35 / BD 27 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

[JamesF]

Very intrigued to see if the HD master's different to the Criterion!

Shame the exclusive extras from the German DVD by Bildstörung couldn't be ported over (including an interview with the late Trish Keenan!), but this looks excellent nonetheless. I'll just have to carry on having three copies of the film

[Bikey]

Amazon UK pre-order

[Bikey]

Blu-ray Special Features:
• Presented from a brand new HD transfer of the film from original materials by the Czech National Film Archive.
• Audio commentary with Peter Hames and Daniel Bird.
• The Projection Booth audio commentary with Mike White, Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger.
• Filmed introduction by Michael Brooke.
• Interview with actor Jaroslava Schallerová (Valerie).
• Three short films by Jaromil Jireš:
- Uncle (Strejda, 1959 / 6 mins)
- Footprints (Stopy, 1960 / 21 mins) - the full length version with 9 minutes of additional material
- The Hall of Lost Footsteps (Sál ztracených kroků, 1960 / 12 mins) - with original colour sequences
• Trailer
• Booklet featuring writing by Peter Hames and Joseph A. Gervasi
• New and improved English subtitle translation.
• Region free Blu-ray (A/B/C)

Pre-order now at Amazon UK

[Bikey]

Full details of this release now up at our website

[yoloswegmaster]

Beaver

[Michael Kerpan]

Beaver's screen caps of this new release definitely look consistently overly greenish....

[domino harvey]

Yeah, thank God for Criterion

[tenia]

That's... weird. I expected SR to simply be an equivalent of the Critierion disc, not to be that different. It's not only quite green and probably over-contrasted, it's also dirtier and has a different framing.
Checking back, the Criterion release was actually based on an internal job (4K scanning: Universal Production Partners, Prague / Colorist: Lee Kline/Criterion Post, New York / 4K resolution on a Northlight film scanner from the 35mm original camera negative) while this is a completely different CNFA job (contrary to what I thought).
It's surprising since the Czech Film Center talked about Valérie through its Criterion 4K restoration in 2016.

In any case, I'm finding more and more Eastern European restorations to be quite variable in quality. Polish ones, for instance, can be plagued with DNR.

[feihong]

Well, I'm keeping my Criterion blu ray, but I'm still looking forward to the audio commentaries.

The captures on DVDBeaver look like the older DVD. But it looks really obvious that the Criterion version has colors which are much truer to life––though I have to say that in motion the Criterion disc looks very pale. The Second Run does look over-contrast-y but the previous DVDs all looked darker than the Criterion blu, and I have to say I'm much more accustomed to the film looking grimy and dark. Probably that was just an effect of the source materials age, though, I'm guessing. I wonder what was the real intention of the filmmakers? I think the film gained something by looked a little dark and gothic, but I have no idea what the intention was.

I have to say, the restorations available on blu ray through the Slovak film archive look fantastic, unlike those unfortunate Polish remasters. I'm really looking forward to the two Elo Havetta films getting their blu ray release.

[Calvin]

It is disappointing that this seems to be inferior to the now 5-year-old Criterion transfer. Even ignoring the colour, there's evidently more damage to the source element. What that might be, I'm finding it difficult to find out. Criterion scanned the original negative in 4K, which one would assume is owned by the Czech NFA, so I'm baffled as to why the NFA would subsequently scan a later generation element. "Brand new HD transfer of the film from original materials by the Czech National Film Archive" implies that it's post-Criterion's 2015 effort anyway, though I notice that the word 'restoration' is absent from the package.

[uajii]

That's... weird. I expected SR to simply be an equivalent of the Critierion disc, not to be that different. It's not only quite green and probably over-contrasted, it's also dirtier and has a different framing.
Checking back, the Criterion release was actually based on an internal job (4K scanning: Universal Production Partners, Prague / Colorist: Lee Kline/Criterion Post, New York / 4K resolution on a Northlight film scanner from the 35mm original camera negative) while this is a completely different CNFA job (contrary to what I thought).
It's surprising since the Czech Film Center talked about Valérie through its Criterion 4K restoration in 2016.

In any case, I'm finding more and more Eastern European restorations to be quite variable in quality. Polish ones, for instance, can be plagued with DNR.

