captainsolo

The Mission (1986)

Been meaning to see this for a while now and finally got around to it. Nothing to really write about. Great cinematography and score. Good performances that could have been better had there been something to actually go on. There is a point, but it's as if the meat of the story has been removed. A really empty movie.

Watched on LD letterboxed with PCM Dolby Stereo. Enjoyable presentation on a nice old disc.

2.5 balls out of 4 Jesuits

Ay that's the rub. The first recording was completely spontaneous and perfect. Somehow it got lost and we later decided to try again. That one was a bit more stodgy and we found after finishing that one of the two mikes had been faulty. ESB only has about 40 mins done IIRC. I'll have to try and dig these up, re-synced and get the better bits up somewhere.

This could take forever...

Nearly any moment in SW could be considered one, primarily due to the way the film was cut. There's an undeniable energy to even the slightest of gestures that makes the thing feel so incredibly alive. This is what really makes ESB and ROTJ seem different.

The big ones of course: Escape pod, Binary sunset, Mos Eisley escape, Chasm swing, Trench run, Throne room ceremony, X-wing rising from the swamp, Bespin duel, the sail barge, speeder bike chase, throne room duel and many more I'm leaving out.

There are many other smaller moments that just stick with me, but to make things interesting here are a few moments that have become favorites to me due to watching and joking with friends over the years:

The most angsty pre-pubescent line in the history of time: (in a super high pitched fast paced voice) "BUTIWASGOINGINTOTOSCHESTATIONTOPICKUPSOMEPOWERCONVERTERS!"

Ben's "beard stroke" and tug after Leia's hologram.

"Freeze you rebel scum" in ROTJ when an old friend thought the line delivery sounded a bit...well they described it as sounding like an odd dirty remark where the Imperial kinda was more than interested in the Rebel...scum...

Greedo's comebacks.

But nothing compares to Dr. Evzan, Luke, Ben and Wuher's dialog in the cantina. When I first joined the site and found the GOUT I got a bit SW-mad again. So for some odd reason at any given moment where it could or could not be interjected, I would fully recite the entire "He doesn't like you" sequence and over the years this has become more and more developed until I created a new version with such additions as: "I can't have a drink-I got liver problems!" "I just cleaned up the bar!" "Come let's get trashed."

In college my roommates and I once dubbed Star Wars and ESB. Best experience ever.  Completely incorrect in spots and absolutely hysterical. Examples: Beru became a heavy chain smoker, the droids became sex robots, Ben became a really crazy old man, Luke was super whiny and inconsiderate with "teen angst!...well technically more like 20-year old angst", dialogue overlapped, references made to the stupidity of the SE, in-jokes, all sound effects done vocally, Leia was puny, Han said "badass" every other line, and things like the ESB probe were dubbed with: "Jor-El placed his infant son in a small rocket ship hurtling in the direction of the Earth just as Krypton exploded."

They didn't need the physical weapon. It served them no purpose as they were masters of the Force.

But nooooo...we just couldn't keep it that way could we?

The trouble is that most of the sources with the uncut and alternate footage are usually in PAL and only in Italian or Spanish.

Are any of LeoneNut's edits available anymore? I'd love to see his Duck, You Sucker for the correct audio.

Great link for FAFDM. After digging around in the Leone forums, I found a thread that talks about the old US LD having the scenes intact but missing the scene with the official and Mortimer "naming" Manco.

http://www.fistful-of-leone.com/forums/index.php?topic=7269.30

It's really revealing to look at those old MGM DVDs nowadays, to see what we've lived with for so long. Fistful has a giant bright white line running along the side of the frame for the entire film, FAFDM has the cuts and a audio sync issue and both are non-anamorphic letterbox. The newer DVDs are better but I still have my old ones. The Blus all have issues and you're best off it seems to go for all foreign editions. At least GBU still has a fantastic first DVD.

For the first two I'd recommend the 2 disc DVDs, as they have great commentaries, anamorphic video, mono audio and are quite cheap.

No version has yet to compare to the theatrical experience though. I saw the Dollars films and Duck, You Sucker! a few years ago and all were stunning to behold...except that GBU was the bastard extended cut, DYS had the improper 5.1 remix, and FAFDM was in really bad shape. In fact it was so much that the theater had a sign posted for refunds if you couldn't live with the print.

