Fang Zei

Yeah, but this is the GOUT we're talking about here, a transfer of an old transfer. There's information being lost on all four sides from what I can see.

Yes, you're correct that - according to my logic - we should be seeing more on the GOUT than the 70mm and not less.

Kinda random tangeant here, but:

I just re-watched the restoration mini-doc on the newest Godfather set today. In my wildest dreams as a film fanatic, This is the exact kind of treatment the OOT would get.

Yeah, but the only example I can remember of a 70mm print being used to transfer a scope movie is the old Blade Runner dvd. They zoomed out in order to keep it appearing at its original scope ratio and filled in the space on the sides with .... well, with nothing but more black bars. Most tv's overscan the image slightly, so most everyone with that dvd probably doesn't even notice. Watching stuff on an hdtv is a different story though.

The 70mm prints wouldn't be an option for restoration since there is lost information on the sides. The source is 2.35:1, but the 70mm blow-up is 2.20:1.

Baronlando said:

It's interesting the way these things are characterized at different times. In 1993, the IPs were good enough to be the source of an elaborate 100 dollar laserdisc box called "DEFINITIVE", and 2 years later the whole thing is on the brink of death if not for the heroic measures of doing a re- release. (and now we're getting to the point where some dude on youtube with a beat up old trailer can get very nice results. look how cool this is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_OhgiNE0Dw

yet also strangely frustrating)

Wow, that's amazing. Strangely frustrating, indeed.

Anyway, the IP isn't what was suddenly falling apart a couple years later. It was the actual o-neg itself.

Baronlando said:

Didn't Lucasfilm later (in 2006) claim that the IPs had been somehow physically "stripped for parts" or something for the SE, making them unusable for anything now?

 

Actually, they didn't even say that.

What they said in '06 was "existing prints are in poor condition," which tells us absolutely nothing. Plenty of other best-quality prints of the original versions of other films were in "poor condition" until they were RESTORED. If - after finishing the '97 project - Lucas had the IP's he used destroyed for no good reason, he's an asshole.

Gaffer Tape said:

But why would anyone want to dress up like a lame clone?!  Why wouldn't they want to dress up as Luke Skywalker or Han Solo?!

Because they're watching the show that takes place before Episode III. The clones are still the "good guys."

Tomorrow I'll finally be able to watch the new Avatar trailer in good quality. My guess - way back when - was that Lucas would attach a teaser for 3D Star Wars to Avatar when it hits in December. Yeah, looks like that ain't gonna happen (I mean, we would've heard it by now, right?).

All of his talk about it has probably only been that - talk. Obviously they converted a few scenes from ANH but that's just a few scenes. For all we know, that's all they ever did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHsn_PPDrEw

This will likely get found and taken down by the end of the day, but there will only be more people to come along and post it again!

Sluggo said:

I think the slugs are getting an unfair treatment.  Slugs are people, too.

-Sluggo

 

And LFL: Just release the trilogy in it's original form in HD.  Warts and all.  What are you so afraid of?  It might be a surprise to you, but people like Star Wars.  They will buy it.

Literally the only legitimately good reason I can possibly think of for why LFL wouldn't want to is that they wouldn't just be able to mass-produce the initial blu-ray release as easily if they have more than one disc per movie. With the '04 release, for example, they came up with a very simple system.

Ziz said:

Which was where, exactly?

I didn't have the chance to memorize all 200,000+ frames of the film in the theater like Sky and VINH did, which is apparently what enables them to critique the films so specifically in spite of constantly claiming that they refuse to watch them.

The 35mm and D-Cinema versions of ROTS are 100% identical (I think). There is at least one alteration on the dvd, though. Instead of there being a wipe to transition from Padme's ship flying away from Mustafar to the shot of Anakin's hand, there's just a straight cut.

Nevertheless, sky brings up a good point. If George Lucas' movies come out on blu-ray, I want the original versions. In the case of the Indy trilogy I don't care about the snake pit reflection and something in the big rolling ball shot being gone. The blatantly cgi shot during the truck chase in the HD broadcast is a different story. As long as it's the exact versions on the dvd that we get on blu-ray I'll consider buying it, but if Lucas and Spielberg (really, I guess it's more up to George isn't it .... blast ) actually intend to keep that 2008 cgi shot in the movie, sorry guys, you ain't getting my money. They really should know better, but as has been said, I guess George needs to blatantly alter at least one shot in all his classic movies.

Anyway, yeah, I don't know where McCallum is getting this idea of five simultaneous shows. That quote has been flying around the internet for like, what, two years now?

Guys, lets stop thinking that the OOT getting a decent release is beyond the realm of possibility.

I was just reading the blog on their website and apparently Jay has a new OOT petition in the works.

