captainsolo

An entire legion of my best mouse droppings await you!!

Again, to those who liked it good for you. That’s fine. I’m not trying to discredit anyone or their likes/dislikes. This is at least one place I feel I can be honest about SW topics.
TLJ killed me. Just gutted me.

But to me this is painfully obvious:
Disney Wars has nothing to do with Star Wars. It has no heart, no soul and no reason for being other than as a property to make money. They do not work as proper standalone features and they certainly have no regard for the property they claim to be a part of.

The more I think about what I saw is to realize how it essentially gives the middle finger to the universe of SW-to a degree that makes what TFA did look like nothing.
Not even the worst of the EU so blatantly disregarded the way the universe of the story worked. To me The Phantom Menace is Shakespearean in comparison. There. Yes, I really said it.

Did anyone else feel as badly as I did?

Ah! What a beautiful new directive!!!
You’re right it’s definitely not color graded but already the detail is wonderful and the black levels are great!!

ChainsawAsh said:

It’s post-PT, but I always have to give Matthew Stover’s Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor a strong recommendation. Fantastic book set shortly after ROTJ (and Truce at Bakura). There are some prequelisms (clones mainly), but damn if Stover doesn’t just get the OT characters, and for such a fun book it gets surprisingly dark at times.

Really hope Stover eventually writes a canon book.

Absolutely. I love Shatterpoint especially which is the best movie Samuel L. Jackson never made, and somehow makes Apocalypse Now meets SW actually work-particularly since it goes ultra dark.

I got dragged in by my sister who is a causal fan.
I had no desire to see more Disney Wars but figured at least it would be passable. I was going in with an open mind.

Geez…what the heck was that? Magical mind melding? Galaxy wide physical projection? The anti-Luke? Blatant repeating of entire sections of ESB and ROTJ?

Throw everything you knew or loved out the window. This is pure gobbledygook that has no connotation to the OT and makes even the silliest of the EU look coherent. There is absolutely no narrative drive other than somebody saying there’s supposed to be stars and a war. Here’s stormtroopers and rebels.

Just…what the…I don’t even know where to begin.
It seems like they have done exactly what they wanted and written off everything that came before in order to make a soulless franchise heavy hitter in their Marvel mold for those audiences who were not SW fans to begin with. It seems the casual fans and the non fans like the sequel trilogy just fine but what I can’t understand is why exactly because TLJ is a mess as a picture let alone that it isn’t Star Wars in any way shape or form.

But what hurts most is that they’ve literally obliterated the heart of the original material. I really want to see George’s outline. Because the prequels were only harmed by having no one around to tell him no and go back to the drawing board-as a story and narrative they at least made sense. In Disney Wars there is no connection to anything Star Wars beyond the set dressing. Not a thing.

Also for those interested who aren’t aware, La La Land records has just released the complete and remastered score for DAD and is limited to 5000. EON has confirmed they are watching the release and if it is successful LLL will do more score releases.

I can’t remember if I posted about this before but I believe the alternate print source used on the Criterion FRWL is the same as the one on the last Pan n Scan MGM disc. It has the same damage marks and looks very similar with the only difference being that it’s an older disc in CLV. The Connery Collection disc is either a new transfer of the same element cleaned up or with new elements mixed in.

I’m pretty positive that we can definitely say now that all three Criterions are print sourced due to all of them having cue marks, differing color to other releases and optical noise. On many occasions Criterion used fine grains or earlier generation show prints so this would fit.
And of course with their DN being the closest match to the IB…that’ll be the clincher.

I wonder if all three are sleeper IB transfers like Criterion’s Wizard of Oz. They might very well be as I don’t think they had made archive prints on safety yet as MGM simply used and reused the same elements until starting the first video restorations in 1995.

And in other news a guy on the LD forever group found TWINE for two bucks…and plans to sell it for crazy money…argh!

