Where Are The Film Classics!

Blu Ray launched almost four years ago and some of the classics of cinema have still not made it to the blu ray format.

It's been argued that the studio's are releasing the big summer blockbusters and recent movies on the format because they believe these movies sell better than classic cinema and while i do not disagree i do feel there is a market for a wide range of material.

Another reason for the delay in releasing some of the older movies on the format is because a significant amount require restoration work to look their best in high definition.

Some people still believe that films shot using the latest digital cameras have more detail than older films shot in 35mm, the plain fact is that a well restored film from the thirties can look every bit as good as a film shot yesterday.

Older films may not have the "looking out of a window" thing that some consumers crave but 35mm film has more detail than the blu ray format. It is true though that some older films may indeed have less detail due to the original film stock having been destroyed or lost but even in those cases the films will still look better on blu ray ( Than DVD ) due to using more advanced codecs and allowing the natural film grain to be shown.

The problem for the film studios is do they release some classics now and not bother to restore them or do they wait and do the job right. I hope for the latter.

Some classic cinema has already been given less than stellar treatment and had film fans complaining but ultimately the average person who rents a film out tends not to notice if the film looks more like high definition video and less like film as is the case with a high prodile title such as the Oscar winning Patton which had it's grain structure obliterated because some dozy employee who works for a Panasonic encoding facility decided grain was bad, indeed that employee even went onto public forums saying the movie looked better than ever due to the fact he used his "tools" to remove the grain which incidentally was so light as to be invisible as the movie was shot in 70mm which has a very light grain structure.

Can we trust the movie studios to get things right with the classic cinema they have in their vaults or will they do a Patton or The Longest Day on us.

Clint Eastwood's spaghetti western Fistful of Dollars trilogy is coming to North America soon but unfortunately the third film The Good, The Bad and The Ugly has had too much grain removal ( which destroys detail ) to recommend, so classic films are getting released but some are disappointing, that particular film has a fantastic Italian release which doesn't have an english audio track and the italian edition makes the American release look poor as far as the image quality goes.

Another example of a release which didn't do justice to the original film was the HD DVD edition of Spartacus, the film originally had a restoration done for a DVD edition but no further work was carried out for the HD release and it just has so many noisy and ugly scenes wich should look amazing in HD. The film is being re-released soon on blu ray and many are hoping restoration work was carried out but at the same time many fear this is just a port of the original HD DVD release and if so it is set to disappoint many film fans.

Warner are known to be working on a number of film classics for release in the forseeable future, Singin' In The Rain and Ben Hur are both being worked upon with Ben Hur set to debut on the format later this year. Indeed Warner spends a lot of money restoring older classic films each year, some releases which look fantastic from Warner after restoration include Quo Vadis, The Wizard Of Oz and The Searchers.

The format needs more classic Hitchcock, more classic westerns, more classic musicals but i would rather they wait and restore the titles so they look fabulous than just release a film which ends up disappointing because they used an old outdated master.

This year we can look forward to classic films like Forbidden Planet, The Sound Of Music, Dr Zhivago, Fritz Lang's M, The African Queen. ( just out ) Grand Prix, The Great Dictator, Where Eagles Dare, A Star Is Born ( Judy Garland ) and Walt Disneys Fantasia. In 2011 we can look forward to Ben Hur and many other film classics.