Are they still colorizing old movies?
Or did that stop?
It seems like when Ted Turner first started it, the process was a little iffy.
But that was years ago, and I’m sure they could do it perfectly now and for 1/10 what it cost him.
(I’m not especially interested in opinions on whether it should be done, only whether it is still being done.)
I believe they stopped. Not only was the process not so great when ted Turner did it, but the fact is many movie enthusiaests saw it as the abomination that it is and complained.
Now Hollywood prefers to make near exact remakes in color with lower quality talent.
i.e.
Psycho (shot for shot)
Charade (this time with Mark Wahlberg in the Cary Grant role… gag)
Family Man (which is basically a role-reversal of It’s a wonderful life"
Mission Impossible 2 ( About 70% of this movie is stolen from Notorius whith a shot by shot reshoot of the racetrack scene).
I noticed the other day that the first season of “Gilligan’s Island” has been colorized to make it more accessible, but i don’t know how long ago this was done.
Perhaps, more bothersome isn’t the blatant colorizing of old black-and-white movies, but rather the other changes that can easily be made with the advent of computers.
Movies are routinely edited, sped up, cut up, logos are erased, changed or added, soundtracks are changed, and no one seems to really care all that much.
Sadly, this wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if the movie companies were required to alert the consumer as to any and all changes made to a film from its initial release.
There is also the argument that its ok as long as the director approves, such as Lucas and his re-editing of the Star Wars trilogy. Or Spielberg’s cutting out a scene from E.T. which featured a joke about terrorism.
And then there are the subtle edits, like Fantasia’s video release not panning over to reveal characters which may appear racist in today’s society.
Sadly, I feel the idea of movies as an artform is dying, and its now more important that its commercial, thus justifying any and all changes. How long before the color version of “Schindler’s List” is released, or “Saving Private Ryan” with a toned down first 30 minutes, so as to make it more acceptable to be shown in classrooms. Spielberg is a powerful enough director to stop such changes, but he’s one of the few…
Sorry, if i got sidetracked. To answer your question, colorizing old movies has gotten much better than the 80’s, but is probably not being done nearly as much as other forms of editing…
I kind of agree on the other forms of editing.
One thing that troubles me is the “Director Cut” business of revisionism. To me it’s a cheap way to “correct” the critics: “You wouldn’t have said it was shallow if you’d seen the stuff from the cutting room floor.” Well, we didn’t, so why try to have it both ways?
The comment on Gilligan makes me wonder if they couldn’t do that with other TV properties. Like “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”, where Gilligan played Maynard G. Crebs.
I do know that White Christmas was restored a few years back…the color was brightened, so it looks more like the original. It DOES look better, as it’s not as faded. And the fading was from age.
With Star Wars, I believe Lucas started out with the idea of just doing that-restoring what was in bad shape. (And it was, in VERY bad shape.)
Well, for every well-colorized movie, there certainly has to be 10 hideously bad ones. To keep on your Christmas motif, Miracle on 34th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life are the biggest steaming piles of…whoops, sorry, don’t wanna get this moved to the Pit :). I understand that it’s a significant amount of work to color match grey scaling but why do it in the first place? I don’t judge a movie by whether it’s color or not (of course, I’m not going to call it artsy and deep just because it’s black and white!); Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is an excellent movie regardless of any colorization, while Star Wars definitely relies on a rich color scheme to tell the story.
As for director’s cuts…I believe those are more to replace scenes that had to be cut to get it to a “reasonable” length for theatre viewing…apparently the studio feels more strongly about removing it than the director!
I prefer colorized photos to colorized films. I do it myself, with a graphics program I have.
Colorizing died out after the colorized version of Casablanca sold less then 500 copies worldwide.
The colorizing people have learned that colorizing doesn’t make the younger audience any more likely to watch the films, and made the older audiences much more likely not to watch.
I agree, colorized movies are an abomination. Witness “Yankee Doodle Dandy”: the color added nothing and frankly, looked weird with the shadows and contrasts from the black and white movie. Black and white was filmed that way for a REASON – so why mess with it. (Horrible thought: Colorized “Citizen Kane” – SHUDDER!!)
Besides, the colorization is only as good as the person who is doing the colorizing. I’ve heard a rumor/urban legend that one colorized movie which featured Frank Sinatra had to be redone: his eyes had been colored BROWN.
Simpletons!