Columbia Tri-Star has released two DVDs containing Three Stooges shorts. It gives you the choice of watching them in black and white or in newly colorized versions. Yes, you read that right. "Colorized." No, you didn't travel back to 1985 and I'm not Ted Turner.

The technology has greatly improved since the '80s, but I'm still against the process.

Still, the tech geek in me has to admit that I'm very impressed with how the colorized Stooges shorts turned out. Click here (http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/threestooges(colorized)goofsontheloosestoogedconfoosed2pack/title-navigation-9.html) for a preview.

I guess that as long as the original black and white is kept available, it's not such a bad thing.

Columbia says the Three Stooges fims are the first of many films on dvd there trying this black & white / color thing on.

Just when I thought that horrible colorization fad was dead and buried.

Well, at least they're giving you a choice, rather than just forcing the colorized versions on us.

;)

Why the hell would they do this to the Stooges? ohno:

As long as the original is intact and available -- Im all for it.

Somethings makes me think both Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie will be given this treatment in 2005.
Just a hunch.

At least you've the option of watching in black and white. Eventually someone will be dumb enough to release the Wizard of Oz with the first 15 minutes colorized. :D

I remember back a long time ago since I used to have the original "Miracle on 34th St." on VHS I copied off of TV and it was colorized. I used to like it and I didn't like that color version at all.:( I like the original 1947 Black & White version better.:) There are a few colorized movies that I have sittin' around somewhere. There were a few Shirley Temple movies that it was colorized except "The Little Princess" was originally released in techincolor in 1938. I have "The Littlest Rebel", "Bright Eyes", "Wee Willie Winkie", "The Poor Little Rich Girl" and "Dimples". All 5 of them are colorized.

Stooges Digitally Painted on DVD

By David Germain
The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - The DVD era is resurrecting the great colorization debate of the 1980s, and at the heart of the matter are Curly, Larry and Moe.

Sony's Columbia TriStar home-video unit is releasing two Three Stooges DVDs that allow viewers to watch the original black-and-white or digitally colorized versions.

Purists consider it desecration, while Sony executives say the process can help introduce Hollywood classics to young audiences reluctant to watch anything in black and white.

The Stooges discs coming out Tuesday also give die-hard fans better black-and-white versions, the studio insists.

To prepare for the colorization process, Sony did a more extensive restoration than it had with previous black-and-white-only Stooges DVD, said Bob Simmons, a technical specialist who worked on the project.

"The best thing about this DVD release is it gives the consumer the ultimate choice," said Suzanne White, vice president of marketing for Columbia TriStar home entertainment. "They can watch the very best, the finest restored image of the black-and-white version, or watch the new colorized version and switch instantaneously between the two."

The new Stooges DVDs, "Goofs on the Loose" and "Stooged and Confoosed," contain four shorts each featuring Moe and Curly Howard and Larry Fine.

Offering a choice does not appease colorization critics, who include Sam Raimi, director of Sony's "Spider-Man" blockbusters.

"I don't think they should mess with black and white," said Raimi, who is such a Stooges fan that credits on some of his movies label extras as "fake Shemps," a reference to doubles used to complete Stooges shorts after the death of Shemp Howard, who replaced brother Curly after his stroke in the 1940s.

"I think they should just leave it as they are and try to preserve them as best they can. I feel like it's an artistic interpretation that's not anybody's right to make except the director's."

In the 1980s, media magnate Ted Turner enraged film-lovers when he colorized "Casablanca," "The Maltese Falcon" and other classic black-and-white films from the MGM library he had acquired.

Those 1980s dye jobs often tinted actors' faces an unnatural, pasty hue, while colors of clothing, sets and props were arbitrary.

The new digital process allows greater range of colors that give people, objects and backgrounds a more natural look, Simmons said. Researchers also mined Sony's archives and prop warehouses to more accurately recreate colors, he said.

