JonasEB
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Posts posted by JonasEB
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Cable and satellite providers occasionally screw up the feed and provide only the SAP audio - this issue has come up before on the board so this is likely what has happened in your case.
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I really don't understand why some people are so hostile towards Blu-ray. You don't have to buy anything you don't want to, Blu-ray players play DVDs and will continue to do so. DVDs are still widely manufactured and sold. The transition has been far smoother and more palatable than any prior video format - you're not forced to do anything. Blu-ray player and media prices have dropped faster than DVD players and media did a decade ago (last year I bought a region free Blu-ray player, at a Best Buy store, not an etailer, for $100 - you couldn't do that in 2001 with DVD - and you can get two Ozu films in high quality HD from the UK for less than $20 - an impossibility for one film on DVD in 2001.) The quality standards of the format improved with greater speed than DVD did (have you ever seen the early DVDs? They really don't hold up so well.)
So here I am, still happy with my collection of DVDs which I still use on a weekly basis, completely free to buy whatever films I already own on DVD on Blu-ray when they come out, able to get many things I don't have in the very best video quality we've ever had, and still able to buy a plethora of DVDs of films that aren't or may never be available on Blu-ray.
Sounds like a great, perfectly fair deal to me!
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I don't think they have, actually. Silents have always been restricted to Silent Sundays, maybe 4-6 a month guaranteed, but over the last couple of years TCM has flooded a couple of months with silent films (October last year - Buster Keaton - and November the year before - for the "Moguls and Movie Stars" history series) and Summer Under the Stars has often been graced by a couple of silent film days (an entire day of Lon Chaney last year, John Gilbert in 2010.) And there's always the random day or night when a lot of silents will be shown (like Chaplin last month.)
I would like to see even more but I think overall the number of silent films may have increased on the channel over the last few years.
Unfortunately, we're about to enter February - 31 Days of Oscar - so we're not going to get much in the way of silent films for the next month and change. Looks like it's only two - White Shadows in the South Seas and Two Arabian Knights.
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You buying the public domain discs and the people who make money off of it are entirely different things, I never wrote anything about the people buying the discs, my problem is with the people who make them - pay attention.
The simple solution is the following: don't pay for cheap public domain discs, download them. If you want to buy the films, get the real thing instead, which will help companies like Kino continue to release more obscure things like this - http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=988
Pay for a Kino, get more great films that desperately need attention. Pay for a Madacy Entertainment thing, you just fund more poor quality sets that repeat the same cheap public domain content over and over.
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Buster Keaton is susceptible to the "Public Domain" virus - please don't support cheap Public Domain exploitation, they benefit none of the people doing the hard work of restoring these films and they occassionally rip off these very people. The following are the official Buster Keaton discs in America...
Kino's The Art of Buster Keaton DVD box set featuring the pre-MGM feature films - http://kino.com/video/item.php?product_id=597 (Note: This is outdated and made from 1990s Laserdisc transfers. The new editions from the most up to date restorations are listed below.)
Kino's set of the restored silent short films - http://kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=1219 (available on Blu-ray and DVD.)
Kino's set of the Educational Pictures era short films - http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=1084
Kino's new restoration Blu-rays and DVDs of the silent feature films:
Our Hospitality - http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=1187
Sherlock Jr/Three Ages - http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=1161
Go West/Battling Butler - http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=1233
Seven Chances - http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=1253
The General - http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=936
Steamboat Bill Jr. - http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=1087
(Note: The Navigator, College, and The Saphead aren't available yet, they will come out sometime this year. The old editions should be available for purchase but it's better to wait.)
Warner's set of The Cameraman, Spite Marriage, and Free and Easy - http://www.wbshop.com/Buster-Keaton-Collection-The-TCM-Archives/1000002226,default,pd.html
Sony's collection of the Columbia Pictures short films - http://www.amazon.com/Buster-Keaton-Anniversary-Collection-Nuisance/dp/B000E1EHQI
Dougboys, Sidewalks of New York, and What No Beer? are available from the Warner Archive (http://www.wbshop.com/Warner-Archive/ARCHIVE,default,sc.html)
Parlor Bedroom & Bath, The Passionate Plumber, and Speak Easily are not yet available but will eventually end up available through the Warner Archive.
