O Brother, Where Art Thou? color grading

[spoRv]

Directors Joel & Ethan Coen and cinematographer Roger Deakins had the entire film scanned and digitally color graded at Cinesite in Los Angeles.

“It was shot in Mississippi in the summer, when it was green and lush,” says Bogdanowicz, “but they wanted a postcard sepia look. They went to a lab and tried to find some sort of process to get the feel they wanted, but they couldn’t achieve it. Color timers in a traditional lab would have used a heavy yellow-red color correction, which would have changed the blue in the sky and the denim jeans. So, the only way to achieve the look was digitally. Cinesite did a chroma-key on the green and turned it to brown gold.” -> link

http://imgur.com/a/TFmoy

So, according to the article, HDTV is the closest to the theatrical presentation IMHO; removing the usual magenta blanket would take it even closer.

[IcePrick]

The Blu-ray definitely looks off to me. I saw this movie theatrically when it came out, and I've always remembered it having a strong sepia look (admittedly, it's quite a long time ago though). The HDTV is closer, but still looks a little off to me. Like you said, there's too much magenta.

[IcePrick]

So, I dug up my old PAL DVD and compared with your HDTV screenshots.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/216922/

It seems to be the same master, but I think the DVD has better colors. I'm guessing a regrade of the Blu-ray would be difficult if they used chroma-key on the green?

[spoRv]

I think that the HDTV, after a color matrix change and the magenta blanket removal, would be the same of the DVD.