TPM: A Decade Later — Page 5

I might be considered an improvement if it was not pretending to be the cut shown to audiences in theaters, with a couple added scenes which i find are better left in the movie because they were intended by Lucas back then and excised by the studios control.

If it was a special edition not pretending to be the original american graffiti nowhere does it mention on the dvd case the film has been altered in any way.

This is the kind of dishonesty on the 2004 star wars trilogy set which removed the title special edition and included the original dates from 1977, 1980. and 1983 on the box.

At least with THX 1138 they admited right on the box with big words "george lucas director's cut". And it probably would have cost them nothing to include the original version.  It was cleaned up by lowry before the new effects were put into the film.

To watch the original version it took me years before the advent of ebay to find a vhs copy and its frickin pan and scan.  The laserdisc in the usa is hard to find and considered rare.  And the digital audio issue in japan has burnt in subtitles and from what i have heard the sex scene is either cut or censored.

I also believe and this is my opinion and i hope its not reflected once the HD lucasfilm releases come along, that the entire Lucas film catalog on dvd has had way too much digital noise reduction and degraining done.  THX 1138 and American Graffiti and star wars were each shot on a specific film stock to give them a documentary flavor.  removing the grain destroys that.

Though it is really nothing new because they started the whole DNR crap back in the THX laserdisc program days and only now the resolution is showing how much damage has been done.  The Gout looks indeed sharper on dvd but the dnr is way more apparent then on the softer looking definitive collection laserdisc.  Making the laserdisc preferable, not just for that but for the full pcm audio.

Could you imagine how bad it would look if there was an HD source for the gout in non anamorphic with the fine detail and grain completely removed,lol.

Not a huge surprise that lowry was involved in the fiasco that are the bond remasters, the star wars trilogy. or the recent star trek blu rays.  Seriously whenever i hear they worked on a film i will consider the reviews before buying the dvd to see if the colors and grain structure were compromised.

Somehow they were able to do the indiana jones trilogy right.  Under specific instructions from Steven Spielberg to limit the dnr and grain removal.  These days the digital movie maker Lucas who has tried to kill film is all for the degraining movement.  When he used to be in his college days a respected cameraman who understood film as a chemical process.

Films shot in techniscope are supposed to be grainy.  Its a 16mm anamorphic format that is then blown up to 35mm.  Removing the grain with computers the grain that is supposed to be there versus the dupe grain is a joke of epic proportions.  Just like destroying Gil Taylors cinematographic brilliance on star wars be redoing the colors and limiting the grain.

From screenshots in have seen even Kingdom of the Crystal Skull's blu ray is too clean and almost without grain.  When i saw the film in theaters the cinematographer Kaminski had chosen a very nice grain structure on the movie.  I want the degraining movement on Blu RAY and on DVD to end, just as much as the stupid loudness wars is ruining music.

Also Haskel Wexler's graffiti shooting deserved better than to be stripped off its character by dnr.  Never seen the HD broadcast but the dvd the contrast is set too high and the image is too clean and not filmlike.

C3PX said:

Meddling just to be meddling.

It is a bit much sometimes, huh? Especially in a movie that is not about special effects. Sometimes things might look nicer after a change, but really, was there any point? It seems that Lucas does it more than anyone else. I can't think of too many examples of movies being changed to the extent he does it. Restored, colorized, remastered audio, yes, but not big changes like h has made. And with such frequency.

Also, perhaps I am a little strange in this way, but I really like my movies to represent the time in which they were made. I never look at a movie and think "My goodness these effects are dated, wish they'd give it an overhaul." I also like to watch a bunch of movies from the exact same year and in the order in which they were released sometimes. Really gives a cool time travel effect if you know what I mean. It is kind of fun to experience a bunch of movies how original audiences experience them and alongside a few other movies they might have experienced that same year. I am sure I could be explaining this better, but hopefully my meaning is coming across. At any rate, when movies are constantly meddled with, it kind of stomps on my parade for things like this.

And sometimes if you watch a bunch in order like that, you might find that some were either ahead or behind the times in different ways. That's good, because it would be awful for all movies to 'feel' the same.

skyjedi2005 said:

To watch the original version it took me years before the advent of ebay to find a vhs copy and its frickin pan and scan.  The laserdisc in the usa is hard to find and considered rare.  And the digital audio issue in japan has burnt in subtitles and from what i have heard the sex scene is either cut or censored.

Not a huge surprise that lowry was involved in the fiasco that are the bond remasters, the star wars trilogy. or the recent star trek blu rays.  Seriously whenever i hear they worked on a film i will consider the reviews before buying the dvd to see if the colors and grain structure were compromised.

 I agree with you about Lowry Digital (or should it really be called Digital Lowering?) removing too much grain. They've "restored" many Disney movies and Pinocchio is another disaster. The color is oversaturated in dark scenes and his feather cap which is red in all the artwork shows up as pink occasionally. Something that should be red turning out pink. Hmm, why does that sound familiar?

I think there need to be campaigns to convince people that grain is good like there were for letterbox over pan & scan.

I have a letterbox dvd made from the THX 1138 laserdisc by the way if you're interested.

