I’ll pledge an open-ended amount, whatever we need to win this, but let’s just say $245 to get us up to $1000.
I’ve had no luck setting up crypto in the past, so I’ll unfortunately have to use PayPal.
To be fair, the color seen here does not necessarily reflect the scan raw, it uses an LUT based on litemakr’s input on how the color should look going off of projecting his unfaded(?) Super 8(?) print.
Perhaps litemakr can weigh in?
I will say that it didn’t feel this yellow when I was watching it, but my eyes were probably used to it, especially that far into the movie. I have been told by PDB, who saw it in multiple formats, that the 70mm did look yellow.
My memory keeps telling me that the spacesuits appeared white and the water appeared a little more blue, but I just know that I looked at the right images and they definitely made me think of how it looked in IMAX. (For the record, I have not seen Interstellar since the theaters, and I only saw it in IMAX.)
What I can tell you without any hesitation, is that it did NOT look like the images on the left. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single movie in theaters that looks like the images on the left - at least not on film.
That 70mm correction seems to match up with how I remember the movie looking in IMAX.
Home video copies came from low-contrast 35mm interpositives, I think they were sometimes intended for video. The technology got better over time, and the transfers and mastering did too. Early transfers looked awful, some may have come from 16mm, but by the time Star Wars hit video 35mm was definitely in full use for most home video transfers.
Telecasts of 16mm would look inferior. Could be grainy, dirty, washed out, blown out, fuzzy, smearing/frame blending, even if the print was fresh there were still limitations to it being 16mm, and to the often inferior equipment used by TV broadcasters. Star Wars definitely looked inferior on ITV, I only have an AVI encode but I can still tell that the image problems are down to the actual broadcast and not the recording or capture. It may not have been overly brightened like the home video versions, but it had color casts in some scenes due to poor balance in the transfer, it could look too bright or too dark, it had that film chain look to it. (I am not sure if ITV ran their prints live every time a movie was sent out over the network, or transferred them to tape once. And I do know that when a network like ABC in America showed a unique transfer that wasn’t the home video version, like for an extended cut, even if it came from 35mm the transfer looked worse than the home video releases. There was an attempt here to IVTC the Star Trek II extended cut but the individual video fields still had blending between adjacent frames of film.)
I read that the film was darker and more violent before it was cut for release. I don’t know what specifically was in those scenes, other than that I thought the scene in the DVD extras with Sigourney Weaver pretending to seduce Sarris’ henchmen to distract them was one of those scenes that was cut to soften the film (creating the continuity error where her zipper is suddenly open and her bra is exposed for no apparent reason). If that wasn’t in your version, maybe you were indeed in a later round of testing.
I just re-watched the convention scene and I do see a cut where “Shut up” could have been (if it’s not one of those false memories we often have about movies). He turns to the screen, then it cuts to him walking toward everyone else. I think Guy saying “This guy can act” may be slightly joined in progress (unless Sam Rockwell just sort of contracted “This”), but the music doesn’t sound to have an edit, so the cut would have been made before scoring.
To my knowledge, all American TV airings used one of the home video masters. However, if I’m not mistaken, I believe that the ITV broadcasts in the UK came from a cropped 16mm source; they have un-stretched circular cue marks, and several scenes that were panned on home video instead just show one side and then a hard cut to the other side; cropped prints often made less use of panning, I presume because it was more expensive and time-consuming to do pan and scan with an optical printer than on flying-spot telecine machines?
(Random anecdote: I once saw a 16mm-sourced cropped TV version of Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster where they did this kind of cut while someone was walking across frame from right to left, making them appear to warp back to the right!)
As I said, unless someone out there has a tape of a workprint, that version will remain unseen. The film was cut due to test audience reactions.
