captainsolo

Bingowings said:

Magnificent Ambersons has been highly regarded for quite some time

Yes. Needs more regards. The most compromised film of all time. (Next to Greed.)

and if anything I think The Third Man (lovely as it is) is a tad overrated.

No. Never. (but I can understand  if you think so.)

Take out Welles' very small role and you are left with a thriller that while stylishly filmed is largely unremarkable next to other films of he period.

No. Dear god no. In fact, I once argued with a professor for upwards of three hours that this was truly the first post-modern, post-war film. It is the world's alternative to Kane. One of the great works of art. It is one of the only films that can truly be considered alive and breathing. It knows the game, it knows how the world plays the game, and it is so terribly tired of the whole act of living in our so-called civilized world.

Falcon, that is a nice Welles overload for one day. Adding in TOE might have been the clincher. I remember the first time I saw it was in a film noir festival many years ago. I went in round midday and saw Out of the Past for the first time. Mesmerized. Blown away. Destroyed. Then I immediately went next door and walked into Touch of Evil.

Overloaded!

LMS:

The Getaway (1972)- Peckinpah-lite. I enjoy watching Steve McQueen, but this is just uninspired and drags along at times. There are some nice little touches, well choreographed action sequences, a great subplot-but completely uninspired and overly a dull movie.

2.5 balls out of 4 slaps.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1988 Turner Preview Version AKA Sam's rough cut): IMO The second greatest American western after The Wild Bunch. Dark, flawed, bitter, nasty, sour and achingly human version of the classic tale, where Pat Garrett is forced to hunt down his best friend and hates himself for it. Devastating. James Coburn deserved his Oscar for this film. The film feels real, and it is disturbingly painful. Gut-wrenchingly elegiac. Soundtrack by Bob Dylan (who also acts in the film). Theatrical version was butchered by a vengeful studio. The DVD features an inane edit by a fan/scholar. Avoid this and watch the second disc. Many claim it's only a rough edit, but after careful study, I don't think Peckinpah would have changed anything. Another masterpiece.

4 balls out of 4.

You know, if this was just a reissue of the 35mm-I'd go see it. Several times. That was an experience, though not a great film.

They should have just done these straight to 3D Blu-ray.

If you want a theatrical re-release, ship your digital masters as a 2K digital print.

Even better, just freaking tour the 35mm originals to arthouses as a roadshow. You'd be surprised how much money you can make with a popular film that hasn't seen the light of a theatrical release in decades-just at a local arthouse.

I've only briefly thought about this before but the answer to OPs question is:

YES YES YES UNEQUIVOCALLY YES!

Flat, dull, lifeless, boring, inane, stupid, pointless!

There is no life to these shots, no vitality, no wonder, most criminally no imagination. By the time of II and III when everything was an empty room with a blue screen, all semblance of camerawork was gone.

There were flashes of energy in TPM. Such as actual people walking around in a desert. That was nice.

SW has a freshness in it's camerawork if you look at it. There's a definite energy that ties into the overall experience. That said, my camera related favorite moment is in the DS chasm when Luke begins to pull out the super-convenient grappling hook and the camera pans up into a sudden an unexpected documentary style closeup.

A moment of inspired energizing camera movement that sets up a composition most would never use.

THERE. IS. NEVER. ANYTHING. LIKE. THIS. IN. THE. PREQUELS.

EVER.

You simply can't set actors in front of a stationary shot and expect to fill in the lifeless looking void with a massive amount of whirring bits of crap from a computer. For some reason live action is now being seen by a few as uninvolving. Spielberg made Tintin with essentially a videogame controller. I couldn't watch the film after seeing that.

A great artist gone, whose work truly gave a sense of looking at a universe. An actual place that you wound up gazing at for minutes on end just to drink in all of the intricate little details of the painting.

And only then do you realize that it's an image from Star Wars.

R.I.P.

hairy_hen said:

captainsolo said:

SW: The 6 channels were done this way originally- Left, Center, Right, Mono surround and two baby booms on each side of the center channel. These only augmented the bass instead of being discrete. You essentially would just need a 4.0 channel mix and a sub to get the idea. If you added in two speakers you could recreate the full experience but this would necessitate a 6.0 mix or a 7.1 receiver where you could just turn on extra speakers as mirrors cut out the treble and place them accordingly.

