The Princess Bride (1987) - The Criterion Collection

=============================================================================
DVD Details

Disc One (DVD-5):
-Letterboxed widescreen capture
-Original Stereo Soundtrack
-Audio commentary by Rob Reiner, William Goldman,
Andrew Scheinman, Billy Crystal, and Peter Falk
-Rob Reiner reads excerpts from William Goldman’s
novel <span class=“Italics”>The Princess Bride</span>

Disc Two (DVD-5):
-Behind the scenes footage:
-On the high seas
-Fezzik, Vizzini, and Buttercup
-Westley and Fezzik
-Miracle Max’s hut
-Buttercup, the King, and the Queen
-Rob Reiner’s production scrapbook
-Norman Garwood’s production sketches
-William Goldman’s tapestry
-“Morton and Hayes”: Excerpt
-DVD-ROM extras*

=============================================================================
Preservation Ratonale

I don’t have enough fingers to count how many times this movie has been released in the United States on home video, but I have quite a few of them: the old laser-rotten Criterion CAV, the recently purchased '97 Criterion CAV, the studio Pan-n-Scan laserdisc, the original letterboxed DVD, and the Special Edition DVD. To the new “super-deluxe-availble-in-pink-or-blue-edition,” I say <span class=“Italics”>WTF</span>? As a quintuple-owner, I guess it’s my fault for giving them cause to re-re-…-re-re-release the movie, but it’s getting quite ridiculous.

Hence, I decided to bring the '97 Criterion CAV edition, which I feel is the best of the bunch still, to the fan-preservation community.

Here’s some more information on the release, per the liner notes:

“It was my happiest movie experience.” --William Goldman

When we asked William Goldman to join us in the production of this tent-anniversary release, he said, “I am very protective of The Princess Bride. It’s one of the only things I’ve written that I like.” For a moment, it seemed that this long-overdue special edition of one of Criterion’s all-time favorites was over before we’d begun it.

But Goldman invited us to view an exquisite tapestry, based on the film, that he commissioned for his home. And, as if some sort of spell had been woven into it fibers, things began to fall into place. The usually taciturn Rob Reiner coaxed Goldman to join him and producer Andrew Scheinman on the commentary track. Reiner’s second for Criterion, Reiner himself had taken the time to record a two-and-a-half-hour audio cassette version of the book (you can hear excerpts from it on analog 1). We found out that Billy Crystal enjoyed the making of The Princess Bride so much that he based an upcoming film on his on-set experiences with Andre the Giant. Peter Falk told us that, at the screening, he had never known less about what he was about to see or been more delighted with the results.

All shared wonderful stories with us, and all looked back with that rarest of Hollywood commodities: fond memories. Woven like the tapestry, somewhere between Florin and Guilder, the experience of filming The Princess Bride holds a special place in the hearts of all who worked on it.
We hope you enjoy this edition as much as we enjoyed producing it.

=============================================================================
Technical Details

I contemplated harvesting the video from either on of my DVDs, but that’s not really fair to those companies that produced them, so I went ahead and captured the video from the laserdisc. It’s nothing exceptional, and the color is a little off, but the important things (the audio tracks) are intact.

Fans of the film will notice gaps between some video segments that aren’t supposed to be there. In overlaying the novel excerpts, Criterion allowed the narration to run past the last frame on a few of the side changes. To keep the audio complete, I decided to fill up the extra space with black frames. If you watch the film with its soundtrack, you’ll notice the gaps.

I will likely play around with the artwork too, but it’s mostly done.

<span class=“Italics”>Source</span>: The 1997 Criterion Collection’s CAV laserdisc, spine No. 320. Luckily I was able to scoop up a still-sealed copy on eBay earlier this month. I put all other projects on temporary hiatus while I work on this.

Hardware: Pioneer CLD-D704 --> Dazzle DVC90 --> shitbox computer
Software: Pinnacle Studio10 to capture, VirtualDubMod/AVISynth to splice and process, CCE 9-pass to encode video, SonicFoundry SoftEncode 5.1 to encode AC3 audio, and Adobe Photoshop and Encore to build the menus and DVD, respectively.

Extras: A 300-dpi copy of the above artwork, including disc artwork, and the little “Special Edition” sticker. MP3s of the two audio commentary files, so if you find my video too distracting, you can author your own DVDs with video from those. Also, you can load the mp3’s into your iPod or iRiver or whatever trendy doo-dad you have prefixed by a diminutive vowel. Also included: a booklet containing some essays about the film (the Goldman essay from the '97 release, as well as the old essay from the '89-ish release), a Criterion laserdisc checklist I made, and all of my .avs and excel spreadsheets I used. Kind of an “open source” thing.

