msycamore

That is nice d_j. ;)

Has the new Director's cut been released on blu yet?

dark_jedi said:

THX 1138, that is actually a Laserdisc I do not have.

 I'm actually surprised. ;)

ChainsawAsh said:

There's a THX 1138 theatrical LD rip floating around - single-layer, non-anamorphic, and it doesn't look terribly great, but hey, it's the theatrical cut!

Well, that should be better than my VHS I guess. Could you perhaps give me a PM of where I could find it please. Thanks.

ChainsawAsh said:

Don't know about American Graffiti.  I feel like that one would be pretty easy to "de-SE," as it were, since (IIRC) there's only one shot that's been changed.

Yeah, It's only the opening titles that's been altered along with a digital sky, but it's still annoying.

- THX 1138: Italian Cut -

Available on MySpleen, give me a PM or ask in this thread; http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Once-upon-a-time-on-MySpleen-Open-Registration-and-FREELEECH/topic/12652/ if you need an invite.

Year:              US 1971, Italy 1976
Length:          Approx. 81 Minutes
Source:          Italian TV - broadcast
Format:          NTSC DVD
Video:            4:3 Pan & Scan (Aspect Ratio 1.33:1)
Language:     Italian Dolby 2.0 Mono
Subtitles:       English        
Chapters

Special thanks go to:
thxita
Leonardo
SilverWook
and Petar Karan

- The different versions of THX 1138 –

The official story is that when THX 1138 was originally released in 1971, Warner Bros. had cut 4-5 minutes from it without Lucas’ approval. Dale Pollock describes it in his 1983 book Skywalking - The Life and Films of George Lucas, how Warner turned the film over to in-house editor Rudi Fehr - “Fehr cut only four minutes from THX, mostly scenes in the White Limbo and some of George’s bizarre attempts at humor.” This original theatrical release version has never officially been released on video.

In 1978, after George Lucas’ enormous success with Star Wars the previous year, Lucas was able to receive final cut when the film was prepared for a limited theatrical re-release. This version reportedly restored the 4-5 minutes of previously cut scenes. It was later released on video rental in 1982. This version was widely available on Betamax, VHS and Laserdisc through the 80’s and 90’s, the last release was on VHS in 1996, it has not yet been released on any new video formats.

Finally in 2004, a new version was released in theatres for a short limited time and released on DVD and later Blu-ray under the rather silly banner “The George Lucas Director’s Cut”. Anyway, this version uses alternate takes and has much different editing which even alters the story in subtle ways, utilizing modern CGI etc,. Lucas even let new footage be shot to insert actors and to replace and manipulate existing footage. While interesting in its own way, this is the only official version currently available on modern video formats.

That’s the common official story. But, a few 16mm prints and a 35mm IB Technicolor print dated 1971 show us something different, that the only differences between the original 1971 release and the re-release is that the original have SEN’s conversation with the children being a few seconds longer and that there’s a different arrangement of scenes…

Scene order in vintage German and Italian TV-broadcasts and 1971 English 16mm prints:

Drug evasion arrest --> LUH visits THX --> THX gets medical examinations --> Trial & “pain prods” (electro-shock batons) scene --> THX is being monitored & researched --> THX put in prison

Scene order in English home video versions and 2004 Cut:

Drug evasion arrest --> Trial & “pain prods” (electro-shock batons) scene --> THX gets medical examinations --> THX is being monitored & researched --> LUH visits THX --> THX put in prison

Italian Version:

Even though THX 1138 was released in UK and France in 1971, it wasn’t released in Italy until 1976, then under the title “L’uomo Che Fuggì Dal Futuro”, literally translated: “The Man Who Escaped From The Future”. This cut is remarkably different and shorter than any other version of the film. The most significant difference is that the film opens with a segment of the chase sequence from the end of the film narrated by THX himself, complete with an added background story in place over the title sequence, it’s like it sort of trying to tell the whole film as it was projected through THX’s mind, a flashback or perhaps like THX himself describes it in the narration “I want to leave a telepathic message so that posterity will know my real story…”

Besides the different editing, the Italian dubbing is sometimes very poor with translation errors in a few places, making the plot confusing in some parts. In addition to the previously mentioned opening narration, the dubbing also alters the story and plot in many other ways throughout the film, sometimes new concepts are added to the film and sometimes the dialogue is just completely different. Much of the story differences and concepts that occur in the dubbing are most likely liberties taken by “Società Italiana Distribuzione Films” which was the distributor for it in Italy, or by the dubbers that worked on the film.

Original post:

Has there been any good efforts to preserve these two classics in their original form? if so, could someone please point me in the right direction. I am dying to see them again and I’ve searched everywhere with no luck. 😦 Have them on VHS of course but the quality is so bad you cannot watch them anymore and I thought there must’ve been some LD to DVD preservation done to them and was chocked that I couldn’t find any. Any help would be much appreciated, thanks.

An interesting article about the blu-ray release, especially the part about the original audio mix on Fellowship of the Ring:

http://www.hollywoodnews.com/2010/04/09/exclusive-%E2%80%98lord-of-the-rings%E2%80%99-consultant-discusses-current-future-blu-ray-releases/

Amazing!! From those two pictures it seems to be in quite good shape too. Damn! how I wish I could have been there.

satanika said:

...for anh for example, are you taking the flunk version and replacing the bad parts?

Yes, he has done that already, and it's also converted to NTSC. I know this cause I'm doing the subs for him.

