignorance on this forum.

(Someone presumably smarter and more articulate than me will surely not take kindly to that statement.)

Now you people are just ASKING for trouble.

As far as the coloring process is concerned though, I wish they at least tried to go for a more vibrant color scheme and increase the saturation for a "technicolor" look, which would look more natural on such old films (those of 1950's in particular).

And no, I am not by any means a fan of colorization. In fact, I despise it - I probably wouldn't mind it if it wasn't for the kind of people who totally disregard director's intentions, whether it was by watching dubs or pan&scan. Which, of course, brings up another point in the colorization; was the movie in black&white because the director wouldn't shoot in color or couldn't?

The question is irrelevant. Even if the director had wanted to shoot in color but couldn't afford it at the time, the fact is that he did work in black & white, and would have optimized the photography for that format. Colorizing a b&w image will not somehow make the movie into what the director would have done. The two formats each require their own unique choices to be made. By shooting in b&w, you make the choices that are right for b&w, not the choices that might have been right if you'd shot in color instead.

Fair enough. But, the OP tried to bait us into this discussion which most people rather comically avoided until now. Let's not take his bait.

colorized movies ROCK !!!

I actually think its a very relevent point. Ray Harryhausen seems to think that modern colorizing accomplishes what he intended to do but couldn't back in the 1950's. God bless him if he wants to revise his movies. I have no problem with that since they originated with him.

Just make sure that we have the original too, for people like me who have about zero interest in colorized movies.