If Lowry's work has made reds become pinks again and nothing was done about it, that's Disney's fault, just like the wrong colors in the Star Wars DVDs were LFL's fault. They're the ones that ultimately say 'no, this needs to be fixed first' or 'whatever, let's just release it as-is.' It seems like a 'don't shoot the messenger' kind of thing sometimes. That's how I see it, anyway.

It's too bad that the new sky makes Mel's look like it was plopped in there like a cardboard cutout. Perhaps it should've been darkened a bit.

Wow, I had never actually seen the new opening shot before. It looks absolutely awful. Far, far worse than I imagined it.

The old one has that old time feel to it. The new one looks like something done on photoshop. And again, I must pose the question: Why? It does absolutely nothing to improve the shot. Even the whole "well it is to show that the sun is going down since the film takes place during the course of one night night" explanation doesn't fly. The original shot still looks like it is just a short while before dark.

Wow, I thought the building that got erased was in the center as I only saw it on a pan & scan vhs. Looks like that means the full screen version shows the left side of the frame.

In that comparison, the new shot does look a little too high on contrast and saturation.

Future generations will only laugh at GL - for all his attempts to modernize his old movies, the OT will, as it inevitably must, become a snapshot of its proper time and place. I really doubt Lucas will see to it that, after he becomes a Hayden Christensen Force-ghost, someone updates the OT time and time again to try and keep up with whatever the latest film technology demands. Furthermore, the gap between '77 visuals and '97 visuals or '04 visuals will be so freaking obvious to the audiences of the future that the SEOT will look comically bad, like a woman in her sixties wearing tight clothing and excessive makeup. I only hope that future film buffs remember that the embarrassment of the SEOT was the failing of George Lucas, not the films themselves.

Wow, that post was brilliant, vote_for_palpatine. Very cleverly chosen wording. Short and concise, and totally gets the point across with the force of being struck by a frieght train. 

Especially loved the bit about the woman in her sixties.

I am not sure, but George seem to be of the status that you absolutely don't f-with. If Warner for some reason felt like going through the trouble of including both versions of the film on the BD, and George "politely asked them not to", I think they'd just drop it and go with his wishes, regardless of who owns distribution rights of what.

I swear, George must be way up there in the ranks of the Hollywood Mafia. He seems the type that always gets his way. Perhaps this is because he frequently makes them "offers they can't refuse"?

No kidding! That documentary would fit perfectly with the original, but with the CG ridden DC, it is a complete joke. That might be a really good point to bring up with Warner.

The funny thing is, most people would only be interested in THX1138 for its historical significance anyway, and would be watching it out of curiosity. I have heard only a few people say they really enjoy it as a film and watch it from time to time for pleasure. This makes it even more outrageous.

The whole thing is a bit like making a documentary about ancient Roman culture, and interviewing modern Romans and asking them about the way they live.

Imagine a tour guide in a museum explaining how all the artifacts from ancient cultures have not only been restored to represent their original form, but have now also been tweaked and souped up to better match modern trends in style.

"On your left, we have a classic indie film from the 70s. Notice its state of the art special effects? These would have been quite impressive by 1970s standards, and were of course, added many years later and have nothing indie about them. This particular indie film maker became very successful and very obsessed with special effects..."

I often wonder if Goerge "We must preserve our national heritage" Lucas realizes how ridiculous all this is? For some reason, I think he probably does't...

Has anyone ever seen the student film version of THX? Is that even possible? (or was it possible in the past?) Just curious.

There is a dvd out with three of Lucas student films.

 THX 1138:4EB Electronic Labyrinth

A man and his car

and freiheit.

The dvd also has other directors student films.  I can't remember the dvd name off the top of my head.  It was also sponsored by USC School of Cinema.  Not a  surprise.  Without Lucas generous donating where would that school be.

The most genious part of the student version and film version of thx 1138 are the sound design by Walter Murch.

I think the first Lucas film to be shot in widescreen was called Anyone lived in a pretty how town.  I have only seen clips.  The whole thing has not been released.  Neither has his Mckenna's gold tone poem. 

For years it was impossible to find his documentary on the rainpeople until someone posted a fairly good quality copy online.  I have a very bad version which looks like someone played the film and videotaped it off of a screen.

And once George Lucas maker of films gets released as a fan preservation by one of the members of these board there will be less stuff to have to have an impossible time unearthing.

If people are fascinated by Lucas i recommend purchasing a copy of the book the george lucas interviews, and the book skywalking by dale pollock.

There is also a fairly good early article  and short one on Lucas in the book the movie brats.

There is no book that offers an unbiased chronologic view of Lucas filmaking career.  The single book out is an authorized one and therefore suspect of being biased towards modern Lucas in a positive way.  I have that book by Rinzler and despite some nice pictures it is mostly pre digisted information from lucas video interviews and articles and is purely garbage and spin.

I would like a book that traced all Lucas films from his college days to now based on their thematic ideas and interconnecting threads, and also where Lucas fits in in the french new wave of cinema verite and auteur theory of filmaking.  Pure Visual filmaking without story.

I found it somewhat terrorfying the modern lucas school of thought on making movies is taught at all in filmschool, cgi over subtance.  I'm happy there are some schools that actual teach how to handle and shoot real film and not just HD video edited on a computer.

"Gravity defying mutant monkeys." Big surprise... :p