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> {quote:title=hamradio wrote:}{quote}libradoll wrote:
> << I think it was a courageous and gutsy leap of faith for a black and white silent movie to be attempted in this day and age >>
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> Yes and it paid off!
Winner at the Golden Globes and all the praises its been receiving! Makes me wonder what the producers of "Avatar" and the "Twilight" saga must be thinking....never mind I know :_|It's awfully cynical of me, but the reason why The Weinstein Co. picked up the movie in the first place is because they knew they could advertise it in a very specific way to specific people and get these results.
The American business model for nearly twenty years now has been to produce cash cows and blockbuster type films for most of the year and, during the fall and winter, use their "indie farms" (Weinstein Co., Fox Searchlight, etc.) to produce product for another audience. One always hears lamentation of the lack of "adult" or "smart" or "(similar term)" films during this time of the year...the time of the year when you always happen to get a multitude of movies that fulfill those demands to the people who say such things. And these films always do financially well, contrary to the widespread belief, and it's because they're often marketed using the above assumptions about the films they're selling.
It's as focus grouped and market tested as any of the blockbusters but in a different way. The Artist passes market muster not because it conforms to a formula but because it has a...level of quirkiness and obvious difference that can easily be marketed. It's a clear image of "opposite." I mentioned in another thread that the Japanese never exported Ozu's films back in the day not because of their stylistic properites (they thought they were completely ordinary) but because, in its subject and genre, they were perceived to lack any appeal to western audiences. A period film or a samurai film have basic exotic appeal because they look different, but they also have generic similarities to westerns - and that's what we would typically get in the 1950s. It's different and similar at the same time (everything is, actually, but whether or not it can be exploited - that's the key.)
The Artist has obvious differences in its appearance from the normal product we get, but at the same time it appeals to the same things that audiences always like at the movies - sentiment, conventional plotting, etc.
My ultimate point being this - there's no dearth of intelligent or adult or "different" films, it's just difficult to find a lot of them, and I think the tactics that the studios use with films like The Artist only help obscure the rich variety of things that are actually happening every year by giving a priveleged appearance to the set that they choose to endorse every year.
I haven't seen The Artist yet, I very well might enjoy it, but I have wider concerns about its portrayal of silent films, chiefly, that it exploits the idea that silent films are different from sound films when they really aren't; it's only the most superficial difference. It's a novelty I don't appreciate. I get the feeling that 90-99% of the people who see The Artist won't seriously engage themselves with silent films, that ultimately the film's novelty only hepls itself and does nothing to improve the conditions real silent films face.
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It might not be that significant an issue to most people - and Criterion's transfer is okay in other respects - but here are some screencaps and comparisons for anyone interested...
This is a good example of what an Ozu blue sky commonly looks like: http://www.a2pcinema.com/ozu-san/films/captures/equinoxflower/pillow7.jpg
Also: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview/lateautumn/lateautumn06.jpg
This is what the Criterion Floating Weeds looks like: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview2/floatingweeds/floatweeds-screen1.jpg
This is the British Artificial Eye DVD of the same shot: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview2/floatingweeds/floatingweedsAE05.jpg
Another Artificial Eye sky cap: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview2/floatingweeds/floatingweedsAE08.jpg
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Here's typical Ozu skin color: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview/lateautumn/lateautumn24.jpg
Also: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview/lateautumn/lateautumn23.jpg (This is also a great example of what Ozu's reds and greens look like.)
And here's the Criterion Floating Weeds: http://www.a2pcinema.com/ozu-san/films/captures/floatingweeds/8.jpg
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General review of the British AE DVD: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview2/floatingweeds.htm
General review of the Criterion DVD: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview2/floatingweeds2.htm
The Criterion caps look pretty bright and harsh in comparison to the soft, delicate counter examples. The British DVD isn't perfect but it reflects the other Ozu films of the period in ways that the Criterion does not. (Upon further reflection, Floating Weeds and Good Morning are the only problematic Criterion Ozu discs, the others seem to be well within the margin of acceptable variation.)
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I also prefer the silent version, an opinion I haven't changed since the first time I saw these films, among the most beautiful looking films Ozu ever made and one of his best silents. The color Floating Weeds probably ranks at the bottom of my list of Ozu's color films (but as Ozu is first and foremost among my favorite artists that simply means its still better than 99% of the stuff out there.)
