Satantango (Artificial Eye & Facets)

Message

MichaelB · #301 Post by **MichaelB** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:54 pm

vogler wrote:Please feel free to correct anything I have said if I am talking crap.

That seems pretty solid to me.

It's important to bear in mind that the terms "anamorphic" mean very different things with regard to film and video.

When a film is shot and projected anamorphically, it's an entirely optical process whereby a special lens is fitted to both camera and projector to "squeeze" a very wide image - typically 2.35:1 - into a 1.33:1 frame.

Conversely, when a film is described as "anamorphically enhanced" on video, while it also involves a squished image being unsquished, it's an entirely electronic process.

It therefore makes not one iota of difference whether the film was shot with an anamorphic lens - the only things that matter is that the telecine operator gets the aspect ratio right and has the film transferred anamorphically if there's even the slightest prospect of an anamorphic DVD release in the future.

(Just to be even more confusing, while HD formats offer a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, they are not anamorphic. This is because the image was designed to be 16:9-shaped from the outset, so the format doesn't need to resort to optical or electronic trickery to achieve the highest possible resolution at a widescreen aspect ratio).

#302 Post by **domino harvey** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:56 pm

Ed Husayko wrote: For your information,

I was kidding before but now I really do hope they go bankrupt. Facets should take a note from Criterion on how to handle constructive criticism.

MichaelB · #303 Post by **MichaelB** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 3:19 pm

The real question is: did Béla Tarr approve the PAL master in Hungary, or did he specifically sign off the Facets DVDs after sitting through them?

For a very good illustration of how the same masters can produce sharply different results in practice, take the British, French and US releases of Jan Svankmajer's shorts. I'm virtually certain each distributor was sent a clone of the same PAL Digibeta master of the vast majority of them, but they were treated as follows:

KimStim (US): conversion to NTSC, no digital cleanup
Chalet Films (France): encode in native PAL, no digital cleanup
BFI (UK): encode in native PAL, extensive MTI digital cleanup

For a comparison of all three versions, see this DVDFreak comparison - you'll notice that KimStim has ghosting and visible interlacing, while the two PAL versions are much smoother - and the bottom grabs reveal that the BFI has removed a blemish that's still visible in the other two releases. And yet they're all taken from the same telecine.

#304 Post by **zedz** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:21 pm

To be fair, those Beaver caps don't look as bad as I expected, but, as domino noted, Facets' arrogance about this release is pretty obnoxious. Consider this golden oldie:

Facets wrote:Originally, it was discovered there were 2 minutes of missing footage. This time there was some issue with the transfer (Bela Tarr looked at the final print), which is being corrected.

I haven't seen the British Satantango..but I have seen some of the other UK Tarr releases. I will refrain from comment beyond THAT.

I would rather blow off every single deadline than release something less than the best it can be.

And this wild (and wildly inaccurate?) promise:

Facets wrote:Satantango is coming in July.

This DVD will have tons of extras (including the Hungarian television version of Macbeth by Bela Tarr). Satantango has been restored extensively and this version was put together with the close cooperation of the director.

It is going to be a fantastic version of the film.

Still, I don't suppose you can blow your credibility unless you have some in the first place.

sidehacker · #305 Post by **sidehacker** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:31 pm

Facets' response only adds to the hilarity of the situation. Judging from the Beaver screens, it also looks like the image on Facets' release is squeezed a tiny bit.

I would rather blow off every single deadline than release something less than the best it can be.

This sounds almost intentionally ironic.

whaleallright · #306 Post by **whaleallright** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 4:26 am

Facets should take a note from Criterion on how to handle constructive criticism.

Facets employees do have a sometimes-endearing, sometimes-exasperating tendency to avoid the politesse that for most companies is standard operating procedure. I remember being (rightly) insulted by one of their programmers when I questioned a programming decision.

