JayArgonaut

Molly said:

SE was 1997.

USA did air the three movies together in a marathon run, I'm pretty sure they did so on Christmas of either 1993 or 1994 (based on where I was living at the time).  It was my first exposure to any of them.

Yes, it was December 1994 but not quite Xmas. Two decades on, I remember this vividly because I was in the Caribbean at the time and a friend of the family had the USA Network on their cable option.

Watching TESB and ROTJ was one of the highlights of the trip. :)

Edit: just had a flashback of the promo for the marathon, so I did a YouTube search with the term "Star Wars USA Network" and it appears the OT was shown on USA from summer 1993 through to 1995.

Here's one of the promos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zp0TaxwxZ8 

Croweyes1121 said:

Considering this was only ever aired on ABC, I don't think you're going to find this in 1080p.  Too bad they can't just release a nice special edition with the scenes as deleted extras.  Then it'd be pretty easy to make a fan edit that matches the ABC cut.

Ransom, another film by Ron Howard is in a similar situation. The director's cut is only available on Laserdisc. 

It was Meyer who constructed the version that was broadcast by ABC.

"I put that together" Meyer told Cinefantastique Magazine in 1992. "It's ironic as a director of a feature I may not have final cut, but as a director of the television version, no one cares. Places were I was overruled, rightly or wrongly, I get to have the last word. It's very dangerous just to put things back for the sake of putting them back. I am not persuaded that artists are the best judges of their own work."

http://theomegasector.com/index.php?/topic/19238-lost-scenes-from-the-wrath-of-khan-online-saavik-is-half-romulan/

MTV's VIVA channel are currently screening a season of the TOS films, beginning with TWOK and I was hoping they might have the extended TV versions of TWOK and TMP. No such luck, tonight's broadcast of TWOK was the theatrical release.

I'm betting that Paramount does have the video masters because in the past decade, the Special Longer Version of TMP was shown on BBC Three - and in widescreen, albeit cropped to 16:9. 

Can you elaborate on your method please? I've rarely been able to get VLC's options to work.  

Thanks for the replies, from what I can see there's no option within the PVR software (nPVR) to record a transport stream without some form of processing being added within the decoder.

I've been looking at the decoder properties for my PVR software and there's a number of settings that I think could be tweaked to produce better results but I'm not sure what I should choose. 

Quality: "Obey quality messages", "Decode I frames only", "Decode I,P frames only", "Decode all frames"

Deinterlace: "Weave", "Vertical filter", "Field interpolation", "VMR", "Auto"

Condition of deinterlace: "Always", "Interlaced frames", "Progressive frames"

What do you suggest as the best choices?

Not quite...

http://savestarwars.com/lucas-nfr.html

"Written into George Lucas' contract with Fox is the line stating that any prints of the original that are found must be hunted up and destroyed," he said. "As a result, film collectors are very loath to disclose where any prints of any Lucas films are at all. There are a few IB Technicolor Star Wars prints in private hands." He went on to state. "I'm not sure which contract it is. I have no idea whether it's public record or not.  I do know that in the early 2000s there were a Technicolor festival in LA, and Star Wars was announced as a title.  After trying to legally clear the title through Fox, the organizers of the festival were threatened with having the print confiscated and destroyed. They told the organizers of the festival that it was a line in Lucas' contract.  The organizers were frantic to get rid of the print they had so that Fox couldn't get to it."

generalfrevious said:

But what Lucas is doing to the OT is unique. I know few believe this, but I think he wants to spite us and make one of the most significant films of all time disappear off the face of the Earth. 

I think Lucas has drawn inspiration from the behaviour of Kubrick and taken it to a whole new level. In the UK, for 27 years, at his insistence, it was impossible for us to legally see A Clockwork Orange. The ban only ended with Kubrick's death.

During the 90s, at his behest, WB sued a British cinema that dared to show the film, causing them to go into receivership. According to one British documentary, even owning the US Laserdisc in the UK was officially prohibited. The WB office in London gave a posthumous tribute to Kubrick by listing on their building the titles of the films he'd produced for their studio and of course, ACO was glaringly omitted.

It seems like Lucas has looked at what Kubrick did with that situation in the UK and thought, "I'll do that with the OOT on an international level." 

imperialscum said:

I am convinced both original film stock (or copies of it) and scanned unaltered digital version of it exist. The only other scenario is that Lucas explicitly ordered to destroy/delete them.

Yes, ala Kubrick, who instructed Leon Vitali to destroy the deleted scenes and outtakes from 2001, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon. 

