Siskel and Ebert hail black-and-white filmmaking

[Jetfire]

I have alot of Rita's movies on DVD and some look great in black & white and others should have been done in color...and all the ones in color look wonderful.

Trying to just say movies look better in black & white is just silly.

 

[SVD]

I like B&W. colorized just doesnt look right if it's after the fact, and doesnt mesh with the "old" sound that the movies of that era had.

no doubt, like they said, it covers up stuff, which is a plus.

I especially like it's use on Heroes for flashbacks

 

[Broccoli]

I have no strong feelings one way or another, but one thing I don't fully understand about people who argue against colorizing (and digital cleanup for that matter in the case of blu ray), how come it is bad to do that, but it is okay to continually upgrade the audio to a perfect digital 5.1 surround sound quality?

Because, those are fundamentally different things. I'd compare upgrading the audio quality to upgrading the image quality - it's something that comes with remastering and restoring a film. Colourising is adding a new element, like giving CGI effects, say, would be.

I guess it is not so much colorization, but when older films are brought to Blu Ray and they have the option to clean up all the grain on the film, but they purposely leave some, because that is how the movie was meant to be viewed (or some reason like that). But yet, they completely clean up everything audio-wise and make it crystal clear.

 

[Harvey]

I have no strong feelings one way or another, but one thing I don't fully understand about people who argue against colorizing (and digital cleanup for that matter in the case of blu ray), how come it is bad to do that, but it is okay to continually upgrade the audio to a perfect digital 5.1 surround sound quality?

Sometimes 'updating' the audio actually is blasphemy. Witness Kino's rather dramatic (and to some, offensive) changes made in the sound mix to Stalker. At least they include the original mono track as well.

Of course, when new films are brought to DVD or Blu-Ray, especially big franchise pictures, you can be sure that the sound mix has probably been redone to suit your less elaborate 5.1 or 7.1 set-ups. And nobody complains about that because, well, there's no choice but to do that.

Criterion's approach is to be as faithful to the original source material (and the director's wishes) as possible. That's why their Blu-Ray release of The Man Who Fell To Earth, for example, only has a 2.0 sound mix. Because that's the original sound mix.