I'm one of those who doesn't wish Facets any harm, however frustrating their lack of quality control and general sense of bumbling incompetence, since they provide a great service to Chicago thanks to their videotheque and cinematheque. Where else was I supposed to see SATANTANGO in 35mm? Or films by Jean Grémillon, Kira Muratova, and Boris Barnet? And they sponsored what I believe was the first Edward Yang retrospective in Chicago. The Film Center only has so many nights in their schedule, and I think it's fair to say Facets will take more risks on fairly esoteric stuff. Doc Films and the Block Gallery have good programming, but it's dominated by repertory stuff and not new(ish) films that would otherwise not show up in Chicago.

(And believe me, I've suffered through more Facets screw-ups than most of you can imagine. Projector breakdowns, unexpected screenings on VHS rather than 35mm, and then that one time that their email server was attacked by a virus and for days on end I received dozens of private emails intended for Facets employees! Also: for many years, Facets' cheapness was such that they didn't provide their employees with voice mail! Hence, difficult to contact anybody there with complaints or compliments. Don't know if this has changed.)

skuhn8 · #307 Post by **skuhn8** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:16 am

jonah.77 wrote:Also: for many years, Facets' cheapness was such that they didn't provide their employees with voice mail! Hence, difficult to contact anybody there with complaints or compliments. Don't know if this has changed.)

Have they resolved the voicemail issue? I'm asking because I have some compliments I'd like to send.

kaujot · #308 Post by **kaujot** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:24 am

jonah.77 wrote: Where else was I supposed to see SATANTANGO in 35mm? Or films by Jean Grémillon, Kira Muratova, and Boris Barnet? And they sponsored what I believe was the first Edward Yang retrospective in Chicago. The Film Center only has so many nights in their schedule, and I think it's fair to say Facets will take more risks on fairly esoteric stuff. Doc Films and the Block Gallery have good programming, but it's dominated by repertory stuff and not new(ish) films that would otherwise not show up in Chicago.

I can sort of understand the whole "Well, Facets shows rare stuff, and I'm glad I saw it at all, even if it wasn't a good print, etc., etc," but I can't personally swallow that excuse. If I'm going to see some rare gem, I'd rather see it in the best possible shape before seeing it at all, and Facets, with their great library of films, continually fucks it up. I don't want to see their DVD of The Fifth Horseman is Fear because of the supposedly horrendous quality of the transfer, as well as the terrible subtitles. So I'll try and find a different version.

I'd have a better opinion of them if they'd license their films to an outside distributor. A distributor who will take the proper care that the films deserve.

But then, I'm a dick like that.

Darth Lavender · #309 Post by **Darth Lavender** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:31 am

vogler wrote:Softness can be introduced into a transfer if a non anamorphic video master is encoded anamorphically.

Thanks, that cleared a lot up. But a few related questions;

Does that refer only to an SD master? What about encoding a 'non-anamorphic' HD master to anamorphic SD?

I'm wondering somewhat about "A Clockwork Orange," now. Presumably, that would have been taken from new elements. So why would the 2007 rerelease be softer than the old non-anamorphic DVD?

The Fanciful Norwegian · #310 Post by **The Fanciful Norwegian** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 6:56 am

Darth Lavender wrote:Does that refer only to an SD master? What about encoding a 'non-anamorphic' HD master to anamorphic SD?

16:9 is the standard AR for HD, so I don't think the anamorphic/non-anamorphic distinction is even operative there. I suppose you could anamorphize anything wider than 16:9 (like a 2.40:1 film), but even if you didn't, there would still be more than enough resolution for a standard-def anamorphic downconversion.

MichaelB · #311 Post by **MichaelB** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 7:10 am

Darth Lavender wrote:Does that refer only to an SD master? What about encoding a 'non-anamorphic' HD master to anamorphic SD?

This should look absolutely fine - and indeed is increasingly becoming standard practice as more and more titles are mastered to HD. (Criterion, MoC and the BFI have been mastering to HD for ages already, even though they haven't yet released any discs in an HD format).

All that happens is that the 1920x1080 resolution of the HD master is shrunk to whatever is most appropriate for a PAL or NTSC release - and the resulting SD picture will invariably be anamorphic because there's no reason for them not to be: it's the best way of wringing as much detail out of the HD originals as SD formats can cope with.

