Depends on the title, but the main issue with Kino specifically is that some of their discs are mastered at the wrong gamma level. Titles like THE REIVERS and SPACE CAMP are two of the most obviously affected, but there are actually a fair amount from the last few years that have this problem. On SPACE CAMP you can see matte lines you shouldn't be seeing, the entire brightness level is raised excessively high. It's something in their QC department that they've lacked over the years, and they ARE responsible for that. (If you do run into it, it can be solved by turning your TV's gamma level down a notch or, many times, two).Edmund Kattak wrote: ↑Tue Apr 28, 2020 2:04 pm Has Kino-Lorber been known for generally mediocre transfers? So far, the couple I have seem pretty grainy - like THE PACKAGE (1989).
As for THE PACKAGE itself -- which I don't think has a gamma problem -- there's such a thing as a "typical MGM catalog master" and that's pretty representative of it. Those are usually decent, better-than-DVD efforts, but you know they could be better if they were newly remastered. The majority of MGM titles that have been released on Blu-Ray -- be it from Kino, Twilight Time, Shout, Olive, etc. -- are from that batch which were probably done in the mid-late 2000's. They also populate the MGM HD channel and its broadcasts.
It's good, not great. Kino does do remastered transfers -- like MJ noted, they're usually marked as being 2K or 4K restorations. In the case of MGM, newer masters typically have a newer, "gold tinted" MGM logo before them (with Leo's eye up close before pulling out to the usual MGM logo).
And the film's attempts to rig a Vertigo-style doomed love story climax with Scheider and Janet Margolin falls flat due to their lack of chemistry (despite being physically well-staged). It's frustrating, because all of the pieces are there, but it's the work of a gifted novice trying to emulate the work of a Master of Suspense, and getting all of the physical details right (it's a wonderful-looking movie, and oh, that score!) without plumbing the depths of impassioned inner conflict that fueled Hitchcock's best work. At least a pastiche artist like Brian De Palma shored up his Hitchcock imitations of the period with enough terse staging and galvanizing ultraviolence to keep things lively (not to mention his own quirky comic touches that Hitchcock would have been mordantly amused by), whereas Demme is a bit too tasteful with material that should have been treated like zippy pulp trash.