What should the many different restorations have in common based on the geographical location? Maybe you should keep your racism to yourself? Furthermore this is not an "Eastern European" release, nor is it claiming to be a "restoration". All the past and current NFA restorations are listed on its website https://eea.nfa.cz/cz/filmy/ and Valerie isn't there.

It is disappointing that this seems to be inferior to the now 5-year-old Criterion transfer. Even ignoring the colour, there's evidently more damage to the source element. What that might be, I'm finding it difficult to find out. Criterion scanned the original negative in 4K, which one would assume is owned by the Czech NFA, so I'm baffled as to why the NFA would subsequently scan a later generation element. "Brand new HD transfer of the film from original materials by the Czech National Film Archive" implies that it's post-Criterion's 2015 effort anyway, though I notice that the word 'restoration' is absent from the package.

NFA will scan what Second Run will tell them to scan. If they wanted they could have scanned the negative just like Criterion did. But obviously a full restoration from a negative is way more expensive and Second Run doesn't want to pay for that.

[mhofmann]

NFA will scan what Second Run will tell them to scan. If they wanted they could have scanned the negative just like Criterion did. But obviously a full restoration from a negative is way more expensive and Second Run doesn't want to pay for that.

True, but I wonder if they couldn't just have acquired the existing scan (from around 2014/15?) that Criterion used, even in a pre-restoration state. It's apparent that they used a different, inferior source element, and then didn't even bother to do any appreciable amount of color correction.
I'm not an expert on licensing conditions for existing scan, but I also find it hard to believe that, say, Criterion has exclusive rights to use this scan for years.

I have bought all of the Second Run Blu-ray releases so far, and this is the first one that truly disappoints me. Some of their Czech New Wave movie releases had excellent transfers, others were definitely more than acceptable, and a few of their overall Blu-ray releases have had compression issues. But this one's quite a let-down.

[Michael Kerpan]

Racism, really?

[Mr Sausage]

That's... weird. I expected SR to simply be an equivalent of the Critierion disc, not to be that different. It's not only quite green and probably over-contrasted, it's also dirtier and has a different framing.
Checking back, the Criterion release was actually based on an internal job (4K scanning: Universal Production Partners, Prague / Colorist: Lee Kline/Criterion Post, New York / 4K resolution on a Northlight film scanner from the 35mm original camera negative) while this is a completely different CNFA job (contrary to what I thought).
It's surprising since the Czech Film Center talked about Valérie through its Criterion 4K restoration in 2016.

In any case, I'm finding more and more Eastern European restorations to be quite variable in quality. Polish ones, for instance, can be plagued with DNR.

What should the many different restorations have in common based on the geographical location? Maybe you should keep your racism to yourself? Furthermore this is not an "Eastern European" release, nor is it claiming to be a "restoration". All the past and current NFA restorations are listed on its website https://eea.nfa.cz/cz/filmy/ and Valerie isn't there.

It is disappointing that this seems to be inferior to the now 5-year-old Criterion transfer. Even ignoring the colour, there's evidently more damage to the source element. What that might be, I'm finding it difficult to find out. Criterion scanned the original negative in 4K, which one would assume is owned by the Czech NFA, so I'm baffled as to why the NFA would subsequently scan a later generation element. "Brand new HD transfer of the film from original materials by the Czech National Film Archive" implies that it's post-Criterion's 2015 effort anyway, though I notice that the word 'restoration' is absent from the package.

NFA will scan what Second Run will tell them to scan. If they wanted they could have scanned the negative just like Criterion did. But obviously a full restoration from a negative is way more expensive and Second Run doesn't want to pay for that.

I'd be angrier with your choice to blithely call another user racist if it weren't so baffling and so inaccurate ("eastern European" is not a race).

I still don't want to hear any more of this kind of thing, don't make any mistake. Cool it down please.

[tenia]

True enough : Czech Republic is indeed Central Europe rather than Eastern Europe. I'll throw myself through the window for penence.

Also, glad to know it's not a restoration. I guess this settles once and for all the technical expectations we should have had for this SR release, so I doubt this is a very positive defence of the release (though I'm unsure this was a defensive post).

Obviously : dafuq just happened ? I'm not sure to even know where to start on this. All I can say is that I'm lucky enough to have been able to discuss with some restoration labs, but also have seen myself probably more than a thousand restorations, and yes, not all countries (and yes, some can be grouped by larger areas) have the same technical culture when it comes to movie restorations. They also don't have the same experience, some having started much later than others.