I noticed some greens have been boosted but compared to the old Criterion disc I don't think the color changes are that bad to be honest. The film originally had, I think, a dreamier look which better supported the material.Ah, I missed the opening shots and noticed it going back to the old disc. In respect to the other films in the set, it has, I suppose 'got off easy.' But I think the new color correction distorts the look the picture used to have in pretty damaging ways. In some cases he has cropped shots on the top and bottom to get them into that ratio, and in some shots he's done both things.ДЄs far as Chungking Express, there are the gunshots under the opening credits, which are an annoying new addition, these new ending credits, and the David-Fincher-style new color correction. In most cases he has literally stretched the image, warping it horizontally to achieve the new ratio. For the new version, Wong has stretched the image to 2.39:1. I'm quite certain, judging by experience, Shout's encoder just isn't as good as them with such amount of high frequencies, and that the issue thus isn't the amount of HF.ДЇeihong wrote:The imdb lists Fallen Angels aspect ratio as 1.85:1. However, many authoring houses (David M but not only) have demonstrated time and time again how much grain can be handled without compression issues. It is however mechanical/mathematical for grain to be challenging encodes, since that's how encoders are working. It does exist for sure, I'm not denying that, but I'm under the impression the utmost majority of the restorations of the past years (let's say since about 2014 at least) are not done within this kind of process, and certainly not by removing 'all the grain' before a regraining. I doubt they're representing the majority of the restorations performed in the market. The whole degrain / regrain process is popping up in a regular manner but honestly, I have yet to see concrete proofs about exactly which and how many restorations are indeed concerned. What he's talking about reminds me of the Lowry process, and that wasn't a common process at all AFAIK. Maybe he's talking about the ancient 2008 BD release of Predator (not the waxy 2010 BD or the 2018 4k)? As for the Indy films, who knows.

I'm never going to do something to the extent of what was done on Predator or on some of the Indiana Jones movies where they removed all the grain and then re-grained it later on.' 'That's actually a pretty common process, to remove the grain and then add grain back'

do think that some grain management is necessary to mitigate any issues that could happen in compression, but I don't go to the point where I'm smearing the image. I'd have love knowing what he's talking about in particular since except the first one noticeably noisy at times because of the film stocks used in some scenes, I doubt it's be tampered with one way or another.Д«ut it's funny that this would come from someone at Shout, who are probably often tampering with their movies, and have dozens of mediocre encodes on top of that (though that doesn't mean he's wrong). I was a bit surprised, though he didn't go into details. The Hong Kong cut was released on VHS/laserdisc by World Video and on VHS/LD/DVD by Mei Ah.Maltic wrote:The Film Formally podcast a while back interviewed a guy who does mastering for Shout and others, and he sort of scoffed at re-graining and mentioned the Indiana Jones BDs as examples of bad jobs. The international cut is Wong's preferred version and has been used for most home video releases. The international version strips out the music (leaving only ambient noise), although 'Dreams' still appears at the end of the film.

In the Hong Kong version, the Faye Wong cover of 'Dreams' plays over the shot of 663 drinking coffee.

The sequence with Zhiwu loitering outside his girlfriend's window appears earlier in the international edit.

The international version includes the kidnapping of an Indian girl, which does not occur in the Hong Kong version.

Indian music plays during the smugglers' arrival at the airport in international prints in the Hong Kong version, the title theme plays.

The international version expands the scenes where The Blonde prepares for the smuggling trip and later searches for the smugglers.

'Kar Wai Wong' made several changes to the international version, bringing the running time to 102 minutes: The original Hong Kong release ran 98 minutes.

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