The ghost of Stanley Kubrick is choking, hissing and sputtering over the apparent teal-tinting in portions of Criterion’s 4K Eyes Wide Shut disc, which pops on 11.25.25.
I’ve seen Eyes Wide Shut at least eight or nine times (twice theatrically, once or twice on DVD, the rest via WHE’s unrated 2008 Bluray), and the blue-and-amber nocturnal accent scheme has always been the same.
Nocturnal accent colors adorning the wooden window-sill-and-frames of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman‘s bedroom, the window sill-and-frame lighting outside of Sydney Pollack‘s pool room salon, the bluish-amber tints in the Harford kitchen…we’re talking lots of blue and amber. Unmistakably.
Remember the iron-bar gates of that Long Island estate where the orgy was held? They were painted vivid, bordering-on-radiant blue, and with a fresh coast of paint at that.
But the proverbial teal monster has reared its revoltingly ugly and disgusting head in Criterion’s forthcoming 4K version of this 1999 film.
A DVD Beaver rendering of a still from that daylit scene (Cruise staring at the gates) shows a distinct teal flavoring — the gates were luminous plain blue in an older version, but now they’re unmistakably a dark somber teal-green.
Even the frequently obsequious and kowtowing Gary W. Tooze, owner and proprietor of DVD Beaver, admits in his review that the Criterion 4K “does have some teal-leaning.”
