I released a sigh of disappointment when I read Bill Hunt's review of Disney's forthcoming Tombstone Blu-ray at The Digital Bits. As I worried, the transfer was reputed to be lossy, inconsistent, and disappointing to the trained eye. Upon viewing it myself over the weekend, I've come to the same conclusion. It does look visibly, noticeably better than the first DVD edition, but that's the highest compliment I can give it. The black levels, contrast, and color are much better than that first DVD, but it was notoriously bad in the first place.
The biggest problem is that the Blu-ray has an overly-digital look to it. This isn't a subtle de-graining, it's digi-Botox. If you watch the DVD edition of Jurassic Park (from the same era), you can see the grain-present, film-like look. Tombstone has so much Digital Noise Reduction at various points that everyone looks like they got some fresh wax applied to their faces. "It looks like it was shot a few years ago" is not a good thing for the preservation and future of a much-beloved, 17-year-old western that should look like it was made in 1993. A film's vintage is important, and I'm not going Grain Monk-y here. It isn't the horror show that was Patton on Blu, but it's in the same category of misstep.
While I was reading Hunt's piece and its comments on a "Director-Approved" transfer, I recalled one of my favorite "aha!"pieces Jeff has put together for Elsewhere that went up back in 2006. It turns out that Kurt Russell ghost-directed Tombstone, and the legend behind the making of it is larger than what has been told publicly, outside of a few articles like the one Jeff posted about four years ago. This means there's never really been a full-participation, properly- blessed transfer supervision on any digital version of the movie.
I sent the link over to Bill in an email exchange last week, and he was floored. He added an addendum to his original review after this exchange. He linked some more pieces from years past about the ghosts of Tombstone in a "My Two Cents" post at The Bits last Thursday, and he invoked The Movie Gods in his pledge to help make a deluxe 20th Anniversary edition happen in 2013. Count me in as part of the posse. There's a book, a documentary, and a deluxe swag-and-everything release in this story.
The Blu-ray transfer that will be available 8 days from now is much better than the 1998 DVD kicking around in the bargain used bins, and it's better in most respects than the 2002-released Vista Series edition. It is exponentially better than the pan-and-scan transfer that The History Channel HD has stretchy-visioned for 16x9 monitors over the last year or so. Hopefully this transfer will take over for that abomination. None of that changes the fact that this could be, right here and now, a definitive transfer of this movie.
I love Tombstone, and I was looking forward to this release big-time. Like many other half-hearted Blu-ray "first dips", most people won't notice the problems here, that's true. The studios will roll out "newly-remastered Special Editions" within a couple of years and cash back in as everyone is wowed by actual effort. Plenty of reviewers have simplistically glossed over the issues with this transfer, which are wholly representative of the wool being pulled over so many eyes when it comes to Blu-ray early adoption. Enough with the multi-dipping, I'm done with it.