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ocpmovie

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Join date
22-Sep-2004
Last activity
10-Mar-2008
Posts
1,616

Post History

Post
#173824
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/173824/action/topic#173824
Time
Just got in the pan & scan DVD of the Australian cut, The Princess and the Cobbler. I so wish this version was in widescreen somewhere - it would make things very easy, as it's the most complete version of the film that was actually released. One might jokingly call it the "Fred Calvert director's cut." It's not a Williams cut, but I do still enjoy watching this version, as "most of it is still in there" - I put it in the DVD player to test it and wound up watching the whole thing, so hey. (I fastforwarded all the songs, except "Beem Bom.")

Such an entertaining movie, even in cut form. The deceptively simple character designs give way to animation that is amazingly expressive, and actually witty. I would call the motion and movement witty - a word you would normally only apply to words.

And although Chris doesn't quite believe it, watching it again just confirmed my belief that the Thief's fight with Zigzag at the end, even though it's not in the rough cut, was I think something that Williams did come up with, after the rough cut was bootlegged. The animation is just too good in most of that segment, and it fits in with some of what we do see in the rough cut (Zigzag seems to have been tied up and defeated, even in the rough cut).

What always bugs me about this version is that The Thief's part was cut down heavily for this cut, and many of his scenes put in as "outtakes" during the credits ... and there are several scenes in the credits that ONLY appear there, because they weren't in the rough cut yet when it was bootlegged! Notably an assault on the Buddha ruby by the Thief wearing bouncy feet springs, and a longer version of the Thief stealing the emerald (added in the 90s apparently, to a scene animated in the 60s!) ...

If only I had a version of those scenes without credits over them ... tsk tsk.



I watched Williams' A Christmas Carol, thanks to Chris' DVD. The animation is amazing, some of Williams' studio's best. Especially notable is Scrooge - I couldn't recall when I had ever seen a realistic human character animated with so much believability and personality. You really buy it as animation of real humans. (The fault of the ever-brilliant Ken Harris I suppose, who also did The Thief, and the Pink Panther for Williams.) The casting of Alistair Sim also touched me as a bit of a masterstroke, as his live-action Scrooge was the one my family watched every year.

However, although the film is visually perfect, it doesn't hit the emotional beats that other adaptations of A Christmas Carol have -- since we've seen so many versions of this story, there were many moments where I thought, well, that's been done much better in that other adaptation.

There was very little music (meaning basically none - there's a lot of silence), which would have helped it have more emotional impact, and Alistair Sim's performance, although I think he's in theory the ideal Scrooge, misses the mark at times - he's allowed to be too likeable and eccentric when he should be grumpy, and never hits the depths of despair that he ought - the fault of directing I suppose.

They animated things which weren't relevant to the story (flying around at length with the ghost of Christmas Past, purely to show off the animation), and went quickly over points which have been the emotional high point of other adaptations. The ending particularly so. There's no "God bless us, every one," and the narration has no emotion to it, it's quite poor.


My opinion - an amazing piece of animation, the visuals are perfect. This is a major work, one of Williams' best. I feel that with a little more work on the sound - rerecording the voices, doing music and sound effects - this could have been the best Christmas Carol ever. As it stands, it is merely great. Recommended.
Post
#173338
Topic
Star Wars: Classic Edition by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/173338/action/topic#173338
Time
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/5224/snapshot200601261249321vz.jpg


Jesus fucking christ, did I leave that in there? I must have deleted the wrong clip - deleted the O-OT one in place of the SE one.

That's awful. Sorry 'bout that.




The others are .... damn. I can see how I missed them, as they look very similar to the originals.

Sigh.


I like the new Death Star hangar - though I didn't do that on purpose I probably would have.

I did leave out the cardboard people on purpose. I'd already handled that in Deleted Magic, and for such an iconic shot I didn't want to go to cruddy laserdisc.



And yes, I did miss the push in on the sandcrawler, I didn't know about that at the time. It's been mentioned by me a couple posts back.
Post
#173298
Topic
Star Wars: Classic Edition by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/173298/action/topic#173298
Time
You should let me know what changes you're talking about, and provide screenshots if possible, I'm curious.

You're the first one to spot any of these, they're changes I didn't know about that match the original shots almost exactly so why would I see them?

There's certainly nothing in there that screams "CGI" or detracts from the story.

As I said, ANH is completely stuffed full of pointless little changes and I doubt we've noticed them all. What people need removed is the ones they can notice!

