| Daemonia | 6th November 2012 12:05 AM |
Well, VHS was good in its day - but, trust me, I was one who really did wish for things like a better picture, better sound, correct OAR and so forth. Especially when LD arrived and you just knew there was a better alternative out there, but financially unviable for me at the time.
So when DVD hit, I grabbed it with both hands and ran with it, for about 10 years, then kinda burned out on the whole thing. So when I dipped into HD waters, it reignited my interest in collecting again (although I've always watched films, no matter what, just lost the collecting bug for a while).
For me, I think every film deserves the best presentation possible - and at the moment that's Blu-ray. But, as I've said elsewhere, I also see HD restorations as film preservation. I mean, come on, with TVs getting bigger and with higher resolutions, will an SD master of a film even be wanted for much longer, much less used? I think all films deserve the HD upgrade. That's my opinion, anyway.
But I also recognise that some old and obscure titles may not have elements usable for an HD upgrade, but, to be honest, I think those cases are few and far between. In many cases when labels have said 'These are the best materials that exist' a little while later someone comes along and says 'Hang on, I've got a negative here in pristine condition'. Labels do lie, believe it or not - they've done what their budget will allow and want the punter to cough up for it, but they're not going to say that. Like Paramount lying and saying the cut footage from My Bloody Valentine doesn't exist anymore - funny how Lionsgate found it, eh? And have a read at all the stuff Don May Jr of Synapse has managed to unearth - like a decent print/negative of Intruder. And hasn't he also found a film print/negative of Last House on Dead End Street that Barrel claimed didn't exist?
NB: None of the above am I applying to Arrow or Shameless, by the way. | 