ESB and ROTJ were done in stereo surround without the baby booms so this would be much easier.

Not so; in addition to augmenting the low end of the main channels, all three films had real LFE content in their 70mm releases.  This seems to be a point of confusion, but the research I've done on the topic indicates it to be the case, most particularly the remarks of THX engineer Tomlinson Holman (who incidentally is responsible for the adoption of 5.1 as the industry standard audio format).  Also, none of the movies ever had stereo surrounds originally.

In fact, the reason the second and fourth channels of 70mm magnetic sound were used for bass purposes in the first place was because that was the only way to achieve a 'thunderous low end' when the Star Destroyer first goes by overhead.  It's possible that it wasn't quite as loud as you'd expect of such things these days, true, what with subwoofers not yet being standard issue and headroom not quite as high as digital formats, but it was definitely there.  Even listening to a low-fi tape recording made at a 70mm screening the discrete bass content can sometimes be discerned as clearly distinct from the rest of the mix.

The augmented portions of the boom tracks would be a bit problematic for fitting into modern formats, particularly for the first movie since the low pass filter was first set at 250 hz, though by the time the other two came out that had been changed to 125 hz to avoid noticeable crosstalk with the main channels.  Dolby Digital only allows for LFE going up to 120 hz: a flat limit, not just a rolloff, in order to save bandwidth by taking advantage of the Nyquist frequency and only using a sample rate of 240 for the LFE.  In general mixing practice, it tends to be rolled off around 80 hz to avoid the upper limit, and is only used for discrete effects and never as a general crossover.  In making the 1993 mixes for the Definitive Collection laserdiscs, the boom tracks were deemed unsuitable because of these conditions, and the low end was instead added from separate sound effects masters as is the present custom.

So—the 70mm mixes cannot be presented exactly as they are in a remastering.  The LCRS main channels could simply be ported over directly, but the bass needs some care taken to achieve an optimal effect.  Either it would have to take the same path as the '93 mixes and be created over again, hopefully following the aesthetic of the original; or else the actual LFE content isolated from the boom tracks and summed together into one at a proper level.  Either way, the result would be a 4.1 mix with monaural surround, similar to what appears on the Bluray releases of Alien and Aliens.  (The fact that those include their 70mm audio shows that it can be done easily enough as long as proper care is taken.)

Ahh..I figured I was probably goofing up somewhere. Darned late night posts!

Hmm...everything I've read says it just enhanced the bass content...but it does make sense that people would actually try and create some added LFE content-especially with SW being the first Dolby 70mm presentation.

The 4.1 idea seems the most appropriate format to playback the 70mm mixes, but it would probably be better to add in a second sub to have two firing at you like the baby booms would have. Or maybe I just like big speakers..;)

Ioan Allen describes 70mm Dolby 6track development:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaXiJSofaMY&feature=related

What got me thinking about these again was the 5.1 mix of The Wild Bunch. It's a mix derived from the 6-track masters from the 70mm run, and only in a lossy ac3. I didn't know if it was originally made in ProLogic stereo or presented in 5.1 for the restoration. It's an odd mix that's primarily centered in the front with very little rear activity. Now I've got to try and find the original mono to compare the two.

To finally, finally, finally, finally do it right, and do it without worrying about the new editions...here's what I'd do if things were available:

Theatrical in Dolby Stereo, Dolby Stereo 70mm, Mono (for SW only)

Theatrical 70mm version (2.21:1 blowup) in Dolby Stereo 70mm

The 70mm mixes could be presented as they were pretty easily or slightly reformatted into a standard 5.1 mix.

SW: The 6 channels were done this way originally- Left, Center, Right, Mono surround and two baby booms on each side of the center channel. These only augmented the bass instead of being discrete. You essentially would just need a 4.0 channel mix and a sub to get the idea. If you added in two speakers you could recreate the full experience but this would necessitate a 6.0 mix or a 7.1 receiver where you could just turn on extra speakers as mirrors cut out the treble and place them accordingly.

ESB and ROTJ were done in stereo surround without the baby booms so this would be much easier.

