skyjedi2005

Just wanted to pint out that the best source for the original english streamline pictures dub of Akira is the CAV criterion laserdisc PCM track.

It was not even included on the DVD in the states in a poor mix down to dolby 2.0, much less the full bitrate PCM master could have achieved on a blu ray release.

The Video on the laserdisc is not identical to the first DVD release or the new blu ray, so would take a person who could sync the picture to the new blu ray restoration. Of course this would fall under the custom DVD and not a restoration.  Which would mean it could not be shared because of copyright.

If you were going to do a DVD you would probably use the blu ray as your base source for the video downrez it to DVD resolution , and add the full PCM track.  Or you could strictly just capture the non restored video off the laserdisc and audio and make an anamorphic conversion for DVD.

Did you paint that cover rogue ? I think it really cool looking ,almost a blade runner feel.

generalfrevious said:

zombie84 said:

The physical ability to do it isn't the problem. As Robert Harris said, the films are pretty well protected in that there are sep masters for at least two and probably all three. The problem is that no one can get at them right now due to certain business conditions, the main one being that George Lucas has the legal right to block people from getting at them. This may or may not change in the near future but it will change in the distant future, and because of that it might come out in between those extremes (i.e. in 15-20 years, after Lucas dies, but maybe even less). The situation is bad but not hopeless.

But it's still a paradigm shift; the OOT has been supplanted by the PTSE for the last fourteen years, and there is no chance that the PTSE is going to be phased out and the OOT put back on its rightful place. The OOT may be preserved, like you say, but time is not go to go in reverse and redeem the franchise.

You are right of course.  When the guy who is the emperor and has the keys to the kingdom has lost his marbles and thinks his new clothes look so good because his lackeys and yes men say they look so great,lol.

Don't give Lucas any more ideas it, he has already ruined much of what made the originals great.

Suppressing the originals is the worst suppression  of film art and destruction of our cultural history.  Even worse when you consider the director and writer is in on it, usually filmmakers don't suppress their films.  Especially if they are the biggest commercial grossers in history modern before the Present day.

Especially if it is the work you did that is beloved by the masses, why would you suppress that, but not suppress the other works which are hated, like Howard the Duck or the Star Wars Prequels, or Indiana Jones IV.

I listened to your raw recording of Return of the Jedi and it was a significant sonic improvement over your last effort, it had no digital clipping or level adjustments just the pure bliss of vinyl.

Now if it had been cut up into tracks, and in flac it would have been perfect for release.

See you could actually contribute something to this community. 

If you could be reinstated and given a pass on your past transgressions whatever they may be.

It is reiculous how much better sounding your LP rip is than the special edition CD of Jedi, it sounds better than the RSO CD even.  I cannot explain this.

The highs and lows are fuller, and they should not be as they came from the same master.  Did they apply digital noise reduction to the recordings all the way back in 1983, but the LP was spared of this ?

The only noise reduction i was aware of was the Dolby noise reduction, done at the time and since the seventies on analog master tapes.

Sluggo said:

Yoda meeting Chewbacca.  Absolutely unnecessary.  Chewbacca.  Also absolutely unnecessary.  And of course Han Solo was featured in the rough draft of the script and some concept art was done.   To me, the idea that Lucas actually seriously considered this is a huge strike against his shrinking universe and it isn't forgiven even though he jettisoned the idea..

One idea that I would like seen looked at with a little more depth is R2 and 3PO.  Although they were introduced in the wrong places and with the wrong people, I am torn whether they should be in the prequels or not.  Lucas has stated rather early on that the story would be viewed from the eyes of the droids.  I do like this idea, but I am not sure if the prequels can be about Ben and Anakin and the droids.  I'm not sure how this all would work.

Lucas also wanted to make Palpatine in some sense Anakin's father, as he used his masters manipulation of midichlorians to create life.

Palpatine therefore would have been his creator/father and therefore Luke's grandfather. 