=============================================================================
Distribution

Like my She’s Gotta Have It project, I will send out free copies to the first five who contact me, and just let people trade from there. I don’t have any interest in torrenting or otherwise uploading the discs, but if someone else wants to, you have my blessing.

=============================================================================
Project Status

Disc one is done, and I’m still working on disc two. I wanted to post this thread before I got the set done because I wanted to gauge the interest. There wasn’t much interest in the She’s Gotta Have It set, so if there’s similar interest in this, then I won’t worry too much about getting it done. If there is, it will light the fire under me.

<span class=“Bold”>She’s Gotta Have It (1986) - The Criterion Collection</span>

=============================================================================
DVD Details

Disc 1:
-Exclusive presentation of the unrated director’s cut,
featuring material censored from the original theatrical release.
-Audio commentary by director Spike Lee, cinematographer
Ernest Dickerson, sound desinged Barry Brown, and
production supervisor Monty Ross

Disc 2:
-Scene deleted from the final cut
-Outtakes
-Original Theatrical Trailer
-She’s Gotta Have It music video
-Still photo gallery with audio commentary by
Spike Lee’s brother, unit photographer David Lee
-Still photos of <span class=“Italics”>She’s Gotta Have It</span> props, paraphenalia, and memorabilia
-NIKE ads featuring Spike Lee and Michael Jordan

Both are region zero (obviously) and NTSC. I put a small border around the video stream so that more of the image would show up on my TV; Criterion has started to do this, and although it is derided by review houses like dvdfile, dvdbeaver, etc., I like it. I see nothing wrong with pandering to those of us who own sub-standard equipment.

=============================================================================
Technical Details

Content Source: 1994 Criterion Collection CLV Laserdisc
LD Player: Pioneer CLD-D704
Capture Device: Dazzle DVC90 (see notes)
Post-Processing: For video, I used VirtualDubMod being fed by AVISynth and a few filters. Each segment of video was captured three times and then merged together to “average out” the random noise. Also, since there are multiple audio tracks for much of this DVD, lining up the individual captures for this merging also lines up the audio clips. (Less work for me). For audio, I just saved the wav stream from each trimmed video capture, merged the “two channel mono” down to a monoaural stream, and then encoded it to a 1.0 AC3 stream. If you play the discs with a 5.1 setup, the sound will come from your center channel speaker; if you play the discs with a stereo setup, the mono stream will come from both speakers.

=============================================================================
Notes

First off, I realize that the Dazzle isn’t the greatest device to use, but my intent with this project was CONTENT, not QUALITY. Perhaps in the future I will pony up for a Canopus or some such play thing, but the laserdisc piggy bank seems to run chronically low. Anyway, I’m far from a videographer, and all of what I know about it has been gleaned from the internet, so if there are large defects in the capture/processing, don’t hate. (If you get around to viewing my capture, take special note of the burst of chroma the pops out of the sewer grate about half way through the otherwise black-and-white movie. I laughed out loud, and my wife wondered why. She doesn’t seem to appreciate chroma-related humor) I basically played around with multiple filters until I got something that was acceptable to me on my 27" tube TV.

Specifically, I merged the three captures, IVTC’d, and hit it with a small bit of grain removal. If you’re more interested in what I did, or would like to look over my AVIsynth script, let me know.

My primary rationale behind porting this particular disc is that it has been rumored for re-release by Criterion, but that now seems unlikely as MGM has acquired the rights to the film. Reportedly, they have a policy of not licensing their films to other release houses. The rumors say that it is/was slated for release early 2007, so my discs will either fill that gap or set a new record for the fastest project to become obsolete. Besides that, I chose it for my first project because I saw the movie only recently and really enjoyed it and the insights of Spike Lee. I wanted to share that with others in the forum who have been kind enough to share their work with me.

Additionally, the film is only available on DVD in Region 2 PAL format (joining the large list of American films not available in the US). You can read about it here. Now, I realize that “Not available in my region!” is not reason enough for preservation, per the forum’s charter, but MGM’s releases are notoriously barebones. Even if we get a good R1 release, I wouldn’t hold out much hope for these extras. The rumors also state that Lee himself has been trying to get the DVD rights into Criterion’s hands, so it’s unlikely that they would sell their extras when they have the film’s creator in their corner. That’s all based on what is likely jack-ass internet speculation, but it got me moving on this anyway.

=============================================================================
Distribution

I have no way of uploading this either by torrent or usenet, so I think I will just try to spread it around to a few who contact me, and hope that they pass it around or upload it somewhere. If you get your hands on a set of these, feel free to upload if you have the ability. I certainly do not assert any ownership of the material contained within.

=============================================================================
Other Criterions in Progress…

Status: Captures done, need to process it all

Status: Content ready, DVD not yet constructed

Status: Temporary hiatus. Keep dropping frames on the captures.

Status: LD on its way to me. The artwork I had for this was so cool that I already have the jacket made.