I'm wondering somewhat about "A Clockwork Orange," now. Presumably, that would have been taken from new elements. So why would the 2007 rerelease be softer than the old non-anamorphic DVD?

You'd have to talk to the people who did the transfer or someone who has compared the HD and SD releases: I haven't seen the new version and from what I hear of the transfer of even the Blu-Ray I'm probably not going to bother.

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:16:9 is the standard AR for HD, so I don't think the anamorphic/non-anamorphic distinction is even operative there.

It isn't - the image was designed to be widescreen from the start. Anamorphic processes, whether optical or electronic, are designed to squeeze a widescreen image into a format (usually 1.33:1/4:3-shaped) that wasn't originally designed for them, but that's not the case with HD.

I suppose you could anamorphize anything wider than 16:9 (like a 2.40:1 film)

You could, but there wouldn't be any point unless you had a monitor whose resolution was higher than 1920x1080. I suppose it's conceivable that it could happen with 4K scans of Scope material, but I don't know if it does.

vogler · #312 Post by **vogler** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 7:28 am

Darth Lavender wrote:Does that refer only to an SD master? What about encoding a 'non-anamorphic' HD master to anamorphic SD?

I think the softness that I was talking about is usually introduced into a transfer when lower resolution is increased to a higher resolution e.g non-anamorphic letterboxed widescreen to anamorphic 16:9 widescreen. With HD the process is reversed. The HD master is being converted to a standard definition format with far lower resolution. This shouldn't cause any problems with softness - more likely the opposite. If the new Clockwork Orange DVD is from an HD master then I would think the softness must have been caused by somthing else. A new anamorphic SD DVD made from a new HD transfer certainly should be sharper than the old non-anamorphic one.

The Fanciful Norwegian · #313 Post by **The Fanciful Norwegian** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 7:45 am

MichaelB wrote:
The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:I suppose you could anamorphize anything wider than 16:9 (like a 2.40:1 film)
You could, but there wouldn't be any point unless you had a monitor whose resolution was higher than 1920x1080. I suppose it's conceivable that it could happen with 4K scans of Scope material, but I don't know if it does.

That's exactly what I was thinking -- digital intermediates or HD masters of 35mm-sourced material at ARs wider than 16:9, where you might want to use every available pixel to preserve as much of the original as you can. (I suppose you could also distort a 4:3 image to fill the 16:9 video AR, but would that still be considered an "anamorphic" process?) Like you, I don't know if it's actually done, and I suspect it would be of minimal benefit at consumer-level HD resolutions.

MichaelB · #314 Post by **MichaelB** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 7:48 am

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:I don't know if it's actually done, and I suspect it would be of minimal benefit at consumer-level HD resolutions.

I can't think of any conceivable benefit at all, given that basic HD transfers already present the film in the maximum width available on a domestic HD screen.

peerpee · #315 Post by **peerpee** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 8:50 am

The "ITV DVD" Blu-ray of GREAT EXPECTATIONS has some slight yet undesirable flaws across the top of the picture towards the end of the film (these only last for a second or two at a time), but they are in the 16:9 black pillarbox area, at the top of the frame, as well as along the top edge of the 4:3 film area.

I haven't had the fortune to author a 4:3 Blu-ray yet, but it appears that the Blu-ray player outputs a full 16:9 image, with the black pillarbox parts of the screen part of the actual output (rather than black bars imposed by the TV/disc player).

When encoded correctly, without any faults that appear in the pillarboxed areas, this looks as if how 4:3 material has to be encoded for Blu-ray (ie. as a 16:9 overall image, pillarboxed 4:3) ---- but it struck me as ironic that a 1.33:1 film is now going to be encoded in a similar way to how a non-anamorphic widescreen film was (when done badly), ie. with these black portions encoded into available frame space (albeit on the left and right, instead of the top and bottom).

Hope that all made sense!