But I think part of the problem might be what Criterion did to the colors - it isn't as bad as their DVD of Good Morning, but they've completely altered Ozu's clearly defined color palette. The ordinary reds seem oversaturated and it seeps into the skin color which should look simply like average Asian tones. The blues too seem overdone; an Ozu sky should be pale blue with the slightest hint of green. The result is that everything seems quite harsh and garish where they should be soft and pleasing. Floating Weeds seems more deliberate and heavy than Ozu normally is, so an inadequate color reproduction really can affect the film adversely.
Most of the Criterion color Ozus seem afflicted to some degree, only Late Autumn seems completely untouched (Equinox Flower and An Autumn Afternoon look okay despite the boosted reds but the new BFI Blu-rays have nailed the colors down properly.) It'll be interesting to see how the eventual BFI Blu-ray release of Floating Weeds looks.
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Some things from the intros to both films that irked me...
"Spritual" - Ozu's concerns were entirely earthbound, spiritual life had little place in his films. One of the reasons Ozu has become a major touchstone for contemporary filmmakers is that he taps into some broader human feeling about every day life, something pretty much everyone can relate to. To return to Paul Schrader's model, I find nothing in common with Robert Bresson and Carl Theodor Dreyer, and on a personal level, I relate to and feel about Ozu's films in an entirely different way than I do with Bresson or Dreyer.
"Little influence of western cinema" - Highly debatable. You could just as easily put "eastern" in there (but then what is "eastern" cinema - I'd suggest it never existed.) Ozu wasn't interested in Japanese films growing up, it was American cinema that sparked his interest in filmmaking. The Japanese studios pursued the American production model in the 1920s and all of the young filmmakers of the period were focused towards the modern things and western style. When Ozu started out you can see clear traces of Harold Lloyd, Josef von Sternberg, and, especially, Ernst Lubitsch in his work but he eventually dropped overt homages. In his own words, "I have formulated my own directing style in my head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others."
When Ozu wasn't distributed in the west in the 1950s for being "Too Japanese", I think the executives probably thought the genre Ozu worked in and the subject matter wouldn't interest Americans and Europeans. This was Shochiku afterall, the most stratified and regulated of the major Japanese studios. We would likely think the Japanese would have no interest in the common American television shows of the 1950s and 1960s - this is what the Shochiku executives basically thought of the films they made; plain entertainment for the middle class Japanese audience. Period films, Samurai films, and Chanbara are exotic and easy to promote to other cultures but a business man dealing with everyday family issues...they couldn't see the point. Simple shortsightedness.
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> {quote:title=Bolesroor wrote:}{quote}The Charlie Chan films would be a perfect example... to show those movies might open a dialogue... between parents and children, between spouses, between messageboard users right here... and in the conversation we could all hear one another's stories and learn the most important lesson: WHY ethnic stereotypes can be harmful, and why we as people should not buy into them or repeat them. That's how prejudice dies.
Come around here when TCM does their next "Race in Hollywood" series - TCM doing exactly what you suggested get's the silliy anti-PC people riled up like nothing else.
By this example, the anti-PC people are the ones who are attempting to stifle discussion.
The term "Politically Correct" is a construct made to try to pathologize conventional societal tendencies and push them on to a single group to make them appear unfavorable. It's political bull and elides real issues of censorship.
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Anytime I hear the anti-PC brigade coming I roll my eyes...
I encountered a user review on amazon.com calling WB's disclaimers about insenstive content on Popeye or Looney Tunes DVDs "Stalinist tactics" - never mind that these are beautifully restored DVDs offering uncut original editions of the films for the first time in decades, putting a plain disclaimer on a disc is apparently going too far.
It's a mind like that, a mind that can't see the obvious cracks in their logic, that is diminishing this country.
Furthermore, people who go on and on about political correctness seem to think there was some magical time when everyone could say anything they wanted to - this is absolutely laughable! It NEVER existed! Societies always dictate prevailing norms whether they are democracies or dictatorships. There are always faux-pas, there are always things that "aren't done," there are always boundaries. Any rational person can see that we are in fact more free to discuss these things today than we ever were 50 years ago on.
The anti-PC thing is mostly a way for mainstream society to feel they are being victimized by the groups they used to victimize. It's a joke. You might get sent to HR for calling someone a **** at work - 70 years ago a homosexual individual could lose their livelihood by being exposed. There's a HUGE difference.
