I drove an hour in the freezing cold just at the end of the year to see a movie at midnight. What would provoke me to do this you ask?
The last testament of the Master.
Eyes Wide Shut
When I was 9, I wanted to see the film more than anything despite the adult nature of the storyline and the complete failure of the marketing to explain that this was a fully mature look at the societal psychosis of fidelity, truths and trusts amongst MANY other things. I had just begun learning all I could about the Master after seeing Paths of Glory and Dr. Strangelove and then he suddenly died before EWS was released. But of course, I was deemed too young and not allowed in.
I have always been moved by this picture and marveled at the intricate layers of depth, care and thoughts within. Though we will never know what Stanley may have done in a final edit, this rough version completed by his team and WB remains both a masterpiece and a genuinely affecting motion picture that will make any who see it weep at what the medium still has the power to do.
All this being said, this was an original 1999 theatrical print with the US digital censoring applied. The long held rumors of the deep rich and blown out look of prints is 100% accurate. I do not know what they were thinking on home video, but all DVD/BDs are horribly wrong. The print is awash with grain, GRAIN, GRAIN due to the negative being push processed to hugely accentuate the color scheme primarily around primary colors. It is also very soft almost in places like classic Hollywood glamor shots, looks like a Christmas card in others, and at all times otherworldly. On all video editions everything has been normalized in color, shorn of virtually all the grain and made to look like anything else. It's terrible!!
The sound was the DD 5.1 and if I'm thinking correctly had the censored bits from the Bhagavad Gita during the orgy. The overall soundmix was still the front almost mono seeming one we know from video but the bass seemed deeper akin to what DD theatrically of the era was like or it's variant on ac-3 LDs. The credits listed DTS and SDDS which I never realized existed.
The print was gorgeous save for some wear at the first reel change (mirror) and had inherent jitter that kept poking up in scene backgrounds.
My question is now, were the uncut European prints similar in heavy grain structure and deep color? If not, one could insert the unedited portions from it into a US print and use the DTS for a new scan..and by someone I mean WB doing a complete overhaul of the Kubrick canon still stuck in hugely outdated and inappropriate transfers!!