(Actually, I’ve read there were more things cut before release, so if those are the only differences you remember, you could have attended a later test screening with an edit that was already close to the final release, but still with saltier dialogue…)
I saw this in theaters when it came out, it was already censored - it was to get the PG rating the studio wanted. The theatrical release was also PG. The only difference between theaters and DVD/Blu-ray was that everything from the convention to right before the big doors open up and Jason looks out into space was pillarboxed at 1.85:1, this effect was removed for all widescreen home releases in favor of a 2.35:1 ratio as soon as the TV show clip transitions into the convention.
I believe the movie was shot with the intent to go for PG-13 (some say R, I’m honestly not sure the version that was filmed went THAT far). Sounds like you saw a test screening before the edits were made, you are incredibly lucky. I’d assume that the only way the original dialogue would ever surface would be if someone found a copy of a workprint.
Airline versions generally are not less censored than theatrical, if anything they have extra censorship. A lot of the time, edits/overdubs in broadcast/basic cable versions show up on the airlines first. (For example, I know from a friend that “you mewling quim” was altered in the airline cut of The Avengers long before the movie hit basic cable…)
Which other lines have you recognized as alternate takes in the SW/ANH mono mix? The ones I picked up on myself were both Luke dialogue: “Come on, let’s go have a look. Well, come on!” and “What good’ll it do us if he gets himself killed?”
The only difference I’ve read of in the 70mm mix of Jedi is that for some reason, the crawl music from ESB was tracked in; I have no idea how the edit would have sounded, since the theme leads directly into the next scene. (This info comes from Michael Matessino, who also detailed that the 70mm mix of Empire was near identical long before we found the theater recording, when the speculation about the alternate SE dialogue from ESB/ROTJ being in the 70mm mixes was still being thrown around in fan circles as if it were fact.)
Perhaps the deleted scenes on the DVD/BD were indeed from the original elements, combined with the mono TV cut mix. I know that the Blazing Saddles releases with its deleted scenes also have them in widescreen, but with the censored TV audio. I believe that the same thing happened with The Goonies as well, they’re in widescreen but with a full mix and at least one instance of redubbed profanity. I’ve always wondered if they had some kind of widescreen master that was used to make the pan and scan (like the so-called “director’s cut” of Supergirl which has mono sound and censored dialogue characteristic of a TV version), or if it was restored picture conformed to the P&S TV cut and synched to the audio.
I thought the prevailing theory was that while Beru’s voice was dubbed, it was still Shelagh Fraser, just doing an American accent, and with the mono mix being a different take from the same dubbing session. Doesn’t J.W. Rinzler’s book, or somewhere else, mention an ADR session with Fraser?
The stereo and mono mixes do not sound like different people to me, just different takes of the same person (whoever it is).
The ESB mono mix also shares some differences with the Special Edition mix - Yoda crying out when Luke points the blaster at him, the extra “yes, yes” or whatever it was at the beginning of the Luke-running-with-Yoda-on-his-back scene, Threepio’s “There’s nowhere to go!”, Chewie’s roar drowning out “…that we can trust you?” after “Do you think that after what you did to Han…”, and some other stuff like that. But on the other hand, it still has “till I get the shelter built”, “You’re lucky you don’t taste very good”, the tracked-in music over Captain Needa’s shuttle, and the ‘normal’ take of “The first transport is away” (but at a higher pitch; it sounds to my ear like the stereo/70mm mixes slowed the pitch down, and the mono has it as originally recorded). And there are other unique differences (like the snowspeeder takeoff scene having no music).
@Lite: what’s your thoughts, if any, on the ROTLA 1999 LBX THX LD vs the 1992 release?
AFAIK, there was no 1999 THX LD, only VHS. There were supposed to be remastered LD releases with AC-3, but they were canceled. I assume those were supposed to come out concurrent with the VHS remasters, but LDDB does not list them as THX (though old alt.video.laserdisc posts seem to indicate they were going to be THX).