Along with the young Han Solo idea which would have Jettisoned the original han solo storyline of meeting Chewbacca for the first time when he was in the imperial academy.

Just more examples of how the prequels did and would have even done more destruction of star wars had Lucas been able to keep all his ideas in the final films.

It has been proven had he a different writer and director and been fired except as an idea man and man who holds the money and keys to the kingdom, the prequels could have been great.

Look how much better the clone wars animated shows are than the prequels, even with the bad stuff Lucas introduced.  The rest of the team devoted to the oot.  And Lucas daughter can actual write, and filoni can direct.  Lucas cannot , he could not write his way out of a wet paper bag in the middle of a blizzard.

He even said in the making of phantom menace the whole sucess of the film hinged on Jar Jar, hilarious.

As was his comment that you can destroy these things, and that more american graffiti made ten cents.

The thing is i liked the oriuginal trilogy from 1977-1983.  I thought it was brillianly conceived and a wonerful set of films.

The prequels sucked and are not real star wars, so to me their is no shrinking universe because the star wars canon is the original trilogy circa 1977-1983.

The Special Edition changes and the prequels as released are not a part of the original continuity as it existed in 1983.  So i declare them garbage and worthless.

In Season 2 via the bonus material Filoni explains that Boba Fett and Jango fett are just random bounty hunters and not Mandalorians anymore.

George Lucas decision

Karen Traviss was right they completely destroyed the mythology built up carefully over thirty years plus in the EU.

Anybody still have the 7FN transfers pm me a link, thanks in advance

The guys in that Zahn novel.  The Rogue stormtroopers.

The worst case is releasing a blu ray set without the actual films.

Like the star wars set.

Is this project still coming out.  Desperately seeking a DVD quality NTSC version of the 1997 editions as the 2004 suck.

The scenes with Shaw in return of the jedi vader's unmasking, and ghost scene as well as the funeral pyre.

The ghost scene in both the 1983 and 1997 versions.  The 2004 was an absolute outrage they put Hayden in there.  I wanted to smash the DVD into little bits.

Someone on home theater forum said if we support the blu ray of the special editions there would be a chance Lucas would take that money and restore the originals at a later date.

If that was true he could have used the money he got on the 1997 theatrical release, or 2004 DVD release.  The fact the films are still rotting in a vault someplace says to me its a bogus idea that person had.

In fact its more likely Lucas will release the 2004 without any fixes beyond a new and even worse audio mix for episode IV a new hope, formerly known as star wars.  He will take the money and run, "a fool and his money are soon parted".

If smaller studios and companies releasing silent and black and white films and take incredible care in doping so like Kino, or a smaller catalog company like Criterion, then there is zero excuse for a company like Lucasfilm with billions in revenue not to release the theatrical cuts of all the films, including the prequels and 1997 special editions.

If films like Blade Runner and 2001 which barely turned a profit can be restored and issued on blu ray why not the 3 most popular films in motion picture history, the star wars trilogy 77-83.

The scene in Return of the Jedi when Luke throws his lightsaber away and rejects the dark side.

And says "Never.  I'll never turn to the dark side.  You've failed your highness.  I am a Jedi, like my father before me".

I think someone on these boards did a letterbox transfer of blade runner criterion without the bonus materials.  Not sure but i think it was Rikter, but i am not sure if he authored the disc or someone else.  I know he also had a copy of the then rare workprint from a vhs tape ported over to DVD.

The Euro cut preservation had very poor video quality, even the audio was just mpeg 2 or ac3 not PCM.

I had it but the DVDR is probably now toast as being a rotter, otherwise i could have posted screen grabs.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

FanFiltration said:

I have my own plans to do a few Criterion preservations of disks I have.

 

"The James Bond Films" (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger) Upgrade

"Lawrence of Arabia" (Preservation of the 4 disc set with all extras) 

"Akira" (With the original English audio)

"A Hard Day's Night" (This will also include the very rare complete unaltered original mono mix from the first MPI release)

Sorry to bump but how are these preservations going? I'm especially interested in the "A Hard Day's Night" Criterion Preservation.

