I'd recommend the hdtv source or just the original DVD, as it's widely available and no slouch despite being a very old disc. Shouldn't be too much difference from the BD/HDVD as there were no edits or changes other than color.
AntcuFaalb said:
Continued...
The closest to a "100% pure video signal" from an LD that I think we'll ever get is a TooT of 3 captures from 3 different copies of the same movie on LD (pressed by the same pressing factory, preferably) on an LD player with a >51dB signal-to-noise ratio that doesn't smear CLV LDs (if the LD in question is CLV, that is).
What a mouthful!
What player does all that exactly? Silly me would buy one of course. ;)
Yes, but in standard Dolby format. Only October had split surrounds, the prior two were LCR + mono surround enhanced by two baby booms with spectral recording noise reduction. To my ears, Batman on LD has a certain clarity unheard on any of the later video 5.1 remixes.
Jonno said:
Speaking of which, I recently synced the laserdisc Dolby Stereo for Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior to the HD-DVD video for a custom disc. I'll upload the track if anyone's interested, though I'd like to wait until the new Blu-ray release arrived with me to check that it syncs with that.
Awesome, I wanted to get the LD just for this track. But how did you manage syncing with the few excised bits from the US edit? (Not that I remember all of them.)
borisanddoris said:
GoldenEye's AC3 LaserDisc track has bloated LFE, which was fixed on the DTS LD.
Is this on the LD as was reputed to be on the SE DVD? It would make sense as the LFE is very bloated.
borisanddoris said:
That too can depend on the film. Take Batman Forever. The PCM mix is great, but lacks the spatial characteristics of the AC3 mix. Both great, but the AC3 is truer to the intent of the film.
The Lion King? Yeah, PCM hands down.
A lot of folks also prefer the PCM track of Top Gun to the AC3 version. I surely don't. I think the AC3 one rocks big time. There's a preservation that is worthy!
On Forever it's neck and neck. The PCM has a more natural soundstage and bass, but the ac3 has intensive clarity and defined discrete channels.
Apocalypse Now is best on the 1991 release in PCM. The later 5.1 LD and DVD/BDs aren't the same.
Hunt For Red October, Die Hard and Batman all sound better on LD PCM than the remixes, even the LD ones! Especially Batman. One of the best Dolby Stereo mixes ever done IMO.
I'm pretty sure this is an issue of using a master source that did not have the the theatrical color timing. Somewhere the cinematographer mentioned about having to push the color saturation for prints a lot which would make sense if this were the case.
I really prefer the old timing, and have held onto my snapper DVD just for it despite being the slightly cut US version.
3 Deranns up for sale.
Just how good can a VHS audio track be? I'm considering looking at VHS audio for a project where the only other source is heavily compressed DVD audio (96 kbp/s mono and time compressed on top of that). Can hi-fi audio stand up to a lossless transfer, and if necessary can non-hifi VHS audio work?
captainsolo said:
If you want to see a real prison film, there is a WB 30's picture that was far truer to life and delved deeply into the black that eventually became noir. Cold, tough, brutal and ultimately a tragedy this is the great forgotten American classic I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.
I said this.
So I watched the film again.
LMS: I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)
This is a dark, gritty, nasty, blistering, scathing piece of work that goes up and down a continual roller coaster of the American societal structure. It is an indictment of the chain gang prison system but also a microcosm of our inherent societal oversights. Paul Muni gives what is his best performance (forget Scarface) as the main character, a returning WWI veteran who only wants to fulfill himself as a great doer of things, like any other man has ever wanted to do. But the world refuses to let him.
And so it begins. From returning decorated soldier to jobbing worker to traveling worker to hobo to being the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. This lands him on the chain gang, for an extremely overdone sentence of 10 years. And this is not prison, it isn't even quite Earth any longer. It is Hell. A Hell that exists for only one thing, to absolutely destroy a man.
Any normal film would focus on the prison, the term served, the plans for escape but it is the mark of greatness that has the plot go outside and watch a man re-establish himself amongst society with some actual success. The sheer adeptness of the filmmaking process on this, a 1932 WB picture, is astounding. Mervin LeRoy had just made Little Caesar, but that was no indication for the giant leap forward in technique displayed here. This is a beyond taut picture, brilliantly suspenseful throughout and vividly puts you right alongside the innocent man for not just a section but the entire duration of the film!
And being a PreCode film, it pulls no punches. And gosh is it wonderful to not have to deal with the sidestepping.
The controversy caused by the film's scathing depiction of the chain gang system was justified in that not only was it based on a real ex-con's memoir, but that the scenarios are largely if not fully accurate. The public outrage upon learning of of this essentially caused the reform that ended the gangs.
This is an honest picture, and this honesty combined with an incredible cinematic quality is the key to its effectiveness. This has all the mighty power of the classic Warner storytelling machine with the weight of a true social drama.
And the ending is truly haunting. Not one of those that merely sticks with you, but genuinely and definitively haunting and to be perfectly honest foretelling the onset of film noir.