I don’t follow here, Paramount agreed to an S-VHS LBX but not a VHS LBX release? According to this interview, Spielberg states that Paramount were convinced to release Last Crusade in LBX on VHS alongside the P&S version.
http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/spielberg-turns-letterboxing-into-crusade-with-new-tape
It doesn’t look like that actually ended up happening. A Los Angeles Times article a month later mentions seven different versions: VHS, Beta, P&S LD, LBX LD, Video-8, S-VHS, and VHS subtitled in Spanish. It specifically mentions the S-VHS being LBX, but nothing about a regular VHS in that format: http://articles.latimes.com/1990-02-02/entertainment/ca-1301_1_indiana-jones
I can find no evidence of a LBX regular VHS release until the 1999 THX remasters, so if there was supposed to be an LBX version originally, it looks like Paramount backed out at the last minute.
Again, thanks for the information. The OT received an LBX Japanese LD release in 1986 that still remains highly regarded, all these decades on.
Yes, I thought maybe that was one of the earliest post-Manhattan scope LBX releases anywhere in the world, but searching LDDB shows evidence of other letterbox LDs (including 1.85 films) going back to 1982. I cannot determine how many of them actually were letterbox, or whether their given release dates are accurate. I did find a Japanese site with some release history for the 50s/60s Godzilla movies on LD, and translated it in Chrome; going by the Google translation, the 1986 LDs of the scope entries indeed letterboxed, but were zoomed “midway between Cinemascope and Vista” (so probably around 2:1?) As I said before, the history of widescreen releases in Japan is unclear.
This is all a digression from Raiders/Indy anyway.
No, it wouldn’t. I swear there was an earlier HD transfer, just not on physical media. Am I misremembering or confusing it with Sword in the Stone?
Hey, does anybody out there possibly still have the pre-BD HD version of Mickey’s Christmas Carol saved somewhere? I thought it was on streaming prior to the BD, with the grain intact, but I can’t find a rip of it anywhere…
I think the fact that Manhattan was a less mass-consumption movie might have contributed (and I don’t believe it was fully letterboxed to 2.35:1 anyways?). Spielberg was able to get a few of his/Amblin’s movies released in widescreen, even on VHS, though they were only 1.85:1 movies - first, Warner Bros. released The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun (on LD only, IIRC) and Joe Dante’s Innerspace exclusively in letterbox, then Universal used letterbox for E.T. (on LD only) and Always. I believe the first 2.35:1 Spielberg movie released in widescreen on video was indeed Last Crusade, and even then he wasn’t able to convince Paramount to release a letterbox VHS (though it was LBX on S-VHS).
I have no idea of the history of letterbox releases in Japan, but using LDDB’s dates, the next North American letterbox home video release of a scope film after Manhattan was the Criterion LD of The Hidden Fortress in 1987 (it has the earliest volume number of the three scope LBX CC releases that year, the other two in '87 were The Graduate and Blade Runner). In 1988, three non-Criterion scope LBX LDs came out - Ben-Hur and Doctor Zhivago from MGM, and Otto Preminger’s The Cardinal from Image. LBX in general, and scope LBX in particular, became a bigger thing in 1989 (Fox, Columbia, and more from MGM), and I believe all the studios were on board by 1990. (I have no idea what the next scope LBX VHS was after Manhattan - I do know there was a widescreen VHS of the 1989 restoration of Lawrence of Arabia, maybe it was that?)
I’ve checked the ABC footage, and after being IVTC it still has the interlaced look. Again, this is only for newly inserted footage. I’m thinking this was an issue with how the thing was broadcast in the first place.
I am thinking that the telecine, whether done by ABC or WB, had ghosting/after-image issues. It may have been done at ABC - there was a Star Trek II project in another thread, and there was no way to perfectly IVTC the image, there were some blending artifacts that just couldn’t be eliminated. And even though I was only born in 1987, I know from some of our old tapes that some of the Bond film airings looked atrocious in this regard, I had a tape from 1989 with a promo of OHMSS that was a smeary mess. And I think I still have a 1986-87 airing of Goldfinger that looks for all the world like it’s 5-10 years older than it is.