For example, they found the actual stove used in "An Ache in Every Stake," in which the Stooges play ice-delivery men caught up in preparing a fancy birthday meal that climaxes with an exploding cake. The stove was yellow, so that's the hue it has in the colorized version, Simmons said.

Yet critics say it's bogus to match colors to studio props, whose tints were chosen for the way they photographed in black and white. Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert, responding to a reader's question last month, wrote that for consistency, colorized versions should paint the actors' faces light green, the color of makeup that was applied so they would photograph better in black and white.

"Colorization is a form of vandalism," Ebert wrote.

Columbia TriStar's White says colorization is just another tool to make old movies more palatable to modern audiences, like converting analog sound to 5.1 digital audio.

The studio hopes to use the colorization process on some black-and-white feature films. If coloring the images raises consumer interest in old titles, "it may be a way of getting more black-and-white films released" that otherwise would not have been economically feasible, White said.

"Star Wars" creator George Lucas, who testified with Steven Spielberg before Congress in the 1980s against colorization and other forms of alteration, said the process yanks such slapstick performers as the Stooges out of the black-and-white universe they belong in.

"Would color distract from their comedy and make it not as funny anymore?" Lucas said. "Maybe just the fact that they're in black and white makes it funny, because their humor is dated. But by putting it in black and white, it puts it in a context where you can appreciate it for what it was.

"But you try to make it in full living color and try to compare it to a Jim Carrey movie, then it's hard for young people to understand. Because you're then thinking you're comparing apples to apples, when you're not. You're comparing apples to oranges. I'm saying it's not fair to the artist."

Originally posted by AKA

"Star Wars" creator George Lucas, who testified with Steven Spielberg before Congress in the 1980s against colorization and other forms of alteration, said the process yanks such slapstick performers as the Stooges out of the black-and-white universe they belong in.

"Would color distract from their comedy and make it not as funny anymore?" Lucas said. "Maybe just the fact that they're in black and white makes it funny, because their humor is dated. But by putting it in black and white, it puts it in a context where you can appreciate it for what it was.

"But you try to make it in full living color and try to compare it to a Jim Carrey movie, then it's hard for young people to understand. Because you're then thinking you're comparing apples to apples, when you're not. You're comparing apples to oranges. I'm saying it's not fair to the artist."

Lucas is the LAST person in the world who should ever complain about tampering with classic films.

I think black and white is better. It's more classic. I have the Beatles film A Hard Day's Night on DVD and it's in black and white. I would hate to see it in color. It would ruin that classic feel to it.

If you are a colorized movie buff, here's what you can do. If you have a color TV set, besure to turn your picture control to black & white on your TV with your remote control, so that you can watch the movie that it looks exactly like the original. There you have it!:D If you have an older black & white TV set, you can watch it like the original does.

If you are a colorized movie buff, here's what you can do. If you have a color TV set, besure to turn your picture control to black & white on your TV with your remote control, so that you can watch the movie that it looks exactly like the original. There you have it!:D If you have an older black & white TV set, you can watch it like the original does.Well said. The Stooges colourized pics look pretty good and this can only help create a new generation of fans who usually shy away from B&W material. I'm all for it as long as the original B&W masters are preserved and the colourization is well done.

Can't wait until they do this to Lucy.

The Stooges should remain in black and white.

I like films for what they are, I like them black and white without sugarcoating it all. Nothing is sacred to these people. They didn't do the Wizard of Oz that way, so why should they do it to the Three Stooges?? :mad:

I like films for what they are, I like them black and white without sugarcoating it all. Nothing is sacred to these people. They didn't do the Wizard of Oz that way, so why should they do it to the Three Stooges?? :mad:For me sugarcoating is more like Hollywood feel-good war flicks - the colourization process is something else. The reason why The Wizard of Oz wasn't and will never be colourize unlike the Stooges or TV's I Love Lucy is because its beginning and end were deliberately filmed in B&W or Spielberg's entire Schindler's List for that matter.