A forgotten American masterpiece along the likes of The Grapes of Wrath. 4 stars. Storytelling perfection. One of the best films of the 30's, one of the best films the studio ever made and unforgettable. THE Prison film.
See it by all means. Buy, rent, anything.
It also may be the first film where a person hides from pursuers by diving into a lake and breathing through a reed. It absolutely 100% influenced the same scene in Dr. No right down to the guard dogs.
FanFiltration said:
"Licence to Kill"
This is one of my top five favorites. I know it has it's cheesy moments, but this film feels much more like an Ian Fleming flavored James Bond then any of the Guy Hamilton, Lewis Gilbert, or other John Glenn entrees. Bond is at his gritty best, and he has a great personal motivation for his revenge. The action is realistic, and most of the bad guys don't feel like they are out of a comic book. They have some real nasty objectives with the drug trade plot, and I love how Franz Sanchez comes completely unglued by Bond's psychological manipulations. The story moves at a decent pace, and I really enjoyed the Milton Crest character and his roll in the overall drug operation. His fate was amusing, and I almost could find myself feeling sorry for him. How Bond set him up, was brilliant story telling. The call back to earlier Bond gags (like the duck disguise from "Goldfinger") was pulled off very well this time around. The Manta Ray disguise was so much more realistic here, than the use of a crocodile disguise done in "Octopussy". The Truck chase was a bit over the top, but it beats Bond fighting in front of a rear projection screen, or fighting on a airplane yet again. Yes, I like this film a lot. Too bad Dalton did not get another go as Bond. Oh, and I have to add that Wane Newton was excellent in his roll of the greedy and overly sex obsessed Televangelist.
"Bless your heart!" ;)
Really? You like LTK over everything besides Young's three and OHMSS?
Smart Money
The only pairing of Robinson and Cagney is an odd movie, which is better for being Pre-Code and stuffed with innuendos than for its plot. Watch for these two playing off of each other and for Boris Karloff.
2 balls out of 4 cigars.
Scarface (1932)
Of all the classic gangster pictures, this is the most disappointing one. Howard Hawks directed, Ben Hecht wrote it and damn it if this doesn't drag on with little to no interest in the main character. Paul Muni comes across as more of a dope than a grand master of crime and it is actually George Raft who makes the star turn as the murderous supporting gangster who says little but habitually flips his coin in the background without looking at it.
3 balls out of 4 overly protected sisters.
Bullets or Ballots
Essentially G-Men 2, with Robinson as a cop going undercover to crush the rackets once and for all. Worthwhile primarily for Eddie getting some great one-liners and Bogie's cold Gangster No.2 who exists only to antagonize and die in the penultimate reel.
3 balls out of 4 fedoras.
San Quentin
One of the classic prison films, SQ is more a character study that is most hampered by it's short run time and inherent goody two shoes quality. An army man is brought in to help make the prisoners truly reform while doing time. He just happens to develop feelings for a nightclub singer (Ann Sheridan) (Swoon!) who just happens to be the sister of newly arrested Bogie. See where this is going? See this for another early big part for Bogie despite it not being any comparison to Black Legion, and because it's one of those short classics that doesn't inspire adoration or hatred but merely a welcome time filler.
2.5 balls out of 4 big houses.
If you want to see a real prison film, there is a WB 30's picture that was far truer to life and delved deeply into the black that eventually became noir. Cold, tough, brutal and ultimately a tragedy this is the great forgotten American classic I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.
If it was done at the behest of the filmmakers that is one thing. If it is a fan doing it for their own preferences that is one thing. But the idea of colorizing B&W classics is to me sacrilegious and not because I am just a purist or anything. It's completely manipulating the original image and by pasting this stuff over the original cinematography, the image is destroyed. I absolutely lost it when I saw what they did to Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, had no idea that so many others got the same bastardized treatment.
That said, there is one title listed there that does need some work, and that is the 2 strip Technicolor film Mystery of the Wax Museum which was re-timed poorly for it's DVD release.
Are there any decent English subs for ABT I and II? The IVL/Fortune Star ones are really poor at conveying the dialogue.
Glad someone is taking a stab at this. This new BD is terrible!
Is it wrong that I really prefer the old 1998 DVD with the original as-shot framing that's really wide?
Jetrell Fo said:
Well, I have added a few "founds" to the list .....
Little Mermaid
Apollo 13
The World Is Not Enough
Clear And Present Danger
The Matrix Trilogy
Batman & Robin
Batman (Nolan) Trilogy
It's been an exciting weekend ..... here's to the hunt ...... :)
Whaaa...? Oh boy this is going to be fun...1999 had some great mixes.
The color timing on GF I and II was indeed a huge difference especially in daylight scenes on GF I. But that was done from extensive research by Robert Harris, all the original materials they could get their hands on and by working with the Prince of Darkness himself Gordon Willis.
Brilliant restoration job on both films, in fact some of the best done in the past few years....And of course no worked on the mono tracks. Go figure.