EDIT: Oh and has a preservation of the Blade Runner Criterion Laserdisc ever been made and released? If someone can help me get a copy of a Blade Runner preservation, can you pls. PM me?

That is the euro theatrical cut released on DVD in the blade runner boxset.

I am looking for the preservation of jason and the argonauts criterion.

The laserdisc is prohibitively expensive.

Harmy said:

 

Baronlando said:

I saw the Spartacus reconstruction in a theater and you'd never know it was that far removed from the negative. And that was years ago, Harris probably can do some amazing things now.

 

Maybe it's not that far removed from the o-neg, maybe he did develop a way to only use one of the 3 masters for fine detail (which would be the equivalent of using an IP in terms of grain and detail but the resulting image would be black-and-white with wrong levels) and then using all three to give it proper colouring. It would be a process similar to colourizing a black-and-white movie.

Anything Harris could do including restoring the negative back to its original state, is far better than those 2004 abomination video edits.

Undo the damage done since 1996 and do a true restoration of the original elements what the special edition originally was supposed to be.

CO said:

I actually believe we will see a remastered OOT sometime in the future.  The fact that Lucas is releasing the Saga AND the PT and OT seperate on BluRay tells me that Lucas has conceded that idea that everyone will be a Saga fan of all 6 movies.

He has preached and preached for the past 10 years that it is one big movie that is supposed to be watched from 1-6, yet he releases the OT seperate from the Saga?  Purely for financial reasons, because they fear that many OT fans WONT buy all 6 movies and just want the OT.

Lucas can get away with this BluRay set by not putting out the OOT because there are a market of OT fans who prefer the OOT, but put up with the SE changes and will buy this set. (I have several friends who prefer the OOT, but will be buying this set.)

Which leads me to believe that Lucas will release the OOT fullly remastered in the next few years, and he can make more $$$$$$$$ that way then include it in this set.

You need to buy the saga set with the crap prequels to get the oot deleted scenes, so i think Lucash wins on that one.  You buy the special edition trilogy set only without the prequels and you don't get the bonus materials.

Did you do a raw conversion of return of the jedi LP.  If so i am very interested.

I don't have any money or resources to contribute all i can do is say good luck with your endeavors and projects.

Harmy said:

But I think it would be a bad idea to use all 3 separation masters, because it would mean combining 3 different film strips together, thus combing four different grain patterns (that of the o-neg plus one for each of the seps), so the sep-masters combined would have to be 3 generations worse than the o-neg and that's assuming they were stuck directly from the negative.

Didn't they use the separation masters for the Wizard of Oz, and before that The adventures of robin hood. 

Warner Bros and MGM i mean.

Sleeping beauty also was restored from the 3 strip separation masters ycm.

As were portions of star wars special edition in 1997 in which the negative was too far gone to use. 

Return of the Jedi looked great in theaters in 97 when i saw it.  No Hayden, No Jar Jar.  Only real crap scene to me was Jedi Rocks.

TMBTM said:

Problem with buying the OT box only is that you can't see the 2004 SE pretending it's the only trilogy, because Hayden's ghost fucked the whole thing... unless there is seemless branching with the 1997 SE...

That and you don't get to see the 30 hours of bonus features on 3 extra discs.  Problem is just like having to buy the bad 2004 cuts twice to get the ported over laserdisc masters as a bonus feature.

You have to purchase the prequels bundled together with the special editions of the original trilogy.  I bet Lucas did this on purpose knowing people would who would not buy the prequels otherwise have to be forced into buying them for the exclusives.

Imagine what a dream it would be to just buy the oot with the old school documentaries and deleted scenes all in restored quality, and no special editions or no prequels.  Sadly Lucas does not want us to have our cake and eat it too.