Telecine transfers in Russian Blurays

[titanic]

I wrote it as a comment at myspleen but I thought to start a new thread here too.
With these 2 recent uploads at myspleen of telecine transfers in Russian Blurays of 2 films (The Mechanic and Shutter Island), I was wondering if there are other Russian Blurays like this, of pre-2000 movies.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/151274
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/151276

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/152459
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/152462

Thanks for posting these titantic. I had already downloaded Shutter Island but hadn't seen the Mechanic so thanks for the heads up.

I liked the Shutter Island transfer.  Not sure how accurate it is. I assume the regular BD would be from the DI. The regular BD looked nice and colorful but the desaturated look of the Russian BD sometimes fit the mood of the film better. I looked in American Cinematography magazine and they went for a Kodachrome look for the concentration camps scenes but a silver/ENR/CCE look for the rest of the film in the DI (https://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/March.../page1.php):

The rest of the picture is rendered in a palette that approximates a light application of ENR; this look was also achieved with a LUT. “ENR provides an apparent desaturation of skin tones and heightened grain, which enhanced the contrast with the fine-grained, vibrant properties of the Kodachrome look,” says Richardson.  

So who knows, I treat this as an alternative look to the film. I would love to get my hands on as many of these Russian transfer as possible. Especially, since the quality is very good.

[jerryshadoe]

Is there anywhere online where we can easily find out which Russian transfers are different or is it a "hit-and-miss" type of policy?

Not sure and I would like to know myself.

I assume online these would use the rc or r5 designation

[jerryshadoe]

R5 is a DVD region and since we are talking about bluray's, then I would assume that the "RC" designation would help. (paraphrased from here: http://www.torrent-invites.com/showthread.php?t=215754 in post #4)

A simple google search of "rc bluray" does yield a lot of results and now it's just a matter of seeing which ones are actually different from other BD releases.

You are right R5 is a region but it also used for tors that derive from a Russian telecine. I've seen some people still use the R5 designation for HD material.

[jerryshadoe]

Although I haven't seen that myself in relation to video, I wouldn't be surprised by this because not everyone conforms to "standards." In my experience, when seeing the "R5" designation in relation to HD material, it's usually when Russians take R5 DVD audio (usually Russian audio, because they have so many different dub and voice-over versions) and remux it with HD material.

Hope you get that I am NOT trying to argue about this with you, just relating my experience and, as with such things, YMMV

Peace

Not arguing either jerry just saying what I've seen. There are a few RCs out there but you got to look hard.

Frankly, none of the ones I have seen match SI's quality, so I'd like to see more of those...

[jerryshadoe]

Agreed, I haven't seen any that match the quality of SI either and if I do, then I'll share the info here

[TomArrow]

I know it's an old topic, but I have a question about these telecines. At least The Mechanic was released as DCP and scope prints, according to imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472399/technical

The master format is a DI according to those specs. Now, someone somewhere wrote that those Russian versions are likely scanned from an Internegative.

However the Russian Mechanic is Open Matte, whereas the prints were scope. So I would assume that the Internegative would have been scope too, in which case an Open Matte scan would be logically impossible.

Thoughts? If it is indeed a telecine, did the Russians just make a flat print from the Open Matte DI and scan that?