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> {quote:title=JimmyD123 wrote:}{quote}That being said, the picture quality on many, if not most, of the HD broadcasts make the channel nearly unwatchable. And I'm not talking about the fact that these are mostly old movies that were of poor quality to begin with, I'm talking about the fact that TCM seems incapable of broadcasting in HD. Everything looks to be upconverted from SD (and poor SD at that) and just looks terrible.
Maybe you worded it poorly but those old movies aren't visually "of poor quality".
As stated below (and too many times elsewhere) "TCMHD" isn't an actual HD channel. There are reasons for this, chiefly that although a large number of HD telecine transfers for older films exist, TCM needs to collect a large amount of them before starting legitimate HD broadcasting. They don't want an uneven mix of HD & SD material.
TCM should seriously consider running a disclaimer on the HD feed - maybe on the TV rating screen before films start. The existence of the HD channel is already causing enough confusion and we don't need people coming in here every other day complaining about it.
> {quote:title=JimmyD123 wrote:}{quote}The TCM broadcast looks like the source material was VHS tape. And not just VHS tape, but a copy, of a copy, of a copy of a VHS tape.
This is more than an overreaction - I find the quality wanting on widescreen color films but this is a completely wrong statement.
> {quote:title=JimmyD123 wrote:}{quote}Even silent movies that air on TCM carry "5.1 surround sound." Amazing.
I know it's not what you're going on about but it should be pointed out that there are a lot of silent film transfers available with newly composed 5.1 scores.
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> {quote:title=joefilmone wrote:}{quote}In the old studio days there was a better sense of basic storytelling- technically the movies are now better- interestlingly Spielberg shot "War Horse" is real celluloid instead of going digital- perhaps he wanted capture that old lusch studio glow.
"Technologically" the movies have improved (changes in film stock, computers, machinery) - "technically" we haven't done much new since the silent era.
> {quote:title=TopBilled wrote:}{quote}Right...because Spielberg understands the difference between celluloid and high-tech video. This is something that I feel James Cameron does not fully grasp...and it's a simple concept, really.
Except James Cameron isn't the exclusive definition of digital video. The digital photography of Jia Zhangke's films The World and Still Life trump practically anything made on film in the last twenty years.
Not just a beautiful panoramic landscape - http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews52/the_world_blu-ray_/large/large_the_world_blu-ray_6x.jpg
It's not the media used, it's what you do with that media - most people do absolutely nothing with either.
> {quote:title=TopBilled wrote:}{quote}One of the biggest problems I have with current movie-making is the way the films are lit. I know this may seem like a minor quibble to some people, but it is a major deal for me.
Watch more movies - there are countless films that have atmosphere, texture, ambiance, whatever, up the wazoo.
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It's absolutely true that the majority of films in the 1920s, in any past era, were as much "junk" as what we have today. This is a simple fact of everything under the sun, a law of nature; movies, books, tv shows, music, painting, sculpting, etc. etc.
They may not have had a "House Bunny" - that particular type of film - back in the 1920s, but they did have terrible things like Beyond the Rocks (a lot of Valentino films, actually) or Where East is East or The Boob (and actually I'd much rather watch The House Bunny any day over any of those films again.) Trite romance and the stupidest kind of orientalism aren't any better than "toilet humor and sex jokes".
All I can say is you really need to watch more movies - these cheap generalizations about American cinema today already make little sense to me but to hear them while knowing about everything that is happening around the world? Makes no sense. There are an enormous amount of movies made in the last 30-40 years that can throw down with absolutely anything made in the first seventy years of the cinema. One could just as easily ask what in the silent era (any era) can match The Wind Will Carry Us or The Puppet Master or A Brighter Summer Day? But I don't have to - I already know that these are in communion with The Dying Swan, Coeur Fidele, Tabu, The Only Son, How Green Was My Valley, The River, Adelheid.
There is no "then" and "now", there's only cinema, and what makes good cinema has changed very, very little in the last 100 years.
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"TCMHD" isn't a real HD channel, it's just a copy of the main channel with better bandwidth - less compression artifacts, etc. But those films made when "HD was only a dream" are in fact "high definition" (higher than) in their native film form and a lot of them have telecines that can reproduce that (2K) it's just that TCM isn't showing HD material yet.
