Harrison Ressler
5 Films
Harrison Ressler
5 Included Films
Harrison Ressler began his film career in 1974, at the age of 66. After appearing on the television game show "To Tell The Truth" as one of the impostors, Producer Mark Goodson suggested he become an actor. In his motion picture career he considered himself privileged to share the screen with actors like Laurence Olivier, Sean Connery, Burgess Meredith, Jeff Bridges, Robert DeNiro, and Zero Mostel. His passion for theater and cinema began during his high school years, where he acted in Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado" as Ko-Ko. He was a true renaissance man, writing plays, lyrics, and poetry throughout his formative years. In his freshman year at City College he was active in amateur theater, but The Great Depression led him down another path. Married and expecting his first child in 1929, he found work in sales in the NYC garment district, a career that he held for 40 years. During that time he kept his passion for the arts alive, participating in regional amateur theater, composing music, writing lyrics, arranging and performing for the USO during WWII at Camp Kilmer, emceeing at Catskill Mountain resorts, and performing in fraternal and charitable organization productions. Some of his best known songs include 'Shadows in the Moonlight' (1948) and 'Nancy from Delancey'. His legacy continues within his own family, as many of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have pursued the arts both personally and professionally, inspired by Harrison's example.
The Paramount 4K "restoration" is a desecration. It has completely revisionist color timing, harsh HDR, treatment of stock footage, bad encoding, selective DNR and grain management so bad that the entire screen frequently freezes up with only characters moving around in grain soup. It is so bad that the film's restorer Robert Harris publicly washed his hands of it saying essentially the 2007 restoration (with Willis and Coppola supervising) is how the film was intended and made. This is Paramount's modern version done their way. The new 1080p SDR Blu-rays in print are the crap 4K desecration master with the same problems still there just harder to spot and with crap encodes. Part II overall fares better than the first film but it has all the same problems. Randomly some shots are the worst in the trilogy looks mushy and manipulated to death.
The mono option is an unnecessarily processed version of the lossy mono from the 2008 Blu-ray. The 2008 Blu-ray of the 2007 Coppola Restoration while an imperfect outdated disc is LIGHT YEARS better than this 4K desecration. The only truly major issue is that it is very slightly redder than the 2007 finished master as seen on DCPs. The lossy mono on the 2008 Blu-ray is the best version of the original mix known to exist as it is better than the late 80's mastering for VHS and LaserDisc.
DFIC review of the hideous crap 4K Blu-rays: https://youtu.be/0uw6-Kcy_UA?si=ob1nDg0wTCvemjH0
The Paramount 4K "restoration" is a desecration. It has completely revisionist color timing, harsh HDR, treatment of stock footage, bad encoding, selective DNR and grain management so bad that the entire screen frequently freezes up with only characters moving around in grain soup. It is so bad that the film's restorer Robert Harris publicly washed his hands of it saying essentially the 2007 restoration (with Willis and Coppola supervising) is how the film was intended and made. This is Paramount's modern version done their way. The new 1080p SDR Blu-rays in print are the crap 4K desecration master with the same problems still there just harder to spot and with crap encodes. Part II overall fares better than the first film but it has all the same problems. Randomly some shots are the worst in the trilogy looks mushy and manipulated to death.
The mono option is an unnecessarily processed version of the lossy mono from the 2008 Blu-ray. The 2008 Blu-ray of the 2007 Coppola Restoration while an imperfect outdated disc is LIGHT YEARS better than this 4K desecration. The only truly major issue is that it is very slightly redder than the 2007 finished master as seen on DCPs. The lossy mono on the 2008 Blu-ray is the best version of the original mix known to exist as it is better than the late 80's mastering for VHS and LaserDisc.
DFIC review of the hideous crap 4K Blu-rays: https://youtu.be/0uw6-Kcy_UA?si=ob1nDg0wTCvemjH0
Director: John Guillermin
StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray: good encode, but poor colours. More extras Paramount 4K Blu-ray: good colours but poor encode.
(Paramount 4K Blu-ray has a 5.1 mix ONLY, which contains a music error) a possible replacement disc is still to be confirmed...
Shout! Factory Blu-ray has extras missing from 4K
Director: John Guillermin
StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray: good encode, but poor colours. More extras Paramount 4K Blu-ray: good colours but poor encode.
(Paramount 4K Blu-ray has a 5.1 mix ONLY, which contains a music error) a possible replacement disc is still to be confirmed...
Shout! Factory Blu-ray has extras missing from 4K
The original mono mix has bad pitch and sound quality issues on the Shout! Factory Blu-ray and is terrible sounding. The LaserDisc PCM mono is very good but sounds a tad muffled in comparison to the MGM 2004 DVD mono at first listen. Yet the DVD mono has the volume of the entire track normalized so that effects and music remain at consistent levels which they don't in the LaserDisc mono-meaning that the jokes and gags hit harder in the LaserDisc mono because the mix varies as it was intended. It may be that the same source was used and then EQ'd and processed for the DVD boxset as all the mono mixes were messed around with. For example, when the hunchback disguise goes off with the explosions, the DVD mono has everything at a mostly consistent level. On the LaserDisc the effects build and fall off in loudness so the intensity is entirely different because they were mixed that way for comedic effect. Another is the piano smashing-on the DVD mono it's at the same level as the rest of the scene. On the LaserDisc it's loud and aggressively so which again makes the gag hit so much harder.
Again, the remixes are existing MGM ones and not good. The 5.1 remix on the Shout! Factory Blu-ray does not have pitch issues but the stereo remix does.
The original mono mix has bad pitch and sound quality issues on the Shout! Factory Blu-ray and is terrible sounding. The LaserDisc PCM mono is very good but sounds a tad muffled in comparison to the MGM 2004 DVD mono at first listen. Yet the DVD mono has the volume of the entire track normalized so that effects and music remain at consistent levels which they don't in the LaserDisc mono-meaning that the jokes and gags hit harder in the LaserDisc mono because the mix varies as it was intended. It may be that the same source was used and then EQ'd and processed for the DVD boxset as all the mono mixes were messed around with. For example, when the hunchback disguise goes off with the explosions, the DVD mono has everything at a mostly consistent level. On the LaserDisc the effects build and fall off in loudness so the intensity is entirely different because they were mixed that way for comedic effect. Another is the piano smashing-on the DVD mono it's at the same level as the rest of the scene. On the LaserDisc it's loud and aggressively so which again makes the gag hit so much harder.
Again, the remixes are existing MGM ones and not good. The 5.1 remix on the Shout! Factory Blu-ray does not have pitch issues but the stereo remix does.
Director: John Schlesinger
Director: John Schlesinger
Director: Woody Allen
Director: Woody Allen
5 films




