Early word on the Curzon 4K of The Double Life of Veronique is that the new restoration lands close to what the recent Criterion Three Colors 4K discs did: fine grain now clearly visible, more detail pulled out of the shadows, and a 5.1 track that people are calling glorious. Reportedly the colour grading stays very close to the old Criterion Blu-ray, so this is not one of those releases that reinvents the look.
I could not get at the full write up, so treat all of that as secondhand until more people have the disc in hand. What interests me is the grain part, because that is the thing that separates displays rather than discs. A film shot the way this one was, with that famous golden filtered look, is exactly the material that exposes weak grain handling. On a lot of sets the noise reduction kicks in on its own and turns fine grain into a smeared shimmer during camera moves, and on projectors you can watch the grain field crawl if the bitrate or the tone mapping is not up to it.
The grading note also raises the obvious question: if the colour is effectively the Blu-ray look, then the upgrade you are paying for is resolution, shadow detail and grain fidelity rather than a new HDR grade. For this film I would take that trade, since the last thing it needs is somebody pushing highlights.
If you already have it, what does it look like on a projector? These grain heavy restorations are where 4K discs either justify themselves or fall apart.
I could not get at the full write up, so treat all of that as secondhand until more people have the disc in hand. What interests me is the grain part, because that is the thing that separates displays rather than discs. A film shot the way this one was, with that famous golden filtered look, is exactly the material that exposes weak grain handling. On a lot of sets the noise reduction kicks in on its own and turns fine grain into a smeared shimmer during camera moves, and on projectors you can watch the grain field crawl if the bitrate or the tone mapping is not up to it.
The grading note also raises the obvious question: if the colour is effectively the Blu-ray look, then the upgrade you are paying for is resolution, shadow detail and grain fidelity rather than a new HDR grade. For this film I would take that trade, since the last thing it needs is somebody pushing highlights.
If you already have it, what does it look like on a projector? These grain heavy restorations are where 4K discs either justify themselves or fall apart.