Whatever problem you are having with the picture size seems to be a problem with your cable service. I have Comcast and haven't encountered this issue.
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NBC has exclusive rights to it.
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> {quote:title=SansFin wrote:}{quote}I will go so far to say that no restoration of a Japanese silent movie is properly done if it does not include a katsudō-shashin-benshi.
This isn't true in all cases: Some studios, most prominently Shochiku, were very much against the benshi (the benshi sometimes upstaged the film they were performing for, some benshi were the audiences' main draw of seeing a film.) If you look at a lot of late silent Shochiku films, especially Ozu's, you'll see an increasing amount of intertitles (Passing Fancy springs to mind.) In Ozu's case, it even matches the amount of talking that would appear in his sound films. And not to mention the editing of the intertitles - they diverge from conventional formulas (ex. close-up character 1, title-card, back to close-up character 1, etc.) not only anticipating their talkie methods but certainly to trip up the usefulness of the benshi's additions to a scene.
In the 1920s, Japanese cinema was increasingly dedicated to pursuing the Hollywood production model & cinematic form and by the time of Ozu, Shimizu, Naruse and their class, the benshi style was out of sync with what they were typically doing. Ozu was a total Americaphile, he didn't like the Japanese films he grew up with, instead eating up any new American or foreign films he could see.
I do think benshi accompaniment to a film like Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth may work out well but it's the point in Japanese cinema where they become superfluous - Ozu has perfected his form and he changes very little in the next 30 years.
Benshi presentations are pretty much always historically accurate but not necessarily artistically accurate.
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The 78 minute version is simply run at a slower, supposedly more correct speed, otherwise it's the same. The film as it is today is incomplete, a third of the material is missing and it's believed that Kinugasa cut it out to enhance the "avant-garde" credentials of the film (he created the version seen yesterday on TCM in the 1970s - he chose the score and ran the film at 24 fps. This isn't the only time Kinugasa has re-edited his films by the way.) The film was supposedly much more straightforward in its original form.
I was disappointed with the film - seems too much like a really flamboyant mimicry of what the French were doing at the time (and some of THOSE films were already extraordinarily flamboyant.) All style and blah substance. By comparison, F.W. Murnau's films from Der Letzte Mann on (especially Mann, Sunrise, City Girl, and Tabu and probably 4 Devils was) are heavily influenced by French Impressionism (among other things) and these are examples of it done right. On a visceral level I found it all too much to involve myself in any emotional context. But Kinugasa sabotaged the film; if the original film could be reconstructed (with the benshi, the scripts to which still exist) things might be different.
And that score! I had to turn the sound off. Bad psychedelic freak-out/poor imitation Krautrock with some conventional avant noodling. It all seems flagrantly orchestrated to emphasize "avant-garde."
Of all of the Japanese silents I've seen, I'd rank this among the lowest - not to say it's "bad", just that I didn't find it lived up to its reputation.
Definitely glad to see TCM dig it up though, I hope we continue to get more left-field surprises like this and the Jean Gremillon films last summer. A really valuable service TCM is doing us.
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> {quote:title=Sprocket_Man wrote:}{quote}
> > Those cameras from the 40's and 50's gave a texture to film that was so beautiful. Those machines must be somewhere...why not dust them off and use them? Utilize the mid-century microphones and recorders, too.
> It has nothing to do with the cameras (the lenses are another matter; they're actually much sharper now), and everything to do with the aforementioned film stocks and, even more importantly, the cinematographers.
Yes, I can't remember who said it at the moment but one of the cinematographers covered in The Parade's Gone By, when talking about the sophistication of the early film cameras, said that you could load modern stock into them and you would get the same results as a then contemporary camera (1960s.)
But I don't think cameramen lack the skill to recreate old "light and shadow" - it just wouldn't fit into anything being made today (and frankly it didn't fit into much of the old stuff either.) I can't imagine anything today that would benefit from Sternberg lighting.
I'm watching Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) again and it certainly has a sophistication in its lighting and photography that is as good, even better, than anything made in the first half of the century...and it's in color...and it's 16mm!
