Doctorossi

You can 'imagine what it would've been like', but that doesn't put the same thoughts in your head that you might've had if your first exposure to the film were to a more accurate rendition. As they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

I'm sure The Wizard of Oz is a perfectly watchable story on a black and white television and you can imagine the road being golden and the slippers being red, etc. However, there's a reason that everyone 'oohed' and 'aahed' when Dorothy woke up to Technicolor.

tylergfoster

Like I said, I'm more than willing to rent the old Universal disc, as I doubt Hollywood will have the Criterion, if the color timing on that disc is accurate, and give it a look. But I think it's a little silly to compare a constant filter merely intended to create a "heat wave" atmosphere on a movie about racism to the switch from black and white to color in The Wizard of Oz. It would be more akin to watching a movie like Saving Private Ryan without the timing.

Doctorossi

I disagree completely and the general critical consensus about Do the Right Thing does, as well. The setting in this movie is paramount and tells much of the tale. This movie is famous for its evocative look and the role it plays in the story.

I think a better analogy might be to watching Saving Private Ryan without the machine guns.

'I can still tell they're at war. I can imagine the guns. Etc.'

tylergfoster

Well, don't confuse what I said about what I've seen about the color timing with what I felt while I was watching the movie. I'm saying I watched the movie and color timing or no, I felt the heat in my bones. Like I said, I hate it when it's hot, and you can tell right off the bat, just looking at the movie, what kind of heat it's meant to be like in the film.

In terms of what I imagined, I can imagine the filter, the look in my head, now that I know the color timing is inaccurate, having seen the caps on DVDBeaver. But I didn't have to imagine the heat in the film.

Again, anyone know if the non-anamorphic Universal DVD is accurate? I'm pretty sure it is, but I don't want to go rent it and find out it's no better than the other two Do the Right Thing DVDs I already have at my disposal.

Doctorossi

However, you probably didn't feel it as intensely as you would've with the correct color-timing. You see, he wasn't trying to say it was

THAT HOT

he was trying to say it was

THAT HOT

In There's Something About Mary, the Farrellys didn't have to show that zipper shot, did they? You probably could've imagined it from the context of the scene. They did show it, though, and that made it a different movie than it would've been without it. You could call it a small distinction, but it's one that everybody remembers and everybody talks about when they're discussing the film. Just like the color-timing in Do the Right Thing.

Arthur Dent

I haven't seen this film yet. I decided against blind-buying it because of the color-timing issue, but now I'm not even sure I want to rent the Blu-ray. I want to make my first exposure to the film count.

tylergfoster

I think this is a better explanation than what you've made before, but in terms of your example, the zipper shot is one shot in the movie, that relates to a single scene. In Do the Right Thing, people are sweating in every shot, sitting in front of fans, they talk about how hot it is, they look hot, there are newspapers describing how hot it is, etc. etc., and again, at least some of the color timing is still present. So there's a difference, still, between the Mary example and this movie.

lisadoris

I am extremely disappointed in the comparisons. The color timing was very important to setting the mood of the film but I will reserve judgment until I watch it myself. I'll still pick up the new version mostly for the new commentary and I can have my students compare the two transfers _ I was always going to keep the Criterion since I can't screen blu's in my classroom.

Doctorossi

Yes, that's why I think this is even more problematic. I don't know if I'll ever find the perfect analogy, but this radically color-changed release, to me, is essentially similar to a pan-and-scan release. Yes, you still get the gist of the movie, but every shot is inaccurately displayed and misrepresented and some meaning is lost and/or altered as a result.

Doctorossi

If you can find a copy for rent and can stand the step back to SD, I'll recommend the Criterion disc. It's a very nice presentation for a DVD.

Tom Creo

There is a difference between west coast hot and east coast hot. Spike caught the look of a NY sweltering summer perfectly. The setting is a major character in this film. The BD looks like an episode of CSI Miami.