I think the 97SEs should be included as well. Fresh scans of just 35mm should look stunning-especially if the full DTS was finally included. These knocked your socks off back in 97 theatrically. And there were even some 70mm screenings too.

It kinda makes sense:

New IP made around '85 or so-Digital tape transfer-Overporcessing, sharpening, DVNR,-final resize to 4:3 letterboxed 2.35:1.

There's bound to be some cropping in there and definite resizing. Theatrically you're bound to lose some here and there unless you're a brilliant projectionist with a pristine print and great equipment or Stanley Kubrick pops up in Kansas to tell you that you're mis-projecting Full Metal Jacket...;)

Wow, there's a lot of stuff going on in here! I think more and more that we just got royally screwed in 1993 when they decided to use the IPs laying around and then overprocess like mad to make them look "good" for old CRTs of the era.

Good idea on those last caps-the film is definitely going to look different on modern equipment versus 70's era equipment that the prints would have been manufactured for.

I don't know if people have done this yet but two other things that might be useful: Looking for other films of the era shot with the same film stocks and films from the era shot by the cinematographers. Every person has a unique style and way of lighting that no matter what will show though and affect the image in some way. Having an idea of this and how it would affect the stock might help to give a better idea of the way the image was originally developed.

I find this kinda depressing actually. Sure it sounds nice, but displays will get better and better and finally kill of theatrical distribution.

Most people aren't going to know or care about scope films. When I really really want to enjoy something in scope, I'll go out and buy a projector and fit an anamorphic lens. For cheaper than this thing.

When was the last time you even saw a great scope movie? Everything is shot in such a flat style nowadays that even scope has become lifeless. (Never thought I'd be saying that.)

I'm wondering if Raiders will this use the Lowry scan or the new 4K restoration that has had a print or two play occasionally in the past few months.

Still one of those film series I want to see in archival 35mm. And this probably won't stop me from buying the LDs.

I saw the TCM cut about a year or so ago, first and only time I've seen the film. Felt like it was overkill to be honest. But a Cinerama film needs a large screen and venue.

That said, I became fascinated by the presentation history and editions. From following different threads and articles:

The TCM cut is indeed the Laserdisc extended version in SD, and an old SD at that. The added footage (+/- 20 minutes or so) came from a used promo 70mm reel and was not properly restored. They just did a simple film to tape transfer at the time to keep costs down. It looks quite dated today. IIRC, the TCM version was at least in scope 2.35, perhaps a little wider but it was hard to tell on an old crt TV. It should for all intents and purposes be the same as the Laserdisc, but there may be further differences.

It's really going to be those added scenes that are the difference. The original DVD release (yellow spine) had scenes on the flipside of the disc, but I don't know for sure if this included those added for the extended LD/TCM version. They should be, and this would would give you a professional transfer of the early 90's era digital video which would look much better than any cap of the LD. Then it would be a matter of cutting the footage back in to whichever version you own/prefer-though adding this to the new Blu-ray would be a bit of a jump back and forth in quality.

It's 2.5 for me. Raiders, Temple and half of Last Crusade.

I'd be happy with a straight transfer of the Dolby 70mm mix to 5.1 like the DVD mixes supposedly were.

Ziz said:

And Felicia Day is cute.

x1,000

I enjoyed it for what it was. That said, I was pleasantly surprised how much I genuinely laughed. Then via this I stumbled onto The Guild. Then the laughs went overboard.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/318936/paramount-announces-indiana-jones-blu-ray-collection-fall-2012#post_3902179

Not very descriptive but due out this year. Please let this be right and not tinkered on...and maybe have the original Dolby Stereo mixes...

TV's Frink said:

captainsolo said:

 

Balls cannot describe.

YOU TAKE THAT BACK!!

Ok, maybe something more like:

4 unquestionable grand large balls of infinity out of 4. ;)

The Ballad of Cable Hogue

This is a quirky film, allegorical and comedic, which is about the last thing you'd ever expect from Sam. It works for what it is  and is a kind of film that can never be made today. Recommended.

3.5 balls out of 4.