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> {quote:title=phw wrote:}{quote}I hear what you're saying about the old B&W movies... my initial frustration and despair with TCM HD arrived during the Halloween movie marathon when I was hoping to be able to see all my old Universal Classics in glorious HD... but instead got a horrible 4x3 squeeze... but i guess there's no money in paying to upres all that old content.
Actually, I'm pretty sure the Universal horror classics are available in HD - the recent DVDs certainly would have been at least 2K telecines (a little more than 1080p) so it's probable that HD broadcast masters exist for these. The problem is that TCM needs to collect a large number of new HD TV masters before they can have a viable HD station. Because of the widespread perception that old films won't benefit from HD (wrong) TCM needs enough HD content to run without being reliant on repeating those same films and without running too much SD content among it. The latter is unavoidable but it's important to have a lot of genuine HD content to avoid creating more confusion (although the existence of the TCMHD channel probably already creates this confusion.)
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SD will simply look bad on an HDTV.
TCMHD isn't a real HD channel, it just provides greater bandwidth, which will diminish digital artifacts, and they are simply artificially enlarging widescreen films to fit the screen. Black and white films in academy ratio tend to look pretty good, often nearly as good as a DVD, because there is zero manipulation - they simply benefit from the higher bandwidth. Widescreen color films tend to do poorly.
It can't be helped until TCM starts showing genuine HD programming, which is a complicated issue for a classic movie channel. They don't want two separate channels, so they need enough HD material to broadcast without being repeat heavy and without showing too much SD content among the genuine HD content. The latter will be unavoidable, but due to the widespread perception that older films don't benefit from HD (wrong, wrong, wrong) it is necessary to have enough HD content to prevent this confusion (although the existence of the HD channel probably already does this.)
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I restrict myself to five different film suggestions every time I post over there - right now only about once each week. There's the occasional person who will post twenty or so everyday, which is is a bit obnoxious (the posts don't disappear, they're all collected, but that amount still drowns out other people's requests.) I wouldn't repeat-post a single title several times each day - once a day is good enough.
TCM is just looking for good ideas. Popularity would probably help but I know that a few of the films I've suggested and have subsequently seen on TCM were only requested by myself.
Also, the Suggest A Movie page is quite buggy. If you go through each page you'll notice it jumps from date to date - like today, page 1 will have the most recent requests but page 2 will suddenly jump back to December 1st. Those missing dates in between weren't deleted, they're still getting them at their end, it's just a slight bug that still hasn't been resolved.
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Among the rarities on December 14th's George Eastman House day is this one...
The highly significant Japanese silent film A Page of Madness. There is no official video edition of this, even in Japan, and to my knowledge this is the first time it's showed up in an English-language country on television.
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December 14th - The highly significant Japanese silent film A Page of Madness will be shown. There is no official video edition of this, even in Japan, and to my knowledge this is the first time it's showed up in an English-language country on television.
Winner at the Golden Globes and all the praises its been receiving! Makes me wonder what the producers of "Avatar" and the "Twilight" saga must be thinking....never mind I know :_|
Blu Ray Discs
in General Discussions
Posted
Video is probably always going to be somewhat different from projected film, but a Blu-ray at 24fps is getting pretty close. I'd say the detail and the visible grain levels of good projection are very similar and the motion of the images, although aflicted with a little more motion blur than you might see on projected film, is closer to film than what the old SD NTSC 2:3 pulldown could provide.
Black Narcissus and the Red Shoes truly look exceptional on Blu-ray, two of the very best discs out there, old or new, I think you'll be satisfied when you see them. When people point out increased sharpness in textures in the image, it's always relative to the film; if it's handled right it shouldn't be unnatural, always true to what's on the film (and a good generation film of any age is of higher visual quality than what a Blu-ray can provide - the Blu-ray, from a 2K or 4K telecine scan, is just presenting more of what's on the film.)
But an important fact of life with Blu-ray and HDTV is that the user has to be proactive with the settings on their TV and player, much more so than with a Tube. Setting the sharpness down to zero (no artificial enhancement) is an absolute must, turn off edge enhancement, turn off noise reduction, turn off settings like "Motion Flow" or "Auto Motion Plus" (which are separate from the 120hz - or higher - refresh/frame rate that they're always advertised with), and find the right balance between the brightness & contrast settings and the backlight of the TV (and of course slight color adjustment.) It takes some doing but when you get it right it's absolutely worth all of the trouble.