Maybe it's shoving the definition of "recent"' but Woody Allen's ZELIG brilliantly splices old newsreel footage and couples it with faux '20s (filmed circa 1982) and blends it seamlessly more than a decade before the ballyhooed "Forrest Gump."
The British series CALL THE MIDWIFE, set in the late '50s to early '60s, has been processed to look like some of the hand-tinted B&W photographs I've seen from the period. I haven't read anything on how it was done, but I'm guessing some sort of proprietary "grading" where colors are posterized and pushed closer to distinct primary and secondary hues. For example, the various skin tones on a single face are "flattened" to one color, perhaps with an obvious rose blush to the cheeks.
The effect is not uniform throughout the series, but varies in intensity.
(And for anyone my general age who grew up dreaming of Jessica 6 from LOGAN'S RUN, the series features Jenny Agutter as Sister Julienne.)
Yeah, apparently the seventies were bright yellow! I don't remember it like that but who am I to argue with Hollywood. The trouble with films with a "look" these days, is that they lay it on with a trowel, no subtly any more.
Billy Crystal's "*61" did a terrific job capturing the period look of 1961 and 1961 baseball.
Yeah, that brings up the interesting question of what is the look of 1961 (or 1951 or 1971)? Styles & cars apart, they really looked the same as this year does. I suppose it's how we think it should from seeing old films & newsreels & photos. Like a gritty British 40's & 50's drama should be in b/w.
There's are some odd choices made, like Clint Eastwood's two Iwo Jima films. The newsreels I've seen of that were shot in Kodachrome, bright hard colour, but Eastwood gives us this drained of colour gungy look, I don't know what the thought behind that was.