Mike O

Rush- Subtle as a sledgehammer but totally exhilarating sports drama from director Ron Howard about a real-life 1970s Formula One rivalry. Terrific performances all around, exciting supercharged racing sequences, and an smart, if not subtle screenplay from Peter Morgan. Special shout-out to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, helping Howard shoot digital for the first time. Some spectacular camera work, and Morgan’s script teases out interesting ideas about celebrity, competition, desire, and obsession. Good stuff.

Mark’s Down On Your Syntax said:

Mike O said:

Anchor Bay teamed up with Shout Factory to release a huge boxed set of the first 10 Halloween films. Unfortunately, it’s the only way to get the original film with the damned mono track, and lossless to boot. But you can’t get it individually. Which is all I want. Goddamn first world problems.

We kinda discussed something along similar lines to this near the bottom of this page and some more people replied on the next page. I bought the 10-disc set not knowing that a 15-disc set existed so I was trying to figure out what I was missing out on.

From what I can tell the Halloween version in the 10 disc box is just disc one from the 2-disc 35th anniversary release (you get both in the 15-disc set.) You can buy the 35th anniversary individually, prices vary wildly but I’ve never seen it more expensive than the 10-disc set. I think that’s your best option, Mike.

The “mono” on the 35th anniversary version, apart from being lossy DD 2.0, is unfortunately just a downmix of remix. It’s only the boxed set version with the real mono, and lossless to boot.

But maybe the new film’s release this year will bring yet another re-release of the original so it might be worth waiting for that?

This thought has more than once occurred to me. When’s the new film due?

Handman said:

Jason and the Argonauts
Great effects, the first half hour was pretty uneventful and the revenge plot really went nowhere, but Harryhausen’s effects hold up and it was quite the spectacle.

It’s still pretty fun, even if the pacing lags a little in places. It has production values that most sword-and-sandal movies can only dream of.

Green Arrow: Year One- Surprisingly engaging retelling of the Emerald Archer’s island origin. Andy Diggle’s writing is pretty solid, but the real treat is Jock’s impressionistic, minimalist artwork. A genuinely interesting tale of survival, unlikely heroism, and redemption.

SilverWook said:

You just have to keep looking on Ebay. People do break up the set from time to time.

How would I differentiate between the one from the set and the individual release from before? I doubt most people would sell off the only good movie in the set 😉.

You could also buy the set used and sell off the rest?

This isn’t a bad idea…

Anchor Bay teamed up with Shout Factory to release a huge boxed set of the first 10 Halloween films. Unfortunately, it’s the only way to get the original film with the damned mono track, and lossless to boot. But you can’t get it individually. Which is all I want. Goddamn first world problems.

I should download it before YouTube takes it down. Is anyone here working on mixing the Blu-ray and the LD mono?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnUb1KIWb5E&t=8s

Looks like the work of someone from around here 😉.

DominicCobb said:

TV’s Frink said:

Han Solo IRL said:

AOTC and ROTS look totally fine to me in terms of picture quality; I mean it’s not like they look like 28 Days Later or something.

28 Days Later looks that way on purpose (I assume, I don’t know anything about picture quality).

I mean, if you’re saying they chose to shoot it on a shit camera, sure.

They chose to shoot on cheap DV. Whether that was a good decision or not, the aesthetic choice was pretty deliberate. I assumed it was much like the idea of shooting on grainy 16mm to give a specifically gritty look.

Did anyone ever do any work on this?

Collipso said:

Humby said:

Michael Ward said:

Collipso said:

You can’t deny he was technologically innovative though, since most movies today are shot in digital cameras and Lucas was the one that started the trend.

I don’t find it innovative. The technology already existed and was being used on smaller films. All he did was use it badly.

Innovation doesn’t always age well, but what GL and Lucasfilm (along with Sony, Panavision, and a host of others) did for digital cinema literally revolutionized the industry. You don’t have to enjoy the prequels, I certainly don’t love them, but whether or not they were innovative isn’t up for debate. It’s a fact.

Michael Ward said:

Frank your Majesty said:

Just like digital photo cameras, digital film cameras are much more convenient. It’s easy to assume that they would have been adapted eventually, if they perform just as well as analog cameras. I don’t deny that Lucas probably recognized the potential and wanted to advance the technology. However, he definitely used it too early. He was more concerned with being comfortable while making the movie than with the final product. The reason more and more directors started to film digitally after Lucas was simply the advancement of the technology itself, not because they liked the look of Episode 2.

I hadn’t thought about Lucas’s comfort. I’ve always felt he was just trying too hard to appear innovative.

