A few nights ago, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, a historic theatre called The Senator, built in 1939, closed down. It'll be reopened under new management soon, but it's the end of an era. But that's not really what I'm posting about.
To commemorate this, they got ahold of a British IB Technicolor print of A New Hope. They said it was the original, 1977 version, but things like "EPISODE IV - A NEW HOPE" and a lack of "Close the blast doors!" tell me it was the 1981 re-release. That being said, it was a high quality (like I said, IB Technicolor, if you know what that means) print, barely faded if at all, only dirt in a few places. It was beautiful.
The first time I ever saw Star Wars was on the THX Remaster VHSs, and then of course the Special Edition in theaters and the 2004 DVDs later. When I first watched Revisited, I was pleased, but not fully convinced about all of the color correction.
After watching the original version on a big screen, I can confirm that Adywan is doing this brilliantly well. Folks can argue about the changes, the newly composited lasers, etc, but the basic premise, that Adywan is color-correcting the films so they look how they looked, how they ought to look is 100% right.
Thanks, Ady.