(EDIT: shit, just realised this is all off-topic)

Rich Malloy · #316 Post by **Rich Malloy** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 10:52 am

Why did I get my hopes up?

Why did I trust Facets?

Why did I sell off my AE "SATANTANGO" in anticipation of this release?

Me stoopid and me learn lesson. Facets... not so good on the learning of the lessons.

MichaelB · #317 Post by **MichaelB** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 10:59 am

Rich Malloy wrote:Why did I get my hopes up?

Why did I trust Facets?

Why did I sell off my AE "SATANTANGO" in anticipation of this release?

There really is no answer to that!

Just out of interest, while I'm aware that Facets have distributed several excellent DVDs produced by others (the Sokurov series being a particularly outstanding example), have they ever produced one in-house that can stand comparison with what would be considered minimum expectations elsewhere?

vogler · #318 Post by **vogler** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 11:22 am

MichaelB wrote:Just out of interest, while I'm aware that Facets have distributed several excellent DVDs produced by others (the Sokurov series being a particularly outstanding example), have they ever produced one in-house that can stand comparison with what would be considered minimum expectations elsewhere?

The James Broughton set is pretty damn good. Certainly not close to Criterion standards but quite acceptable considering the nature of the films and the materials that were likely available. It was one of my choices for DVD of the year a while back. From what I've heard the Larry Jordan set appears to be of similar quality. Other than that their DVDs seem to universally stink. I own quite a few and the best is probably Daisies.

Ironically this new Satantango set is probably among their very best in spite of the problems, but expectations were high this time.

kaujot · #319 Post by **kaujot** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 2:32 pm

vogler wrote:Ironically this new Satantango set is probably among their very best in spite of the problems, but expectations were high this time.

They certainly didn't help with that.

Perkins Cobb · #320 Post by **Perkins Cobb** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 2:34 pm

Well, let's look on the bright side: at least this'll mean an avalanche of sales for AE from people like me, who held off on buying their Satantango until the Facets reviews were in. Who, knows maybe it'll cause them to release some more Tarr films!

John Cope · #321 Post by **John Cope** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 3:28 pm

What I have yet to see anybody address is the issue of the extra films. Will this be enough of a draw to take the plunge regardless of quality for the set as a whole? I certainly see no alternative to picking this up unless somebody knows of plans to release Macbeth and Journey on the Plain elsewhere.

Zazou dans le Metro · #322 Post by **Zazou dans le Metro** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 4:18 pm

Perkins Cobb wrote:Well, let's look on the bright side: at least this'll mean an avalanche of sales for AE from people like me, who held off on buying their Satantango until the Facets reviews were in. Who, knows maybe it'll cause them to release some more Tarr films!

Allegedly there is a Tarr box set coming later this year or early next. I e-mailed AE twice to ask if this would be likely to have the extras from the Facets set but true to form I have never received an answer.

markhax · #323 Post by **markhax** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 4:50 pm

I own the AE Satantango, but know 'Damnation' and 'Werckmeister Harmonies' only through the Facet releases. Are the AE versions appreciably better, and if so how?

Rich Malloy · #324 Post by **Rich Malloy** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 4:55 pm

John Cope wrote:What I have yet to see anybody address is the issue of the extra films. Will this be enough of a draw to take the plunge regardless of quality for the set as a whole? I certainly see no alternative to picking this up unless somebody knows of plans to release Macbeth and Journey on the Plain elsewhere.

I'm hoping that these are what's available on the "Satantango Disc 4 Bonus Materials" that I just loaded in my Netflix queue. Worth a watch, to be sure, but Facets deserves nothing more than whatever % of my rental fee goes their way.

foggy eyes · #325 Post by **foggy eyes** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:58 pm

John Cope wrote:What I have yet to see anybody address is the issue of the extra films.

This is exactly what I've been thinking, as Macbeth and Journey on the Plain are easily the most exciting things about the release - we already have a perfectly decent transfer of Sátántangó, so I'm a little stumped as to why that's attracting all the fuss. Has anybody watched the two extra films yet?