I'm onto the 2nd instalment of my "Walter Murch trilogy"

SilverWook said:

Wait a minute. The whole raison d'etre for the 1997 versions, was George felt the OOT were unfinished works, because he didn't have enough time and money originally to achieve his "vision".

So, he essentially leaves them unfinished again, on purpose this time?

Good point. Lucas' rationale just doesn't hold up to serious scrutiny. It's the stuff of satire that would make Orwell, Kafka and Heller proud. 

Here's an infamous quote from 2004 by LFL's VP of marketing, Jim Ward in response to the demand for the original versions:

We love our fans but this is about art and filmmaking.

As a point of integrity, an organisation that loves their fans and is truly concerned "about art and filmmaking" wouldn't deliberately release an unfinished product with the founder claiming during interviews that the release fulfils their "vision." (On a side note, a company that loves their fans and is committed to the ideals of art and filmmaking wouldn't suppress the availability of their films, nor would they release vandalised versions in the first place.)   

Mike O said:

So basically, the 2004 release was a just a placeholder to make OOT fans shut up?

Apparently so. If they hadn't run out of time, back in 2004 you would've been hearing samples of James Earl Jones' voice during the climatic throne room "electrocution" scene of ROTJ and the krayt dragon sound effects in ANH.

Along with all the other wonderful additions that we've come to love (sarcasm mode)

That appears to tie in with reports by The Digital Bits soon after the 2004 DVD's were released that industry insiders had informed them that Lucas was preparing even further changes for subsequent versions.

Mike O said:

Apparently Cameron thinks those are the colors he always intended to use in 1986. And between the market being on its knees, the franchise being dead, and the fact that it was done by Cameron himself, I don't see it being fixed now or ever. And I can't imagine many 35mm prints of it still kick around. Subtle revisions like the snake pit reflection in Raiders do bug me, but I also have to accept that to a normal, well-adjusted person who gets laid once in a while, but it bothers me all the same the same way it does on the Evil Dead disc, and it's a slippery slope to think what they'll go changing next. In other cases, like the coloring issues on The Fellowship of the Ring or Raiders of the Lost Ark Blu-rays, I do sometimes wonder if it's not a case of revisionism, but of simple fuckups on the mastering end.

Thanks for that comparison, my HDTV recording appears to have been sourced from the same "colour corrected" master as the Blu-Ray. I'll stick to watching my DVD instead.

Filmmakers, directors etc are entitled to make whatever revisions they like to their work (and in the case people such as Lucas, their franchises), regardless of whether those revisions are ill advised and come across as vandalism. As a consumer, I'm also entitled to object to what I see as bad choices that ruin my enjoyment of the product and vote accordingly with my cash. 

From observing Lucas's behaviour in recent years, where he has told fans during face to face conversations to "grow up", for daring to question the logic of neglecting the unaltered versions, made Orwellian claims such as, the original films no longer exist, that in his mind, Han Solo always shot first and prior to 2004, Star Wars was "half a completed film", I can only conclude that he has gone insane.

The constant revisions (and now the additions to the BluRay releases) go far beyond trolling fans, he's as deluded as Palpatine, one of his own characters and like that villain, it appears that Lucas truly believes that his actions are correct and justified. The fame, wealth and prestige have transformed Lucas into a megalomaniac (or perhaps egomaniac?), intoxicated on his sense of power to indulge himself with any frivolity: to the detriment of the franchise and his reputation.

"No Escape" is a forgotten action movie of the '90s

Not by me! :)

Really? What would you regard it as, upscaled? I've always turned over once I saw that the Beeb had cropped the aspect ratio.

AntcuFaalb said:

This: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/04/a-nation-of-slaves.html

 Good article. Couldn't agree more with the analysis. :)

In the blink of an eye - Walter Murch

This has been broadcast in 1080i quite a few times by the BBC in recent years but every time I've tuned in, it has always been cropped from 2.35:1 to 1:85.1.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0077hrs

I say go for it.

If you produce a preservation of the 35mm, I'll definitely watch it. :)

Avatar also has different aspect ratios for the theatrical and home video releases.

In his own words...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqwCQQ4qIXw

doubleofive said:

Un-released deleted scenes that never even made it to the DVDs were either destroyed or are sitting in a box on a shelf somewhere. As for the UK versions of FC having additional scenes, that's a little more interesting, as maybe a print could be found with them intact.

Any UKers who can confirm these, or are these Trek equivalents to Luke missing his first throw?

 I saw FC during the UK theatrical run and I don't recall either of those scenes.

There are two different versions of the North American BluRay release of Brooklyn's Finest. The Canadian VVS Films version has the cropped 1.78:1 aspect ratio while the Anchor Bay release contains the full aspect ratio.