I just wanted to thank you, MoveAlong for making such a beautiful job on this DVD, very tastefully and professionally done disc, the menus and artwork is among the best I've seen on a fanmade DVD and the scenes look excellent on my TV. Thank you!

I totally agree with you about the colortiming, ImperialFighter. The colors in the old 20th anniversary DVD look so much better and natural than the DC version, which looks almost identical to the new Bladerunner colors, the typical ugly modern blue and green tint. Wasn't the latest Alien transfer also badly cropped in a few scenes? It also removed the original Fox fanfare and logo at the beginning, a small thing perhaps but still annoying.

Have there been any talk yet about what audio mixes that will be included in this new set? I really hope that they include both the 35mm and 70mm Dolby Stereo mixes.

Ok, dark_jedi have asked me to help out with making subs for his second SE preservation, and I am wondering if someone knows if the timing of the hard coded subs on the '97 Laserdiscs are the same as the '04 DVD subs?

I hope this project will work out great. I've seen Flunk now, and it is overall much better than Reivax, higher bitrate, better framing, english opening crawl without foreign subs and though the picture quality is better it have gone through some heavy sharpening, halos and edge enhancement everywhere. EDIT: It looks like it was just the contrast that had been tweaked on this version, when I turned it down a bit, it looked much better IMO. Unfortunately it have the same flaws as every other '97 transfer, bad contrast and inconsistent colors from scene to scene and motion smear and why is Greedo blue & gray in every '97 version?! It seems we're very lucky to have gotten the overall good color timing of these films only once! The Gout is a small miracle in that regard. But I must say that the Flunk do look fantastic in the few scenes where the original photography shines through.

Anyway, I'll gladly help you out with the subs but the font I thought it was, (ITC Franklin Gothic Demi Bold) is not the correct one. I've compared every font in that family with the pictures from my thread and no one is a perfect match, the letter g is very peculiar. I'll continue to look for the right font but any help with that is appreciated.

There should also be a "Flunk version" of Empire out there, hard to find I guess and I don't know how it compares to the others.

Moth3r, or someone else for that matter, is it possible to set the black level/gamma & tweak the color/hue for specific scenes within the Avisynth script? or do you have to set the same values for the whole film.

Thank you guys for the Flunk upload!

Much appreciated!

No, but hopefully I'll get it by the end of the month. :)

I cannot wait to listen to it properly, I just listened to the 2.0 version one more time on my computer the other day to still my abstinence. ;)

Also looking forward to hear the result of your Empire audio-mix, keep up the wonderful job you're doing!

hairy_hen said:

The spitting sound was something I edited out on a whim last year for a previous soundtrack attempt, and the edit seems to have found its way into this version also.  I'm surprised you noticed!

Ah... I see. I'm just so used to hear it at that moment, so it came as a surprise when it wasn't there, I think I've seen this film too much I guess. ;)

hairy_hen said:

The spitting was obviously a mistake--they must not have noticed that it was a part of the dialogue track until after the mix was complete.  They had Mark Hamill redub that line for the mono version, and this error is not heard in that mix.  Why it was never removed from the SE mixes I don't know--guess they forgot and didn't notice again.  It had sort of bugged me after Darth Editous pointed it out a few years ago, so I deleted it by looping a section of background noise.  Not having it in the film is no great loss; I'm certainly not going to produce a new version just to put it back in, lol.  But yeah, I guess the oversight does make it slightly inauthentic for that brief moment, alas.

I think it may actually be some hair from Carrie Fisher that had found its way into Hamill's mouth, in that scene you can clearly see Fisher's hairdo starting to fall apart. ;)

A new version is obviously don't needed :) I was just curious and wanted to know if it wasn't part of the original 70mm audio or something. Thanks for your explanation.

hairy_hen, this question is an odd one but did you remove what seems to be a spitting sound from Mark Hamill in your 70mm recreation? if you don't know what I mean, it's just after Mark has delivered the line "What good will it do us if he gets himself killed? Come on.", just curious.

Moth3r's pre-ANH bootleg telecine also have those same marks.

hairy_hen said:

Ugh.  I can only imagine what other craptastic changes will be forced onto the film sound this time.  Though from one perspective, it could be good that they are remixing, because the 2004 version sounds like such garbage that almost anything not completely screwed up would be a considerable improvement.  

The horrible '04-remix match the equally fucked up DVD transfer & visuals though, that's not so bad. ;)

Thanks, g-force for all hard work you have put in to these scripts! I recently ran a few test clips from your latest scripts and the results was very impressive. The stabilization really make a huge difference.

I've wondered... is it possible to set the black level/gamma & tweak the color/hue for specific scenes within the Avisynth script? or do you have to set the same values for the whole film.

I hope everything is going well with this project, keep up the good work. Looking forward to this.

The font is one in the Avant Garde Gothic family, let me know and I can send it to you.

Mielr said:

I love ROTJ, and the fact that their relationship was likely manufactured at the 11th hour doesn't bother me one bit. For whatever reason it was done, I have no more problem with Luke and Leia being siblings in ROTJ as I did with Vader being Luke's father in ESB.

But if you think about it, it was actually ROTJ that cemented Vader as a Skywalker not ESB.

Exactly, The Empire Strikes Back has nothing to do with the bad and cheap script writing of Return of the Jedi.

But I'm one of those fans that don't like Return of the Jedi and in my little world, Leia is not Luke's sister, because I stop watching after Empire and that makes me a happier person, even though the ending is a downer. ;)

Great discovering!

Would make a cool extra feature on DVD or blu.