DrStrangeL0ve71

I really don't understand how you can love film and review it as a profession and yet not see the big deal when the cinematography on the blu ray is quite obviously altered from what was originally intended, shot, and presented on previous DVDs. This mind set makes absolutely no sense to me.

tylergfoster

I'm pretty sure I've explained my stance pretty exhaustively, but here's another way to put it: I'm pretty sure the major points of the film are the relationships between the characters, racial tension and culture. There's a reason the film isn't still called Heat Wave. The heat is the backdrop to the film, yes. It's a key ingredient, yes. But the three points I keep stressing are, in increasing order of relevance to the issue with the transfer:

3) The larger thematic issues of the movie were still conveyed without need of interpretation on my part/understanding and mental "correction" of the error
2) There are several other factors used in the film to convey the heat factor that were not affected by the transfer problem, not to mention more than a handful of shots that seemed unaffected by the issue (i.e. maintaining a noticeable orange hue)
1) I felt the heat. I did. Everyone who isn't me is assuming they have an idea about how I felt while I watched the movie, and that's ridiculous to me.

This is the double-sided conundrum I see: I'm going to go out on a limb, seeing as the disc doesn't street until next Tuesday, and guess that you guys have not actually watched the DVD. I have not watched the Criterion. You guys tell me that I can't say for certain how much my opinion would be changed had I seen the Criterion transfer, yet you yourselves are judging the severity of the differences between the old and new transfers without having seen the new one either. You guys might say "it's self-evident how different it is" and I would reply that it's equally clear to me how much it did not affect my reaction to the movie. Neither of us can be certain until we go out and view the alternate cinematography, and I've offered to do that, although nobody has confirmed that the old Universal disc, the one my local video store is likely to carry, is the correct color timing.

Aside from all of that, I never said it wasn't an important issue. I may not take it as seriously as you, but is that the be-all and end-all of everything? In the updated paragraphs in my review I included the Universal email link from this thread and encouraged people to write the studio to get the issue fixed, and I feel I've provided enough information in the thread for people to make up their own minds. My reaction, whether you like it or not, is that I watched Do the Right Thing for the first time and I thought it was one of the best films I've ever seen, a completely phenomenal work of art, whether the color timing was accurate or not. Would I like it to be accurate? Yes. Did it ruin the movie for me? No.

I don't know what else to say.

Doctorossi

I'm not making any assumptions about how you did feel watching the BD. However, I know with certainty one way you didn't feel, which is how you would have felt if you had watched it with the correct color-timing.

I've seen the screenshots of the BD, and that's enough. Now, you might contend that, since you have seen the screenshots of the Criterion transfer, we are in the same position. However, there is an important difference: I have seen the movie presented correctly. You have not. The difference between the two color-timings presented here is not just one of two interpretations of the material. One is correct; the other isn't. I don't have any reason to see the incorrect version because it isn't what's meant to be seen. All I need to see of it is enough to know that it is incorrect, which is glaringly evident from the screenshots.

You cannot know how much it did or did not affect your reaction to the movie because you haven't seen the movie the way it was meant to be seen!

This is incorrect because, as I say above, these are not just two versions; they are an accurate version and an inaccurate version.

dsa_shea

Fuck this color timing issue. I understand the complaints but damn we can go round and round for days about it. Telling someone how hot they would feel based on the color-timing seems a bit ridiculous to me. Sometime next week I will be watching this on Blu-Ray and enjoying it as much as I did the first and tenth time I saw it.

tylergfoster

What you are assuming is that the experience would be significantly different for me. Just because it is for you doesn't mean I would have a changed reaction.
The color timing is definitely wrong, since the Criterion is Dickerson-approved, but I feel like you're implying that the amount of inaccuracy couldn't ever be relevant, which I don't agree. I mean, if only one scene in the movie was affected or the transfer was only slightly less orange than the Criterion, I doubt people would be up in arms about it. That said, I do think a significant amount of the movie is different, but I'm just pointing out that while I feel you're acting like it's completely one way or the other, I don't think that that's true in all cases.

I still have a problem with the idea that even though I apparently need to see the accurate version to know whether or not I think the issue is relevant, you absolutely do not need to see the inaccurate version to know how seriously the movie is affected. I understand why you feel the way you do, and I don't think you're really wrong, but it still undermines and/or condescends to my ability to view a movie and understand it in a way I don't really like, and again, even if you don't agree that the other things going on in the movie are more relevant than the film's look, the point is that there still are other things going on, lots of things, that are not affected. My judgment call is based on how much the single color timing issue affects the movie as a whole, and I'm judging everything individually of each other. If my car has a radio, the music plays throughout the entire car, and it may be important to me to have music playing while I drive places, but even if my radio breaks, I bought the car to go from one place to another, which it still does.