I don't think it harms the quality of the edit - my response to things like this is -- if anyone thinks they can catch and remove more of the changes than I did, be my guest ..... do it yoself, you so smarteee ...

LOL.
Post
#173070
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/173070/action/topic#173070
Time
Chris has informed me that Ziggy's Gift is on DVD, in a bargain bin kind of release, so I've gone and bought that!



Sooo ...



I got in a bunch of DVDs from Chris Sobeniak, and I must say they're great!

He sent me an NTSC version of the Thames documentary "Richard Williams and the Thief Who Never Gave Up", and the quality is just great. It shows its age, but it's clearly a professionally made copy. Pleased!


He's sent me a nice quality copy of Williams' A Chrismas Carol, which I've wanted to see for years. Marvelous. Combined with Ziggy's Gift we can have a Dick Williams Christmas.

He also sent me a collection of the amazing European animated commercials done mostly by Williams' studio over the years.

It broke my DVD recorder. =(


He also sent me DivX versions of everything so I was able to view it that way.

Oh, my poor DVD recorder. I wonder if I can fix it. It's a Panasonic and refuses to eject the disc. It just says "99" on the front and that's it.


...


=(


Still, there's more happy news, as Chris has sent me scans of a chapter in a book about Canadian animation - the chapter is entirely dedicated to Williams and contains some interesting information I hadn't heard before. It's hard on Williams toward the end, but will make a nice DVD-ROM extra certainly.


Things continue well!
Post
#173007
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/173007/action/topic#173007
Time
Deleted Magic was done the way it was because the deleted footage just doesn't fit into the movie the way we know it. Not just because of quality, or because the scenes themselves aren't that good, but just in general. The deleted material is kind of silly. So I needed an edit that looked like the movie, but was kind of silly.



And despite your misgivings, you should do Moth3r's Jedi. We'd be grateful. But nobody can force you I guess.
Post
#172377
Topic
Classic Edition: Return of the Jedi by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/172377/action/topic#172377
Time
It's a little hot in the red spectrum because of both the DVD and laserdisc footage - they both look like that.

I had to match the laserdisc footage to look just like the DVD footage - a very difficult piece of color correcting. And then match the DVD footage to have the aspect ratio and look of the laserdisc footage ..

If it looks a bit orange, well, that's the way Lucas made it. =)
Post
#172072
Topic
Classic Edition: Return of the Jedi by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/172072/action/topic#172072
Time
I threw out 150 blank Linkyo DVD-Rs today. The order form says I bought 400, which is hard to believe. But that's what it says. I've been using these discs for a while. I'm not sure if I used them for the Empire release.

I bought a new burner too, just in case - my third. Yet another reason you always go broke at some point doing this kind of thing. Do you need the other two dozen reasons?

I'm lucky in that a lot of people asked for this Jedi disc, and I just got a good steady job in Hollywood, so those two things worked together to make sure my bank account didn't get overdrawn this time. As long as I can avoid taking that hit, I come out safely at the other end.

Anyway.


I feel really bad wasting all that $$ and throwing out all the Linkyo discs, but I did have some problems with them. Personally I couldn't get them to play half the time. Even the burners at work had trouble with them.

The weird thing is, the couple of complaints I've gotten don't match at all what the problems were on my end. This time round I tested every disc. I didn't send out a single disc if it didn't play in at least the Sony player in the other room, if not my Panasonic. If they worked in the Sony but not the Panasonic, they were marked "questionable."

I thought that the Star Wars discs would probably have problems. But basically all the Jedi discs I sent out had tested fine even in the Panasonic. I wanted the Jedi run to be perfect, and I threw out a lot of otherwise fine discs. Some of the Empires were good on the Panasonic, some of them weren't.

So anyway, I get this letter today saying that hey, the Star Wars disc was fine, but the others played halfway and locked up after a certain point etc ...

.....


The hell?

Sooo, none of the discs had compatibility problems. The Star Wars disc which shouldn't have been good was. The other discs which should have been good played and then stopped.

There is NOTHING in the tests I did on these discs to support any of that. When I tested the discs I tested them to the end. They all played on the Sony to the end. The only problem would be if they didn't play at all.



Oh, to hell with this. DVD duplication is a voodoo science with no rhyme or reason to it.


But whatever the problems are, I still blame the Linkyo. I never had a problem with the Ritek discs - very rarely anyway.


Guess the Ritek discs will be in on Monday ...

I'll hold off burning til then. Y'all deserve that.