There was a scene entirely pink, the mono was too low for the first reels and way too loud on the last ones, but it looked phenomenal despite the print's condition. The Monco scenes were there proving that this was a pre-United Artists re-cut. But the laugh was cut and the fight may have been a little longer. I'm thinking that although these were dubbed in English that they were dropped somewhere around the time of the dub being finished for whatever reason.

No one is ever able to replicate that Techniscope look on home video. For the Leone films it's usually the color which isn't as deep. This may be due to the MGM produced new prints. With an outside company they struck new standard 35mm prints from Techniscope originals.

That's a film I point people to. Not only does it stay with you, you freaking weep. Not cry. WEEP.  I remember thinking to myself: an animated film about kids? in war? in WWII? How the heck is this going to work? It feels less like Miyazaki or something similar and more like poetry. Haunting, damning, unforgettable.

A truly great film in any regard, animated or not.

Last seen:

Richard III  (1995)

I get the idea behind modernizing Shakespeare to the setting of a totalitarian fiction England in the 30's. Ian McKellen is beyond superb. Other than this the film continually falls on its face with pacing, some stilted performances and an overall lack of energy. The ending is beyond cheesy.

Watched on Laser. 2.5 balls out of 4 stupid boar masks.

Life of Brian.

Simply put, the greatest comedy ever made. (Dr. Strangelove is not an out and out comedy film and doesn't try to be one so I don't count it as strictly comedy.) With Strangelove, this is the only film that can make me pee my pants laughing. But not all the laughs are this way. Only the great comedies have laughs for your mind as well as the tired funnybone. Endlessly quotable, inventive and absolutely hysterical. A comedy ride that also meditates on our stupidity as a race. The Python's masterwork, and yes for the last time this definitively kicks the crap out of Holy Grail.

4 balls out of 4 blessed cheesemakers.

Once Upon a Time in America

Mesmerizing. Even better after repeated viewings. You don't notice the long runtime whatsoever, and the missing 40 minutes are being restored in Italy. Wipes the floor completely with Godfather Pt. II and makes you realize that that was only an appetizer to this. One of DeNiro's best performances.

Why why why why why did Sergio Leone only make six fully-fledged films? Every time I watch one I reach this same thought.

4 balls of noodles out of 4 opium dens.

Would it lose much information to do this via analog outputs? I know it wouldn't be a digital copy, but this is how some people have to listen to/convert their SACDs.

The thing I've wondered is, if Deck is a replicant, how long has he been activated? Is all of his past with the police false, or has he been around for a while? Some have speculated that he's a malfunctioning replicant or a special model designed to help police the ranks of the other replicants.

Deck does exhibit many more human qualities than the others around him, just look at his approach to the job versus Holden. But if you follow along the reasoning that replicants act more humanely than actual humans and that Deckard finds this disturbing when he is having to retire them, finding out that he himself is one uproots his universe completely and makes those lingering sympathies ring true. Human or replicant, it makes sense but to me the replicant notion compounds any of the ideas.

I wish the Tyrell reveal scene had been filmed. The idea that Tyrell would be revealed to be a replicant and Roy finding the preserved hibernated corpse of the real man deep in the building sounded fantastic.

I could just discuss this film all freaking day. Just got the DC and International Criterion LDs and can't wait to get them fired up.

There's not going to be any change form the previous editions. What we will get in this set are the discs previously released and similar ones of those as of yet unreleased.

I'm thinking that the differences in the Blus we've seen are simply because they are coming straight from the Lowry HD masters with little to no extra tinkering. The UE DVDs seemed to have many extra tweaks that were done to make the DVD image more impressive to standard consumers, much like the reasoning behind Edge enhancement and excessive over processing. The "fixes" are simply made by issuing the original files that did not have the extra meddling done on them. And the extra color timing changes are unlikely to be on the master.

What we certainly won't receive are lossless original audio tracks for every film, and images that accurately reflect the original films.

Especially the 60's era. After jumping into LD, I don't think MGM/Fox will ever be able to accurately replicate that original Technicolor brilliance.Use VLC's adjustments on the earlier UE titles and just raise the saturation a bit. Much of the color has been drained and it's really obvious on You Only Live Twice.

I'll wait for the individual releases to grab 1-20 because there might be some way to salvage the films with editing. I certainly won't ever buy a boxset that forces me to pay for the Craig films. Never.

