Bullets 'n' Babes

Given the other similar problems on movies restored by Lowry, I'd say something is askew in that company. They're not paying attention to the original look. I think Lowry realized they had 20 films to restore in a short amount of time so they wanted to do it as quickly as possible with the "good" results. Generally they did okay but they screwed up on a few titles which is too bad.

The UK releases were rushed (because of 'Casino Royale') and in result; half-arsed. The US ones are superior (aside from the fact they are in lousy boxsets) but flawed all the same.

MGM/Sony should have gotten their money back for such shite.

I still don't understand what Barbarian King is saying, when you telecine movies from the negatives in 4K or 8K, the only obvious instruction you may have from your client is make it look great.
You have to time color each frame, along with the restoration, because even if a negative is color ready, it may feature fading, or other problems. So each and every frame have to be color adjusted. By a technician at Lowry. With no other spec than make it look good.

dvdvision wrote:I still don't understand what Barbarian King is saying, when you telecine movies from the negatives in 4K or 8K, the only obvious instruction you may have from your client is make it look great.
You have to time color each frame, along with the restoration, because even if a negative is color ready, it may feature fading, or other problems. So each and every frame have to be color adjusted. By a technician at Lowry. With no other spec than make it look good.

MGM had clear instructions on what to do with each film. And since they're working from the original negative, it was my understanding that there's not a huge amount of color-timing going on since what they're seeing is pretty much exactly what the camera saw on the day, so the only time they'd color-time a specific scene or shot was when MGM requested it in their instructions.

Aside from the framing issues on a couple of films, which still look excellent, the films all look stunning. Spy looks overly sharp, but the old DVD looked that way to, so it's probably something with the way the film was shot. Comparing them to the old DVD's is kinda silly, as these are clearly the better and more accurate transfers, given that they're coming from the original negatives, which were almost all in great shape. Who said the old DVD's were accurate? Most of them looked subpar and had bigger problems than any Ultimate Edition DVD.

On a completely different subject; maan, that "Russian General" is sure one ugly dude

IIRC, he's a German actor named Gottfried John.

Good performance I always thought.

I'll never watch the UE because it is cropped like that. GE is a Scope film and all scope films show the entire frame, there's not supposed to be any cropping involved. I don't give a samn if Martin Campbell would want it cropped or not because he didn't shoot the thing originally. If anyone should be asked it would be the Cinematographer of the film. I think LaLD, AVtaK and GE should be replaced because they look so bad.

I'm sure those are the exact prints that will come out on HD.

I'd love to see a full uncut print of this.
I cant be bothered with the UE, I'll keep my R2 Uncut SE

Markgway wrote:I'm sure those are the exact prints that will come out on HD.

These will be the print they will use for probably the next decade or so which sucks given the fuck ups.

That's what worries me...

Well they have informed of the "errors", there's always the possibility they amend those for the HD versions. Remember the European DVDs were "in progress" and presented differences with the final USA DVD versions. There's always the possibility they fix a few of those (colors errors etc).

Both Goldeneye and AVTAK should be redone from the digital negatives, that is, assuming the cropping was not done at the negative scanning stage.

I presume they used the same Master all over Europe, if so they came out months before the USA release.

Agreed the cropping sucks, as does all the pink in Tomorrow Never Dies but I'd still buy both with The World is Not Enough when the HD versions come out, is there any word on this front?

The other Bonds I own I'm happy with on DVD, that is until HD Disc prices come down.

I've often suspected a lot of these flaws are deliberate to force us to buy the Blu-Ray versions

I have hunch the Blue Ray Bonds might come out in late 2008, somewhere around the same time as Bond 22... if not all of them, at least a few of them...

I reckon you could be right. I doubt these flaws are here so a minute section of the population buys into Blu-ray quicker.