I'm with skyjedi on this. I won't even consider buying the OT movies on blu-ray if it doesn't at least include the '77-'83 originals.
I won't buy a non-theatrical prequel blu-ray either, horrible as the TPM Yoda puppet may look.
Nerfherder, I've linked to both the petition and zombie's new site in my avsforum sig.
Tobar said:
Eh, I'm guessing it's regular EU with no input from ol' George. Though you know he's aware of it from that line he threw in the second season of the Clone Wars. =P
I didn't really catch much of the second season, what was the line?
zombie84 said:
I'd be fine with a fully remastered original interpositive in high definition with the theatrical audio, as Blade Runner did. But yes, it is better to go the negatives.
Y'know, something that's always fascinated me about situations where the actual o-neg is scanned (such as the '04 Lowry job) is that everything on the film is .... well, negative. How exactly do they go about ... positivizing it?
There've been plenty of blu-ray double dips already. T2, Stargate, Full Metal Jacket, Predator and probably a bunch of others I can't think of right now. This Star Wars set will presumably only be a I-VI box with no individual SKU's. It's perfectly reasonable to assume we'll eventually see individual releases.
I look at it this way:
Ever since '05, there's been lots of clamoring for a complete I-VI saga boxset, and that's exactly what this blu-ray set will finally deliver. With the help of deleted scenes, this will sell fairly well. It may not do comparable first day business to the '04 set in terms of number of copies sold, but the doubtlessly huge price tag from the extra three prequels will make up for it.
After that, well, I really don't see what else there is to dip with. It looks pretty clear to me that we're seeing a repeat of what happened with these movies on dvd.
That's the exact reason why I've never been too comfortable with the idea of de-SE'ing the o-neg. Blade Runner befell the same fate, why should Star Wars be any different?
Y'know, between that PvGL documentary and Zombie's new website, I really don't know how much louder we can yell, aside from getting as many sigs as possible on the petition.
This has pretty much been confirmed to be boxset-only and no individual SKU's, right? Then I'd guess the next dip would be individual SKU's. We all remember when that happened on dvd....
Nope, AotC and RotS were filmed with 16:9 1080p cameras and then cropped to 2.35:1 (so the resolution of the original live-action footage would actually be 1920:817, just like any other 2.35:1 movie when viewed on blu-ray). I'm pretty sure that the effects were done at 2K though, so 2K would be the resolution of the final master if I'm not mistaken.
The '04 SE is a different story. It's currently stuck at 1080p. I would hope that if Lucas ever decides to release them theatrically he'll remaster them at 2K. A 2.35:1 movie from a 1080p master wouldn't look too good projected up on a movie theater screen.
..... and Empire's DP, Peter Suschitzky, is still working. He's shot every movie David Cronenberg has made for the past twenty-some-odd years.
Nerfherder said:
Great. Yeah, it's expensive... But not to a billionaire.
My thoughts exactly - the guy makes me sick!
Ridley Scott managed to get 5 cuts of his film onto one superb and AFFORDABLE blu-ray set (including the workprint - imagine Lucas doing that with Star Wars), and I'm sure he's not as loaded as Lucas...
Yeah, but that's the sad irony. Think about it. Warner Brothers (one of the EEEEEEVIIIIIIILLLLLLL big Hollywood studios Lucas was fighting against) actually needed to go all out with the blade runner set in order to get people to buy it. Lucas can throw the scraps from his table and do ten times the business.
Anyway, even if Lucas intended to include a remastered OOT in this blu-ray release he wouldn't be proudly announcing it, so I wouldn't take this as a sign it's definitely not happening. Frankly, I don't see how he thinks this will do comparable business to the '04 set with nothing but the '04 version in hi-def and deleted scenes. That's what the most ridiculous part of Lucas' whole "it would be so expensive" comment is....
YOU'D BE SELLING IT FOR MONEY!!!!
Yeah, it's still American Zoetrope. The only difference in terms of credits is the new Warner Bros logo at the beginning, which is funny since the old logo is still there right afterward.
Like I said, there's no copyright for anyone besides Warner Brothers. At worst, they signed a deal with Lucas not to include the original. At best, they simply didn't include it in the dvd/blu-ray because of the restoration and remastering required. Who knows.
Oh, wow, I thought from the title that you meant the entire thing! Would've really been amazing timing considering that recent screening in Baltimore.
captainsolo said:
There is no reason that they couldn't have included the original. It is simply because the original is withheld.
WB included both cuts of Dark City on the Blu ray.
What's curious about THX is that LFL didn't even exist at the time it was made. I sold off my dvd a few months ago, but I'm pretty sure the fine print doesn't say anything besides "copyright Warner Brothers." Makes sense, since they payed the 300 grand to get it made back in the day. What's not so clear is who footed the bill for the director's cut.