Duck, You Sucker! AKA A Fistful of Dynamite AKA Once Upon a Time...the Revolution

The forgotten Leone film that is extremely deep and more developed than his previous films in its uncut version. James Coburn and Rod Steiger are fantastic in this meditation on the nature of revolution and life in general. Incorporates some of the operatic grand feel of OUATITW with some of the quirky humor of the Dollars films but at the same time has a new-found sense of realism. This is certainly a more adult film. Unfortunately as LeoneNut has proven with his project, the MGM restored version features wrong soundtrack and dialogue elements at certain points and the "mono" track is only a folddown of the incorrect 5.1 mix.

Still a fantastic achievement that hits you over the head with it's impact. Amazing in 35mm.

4 balls out of 4 say to Duck you sucker!

I like pretty much all of the versions, only wishing that the actual voiceover dialogue was better. I think the film works better without it, but to each their own. Though I despise the "happy ending" idea, the actual scene is just stupid, not bad.

Anybody remember trying to see all the versions back years ago? You couldn't see anything besides the Director's Cut for years. I finally tracked down the original VHS of the International cut, popped it in, and readily said: WTF? Then I saw the broadcast version. Ugh!

The only thing about the Final Cut that bothers me is the new color timing. It works when you watch the film and don't think about it, but as soon as you go back to another version you realize they added way too much blue/green. It cuts down on the original's graininess.

I think I actually like the "father" line better. It gives Roy this odd fascination amidst the anger upon meeting Tyrell, his "maker". I felt it made Roy seem more conflicted and in turn "human"...

I read Dick's novel before seeing the film originally. So I had a pretty good idea of the world/culture that the film was going to explore, and I knew that many things would be different. But I never get the idea that Deckard isn't a replicant. It's so perfectly twisted as a plot element, so devious and catastrophic that it must be true. I wonder what Dick himself would have thought of the idea, because I honestly think it improves on the original film's story to such a degree that the entire meaning changes.

But this is constructed in such a way that there is no definite answer. That's what makes this film live on. Everybody can have their own opinion, their own meaning, and it will mean something totally different to another person than it does to you. It's really like 2001 in that sense.

You make correct points about the past. I'm not saying that the industry isn't about making money. It always has been. The period I refer to is one that just isn't really ever defined in any texts. What really paved the way for the abrupt shift was the arrival and eventual acceptance of the "New Hollywood" into the general outlook.

I finally sat down with both Dracs a while ago and actually found that I rather dislike the Spanish version. I understand why it has its reputation, but aside from being visually stronger and having some more spirited performances, it drags considerably. It's too long, and has none of the atmosphere or charm of the English version. And with the Spanish actor, Dracula gets quite hammy.

Usher and Pit are kinda funny since they are essentially the same film. But Pit is so much more realized in every way that it makes Usher seem one-note. It may drop Poe, but it is a much better flowing film for it. I love these scripts written by Richard Matheson, even as a person who adores Poe's work.

Once Upon a Time in the West

Bold, operatic leap from the "Dollars" trilogy into the mythology of the Western Leone loved so much. However, his reasoning and mind couldn't stand the "always righteous" fake moral quality of classic Westerns (I can't either) and had to make a true Western that used the mythology to shatter these amid all the cliches. This came out even further in the criminally forgotten Duck, You Sucker!

It took an Italian to fully appreciate and realize the American genre. It is a simultaneous glorification and subversion of the Western that finally becomes grand operatic drama. The cast is perfect, the visuals are striking, the pacing languid and long, and as a filmmaker Leone raises the bar for himself. Morricone creates yet another of the great film scores.

"Something to do with death." 4 balls with duster coats out of 4 harmonicas.

http://forum.lddb.com/index.php

Just thought I'd pass this along. Never realized this was even up and going. Now I'm on 5 forums!

Guess I'm ignored...again ;)

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Original MGM DVD with 161 minute US theatrical cut. It's worn, torn, damaged, with 1.0 mono and freaking glorious. I hate the bastard SE extended cut with the Italian scenes rammed back in and the bad recording of an obviously older Eastwood and Wallach, the worst 5.1 remix in the history of time and the bad DVD and Blu-ray full of EE and DVNR from the same bad video master. The added grotto scene is completely unnecessary.

News on that front, there's a Italian Blu-ray that features better color, detail and no DVNR!! It's from a company called Mondo and is the extended Italian version minus the grotto scene-only downside is there's no English but there is Italian mono.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1145562&page=15

TGTBATU is Leone straddling the gritty entertainment of the Dollars films with the later operatic grandeur of Once Upon a Time in the West.

