Pale Flower (1964)
乾いた花
Crime, Romance • 1h 36m
Director: Masahiro Shinoda
Cast: Ryō Ikebe, Mariko Kaga, Takashi Fujiki, Naoki Sugiura, Shinichirō Mikami, Isao Sasaki, Koji Nakahara, Chisako Hara, Seiji Miyaguchi, Eijirō Tōno, Mikizo Hirata, Kyū Sazanka, Sōhei Kurata, Shin'ya Mizushima, Muga Takewaki, Hiroshi Mizushima, Isao Tamagawa, Tomoko Saitō, Keiko Kuni, Akio Tanaka, Reizaburo Yamamoto, Hideo Kidokoro, Osamu Abe, Keiko Mizushina, Shinobu Emi, Tae Hayakawa, Teruko Yamada, Fusako Maki, Toshio Shimamura, Fumio Tooyama, Masahiko Inoue, Isao Suenaga, Yoshihide Satō, Katsumasa Yamayoshi, Masaaki Hagihara, Yôji Doki, Keiji Tsuchida, Nobuo Takagi, Kentarō Imai, Eiji Tsumura, Shôsuke Oni, Hideo Asami, Hiroshi Nozawa, Shinkichi Hayabusa, Daijirô Minami, Kanji Ōsugi, Akie Kokubu, Hiromi Hagita, Shuichi Oki, Yûsaku Nishihara, Hiroshi Ikaida
Best English-friendly release · updated 1 year ago
Overview
A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling.
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
Director: Masahiro Shinoda
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Steve James
Director: Joel Coen
Director's Cut: Disappointing UK StudioCanal/US Criterion 4K Blu-ray
Theatrical Cut: LaserDisc or 2001 UK Universal DVD
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=21782879#post21782879 - comparison. StudioCanal is a massive improvement to the Criterion but still flawed in some areas (chroma noise)
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Criterion 4K Blu-ray poor compression, otherwise Second Sight has best Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
> BFI 4K Blu-ray. caps Criterion presents the master as originally graded in SDR whereas FiM added HDR / Dolby Vision for the BFI.
Criterion 4K Blu-ray's audio mix has more detail than BFI’s and same applies to the subtitles, covering both English and France spoken word
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Director: Terrence Malick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Lovely underlying remaster by Criterion and Resillion but encode is sadly low-pass filtered by Pixelogic, and even then, the encode is still less than ideal. Still easily obliterates any prior disc release, but certainly wouldn't hurt to have a UK or German label take a crack at this same master.
Director: Anthony Mann
Criterion 4K Blu-ray, Universal 2008 DVD
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
2008 Universal DVD mono
The mono on the Criterion is severely filtered resulting in it sounding incredibly muffled. It is nearly as filtered as the 2003 original Universal DVD which had extreme filtering and sounds horribly thin. The 2008 DVD remaster and original Laserdisc analog mastering are mostly left alone. The original LD master is from a worn element but otherwise sounds very natural. The 2008 DVD is the highest quality version we have without the heavy filtering and the defects of the LD master. It isn't perfect but easily the best of the main four sources by a dramatic margin.
The existing 4K SDR restoration looks excellent, but the Criterion extras are limited and disappointing. The classic Stewart interview commentary from the LD is ported over but given a new mastering. Compared to past releases it has been very slightly noise reduced.
More Crime on Blu-ray
Director: Iain Softley
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Both 88 Films and Germany Capelight are superior to the Shout! Factory in HDR10 but their FEL layer may even things out. Objectively, the Capelight looks best as they avoided the chroma blocking that’s visible in 88’s disc but they in turn included an Atmos mix. I have the Shout! Factory, love how it looks and the 4K transfer is spectacular. https://slow.pics/c/vPmFQSAH
Shout! Factory has the exclusive The Beauty of the Baud and the You Can't Stop Us All featurettes.
Director: John Woo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
review: Disk Kino
Both have better encoding than Disk Kino, some shots are better on Shout! Factory, others on Arrow
Shout Factory still has the best video while Arrow did a questionable regrade. Arrow definitely has less grain in most shots, has a worse encode and is cm v2.9 compared to Shout’s cm v4.0.
Shout! Factory/Arrow 4K Blu-ray has the original mono
TV series
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative for all episodes
Director: Lloyd Bacon
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: Ralph Bakshi
Director: Roman Polanski
Director: Alan Clarke
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
The 88 Films 4K Blu-ray is disappointing. Indicator Blu-ray > 88 Films Blu-ray. From nicolas:
Fine master, solid HDR but very poorly encoded with strong blocking artifacts in normal areas and clipped highlights that bring Criterion’s Walkabout to mind. Their Blu-ray is slightly better overall but then again still not as good as FiM’s encode for Indicator.
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