I think this version is currently the best all around quality version you can get although it isn’t complete. I hadn’t noticed until after it was released, but the “Smallville Flash” part of the drinking scene is missing. It’s present in the BLAX version and the YTV version, but not the ABC or 2 disc PAL version. It’s probably worth going though all versions just to see if there are any other bits exclusive to the different captures.
That is weird, because I used to have what I assumed to be an ABC-sourced bootleg (commercials cut out, “EDITED FOR TELEVISION” superimposed right after the opening credits, and I think there was a network announcement over the end credits) I got from a tape trade back in the early 2000s (along with the hard-subbed Danish TV broadcast of II and a VHS dub of the Japanese laserdisc of IV). And it definitely had the “Smallville Flash” scene in it, I vividly remember that.
(FYI, it came from REDACTED, a Washington, D.C.-based tape trader I got in touch with via the old Superman Cinema board, who I just discovered was later profiled in a Washington Post story on movie piracy. I have not contacted him since I got the VHS tapes all those years ago. I have no idea if it was taped in D.C. or elsewhere, since it had no ads. I also have no idea which airing it was. I got rid of the tape ages ago, though I MAY have sent a copy to a friend.)
Looks awesome! I’ll definitely donate to this.
I don’t have the Director’s Cut Blu yet. But you’re right, I probably wouldn’t remember the exact details of how that print looked.
dlbsyst sent me encrypted filenames and passwords for the Sky rips last year. They were accessible through NZBclub.com until recently, when they had a hard drive crash. They are currently rebuilding their huge 2800-plus-day database, I’m looking up the encrypted filenames and they currently don’t show up. No idea if they’ll ever come back.
But I do have the TS files for 1-4 and 6 (I do not like 5 so I never downloaded it, now I kwish I had). I could upload them on one of my cloud drives on one of the storage sites I’m signed up for, but I don’t think they’d all fit at once.
No, this print is the familiar shorter cut of the film. There is no doubt in my mind that Disney has the Deems Taylor audio from that cut. I cannot conceive of any way they’d have lost it between the 1990 restoration and the 2000 restoration. What they don’t have is soundtrack for the scenes that were cut after the 1940 roadshow release, the scenes that were only reinstated to the film in 2000. That’s why they redubbed all the scenes, because if they only dubbed the new scenes, it would have been too jarring.
As I said before, the fact that Disney had to redub scenes for which audio exists just to reinstate scenes for which they didn’t have audio, shows that they should have just left those scenes out of the main film and presented them as a bonus feature, with an explicit disclaimer that they had to be dubbed because the original audio was missing. (Or at least found someone who sounded more like Deems Taylor, so they could have used the original audio for the scenes for which they had it, and the dubbed additional footage would have blended in better…)
I was on Home Theater Forum when the DVD came out. The original cut was added to the standard DVD release of E.T. at the last minute, in reaction to the fan outcry about being forced to buy the collector’s box set to get the '82 version. In fact, I seem to recall that there was still uncertainty about whether or not the '82 cut was on the regular release, right up until people got copies of it and confirmed themselves that it was included.
If you recall, the release was a fold-out digipak that looked like it should have had an outer slip case but didn’t - I heard at the time that it was because it reflected the disc contents before the original cut was added, and they added the '82 cut to the release so late that they didn’t have any time to print new slip covers. (IIRC, wasn’t there some kind of sticker on the shrink wrap indicating the original version was included?)
I bet the 2005 reissue was just another instance of the studio choosing what they thought would be the most average-consumer-friendly version for the single-disc reissue. (The mid-2000s was a very uneven time for catalog re-releases - this is the same general time frame where Sony was dropping widescreen transfers from reissues of catalog titles like Annie, that had previously been released with both formats.)