Straw Dogs

I've now seen this movie something like 15 times. Each time it gets better. Darker. Faster. More intense. It took me years to find uncut and uncensored and a quiet place to be able to watch it alone. A misinterpreted masterpiece-one of those really out there films from that glorious 1971-73 period of British filmmaking. Broodingly dark, possibly Dustin Hoffman's best performance, brutal, probably NSFW, and in the end a simultaneous vindication and damnation of the human condition. Oh, and some bagpipes... ;)

I showed this movie to people in film school as a part of the society I ran during a Peckinpah tribute. There were walkouts. No one got it. (Same with: Pat Garrett, Alfredo Garcia...heck they really didn't get any of them. Idiots mostly.) Then the guy who was about to premiere his bastard remake came to speak to the department, and it was all I could do to restrain myself from strangling him. Complete buffoon.

Remember when a movie could be worth a damn? This will quickly refresh your memory. Be ready though. It's rough.

4 balls out of 4 balls. Forgotten, unfairly maligned masterpiece. One of Peckinpah's finest achievements.

The Wild Bunch. Life-changing, devastating, bitter, revisionist, heartbreaking story of what happens when killers go to Mexico. Career performances from cast and crew. One of the great American films and greatest ever made. An easy film to become obsessed with. Masterpiece. True art in every sense of the word.

Balls cannot describe. One of the 8 films that made me love Westerns. (Ride the High Country, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West and Duck You Sucker!) This is one of those films that everyone needs to see.

And then you will find yourself fascinated with the self-destructive cantankerous hard drinking alcoholic bandanna wearing bearded figure in dark glasses. Sam and Leone made the Western what it is. (Yes, I know John Ford essentially created the Western format and kept redefining it for decades but for me it got too stale.)

Ride the High Country.

I've always hated Westerns, because of how cliched and stereotypical they were. You can talk about John Ford all day long, but even his films get a bit tiresome in this regard. (Save for Liberty Valence) That said, years ago Leone's Westerns blew my mind, and Peckinpah achingly tore the Western apart from the inside. So, I now like good Westerns. Here, Sam Peckinpah makes a traditional Western in every sense that is dying. The two leads are wise old sages on their last legs (literally. Both Randolph Scott and Joel Mcrea were retiring.) and the world around them has changed. All of Sam's repeated themes appear here for the first time in the midst of some stunning location cinematography. A simple story that is told in a straightforward way is something that has become lost to the ages. This movie is timeless. Featuring one of the single greatest closing shots in all of cinema and that line...that unbelievably fantastic immortal line: "All I want is to enter my house justified."

4 stars out of 4 "I'm not going to get sad at the end.....oh crap"s.

Major Dundee: The Extended Version

This is the second time I've watched this thing, and the second time where I haven't known what exactly to think. The production wasn't planned well, the script wasn't finished, and then the studio took it away and re-cut the whole thing so nothing really makes much sense. But I still watch this with rapt attention. This is a movie where the Civil War Union Major is a dirty mean son of a bitch who is relegated to being a jailer out in the Southwest because he can't take orders. So he then takes a bunch of Confederate prisoners, criminals and miscreants to track down a band of Apaches who have just slaughtered a village full of soldiers. All this to get back and maybe get a promotion. It's nice and dirty. Charlton Heston is always best when his characters have a nasty side, and Dundee is no exception. Richard Harris steals every scene as the Irishman turned immigrant turned Union soldier turned Confederate turned prisoner. And James Coburn is a part-Indian guide with one arm. That last bit was enough for me to give this a go. The extended version adds back in about 12-15 minutes of scenes but there's no big exclamation of a masterpiece found or anything. It just makes a little more sense. The new 5.1 score seems a bit rushed and doesn't work as well as the original mono. But that original score has a horribly inappropriate title song that does not match the film whatsoever. Dundee is the stepping stone between High Country and The Wild Bunch.

3.5 balls out of 4.

Thanks! That got it into virtualdub, but no matter what the video is still squashed looking. Should my script read differently because the source is anamorphic PAL? I ripped the video with both Pgcdemux and DVDdecrypter and it always comes out squashed.

Thanks for making this Dr M. I've been working my way through the guide trying to take a Case 1 video without any menus or extras to NTSC. I've gotten to the avisynth scripting part for the resize and assume framerate and I keep getting the same there is no function named mpeg2source error. Am I off somewhere? (I'm completely new to avisynth and script editing in general) Plus I noticed my resulting .d2v file is squashed non-anamorphic, should it be this way at this stage?

