Chasing Amy pix: US (Miramax) vs CA (Alliance)

Interesting - aside from color timing, the U.S. version looks a tad sharper, but DNR'd as well.

Any word on region coding yet?

US ver has worse colors IMO. They look very unnatural. Typical contrast and color boosting by studios to impress Walmart shoppers.

The Alliance transfer appears to be 1.78:1. There's a little more info at the top and bottom.

The Miramax transfer is a little sharper. Look at the button on Hooper's jacket. The letters are clearer on the Miramax one.

That's not DNR, that's some kind of bizzare video noise on the other version.

Yeah, I'm not a DNR expert by any stretch, but the Miramax release looks to have plenty of natural grain. The Alliance release has some strange noise that looks like it was added through a post-processing filter.

This is a tough call.

On initial viewing, the U.S version had the better overall look.

However, upon detailed inspection, I'm not so sure that isn't simply because it seems smoother.

What first caught my eye was the top pair of screen caps. I opened up both of them at full size so that I could toggle between them. Look at the rings on the girl's left hand (screen right). When toggling between the images, those rings unmistakably have more definition in the Alliance transfer.

I would also like to know this and for the rest of the boxset

really odd contrast on the US disc but I think I'd choose that based on compression and the grain looks more natural in comparison to the noise covered Alliance disc.

The Alliance release looks like something someone captured off of their cable box. Man they suck at BD.

IIRC, the Alliance version looks close to Criterion's (presumably) correct LD/DVD transfer, color-wise.

Like eric.exe says, the Miramax looks like another dumbed-down, contrast-boosted/oversaturated transfer. Ugly.

I presume you've got the theatrical prints running through your 35mm projector for reference? Care to snap some pics so we know how it's "supposed" to look

How are the Miramax captures contrast boosted? The Alliance release is the one with the blown highlights.

The Alliance disc is showing more fine detail IMO. I'm no tech expert, so I can't tell you if it's DNR or Contrast boost. But in the 3rd set of pics, you can see Holden's five o'clock shadow on the Alliance release whereas the Miramax has it blown out due to the brightness of the skin color. Also look at the CD racks behind them. In the Miramax disc, the black labeling between CD's is virtually gone due to overblown whites. While they're not readable in the Alliance one, you can definitely see that labels are in fact on their. And as someone pointed out in the first shot, look at her rings on her left hand (Our right) I'm seeing more detail in the Alliance release. Two zoomed images of those rings would be a good comparison. But both could be better IMO.

I think I'll wait for a special edition down the road since Kevin Smith has been talking about one for the last few months. Color is definitely better in the Miramax release though and there's less noise. But the film was shot on 16mm so it should be fairly grainy. I doubt the film will ever look that great though.

Is the misframing in the train station scene fixed in this version?

The US BD looks really unnatural, there really seems to be some contrast issues.

No...I do have the Criterion DVD though, which states on the back of the case that the transfer was "supervised by cinematographer David Klein." I also previously said that if I recall correctly, the DVD's transfer looks more in line with the Alliance BD, color-wise.

Now, if the DVD (with the transfer supervised by the Director of Photography) looks similar to the Alliance version, and the Alliance Blu-ray looks very different from the Miramax Blu-ray, what likely conclusion(s) can we derive from that?

Clerks and Chasing Amy are both region free.

As for which is ultimately "correct", listening to the commentary there really isn't anything which goes in depth about it. Smith makes some remake about how he's going to watch it again when the BD is released to see "how much they cleaned it up", but he never states that he or Klein where involved/signed off on it. Then again he's a big fan of the internets, why not just ask him on Twitter (ThatKevinSmith), his website/forum, or one of the Q&A's he keeps on doing across the country.

That's great news that Clerks and Chasing Amy are both region free! I'll be picking up both of these titles.

Unfortunately, unless the boxset includes some new edition of Jay and Silent Bob, then that disc IS region coded and will not play outside of Region A.

The official press release indicated that "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Bob" would have all the extras from the DVD. If that's correct, here's to hoping it won't be region coded.

It is a new editon of JASBSB as it has the tea party doc

The tea party doc is on the Clerks disk I believe.

You are indeed right about that

I think the Alliance transfer's grain looks more defined.

It looks more like the criterion laserdisc and that was praised by the DP for showing off the grain

Huge fan of this film, been waiting for it to come out for a while.

I definitely think the the Alliance one looks much better, particularly in the first shot. The Miramax shot looks almost blurry and muddled while the Alliance one looks natural. Maybe it's just these pics, but if not I am definitely going to make sure to get my hands on the Alliance one.

KT

There is absolutely no comparison. The alliance release looks like a film print. The Miramax looks like video. This movie was filmed in 16mm and should appear grainy. Grain is not the same as noise.

guess a bit of digital noise is all it takes to make you folks happy
that sure as hell aint film grain you're seeing...

Bull. It is most definately film grain.