Monday, 20 February 2017

All the President's Men (1976)

The Warner blu-ray sounds bad. The high frequencies have been removed and some ghastly upper midrange-emphasising EQ has been applied to the entire film, leaving it sounding muted and oddly 'peaky' (as was done for the World at War blu-rays).

The Warner Special Edition DVD sounds more detailed and much more natural.

The BD also looks poor, and I'm inclined to believe these quotes from Gordon Willis, even though Jeffrey Wells has a history of being fucking insane.

Here's a video that switches between the two discs every few seconds:

3 comments:

  1. Argh! I've been saying this for years but never had I seen the two side by side. Willis said the old master was correct and I'm inclined to believe him-particularly since Warner/MPI is doing this stuff to every transfer they do whether its ATPM, Superman or even Lethal Weapon or 20,000 Leagues.

    I have the LD and really need to grab the SE DVD. The LD looks like the SE shown above but obviously noisier and slightly brighter. The sound is great.

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  2. "it's like talking to a head on a stick." LOL

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