Shooting digital back in those early days was hardly easier and comfortable. If anything, it was a bigger pain in the a$$ than shooting on film. The problem is that shooting on film wasn’t practical for the sheer amount of digital post-work needed for episode II.

Man, I’ve edited this post way too many times, but I have one more thing to add…

One of the biggest things that made the prequels so innovative, wasn’t just the use of digital cameras or the amount of CGI or the use of Non-linear editing, etc. It was the COMBINATION of all of these things. Yes, eventually we would have gotten to where we are now. But the sheer amount of advancement in all of these technologies for one film (specifically Ep.2) brought about a good 15 years of advancement in a matter of 3-6 years.

Yes, and I don’t think any filmmaker that we’ve had in the past 40 years would have the courage to go as experimental as Lucas did in his work. Some may even argue he’s the hugest contributor to the industry for the past 50 years, by creating Jar Jar and CGI Yoda and Coruscant and shooting on digital camera in the latter two prequels. All of these things were undoubtedly milestones. Just because they would eventually happen doesn’t take the merit away from Lucas.

That’s not to say that the prequels weren’t dog crap though, because they certainly were. RotS objectively less than the others but still.

Whatever else can be said of Lucas and some of his weaknesses as a storyteller, he’s almost always been a technical innovator.

dahmage said:

I agree with your reviews of the three series.

As a child, my family often watched this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes_(1984_TV_series) and i consider that my benchmark for what Sherlock should be.

It unfortunately switched to different creative personnel in the later seasons and really suffered for it by making way too many changes to source material in the adaptations, but God, those early years really are wonderful. For a lot of people, that’s very understandably the definite take on Holmes. Brett is magnificent, and Hardwicke and Burke were both a great Watson.

Shopping Maul said:

Mike O said:

chyron8472 said:

Mike O said:

What is the “Kurtz version?

Gary Kurtz, co-producer of Star Wars and TESB, wanted ROTJ to end on a bittersweet, poignant tone. Were Lucas not to have intervened and changed the story to be more fun and have a happy ending, among other things Han Solo would have died a sacrificial death for his friends (and completed his character arc from a selfish scoundrel to a loyal hero), there would have been no second Death Star, and also no Ewok Celebration (or “teddy bear picnic” as Harrison Ford put it).

No kidding? I’m fascinated. Did Lucas kick Kurtz off the project because of creative differences or something? I read just recently that McQuarrie had some clashes with him and was running out of ideas by ROTJ. Did they originally want to bring Kershner back to direct?

Kurtz has done a few interviews (they’re all over the internet) talking about his dislike for the direction George was taking with ROTJ. There was also supposedly a question of budget - Kurtz allowed Kershner some extra time on TESB which led to the shoot going over budget. Kurtz ended up directing some scenes himself to save time. I’m not sure how significant the budgetary factor was in Lucas’ and Kurtz’ parting of ways.

Damn, fascinating. I didn’t know any of this! So in some parallel universe, there’s a version of ROTJ that actually pays off everything in ESB, I like the weak version we got? I’d be willing to bet it was a combination of going over budget with Lucas money and Lucas probably wanting more creative control over things after ESB. I really had no idea about any of this, it’s really interesting to me. I’m a disgrace to these forums, I know 😉.

TV’s Frink said:

Mike O said:

They can’t do a 4K release without including the OUT. God CANNOT hate OUT fans that much, surely?

Assuming God exists, I doubt it cares either way.

You’re not helping 😛.

They can’t do a 4K release without including the OUT. God CANNOT hate OUT fans that much, surely?

chyron8472 said:

Mike O said:

What is the “Kurtz version?

Gary Kurtz, co-producer of Star Wars and TESB, wanted ROTJ to end on a bittersweet, poignant tone. Were Lucas not to have intervened and changed the story to be more fun and have a happy ending, among other things Han Solo would have died a sacrificial death for his friends (and completed his character arc from a selfish scoundrel to a loyal hero), there would have been no second Death Star, and also no Ewok Celebration (or “teddy bear picnic” as Harrison Ford put it).

No kidding? I’m fascinated. Did Lucas kick Kurtz off the project because of creative differences or something? I read just recently that McQuarrie had some clashes with him and was running out of ideas by ROTJ. Did they originally want to bring Kershner back to direct?

What is the “Kurtz version?”

I’d say Star Wars, if only by virtue of simply having been around longer.

dahmage said:

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Ender’s Game

meh. The book was better.

I so wanted this film to be awesome. It still has value, but man, they cut too much of the story IMO. Book is way better. Should have been a two part movie.

I thought it moved fairly smoothly. Card even says in the afterword that if there was ever a film, that he’d have removed most of the Locke and Demosthenes storyline.

Mavimao said:

Glad you enjoyed it Harmy!