Also after rereading through the thread I noticed the bit about LATT’s stereo mix.
You have it listed as 3.0 and I think describing it as having directional dialogue originally which should be true as this was the norm until mono dialog started with Sensurround. However CinemaScope films had a four channel magnetic stereo track, not a three channel mix so having some slight surround for a CS release in the early period where they did a four track mix is entirely accurate.

I think with Pan hat the original CAV is closer to what a 50’s print would look like and the 1998 CAV reissue is closer to what the negative and untimed materials looked like at the time of scanning.
I think that in trying to correct the video flaws of the earlier transfers that they went overboard and also neglected to reflect the theatrical presentation as it was.

I now have a number of Disney titles and can’t wait to compare via crt firsthand.

Fantastic. Count me in as well. I’ve wanted to find the LD for years and watch my original issue vhs copy every year.

Also for those who love the soundtrack as much as I do the 200gram Kevin Gray mastered LP is still available and in some ways I think even better than the Analogue Productions 45rpm version. Definitely get the 200g before it’s gone as it will go sky high in price.

I think it helps to live with it for a long time and revisit it often. It’s really the one film that demands rewatches more than any other.
It also helps to read Dick’s wonderful original novel which is more of a parallel book like Clarke’s 2001 novel.

I just bought the US release and suddenly realized every video release is a stereo or surround mix. Was this ever released as stereo originally as I presumed it was a mono film.

My sister is both a Marvel and Waititi fan so she dragged me to Ragnarok.
It’s not a bad picture but just like all the others in this seemingly unending cycle seems to exist only to overwhelm audiences with mere glimmers of life amidst the same frameworks time and time again. And with each pass the framework becomes weaker and weaker.

Apparently they based this around the idea behind the Planet Hulk storyline but the real problem is that you essentially have two movies not glued together but simply chopped in tatters and forcibly attached. The film continually stops again and again for the sake of the other plot line, or a joke or simply for a trailer moment. It never truly is allowed to build up its own steam and achieve any significance that will allow it to last longer than five minutes in the head of anyone who sees it.

It also gave me an insanely passionate desire to watch Flash Gordon with my receiver set to maximum. At the very least that film knows and admits what it is. Ragnarok cannot and will not do this.

Ultimately Ragnarok is yet another time passer that seems to swallow whole the creative person they plucked to be in charge.
2 balls out of 4.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a much better film btw.

Blade Runner: DC Laserdisc
followed by Criterion IC
I’ve been watching BR again and again trying to forget 2049. I still sadly haven’t forgotten it. However I did notice that there are some mixing differences between the international and director’s cut! (Mainly dynamic range, EQ, and the ability to hear many more details in the DC mix.)
OT.com ball rating score: Mastery of Balls.

Saving Private Ryan
I’ve never been a big fan of this at all but figured it had been long enough and had recently found the rare LD version.
It’s really quite a dull picture outside of the battle sequences.
2 balls out of four.

The Fifth Element
I always forget how enjoyable this film is, remember when watching it, and am then reminded at just how unfulfilling the story and setting winds up becoming.
I’ve made my peace with this film and enjoy it for what it is-yet can’t help but feel as if it were short of greatness.
The Pioneer rot free LD pressing is a reference disc for the format with a good ac3 track.
3.5 balls out of 4.

From the MGM first letterbox LD onwards they’ve used 65mm elements.
The BD or any release is a good starting point but it mist be understood that unless you go with the Criterion, corrected MGM LDs or their DVD that there have been slight alterations to color and the sound mix. These are very slight to less so but 99% of people have no idea. It’s not quite as blatant as what happened to the other Warner owned Kubrick titles.
This isn’t to say that any release is perfect but at this stage with Barry Lyndon going to Criterion and not only fixing the aspect ratio, including mono but using the new scan more effectively-it is possible for 2001 to be done correctly.

BR 2049

Good grief.
My brief reaction spoiler free quick analysis.
https://wordpress.com/post/thehificelluloidmonster.wordpress.com/1203

It’s not really bad…but it isn’t good. To me 2049 is everything critics complained the original was in 1982 when describing the theatrical version.