If you are unable to get your hands on or can't afford the Criterion, will only buy the movie on Blu-Ray or are only buying it for the new special features, among many other reasons to buy this DVD and not a different one, I don't think viewers should miss Do the Right Thing over inaccurate color timing, and you don't think it's Do the Right Thing without accurate color timing. In any case, I don't think there's much further to be gained from this discussion, so instead we can both concentrate on seeing whether or not the timing can be fixed, which I am for, regardless of whether I think this existing DVD is good enough or not.

Doctorossi

No, I'm not assuming that at all. I'm just saying that you shouldn't assume that it won't be different.

This is a very good point and you're right that I really should watch the BD before trying to determine just how 'wrong' it is. Meanwhile, because I'm not reviewing the disc and don't really need to know just how 'wrong' it is, I can be satisfied with what the screenshots tell me: that it's at least wrong enough that I don't want to watch that version.

I would need to see it to know how seriously it's affected. However, I don't have any need to know how seriously it's affected. To put it in inappropriate and arbitrary mathematical terms for the sake of explanation, if my minimum standard is an 8, I don't need to know whether the BD is a 2 or a 4 because I can tell from the screenshots that it's a 5 at best... not that I could put any sort of numeric value on it, but you get my point.

I'm sorry you feel condescended to. I don't doubt your perceptive or interpretive abilities, but I do hope you understand my point that you can't ever see something for the first time again, so however facile your brain might be at retroactively applying the filter to your past experience with the movie, you can never rule out the possibility that certain thoughts or flavorings of thoughts might have occurred to you (or failed to occur to you) had the color-timing been different at the time you were watching.

Here, we will have to disagree. I, personally, cannot recommend this BD. For me, it is akin to recommending the colorized version of It's A Wonderful Life. Yes, maybe if it's the only way you can manage to see it, you should still see it that way, but first make every possible effort to see a more accurate representation, instead.

Meanwhile, I hope I haven't given the impression that I have any quarrel with your review. Approach that however you want to, as is your prerogative. I'm talking about this for edification purposes and I don't want you to think I'm trying to demand anything of you.

This, we can agree on. With Universal's excellent response to the audio issue on Inside Man, I feel like we ought to have a reasonable shot at getting this problem (which I would consider to be a much more significant one) addressed, as well.

tylergfoster

"Condescended to" was maybe a poor choice of words, I meant I felt that way more in principle than about anything you actually said. I wasn't offended by the debate in any way, I thought it might be an interesting debate, and I think (hope) it was. I still want to know if the old Universal is accurate or not, though.

Richard Malloy

C'mon, guys. Obviously this is gonna bother some of us more than others.

For myself, it's unfortunate... but hardly the first time a new release has failed to meet expectations. Yes, this is a mistake of the unreasonable sort, the sort of eye-rolling, head-smacking f/up that enduces major frustration among fans. How in the world could they get it so wrong? Isn't it standard practice to refer to an answer print for timing issues? And so on...

But, at the end of the day, the Criterion release is whoppin' good, and on each and every viewing has always delivered the goods. Fortunately, this isn't a movie that needs rescuing on home video, even allowing for how nice a properly transferred and timed HD release might look.

SSF

But so what?

Is the only criteria for a BluRay to pass at DVDTalk is that it sure looks purty?

Regardless if all the edges are crisp or not, this is not the correct transfer of the film, as its colours are completely incorrect, so why is it getting a DVD Talk Collector Series rating?

It should have gone straight to Skip It.

Eric D.

This is terrible and I won't be buying the BD because of it. The loss of the correct color timing is as bad as butchering the aspect ratio.

tylergfoster

I like how you quoted me and then proceeded to say the above quote. Even if you disagree with what I'm saying, this isn't one of the points I was making.

Again, I don't have much more to say on the subject than I already have. The best defense I really have for myself is that I did debate this issue, I have reasons that I've taken the time to think about and weigh the options and all of that, and I still hope everyone who finds this to be an unconscionable dealbreaker write Universal and tell them why you're not buying the DVD/BD. Even if I don't agree that it's as bad as misframing the film, I have read and considered all the counterarguments.

MTRodaba2468

I'm still getting this, so I have it in high def. But this just furthers my resolve to keep the Criterion set.

Drexl

I wonder if it could be corrected if played back on a computer, adjusting the color levels.

Joe Molotov

I'll be picking this up so I can own the first BD to break the color barrier.