So a couple years ago, I watched all the versions of THX side to side so I have a pretty good idea at what the differences are and where to find them. Also, as the creator of the Grindhouse version, I can safely say that while it wouldn’t be impossible to despecialize the film using the Bluray, anyone attempting this is going to run into the following issues:

1. The computer screens: all of the warning signs are in Italian on the print and therefore the only other sources we have are faded and cropped 16mm prints and the LD. These were all changed for the BD.

2. The scene with THX and SRT in the room with the fetuses: this occurs at a reel change and there is a good chunk of footage missing on the print at this point in time. To make matters worse, the bottles were ‘enhanced’ on the BD, so this would require some kind of rotoscoping using the LD or the 16mm prints.

3. The sunset ending: It’s a shame that the end titles are in Italian on the print because the BD sunset has some weird halo-ing artifacts around THX (noise reduction artifacts?). Maybe this can be fixed…?

TL;DR: It’s a shame we don’t have any more sources to work from like we do for Star Wars.

Perhaps another print will show up one day?

Someone hit my car while it was in park in a parking space in a parking lot because of turning the wrong way. I’ve been on the phone with this person a couple of times, and filed a claim with my insurance company. Unfortunately, she needs to file a claim with her’s, and she hasn’t yet. I really don’t want to be difficult or stay on her, but I really need her to do this. My car needs some (thankfully minor) body work as a result, and her insurance company should be paying it.

SilverWook said:

It’s George Lucas’ first movie, of course there’s a market. Put From the creator of Star Wars on the cover and it will sell. They release far more obscure stuff through the archive because they don’t print more than needed.

How many people really want to watch this uncut without a guy and two robots riffing on it? 😉

It’s the typical non answer probably because George has the clout to keep the original buried. If TCM can’t show it, then Warner Bros. can’t release it either.

Which is why I thought that even the alleged presence of the 1971 cut on AIV and Vudu seemed so weird to me; why even pretend it still exists? Like I said, any interested parties here could hit them up on Twitter to ask. Couldn’t hurt.

Speaking of weird, Silverwook, my iPhone shows you having a different avatar than my PC. Strange.

Yeah, it’s probably down to Lucas as usual 😦. I wish there was some way to squeeze like there was with Star Wars, but I just think that the interest level is too low.

The Grindhouse Edition really does look as terrible as advertised 😉.

SilverWook said:

Harmy said:

So, I finally watched this movie yesterday, thanks to the grindhouse version and it was very interesting - I’m definitely still interested in doing a Despecialized version - the print is in fairly good condition but it would be great, if someone with a good knowledge of this movie could take poita’s scan and identify all the shots that would be needed to replace altered one’s, so that those can be cleaned first.

The changes are far more extensive than anything done to the Special Editions. I don’t envy you the work you’d have to put in on this one.

I’d buy that for a dollar 😉.

Harmy said:

So, I finally watched this movie yesterday, thanks to the grindhouse version and it was very interesting - I’m definitely still interested in doing a Despecialized version - the print is in fairly good condition but it would be great, if someone with a good knowledge of this movie could take poita’s scan and identify all the shots that would be needed to replace altered one’s, so that those can be cleaned first.

It arguably needs it as much as Star Wars. Anyone have the old LD to compare against the 35mm print?

I hit up Warner Archive on Twitter. They didn’t comment on the issue of the so-called theatrical cuts on Vudu and AIV, but said they have “no plans to release the original on disc at this time.” Maybe if more people blew up their Twitter with requests, they’d know there’s a market? I doubt it, but hey.

According to Osbourne on my VHS tape’s intro, it was the “TCM debut.” He must’ve meant of the director’s cut. I’ve notified Amazon and Vudu that what they list as the theatrical version isn’t, and today I let WB know too. I don’t for one minute expect any answer, but hey. A DVD-R (or preferably Blu-ray MOD) release would be ideal, but I’d bet that pigs will fly before that happens. I hit up WB Archive on Twitter too, for the hell of it.

The Vudu version of the “theatrical cut” was the Special Edition too. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten so excited. Ah, well. Damn shame about the TCM airings always being the director’s cut, they ought to be fucking ashamed. That goes against their whole mission statement. With the Disney buyout and all the public interest, there is a possibility of Star Wars eventually having its theatrical cut restored in HD, the chances for THX 1138 are essentially non-existent, especially given the current state of the physical media market.

nickyd47 said:

Mike O said:

rodneyfaile said:

Where is 4K77 ?!

Behind 4K THX 1138.

I want a 4K version of THX but it’ll probably be the 2004 Director’s Cut.
Maybe I should trash pick for a 35MM print of it

That’s what I’m saying; someone should try to salvage THX 1138 while it’s still possible.