In any event, it's a pretty good bet that even if there wasn't some agreement with Lucas not to include the original version, WB did it to avoid his ire. I mean, it would've kinda been an awkward situation to have both cuts officially out there two whole years before Lucas even bothered to throw us the scraps of the GOUT.
I seriously wonder if there would've been any consequences for WB including the original version. It may simply have been an issue of disc space. I remember throwing those discs into my computer and they were both pretty crowded, so on dvd the inclusion of the original would've meant a three-disc set.
Bah, I'm probably over-thinking the whole thing. Like I said, it will be interesting to see if the blu-ray is single-layer or not.
No way in hell it's anything but the director's cut. Move along, move along.
Was the starfield redone for the '81 version (and that's why the constellation is circled in that photo?)?
Zombie, I was reading your article on the history of the SE and I have a question (or two):
I've always assumed that when Lowry said they were working at 1080 resolution that they were actually talking about what we all think of when we hear the words "1080p" and "HD," in other words a 16:9 image with a resolution of 1920:1080. Not all movies have a 16:9 aspect ratio. A couple hundred of those 1,080 lines have to be sacrificed in order to fit a scope film such as Star Wars. I'm assuming then that when Lowry said they were working at HD res on Star Wars, what they really meant was 1920:817 for the actual 2.35:1 image itself. Would this be correct?
Also, AOTC and ROTS were shot with 16:9 1080p cameras and cropped to 2.35:1, making the resolution 1920:817, right? But were the effects also rendered at such a low resolution (in theatrical exhibition terms) or were they done at 2K? If they were done at 2K, then I really wouldn't be surprised if Lucas redoes the '04 restoration. Remember, Gone with the Wind and Wizard of Oz were also restored at 1080 that very same year and for the very same purpose, only to be redone at a much higher resolution just a few years later.
Like I said in another post recently, I can at least understand WB not putting out the original version(s) of THX, but that's not how I look at Graffiti. It's had one of the biggest gross-to-budget ratios of all time. It's in the national film registry (just like Star Wars). It's just ironic how the only cgi tinkering done to the film is that one single shot.
I still say, given its relatively short running time, WB could've easily fit both cuts of THX on a dual-layer blu-ray. Actually, I'll be curious to see if next month's release ends up being a single-layer disc.
Has the theatrical cut even been released on home video at all? I know it's kinda pointless, since the longer cut released several years later is basically what Lucas wanted out there to begin with, but I'd still like to see what those handful of people saw in the art house theaters back in March of '71. Five whole minutes of running time is kind of a bigger difference than adding a few words to an opening crawl.
There were screenings of the director's cut the week the dvd came out back in '04. The screening at the Aero will more than likely be this version.
By the way, has the '04 master of the trilogy been digitally projected anywhere? I'm not talking about throwing in the dvd, I mean Lowry's HD master. There was that 30th anniversary screening of Empire earlier this year with Harrison Ford. Did they show the '97 or was it the '04?
Zombie, thank you so much for starting this site (and everything you've put up on it so far)! The article about the film materials is outstanding. Can we look forward to a similar one covering the other 50% of the movies, the sound mixes?
Ah, good point digitalfreak. We're only up to October in terms of announced blu-ray releases. Announcing the Indy bd's at c5 is totally within the realm of possibility. These lucasfilm titles never hit a new format on a significant anniversary anyway. It really does seem like every last catalog title is hitting blu-ray this year, LFL probably feels the pressure.
I just caught American Graffiti on one of the local tv stations and couldn't help but wonder when Universal will put that on the docket for blu-ray. THX is due next month from WB and the absence of the original version kinda feels like a nail in the coffin, though it doesn't have the cultural significance of Graffiti and Star Wars so that's at least understandable.
Something I randomly noticed after the end credits of Graffiti was a quick flash of the title shot, only it was letterboxed unlike how the movie had been presented. I think it was the revised version, don't know what it was randomly doing at the end of the broadcast transfer though. The title shot back at the beginning was - I think - the old version (hard to tell from the cropped-for-tv framing, but I don't remember clouds). Found a nice comparison right here actually.
The GOUT aliasing issue actually brings me to a question I've had about NTSC dvds in general:
Are NTSC dvds* 23.976 fps with 29.97 fps flags or are they 29.97? There's several reasons I'm confused on the issue, but the GOUT relates to it because I remember the talk back in '06 about how they IVTC'd the '93 laserdisc master in order to make the dvd progressive. Also, one of the online reviews said something along the lines of "although progressively encoded, the discs suffer from aliasing." So was the IVTC'ing to get it from 60i to 30p or was it to get from 30p to 24p? Someone please clear this whole issue up for me!
*just to avoid confusion, the examples I'm thinking of are new release titles made from 2k/4k masters.
Yup, I gave up going to tfn and posting in their forums a looooong time ago.