North By Northwest has different timing on every release I've seen. The new version looks far more like film than the Lowry DVD snafu that was downright pinkish throughout, but still doesn't exactly sway me 100%. (It was an 8K scan however) The old Criterion issue used a show print and looks like what a print would have on release.
Welcome to the joys of the Loudness War. ;)
Yeah, what you'll have to do is adjust the gain levels or see if your mp3 player has an adjustable setting. (ReplayGain etc.) I've never used such stuff myself as I stick with FLAC.
Damn, you put so much effort into explaining...wow thanks!
You're exactly right. The screen curvature should not cause distortion, stretching or cropping, especially since this is a single projector/single film Cinerama release. If you watch the HTWWW Smilebox, it it is immediately striking but quickly you realize that everything is out of whack because they didn't take the time to do the work properly.
I'm pretty sure that the studio simply reused the old SE/LD master source files for the new BD. It looks pretty much the same and reveals all the old enhancements but is re-buried in new DNR to cover that up.
Okay since the DTS track has surfaced here's an idea for a Goldeneye restoration.
Use the 720p UE master HDTV rip as a basis which as-is is immeasurably superior to the BD. It does have the revisionist color timing (not as bad as the UE DVD) and cropping in addition to a redone title sequence. What we could try to do is marry the cropped information from the DNR riddled master and the re-timed HDTV cap. The crop stays petty solid and doesn't move so what it will essentially look like is a projector with the edges of the image running off of the screen and slightly out of focus. But this way we can have an HD image that matches the theatrical, maintains grain and doesn't lose the cropped material. Drop in the original titles sequence and the DTS track and it's set.
As this is a full-on preservation of a film that has long been treated horribly on video and is classic HK action I think you should be okay for the spleen. Ask a mod to be sure.
Otherwise there are several sites exclusively for Asian films that I've come across. EDIT: Never mind, I found your thread over there.
The Public Enemy
Cagney. There is a reason why the name evokes such a connection with people after all this time. Such ferocious energy, such physical grace, all wrapped up in a man so tightly wound that he explodes with more force than a thousand tommy guns.
The film is a classic, and a surprisingly far more superior and adult film than Little Caesar which preceded it by a few months. Cagney makes his legendary bid for stardom as a vicious, sadistic, violent, charming gangster-forming the classic mold by which all others are judged. There are countless films inspired by this one, most notably several Scorsese films as Marty is a lifelong fan.
Example: The opening of Goodfellas? From here essentially. This film is 100% pure Pre-Code, full of sexual innuendos, illicit affairs, drinking, and all kinds of other general "nasties". The Public Enemy is a tightly woven drama that always works and runs on pure Cagney fuel.
Cagney is like a lightning rod, as hot as his bulging pistols as he burns his way into your subconscious.
God, that scene with Cagney in the pouring rain at night before walking in towards his doom...THAT is cinema. THAT is acting. No dialogue. No score. Just unbelievable power and tension. Overbearingly strong visuals that sweep you up in their wake.
And then there's what happens when you're the boring girlfriend and you piss off Jimmy early in the morning whilst his hangover is in full swing. ;)
4 balls out of 4...dirty rats. Masterpiece. Arguably THE gangster picture by which all others should be measured.
G Men
Here we see the opposite side of the scale. Made 4 years later in full Code enforcement, Cagney is now on the side of the law as an FBI agent in a film with none of the wit, charm, assurance, vitality, and most importantly none of the danger inherent in Public Enemy. This is pure fiction, pure Hollywood fantasy about government agents vs. crooks, but it's an enjoyable movie for what it is. It's just a waste to see so much talent go without being fully utilized. This film was reissued in the 40's with a pitiful tacked on opening where FBI agents sit down to watch a film about the "greatness of the department".
Public Enemy along with Little Caesar were banned until the mid 1950's, and were only then shown censored.
2.5 balls out of 4
I know I posted in the DTS thread, but again fantastic news. Many of us have wanted to hear these tracks for ages.
TND is essentially the best overall surround mix I have ever heard theatrically. Tons of stuff going on in the soundfield and in the surrounds. I'm almost 100% positive it was a DTS theater.
Jetrell Fo said:
dvdmike said:
What are the 3 new ones?
True Lies, Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies .....
What how where when?? Did you manage to find the theatrical discs or extract the LD audio? This is exciting news, I've long wondered how the original tracks compared to their Dolby and remixed counterparts.
I just noticed that many on the first page are listed as found. Wow, this is really taking off.
Ah. Scratch that, I forgot they had finally put it on disc. Only took them roughly 15 years. ;)
Yep. What you likely saw was an HD version made from files that were pre-tinkering for the DVD format. This is what would have been utilized for the BD with some massaging for the new disc, hence to contrast boost. That's also why DAF is now timed so coldly.
The OHMSS SE disc and LD are what the film has always looked like. At least on these old discs you get some inkling of 60's Technicolor.
The GE HDTV version typically found is 720p and does indeed look great, save for the cropping and color timing. The amount of visible grain is massive, it's tight and dense and near gone on the official BD. However there's a slight error in my version, in the meeting with Bond and Zukovsky.