Oh,

Police Story 4: First Strike

First of all, this looks and feels really cheap. The crummy transfer I saw didn't help but at least it was uncut. Jackie is great as always but the film is very tired, looks tired, feels tired and spends a major portion of the screentime in an aquarium world theme park place. (Always a very bad idea. Always.)

Watch for Jackie's stunts, some funny gags but otherwise avoid.

2 maybe 2.5 balls out of 4 fake sharks.

And what's with all of the extremely abrupt endings in this series? They're really really abrupt!

FanFiltration said:

"The Living Daylights"

Too much change of location. Nice to see a new Bond, but a new director and writing team was also needed. Seems needlessly dragged out and a bit too tame in the sex department for a 007 romp. John Rhys-Davies was a welcome bit of emergency last moment casting. Hhe was called in to replace the Russian General Gogol character.  The actor Walter Gotell sadly became too sick to perform all of the required lines and actions originally scripted for Gen. Gogol, so his character was given a small role at the end of the movie. A nice fresher John Barry score this time (his swan song for the series).  No classic menacing master mind villain to hold things together in this film. Just a bunch of whiny and spoiled crooks. The new Money Penny was quite un-interesting and forgettable. Come on, Barry Manilow records? Dalton and she have no chemistry whatsoever. Also, this film has the worst Felix Lighter of them all. His inclusion was totally unnecessary, and totally miscast. Seems like they wanted to included everything they could think of to connect this to the rest of the series, including Max, the parrot from "For Your Eye's Only".

 

"Lies spread by my competitors!" ;)

Most of this is true, but as more time passes, this stands out more and more as one of the classic canon titles. I just can't seem to get enough of this odd blend of film 007 and book 007 actually being an international spy who...gasp...actually spies...and feels pain...and broods...and has dark humor...and is serious...and dangerous...and human...and a killer.

This is Glen's best Bond hands down. Top notch on the look, feel, and the gall to have such and odd rhythm that straddles the line between movie and reality. To come from the tried-and-true/trying to be a throwback/way too tired and low budget final Moore films to this is like downing three Americanos in the morning.

Leiter is beyond awful and just thrown in, Moneypenny 2.0 takes time to get used to but it works if you're not really scrutinizing (But Barry Manilow? Ugh!), the plot was a bit confused because they were never sure who they were writing for or what the production was-but this one has Richard Maibaum cutting loose and penning some golden moments (Sorely missing from Licence to Kill), Barry's score is one of my all time favorites, the villains aren't very menacing but overall the whole story feels as if it could be real and that it must in order to have a sense of immediacy and odd for a Bond film-poignancy.

And this is really coming out of Dalton's performance, which as a lifelong Bond fan (who loathes the Craig films, rereads the Fleming novels regularly, and is kooky enough to think that the 67 Casino Royale is some kind of bizarre pop-art masterwork of insanity) is one of the finest in all the films. It's markedly different, and certainly the Bond of the 80's. He got a raw deal, and is one of those really underrated actors who never got to capitalize on their talent in films.

I think I may have seen this too much. It may have something to do with being one of the Bond films I could never find as a kid, and then going overboard once I had a copy.

The little moments are so good-The opening straight out of the short story, Bond going back for Kara's Strad, The Aston returns, Bond smoking and mockingly blowing it into the air during Koskov's "debriefing", Bond and M inter-fighting, Bond thinking for himself, Smiert Spionam, Bond and Pushkin, the chloral hydrate and the end of the plane fight.

"We're free!"

"Kara, we're on a Russian airbase in the middle of Afghanistan."

Ditto! Nice to hear from you and that the project is still ongoing!

Not enough sex, sadism and good old fashioned violence!

The best thing about the film is that little piano motif that gets repeated.

I stick with Cantonese w/English subs. Never been a fan of English dubs. Usually I can follow along if the subs are slow...but some of these foreign discs with English subs have really bad grammar...;)

Police Story III: Supercop

The stunts are great as people will tell you, but the story leaves quite a bit to be desired. Fun elements yes, but too disjointed to really get into anything. And what's with the really abrupt endings? Avoid the US edit which loses 10-20 minutes.

3 balls out of 4.