Last night I watched William Friedkin‘s new color-desaturated, de-focused, reduced and blended with black-and-white French Connection Blu-ray, which comes out next Tuesday.
From the standard 2005 DVD. Stark, blueish, unprettified.
The Blu-ray image — lighter, quasi-bleachy, snowier, more grain.
I don’t care if this makes me sound unhip — it’s awful, a rip-off, a desecration and a five-alarm burn. The original film (i.e., the version that played in theatres in ’71 and which was captured for the 2005 standard DVD) is plenty gritty and muddy-looking on its own without Friedkin futzing around. Please, I’m telling you — don’t buy this friggin’ thing. Unless you’re a purist monk it’ll just piss you off. Trust me on this one.
Note: Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny is not a monk on this matter, as a recently posted essay makes clear.
