I believe we have had some informed opinion on the transfers in the new Kubrick box set - by me, who is a hell of a lot more informed than most of the people who write for these websites - not you, MattH, but the kids who have no idea what these films looked like when they were originally shown. Instead, we get comments like "black levels are pitch." The blather about The Searchers' transfer told the tale a lot more eloquently than I could - with everyone tripping over themselves to say how brilliant it was because it was SHARP. Sharp doesn't mean a transfer is great, it means it's sharp. But for almost every "reviewer" at these sites, that's all it took to get a rave, and they said the color was magnificent. Only people who actually knew what The Searchers' color is supposed to look like stood up (me included) and loudly proclaimed the transfer a four-star disaster - the color being a sad joke and looking nothing like the IB Tech prints of that film. Same with The Nun's Story, same with Breakfast At Tiffany's and the same with others. If those are informed opinions, I'll eat a chocolate donut.
FWIW, few people who enjoy "The Searchers" on DVD -- and it looks absolutely vibrant and colorful to them because it IS -- have any "memory" of what it "might have" looked like in Technicolor.
And, of course, no one whose memory of it says otherwise will ever be able to prove how much more brilliant it was because, to date, no Technicolor print seems to exist.
Perhaps if those who have the perfect memories of colors more vibrant, more thrilling, more revelatory than those on the current DVD were to actually do a proper restoration, then maybe that would show "us" how terribly stupid "we" are. After all, "we" can only discuss what we see with our own eyes.
We cannot possibly view the DVD through the eyes of 50-plus-year-old memories.
The color that IS there, however, is dazzling compared to the washed-out crap we get today.
I, for one, apologize to all and sundry here on this board for having any positive opinion upon which you have already pronounced yourself the one and only expert whose opinion is the only one that matters