4 balls out of 4. Got to get a poncho.

Ziggy Stardust said:

Mrebo said:

Haha, Ziggy. This, my 500th post, concerns David Bowie. He would make for a great jedi master in my prequels. What about him captured your attention so completely?

Well, when I was about four (a whole ten years ago!), my mom was playing the album Changesbowie in her room. I asked her about it, and she was all like:

"Wanna have it?"

"Sure!"

"Okay, here."

Since then, I was hooked. I think it's all the changes he goes through that made him so interesting to me then, even though I had no notion of what he was singing yet. When I was seven I asked for "Low" and "Heroes" for Christmas.

I dunno man, there's just something about the guy. I have a drawing I did of him in the second grade, I might upload that to share with you guys tomorrow. That said, in first grade I made a watercolor painting of Björk, so go figure.

Damn, reminds me of myself as a kid if you replaced Bowie with James Bond and Stanley Kubrick. Not that my parents really had film interests...

Hi Mrebo, thanks for saying hello. I got drawn into the great madness when searching online for a better version of the 1997 SE as a college freshman. Slowly but surely ot.com became my one-stop online nook. I typically post in the General discussion section but primarily I'm in the Preservations and Off-topic areas. As a film grad/nut/geek, I salivate over all of the projects going on and wish I had the hardware to compete friendly.

There is no better forum around...we're like an odd bunch of castaways on a strange blue-grey little island.

Ligeia is the most lofty of the Corman Poe's. It is the most emotional, and the one with actual dramatic conflict behind everything. (Screenplay by Robert Towne) The first time I saw it, I thought it was the best of them all, but upon each revisit, it begins to drag and drag and drag until you realize that aside from the opening, a few scenes in the middle and the ending, that this has all been done before...in the Poe's!

Burial is a nice little sleeper whose only fault is that it does what it is supposed to and nothing more.

I'd probably rank Ligeia third best overall behind Pit and the Pendulum and Masque of the Red Death. Masque gets better each time and is an absolute gem. The worst would have to be The Haunted Palace, but that's actually based on Lovecraft instead of Poe.

This is a good idea to document all differences, especially since this was a dedicated mix and not a stereo fold down.

Did anybody else scroll down really fast and have the appropriate music cue going in their heads?

I was referring to the rise of commercialism in film, which did occur and firmly root itself in the 80's. There were numerous handovers/buyouts/collapses in the late 60's up through and around the mid 70's primarily due to the replacing of the old guard. Of course starting with the massive unheard of box office returns of Jaws, the climate began to change dramatically. By the end of the 80's we already were in the days of independent producers who did nothing but cobble together the most exploitative product for maximized profit. Not that this is a bad thing, but there has to be at least some moderation.

I've never felt that the 80's had as many classic titles as other decades, but maybe it's just me. But the films produced then are unbelievably superior to the amount of schlock we endured for the ten years of 00's.

The problem with 80's film: It was the rise of corporate takeovers. Film fully became product. But it produced many lucky accidents in this regard.

Worst decade is without a doubt the 00's. I can't even really make a top 10 for the decade.

Manhunter is just meh, which I really wasn't expecting. In fact, the whole time I watched it I kept thinking I could switch and be watching To Live and Die in L.A. And there are way too many cuts of the movie for no apparent reason.

For a Few Dollars More. Possibly the best of all three Dollars films, and possibly the best Western ever made. Here Leone gets his rhythm down and eases into the style he is known for. Perfect balance between entertainment and art, between action and drama. The grand operatic sweep of his later films is hinted at, but FAFDM retains the almost serial like atmosphere of A Fistful of Dollars, which still keeps us coming back for more. A vast improvement on the first film and completely flawless. Everything is amped up here; the performances, the style, the cinematography, the sets, dialogue...and dear god the score! There are moments that will send chills down your spine (Hearing that organ for the first time in the church duel blew me away. Still does.) and tons of quirky little boings, springs, and whistles.

And you'll never look at a pocket watch the same way again.

Sadly, though the video presentations are much better now after a new master being struck from the Techniscope original, the original elements are not in the best of shape. The best available materials MGM had a few years ago was a degraded print that even went pink in one shot.

4 balls of infinity out of 4.

God, I could watch it again for the 500th time.

Agree that this is best done on LD. Especially with a player that has varying speeds of reverse/ff. Then you can have lightsaber battles slapstick style!

Me four, and was wondering "why the heck is this off topic?".