2001: First impressions - Page 6

I won't take that bet.

Art

^For spectator.

Ah, yes. Sorry, I didn't understand what you were talking about, but I have indeed been following that 'strand' of the thread. Good stuff!

Thanks for the clarification.

For what it's worth- this is also visible on The Godfather II BD, I saw this last night after combing over 2001...so now, of course, I notice things that I've no need to worry about!

When Vito kills Fanucci, there's a shot where he comes in from outside; one side of the open door has a red fringe, the other is blue.

It seems that the first half of 2001 A Space Odyssey has inaccurate black levels that are a bit too bright. Though, all space shots and other dark scenes after the intermission are correct and inky.

I mean all you have to do is adjust the brightness control between the two parts, but it's obviously a studio mistake that should be corrected.


Compare chapter 18 and 30 and you will see the black level change.

Have there been any further thoughts on the sound? The picture appears pretty good.

Early in the thread there was one complaint that the surrounds weren't mixed as well as they should have been.

I don't want to wade through this thread for the answer, but I've heard off and on that this movie has lots of EE and others claim it has none at all.

Which is it?

I think the general feeling is that we're not quite sure whether the halos are caused by the photography, EE, or some of both. There are some screenshots in the thread, so you can decide for yourself if you wish.

If a Halo goes at a certain color its not EE but Chromatic aberration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_aberration

And of course if its a black and white movie it can still be chromatic aberration, since the lens is still in color.

When edge enhancment creates halos, it does have a very different look to them.

http://www.videophile.info/Guide_EE/Page_01.htm

I'm familiar with chromatic aberration. I deal with it in Photoshop when I'm touching up my digital RAW negatives.

How often do you see the halos? If it's pretty rare, I can't imagine they'd want to selectively sharpen segment of the picture.

That's my biggest pet peeve of the transfer! If corrected, I would be a happy man!

I saw 2001 on HDNet and was blown away. I went to Best Buy and bought the Blu-ray (with a price match).

All I can say is a real big WOW! This is a true A+ experience and a real Classic!

If only a really honest restoration and transfer were forthcoming. The current Blu does have some flaws as noted.

Doesn't seem to be an issue on the HD-DVD edition, as far as I can tell.

Agreed. The blu-ray is fairly good but could be a lot better. This classic film deserves a full fledged restoration.

I saw a 70mm print last month and what was a subtle glow on 70mm turns into a nasty Halo on the Blu-Ray. This is most apparent in the scenes in the spaceship where he meets the Russian scientists, there were no halos of this kind anywhere in the movie.

Warner has gotten better for the most part with regard to EE and also with hi-rez scanning so hopefully they will revisit 2001 - it defnitely has potential to look substantially better than this Blu-Ray. That being said this is still one of the better incarnations of a large format movie in the Blu-Ray format where many releases fall disappointingly short of what should be.

Isn't there supposed to be some sort of special edition re-release by year's end?

I thought it was Superb as it is. I really go into the symbolism, messages and concepts, more than its technicalities.

I was reading a review on amazon:

"...was shot in 2.20:1. It was not shot in Cinemascope (or anamorphic Panavision), which is 2.35:1. It was shot with straight lenses in Super Panavision 70 (65mm negative, 70mm projection print with soundtrack). Super Panavision 70 is a 2.20:1 aspect ratio format. When you are watching a 70mm print in a theater you are watching 2.20:1, which was never as wide as the anamorphic formats...."

"... Kubrick went to the extraordinary effort of exposing his special effects composite shots as successive passes on the original undeveloped 65mm negative (after it being held sometimes in refrigeration for up to a year or more waiting for the next pass) so that all the composite visual elements are first generation on the original camera negative, rather than the cheaper and more common optical composite dupe negative inserts. Amazing. That is why it looks as good as it does. No optical negative generations...."


This sounds amazingly difficult to do and very risky. Or am I missing something? What if you expose the wrong shot over the previous? There was no way to make a copy of an undeveloped film, right?

This is mind blowing to me.

For a bit of trivia....
HAL
IBM

Note the fact that IBM follows HAL alphabetically. This, believe it or not, was unintended by Clarke or Kubrick. Also if you really are into this film, read the book by Clarke -- The Lost Worlds Of 2001: The Ultimate Log Of The Ultimate Trip.

Clarke relates his experience working with Kubrick on the film and introduces some new material.

Also I notice that if you buy the blu-ray on amazon you can download and watch it for free. I guess in theory you could return the blu-ray and seen the film for free. But the blu-ray's $10

(although for some reason I was not able to download the movie)

But is the download in HD and 5.1 audio? Or...for those with HDNet Movies, both 2001 and 2010 are being shown tonight back-to-back. (Their print of 2001 is gorgeous!)

I see no problems with the hddvd version and from all accounts the BD is the same encode. I suspect the reported black level difference is erronious and I certainly saw nothing of the sort. Its incorrect relative to what? The ref black is too high? Space isn't totally black (it never is by the way).

I do think its very telling that we have reached a stage where people are quick to cry "EE" without being all that familiar with photographic imagery.

Its a great transfer , go and get it.

You forget where you're posting. The disc may very well be 99% perfect, which in AVS terms means that it's complete unwatchable garbage.

I thought so too...until tonight. It doesn't hold a candle to the print I'm viewing right now on HDNet Movies. Detail and black levels are easily stronger than either the BD or HD-DVD discs. Reds on the furniture in the space station are less blown-out. It may be 1080i but it's the best I've ever seen this film in decades. I'm gonna archive the HDNet version and dump the BD...at least until a better disc comes along. (Which I've heard rumors about, but who knows?)

The HDNET clip can very well have been sharpend and contrastboosted. I would be surprised if they have made another master after the BD.

its pretty much perfect, demo material. all thanks to mr Kubrick being a perfectionist or else all the space shots would have been a grainy mess. instead they look perfect like the rest of the movie.

Only now rewatched it after many years of not having seen it, wow, it looked amazing to me, I guess seeing the detail is far more important in such a film where the camera just lingers and lingers. The film has aged surprisingly well, and the thought that went into the "future" technology really shows, most of it made sense, not much was horribly out of place, I think there was one part where they were watching a broadcast on tablets even. Reading the wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A...sey_%28film%29 on it you can see all the chances for this film to have gone wrong, if kubric had gone with more blatant references to politics of the day,nuclear weapons, the soviets and the rest it would have aged the film horribly, or if he had gone with more dialog.

The in camera effects shots look amazing, no cg to say the least.

I also watched the 2010 sequel recently as well, which sadly doesn't hold up, crts everywhere, and awful aging of the story because of the tacky soviet stuff and world peace bs. A film from 1968 beats a film from 1984 in staying relevant...go figure.

Yes, pretty incredible really. Did you notice the IBM Tile Pad insignia at the bottom corner of their portable flat panels ?

Art

Looks pretty bleh after The Sound of Music showed us what 70mm can look like

Well, there's still hope...wasn't there supposed to be some sort of remastered SE of 2001 in the pipeline? I actually found the HDNet broadcast of 2001 to be superior to the BD (and HD-DVD) discs.

That was one thing that really struck me, was the foresight 2001 had as far as flat panel displays although they were CRTs.
That is 1 of 2 ways to easily date a film, the PC monitors and the cell phones.
A lot of thought went into 2001 as far as the technology being grounded in "real" science.
I think it's difficult for people who weren't yet born when 2001 came out to fully appreciate just how amazing an experience it was.
My older brother took me to see it at the Cinerama Theater in Seattle( we lived 150 miles away).
I'm pretty sure I didn't blink for the entire movie.