Bump-and-a-half here, but I was actually trying to find the thread started by the guys who are making this documentary and I couldn't seem to find it (the forum search seems to be broken so if anyone can find the thread and post the link to it I'd appreciate it).

They're still taking submissions until September 30th. Here's something that recently occured to me:

How many movies can you think of that have been significantly altered from their original form, eventually released on dvd in excellent quality (but still in that altered form), only to have the owner come out with a laserdisc-to-dvd port of the original version - only available packaged with the high-quality alteration - and say "Sorry, folks. That's the best you're ever gonna get."

Yea, I can't think of a single example outside of our coveted OT.

This is the real issue for me.

It's not that we got the OOT in 4:3 letterbox several months into fucking hi-def optical discs of movies being available on the market. There are still movies out there that are in the same condition (The Abyss, for example).

The real issue is that Lucas put out the high-quality alteration on dvd first and said the original version would never hit dvd, only to put out those very same original versions just two years later sourced from 1993 transfers and available only if you buy the high-quality alteration.

For dvd releases, it doesn't get much more shameless than that.

LFL basically said "People will give us their money because this is the original version of the most popular movie of all time and most of them won't even realize they're buying an inferior-quality product because they probably don't even know that 99.99999 percent of widescreen dvd's are enhanced for widescreen tv's because most of them probably don't have hdtv's yet and don't even know what anamorphic video is. They probably think they don't have any choice but to stretch out the 4:3 letterbox picture over that wider screen. Hey, this is a brilliant business strategy! Why put a single dime into restoring or even so much as remastering the OOT? This is Star Wars, they'll eat it up!"

Meanwhile, we get a Blade Runner set with all five versions on it plus deleted scenes.

"Is he fulfilling his destiny or has he destroyed his legacy?" is a line from the trailer for this doc. When you allow your franchise to gradually become nothing but a product, even to the extent where the film that started it all is reduced to being a curious piece of "nostalgia" (LFL's words, not mine), then that's certainly "destroying your legacy" in my opinion.

Baronlando said:

I wonder if Warner Bros could release the original THX1138 even if they wanted to. Maybe Lucas gained control of it when they made the deal for the rerelease (by Lucasfilm paying the bills for an extensive restoration and new effects for a movie that has never been a big catalog title)

On side note, the making of documentary on the THX dvd has an anamorphic clip of Star Wars and it's the original version (Luke looking at the sunset, before the little mountain in front of the lower sun was digitally erased). I wonder what the source was, it looked pretty good.

Well, that's certainly what I fear, and with our luck it's probably the case. Although I should point out that on the dvd packaging there wasn't a single copyright notice for GL, Coppola or anything. It was all WB. Of course, that doesn't mean they didn't sign some kind of deal saying "we'll never release the old version."

Oh, and I never knew until now just exactly what was done to that sunset shot for the SE (or the '04, whenever it was). I only remember someone commenting on the family guy star wars episode that "they used the '93 colors" for the sunset.

SilverWook said:

TCM has shown THX a couple times,  and it's the new version. Not a good sign.

Yeah, but don't they simulcast in HD now when they can (I don't get cable channels in HD, that's why I ask)? In that case, since there is an hd master of a version, they'd show that. Besides, they'd probably show the newer version anyway. Like the other week they showed the not-original version of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Robert Osborne pointed this out in his intro. Wish I'd known they were showing THX, would've loved to hear what he had to say (assuming it was during a timeslot where he does an intro). Actually I don't get TCM at all anymore as of two weeks ago. My cable service (Cox) scrolled a notice across the top of the screen for the last month or so leading up to it, saying we'd have to get a new cable box just to continue getting TCM at all, and I don't even like using one in the first place (QAM ftw).

Anyone can download the Holiday Special from google video. If the fan preservations of the OOT laserdiscs didn't count as piracy back before the GOUT was announced, neither does this.

regarding the OOT:

What gets me .... what really gets me is that the OOT on blu-ray has been built up so much by everyone that for LFL to not include it at this point would just be milking the cashcow. "Gasp, oh we have to buy this because this is all we'll ever get." Yeah, fell for that with the dvd back in '04, not falling for it this time.

When I look at all the bd releases I thought would never happen....

-The original versions of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek VI

-Both versions each of Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick

-Close Encounters: all three versions

-Blade Runner: all five versions (for fuck's sake)

....that's when LFL holding out on the theatrical versions of all six films just seems beyond ridiculous. No one ever started a petition to get the original version of Star Trek VI on video at all and yet we got it anyway, in high-definition no less! Yes, I'm aware it's a sub-par 1080i upconversion job, but that's far, far more than the OOT can say for itself.

Warner Brothers should get the original version of THX-1138 out there, Universal should do the same for Graffiti and LFL, well, if they haven't gotten the message by this point they never will.

