Yeah, I know...and I actually have the utmost respect for Mr. Harris - it's just that I believe he's steered us wrong with a few titles in the past. I'm not suggesting he has other agendas, but I do think sometimes his passion for something (be it good or bad) sometimes gets in the way of his objectivity. We'll have to wait and see with CHINATOWN. Thanks for the link!

Smells like sole DNR was applied. Sigh.

I hear you. I certainly hope we hear more favorable comments in the next couple of weeks, as like many I am really looking forward to this one. It's a great film!

Forget it, Superdaddy...it's Chinatown.

Is that DNR that sticks to the bottom of your shoe?

Some. Damn iPhone spellcheck.

Screenshots from blu-ray.com's review.

I turned it off.

DVD Beaver

Looks solid to me.

Solid, but not spectacular. Could've been spectacular.

Anyone know if Target stores will have this tomorrow?

from blu-ray.com:

Their web site claims not sold in stores.

I was at mine this morning to pick up War Horse and saw no copies of Chinatown so I guess that's accurate.

I saw 1 copy at Best Buy and 0 at Walmart. The only other place where I could see this being carried in stores is a place like Barnes and Noble.

Can you tell me more about the Catalina scene. It's always interested me that the film makes no reference to Catalina. I mean if the viewer doesn't recognize that it's Catalina he/she would have no idea that Gittes has left the mainland. No one ever says "Catalina". It's strange.

Also, one question about the blu ray: Is the original mono available?

It looks like it is, according to DVD Beaver. It has a 2.0 TrueHD track listed, but I suspect that's actually mono encoded as 2 channels, so it will come out of the front left and right speakers.

Too bad about the DNR, but it isn't terrible. At least it doesn't have edge enhancement, which combined with DNR makes something look like absolute crap.

Sure. It's something I read in a copy of the script I found when I was in college.
Basically, Gittes takes a seaplane to Catalina and talks to the pilot about Evelyn Mulray. The pilot tells Gittes that there was a story about Evelyn running down to Mexico to have a baby.
It gives away the best scene and I'm glad it's not in the movie, but, if it exists- I'd like to see it.
There's also an exchange between Noah and Gittes before lunch where Noah reflects on how he likes the smell of manure. That I'd welcome back into the movie.

Fry's has it on sale for $12.99 this week.

Watched the Blu over the weekend. This is my first experience with a disc that looks like this. Is the artificial look the picture has now due specificly to "DNR"? Clearly they wipped most of the grain out of the picture, is that what DNR is used for? All I know is the picture looks unnatural. I actually manually threw my projector out of focus a tiny bit and it was an improvement. It's not unwatchable, but it's pretty bad. I don't know who would think the film should look like that.

The supplements were excelent.

Yes, DNR is generally used to remove grain. It removes other detail as well.

The unwashed masses. People who don't understand what film grain is. People who don't frequent this forum, or others like it.