I will take you to Jabba now

That’s news to me on the godfather front, but the restoration really did the best with what they could work with. I have the reissue early 90s open matte LDs and the restoration bds. I threw out the original DVDs which were quite awful, and I had the restoration DVDs but they never had differences that I noticed like the ones pictured on that website.

The only real evidence we can get that would tell us anything would be dye transfer prints from that era which should exist for part one and part two, as part two was the last American IB run done in the 70s.
That said IMO I don’t think the restorations are off at all considering the mammoth amount of work they had to do. The only downside is the mono original audio is relegated to a lossy track.

Well, that’s the real trick isn’t it?
You can have fun with your friends later.
Come on red lets go!
The jundland wastes are not to be traveled lightly.
How you get so big eating food of this kind?
Patience Luke!
Hello what have we here?
It’s risky but we have no other choice.
Punch it!

ray_afraid said:

TV’s Frink said:

you are a monster.

It’s REMs best album by several miles, so I’ll take it.

TM2YC said:

Interesting thread. I assume by “all they’ve ever done”, you mean “all the albums they’ve ever done”, otherwise I’m not sure I believe any of you 😉.

I was gonna ask how we’re qualifying this. [JEDIT- Anchor said “Albums and live albums”]
As for my list, I only listed bands that I’m missing no songs from. I’ve got more albums, singles, EPs, ect. than I’m missing from all of those artists, and many are actually complete discographies.

Finally someone besides myself!!! Yay!!! Having the cover as my avatar on the Hoffman forums always creates discussion.

Choosing the best of their career is virtually impossible but Monster is my favorite and push coming to shove the best is probably NAIHF.

I’ve been collecting R.E.M. since I first started buying music and will probably never be done since I’m a nutty audiophile now and hope to have US and U.K. copies of everything for completions sake. It took me years but I managed to finally get every original US 1st issue LP to go with the cds and I’m halfway on collecting all the DVD-a discs.
I have U2 and The Who’s discography and due to the insane amount of Who variations I doubt I’ll never stop buying Who records.
Everyone else I collect what I can afford and what is the best sounding release available. I absolutely love hunting down particular great sounding pressings as it’s really like detective work.

There might be a 16mm TPM somewhere. The latest scope 16mm release I’ve ever seen was one of Pirates of the Caribbean.

After watching the BD set there did seem to be a handful of moments that felt like folddowns and certainly a few times where the opening theme was replaced by a fold of the new rerecording.

As far as a good mono source the best I can find would likely be the rare Japanese LD box sets which had pcm mono as opposed to the analog only US releases.

Definitely do a dual mono track as indicated above a single track while more accurate to older theaters is less impressive due to center channels being less accurate than tower speakers and by having less power from receivers.
Also most theaters ran mono through several large speakers at the front of house anyway so single channel mono isn’t really all that accurate.

The general description used for home video is 1.0 or 2.0 mono depending on the channel type used. No cover will list dual mono. The vast majority of studios still use 2.0 to this day, 1.0 was generally only used for space reasons until Warner Bros. started using 1.0 for many of their classic DVD titles in the mid 2000s. Then Criterion and a few other labels started using 1.0 mono on Blu-ray a couple years ago, usually for space so they could fit extras on the disc.

Still so freaking excited for ROTP.

There’s no issues of note. TRhe dvds are still leagues ahead of broadcast versions and aside from cel dirt there’s nothing wrong. Plus hey even have the original Dolby matrix encoding in the audio.

WAC does full on restoration work of every title they release if they can. If there is nothing available they use the best element for a 2k scan and if that isn’t up to scratch they sometimes get to do a 4K negative scan.

SilverWook said:

Aren’t the Fleischers on the Anthology box set already?

They are with many audio flubs. The standalone reissue fixed a few and the Mild Mannered project addressed the others. However the Warner transfers are supposedly from an HD scan of the original elements so a BD would be staggering.

The original announcement is on the WAC facebook page.