4K restoration on Star Wars — Page 272

Fang Zei said:

crissrudd4554 said:

Has that actually been done before???

I don’t know if an outlet as big-name as CNN has ever used unaltered footage before, Harmy or otherwise.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey used unaltered footage, which would’ve been GOUT-sourced since it was finished in 2011.

The timing of this is rather interesting, coming so soon after the Academy 70mm screening and, as mentioned above, with ANH airing on TCM tonight. It’s worth noting that CNN and TCM are, if I’m not mistaken, both part of the Turner media empire that currently has the broadcast rights to all the Star Wars movies.

I’m not exactly expecting TCM to just throw on the Harmy version, nor am I getting my hopes up that this will be some surprise debut of an officially restored ‘77 Star Wars (but wouldn’t that be nice). TCM does like to show movies uncut and in their original ratio, though. So it will probably be the blu-ray master “as is” without any edits or commercial breaks.

I couldn’t help but notice that the framing of the CNN and Despecialized shots don’t perfectly match. Assuming they are in fact from the same source, I guess CNN simply pushed in on the framing a little bit?

TCM featured the film as part of their film fest in Hollywood this year. It was the special edition, so don’t get your hopes up.

It might have been a new master for TMP. It’s getting a theatrical re-release this year.

Ignore me, I misread which Star Trek movie.

I’m sure the special editions will be what they put up on Disney+ but will they be in 4K?

What would happen if they decided to release the unaltered versions but only on Disney+?

Rodney-2187 said:

What would happen if they decided to release the unaltered versions but only on Disney+?

People young enough to subscribe to that sort of thing would be very confused?

Flexicon9 said:

… My DVR now has three rare broadcasts… (TCM HD) Looking For Mr. Goodbar in a pristine high definition broadcast that even host Ben Mankeiwicz said was a TCM premiere (this was 2 years ago) … (MGM HD) On Her Majesty’s Secret Service… not the Lowry transfer, but actually the original print from EON with the proper color timing… rare as it gets, without question. And now, Star Trek II… and I have the SKY broadcast (European) of the director’s cut which is AWESOME. The TCM is better. My DVR is magic… but alas, I have no way to share it with the world. No capture card or a nerd to do it for me. But I will own this magic for the life of a hard drive dvr cable shit box. Thank you and good night.

We could help you out on that front. That OHMSS broadcast, in particular, has been sought-after by several of our Bond preservationists.

OHMSS is my favorite Bond movie. I didn’t even know about this print and now I can’t stop thinking about it.

Well, the 4K version of AVTAK (recently put online) undid the cropping from the Ultimate Editions. However, the master is otherwise the same. A few of the 4K versions are a bit better than the blu-ray, such as LALD and Goldeneye.

The MGM HD version of OHMSS surprisingly wasn’t used for the 4K version of that movie (from what I’ve heard), even though it also undoes the pillarbox titles. Did the MGM HD master have the same over-boosted contrast from the blu-ray?

SilverWook said:

Have they just been sitting on a bunch of decent non-Lowry 007 remasters? Like the one for TSWLM?

I’m honestly surprised that one improved as much as it did for blu-ray/4K. It’s like the home video crew took one look at how thoroughly awful that movie looked on home video (e.g., faded colors, severe edge enhancement artifacts on both SE and UE, and poor color timing on the UE), and figured that they should start from scratch for a new master. The added frame information, better color timing, and preservation of the soft-focus look lead me to believe that they either started from scratch with the video master or went back to the negatives/interpositive for a better source. Maybe they found the cinematographer/editor’s notes and redid the presentation to better match the original version.

If it were me, every movie out there would have a multiple version release similar to the Blade Runner Final Cut 5-disc set, a little something for everyone.

“Why build one when you can have two at twice the price.” - S.R. Hadden

Digital Bits has TFA and R1 coming out in 4K at the end of this year, and everything else (both in a saga boxed set and as individual releases) in “the first half of 2020”.

https://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/the-4k-uhd-release-list/4k-uhd-list-01

That’s important information, great find.

It would only make sense for TFA and RO to hit UHD this year, not only so that fans who’ve upgraded their hardware can at least marathon the first two installments of the ST in the highest quality possible ahead of IX’s theatrical release, but also because Disney’s had all the time in the world to do HDR passes and get them ready for UHD without the legal barriers that kept them from releasing I-VI on physical media until just this year.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Lucasfilm hasn’t been working on I-VI on their own, regardless of who the distributor was. In fact, we know they have been. It’s the whole reason this thread was started in the first place.

I’m very curious to see how they handle AotC and RotS.
Will AotC still have the terrible blu ray colors?
Will both of them benefit from HDR since that usually seems to tone down cartoony colors?

I’ll appreciate it an awful lot if the boxed set is in fact coming this early. If they were going to hold off until Christmas 2020 I probably would’ve ended up buying 4K TFA and TROS twice. I’ll still probably rent TFA in the run-up to the new movie, but I can wait six months for the discs.

My only question is whether or not the unaltered cuts will surface. Anything else is neither here nor there for me.

LordZerome1080 said:

My only question is whether or not the unaltered cuts will surface. Anything else is neither here nor there for me.

The “4-discs per film for the UHD, 3-discs for the blu-ray” rumor is the only shred of hope regarding an official unaltered remaster, which doesn’t even guarantee that the unaltered version would be an actual UHD disc in the UHD edition. It might turn out that the 4-disc UHD is simply the same regular blu-rays from the 3-disc edition plus the most recent version on UHD as the 4th disc.