The Conan movies have actually been on my wishlist for a while also. Conan the Destroyer's dvd is just a port of the laserdisc, so it hasn't even been remastered yet. Maybe Universal will wait until Lionsgate puts out the new movie to release the old ones on blu-ray, but then again they might not want to wait that long.

Legend will surely get released on blu-ray with both versions at some point.

Sky, THX-1138 is on the table for a blu-ray release sometime in the next couple years. Someone from Warner said so in a chat that's transcribed at digitalbits:

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/032409htfchat.html

I would love it if they included the original version (as far as I know it's up to them and not Lucas), but we'll just have to wait and see.

Something that's at the top of my list is Mallrats, hopefully with both versions. I got the tenth anniversary dvd back when it came out, but I didn't discover until months later that the dvd-18 had a scratch in it causing the movie to skip right around the time Brodie tells the story about his cousin on the airplane. I tried bringing it back to the local shop I'd gotten it from even though they had a two-week policy. They wouldn't let me exchange it. I was too lazy to ship it off to the studio for a replacement. The scratch was on the theatrical side and when Universal ports the hddvd over to blu-ray, it'll pretty much undoubtedly be the theatrical version they put out. So I could just hang on to my dvd for the extended cut on the other side and get the blu-ray to get a non-scratched copy of the theatrical.

For a slightly different reason, The Blues Brothers. My sister borrowed the 25th anniversary dvd from me but she keeps all her dvd's in a case and OF COURSE she jammed more than one dvd into several of the sleeves. Blues Brothers, a dvd-18 like mallrats, didn't get out unscathed.

I'm sure Universal will port Dune over to blu-ray at some point. Maybe they'll wait and see if Paramount actually greenlights the new Peter Berg project and then time the blu-ray to coincide with the theatrical release (although that's years away at the earliest, so maybe they'll just get it out to blu-ray sometime soon just like every other hddvd).

Lionsgate said way back in '06 that they were planning on bringing the Dune miniseries to blu-ray, but still no dice.

Oh, and The Abyss. We'll probably get this in the next year or so now that Cameron is finally finishing up Avatar. I never got the dvd after hearing it was non-anamorphic.

It should be "Han shot before Greedo shot before Han shot."

skyjedi2005 said:

Why does he torment the fans who loved star wars so much that at first they were willing to forgive the prequels and the special editions, until he announced his intentions to bury the originals forever indirectly.

This is by far my biggest gripe with the whole GOUT issue. I would've preferred nothing over the middle finger he gave us.

LOL, I was just on my over here after reading the news at digitalbits.

Wouldn't the IP's be all we need to worry about? The solution would be even simpler than what zombie suggests. All they'd need to do is take the IP's, make sure they're usable (this is a where an actual restoration would be involved) and then scan them to make a new OOT transfer. The real trick would be finding said IP's. Lucasfilm's official response to us back in '06 was "existing prints are in bad condition." That could literally mean anything, but if well-preserved IP's are out there somewhere then the OOT could hypothetically be remastered.

The actual original camera negatives - the ones LFL had restored photochemically and then permanently altered for the 1997 SE - are what were scanned and digitally restored back in '04. The OOT hasn't been scanned at all since 1993, which is why that's what we got in '06: a laserdisc transfer.

Janskeet, I seriously doubt it was any less than 1080p. I just don't think it was any more than that either.

Does anyone know where I can get ahold of a theatrical TPM transfer with NTSC timing?

adywan said:

Fang Zei said:

Does anyone know where I can find a torrent of the theatrical TPM? I'm not talking about Ady's project, I just really want to get my hands on a copy that's better than the vhs but isn't the dvd cut, preferably one with NTSC speed and not the 4% PAL speedup.

It's kinda funny how AOTC and ROTS are the only ones officially available on dvd and in anamorphic video in their theatrical versions, and even then it's the DLP versions not the 35mm.

ROTS isn't available in its theatrical form. Even the DLP version had the wipe in it that is missing from the DVD

 

Heh, well now I finally have an answer to something I was wondering about myself. I saw ROTS in DLP twice but that was bookended by 35mm screenings which is why I could never quite remember.

Was the additional dialogue between Padme and Anakin right after his confession scene in the DLP of AOTC or is that also something that was added just for the dvd? I ask because I only saw AOTC in 35mm.

Does anyone know where I can find a torrent of the theatrical TPM? I'm not talking about Ady's project, I just really want to get my hands on a copy that's better than the vhs but isn't the dvd cut, preferably one with NTSC speed and not the 4% PAL speedup.

It's kinda funny how AOTC and ROTS are the only ones officially available on dvd and in anamorphic video in their theatrical versions, and even then it's the DLP versions not the 35mm.