skyjedi2005

This is truly devastating news to me as a film fan.

Now we should demand that Lucas does a proper restoration of the 1980 version of the empire strikes back.

We should also lobby for the release of the Parbot documentary because it has a good interview with Kersh.

Zion said:

It's 1 hour, and a very good doc by the way. Lots of Star Wars.

I was less than impressed.  Only ten minutes on the real star wars trilogy from 77-83 and little to nothing except that on physical effects done the good old fashioned way.  It was basically a long documentary on ILM Cgi and the prequels. 

I guess i should have expected that though with a title like creating the impossible, it would heavily focus on the development of the Computer graphics group that eventually replaced the physical effects group.

The book Droidmaker and Into the digital realm as well as the making of the special edition already covered all of this.  Some of the clips were new.

They missed a lot of stuff like the old star trek movies and the back to the future trilogy, as well as return of the jedi, temple of doom and last crusade.

Definitely not worth the extra twenty bucks i had to form over to see it on demand by purchasing a movie package with encore/starz.

I would not pay that sum of money on DVD for it because of the lack of focus on real special effects.  CGI is not anymore special as it is used way too heavily in all films.

A Lucash prequel era doc is worthless.

ChainsawAsh said:

The masters used to make the DVDs were, in fact, 1080p.  That's where the HD broadcasts came from.  I doubt we'll be getting new transfers.

Yep you are right.  Lucasfilm did the scan at 1080 only and sent the hard-drives to Lowry to do the DVNR process, and grain removal. frame repairs and whatever else they did.  They were not responsible for the color timing as ILM did that with Lucas in charge,lol.

So far all we know is that star wars 2004 special edition is getting a new lossless mix from the same guy who did that bad 2004 one, Wood.

I am almost sure it will be DTS-HD, as the audio carrier/codec makes very little difference.  DOLBY-HD is a lower bitrate but if from the same sound master they would sound almost identical from a blind test.

Adywan said it looked like to his eyes Phantom Menace was given a new transfer, but without any official word on that it is just hearsay.  Though i trust his word above a great many other posters, because he was not putting us all on.

Is preserving the HD broadcasts of the 2004 version of the trilogy even relevant anymore.  I mean considering the same versions will be on Blu ray, except star wars won't have the bad 2005 mix but a even worse bad mix.

generalfrevious said:

It's besides the point. LFL is always going to half-ass the BD and 3d releases of SW, like everything since 2004, while fans of the OOT are going to be still watching the GOUT 10 years from now. And the GOUT was just a ploy to undercut bootlegging.  

The ironic thing: they're going to think the BD/3d upgrades are better than they really are, just like the 04 DVDs.

 

The Blu ray release other than to make huge bucks, is to undercut the bootleg HD versions.  The blu ray will be from the 2004 HD 1080 masters, but will still look better than the ripped broadcasts to kill the bootleg market.

robbottin said:

Didn't Spielberg effectively directed some scene in EPISODE III?

The pre viz of the mustafar duel.  Where they are jumping on droids over the lava.  Horrible crap.  That and nuking the fridge are awful.  Spielberg's tastes really have not matured for the better.

I am glad Marquand directed Jedi.  I now no longer have an faith in Spielberg since the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ruined Indiana Jones, and he made a bad remake of war of the worlds, and produced those horrible bayformers films.

This tintin thing he did also has really bad plastic looking cgi animation.

Maybe Spielberg in his early days.  But Temple of Doom sucked.  Last Crusade was great.  And so was raiders.  So even in the eighties he had bad bombs like 1941.

Jetrell Fo said:

That bullpaq media doesn't sound very reliable really...or do they just not hold up to age?

The reliability is probably close to  zero if not more than 10%.

Russ had something like 500 discs he said and they are all now drink coasters.  That pretty much makes the bundle of about 15 discs he sent me all rotters.

Darth Mallwalker said:

 

skyjedi2005 said:

dark jedi 4 disc special widescreen set

I have 3/4 preserved in my cupboard, because that's all that segaflip posted.
They were the very last things he posted before basically disappearing from these boards. segaflip never posted the ROTJ SWE, so I couldn't repost that one (unless you wanted Rikter's BLAK0047-BLAK0050).

If all you want is '85 audio, and cannot wait for the new version, then just grab Dark-Sega (JSC) from a.b.starwars -- it's already there now, and presumed to contain the same soundtrack.

But wait . . . aren't you one of those say-no-to-usenet people?

 

You would not mind posting star wars SWE DJ incredible shrinking ratio ?

I can learn and purchase a usenet account, but do prefer blanks and postage.

Tested my disc yesterday for star wars, tried doing so at a slower speed still has two read errors.  Like most of the rotters the end of star wars is ruined during the trench battle.

I would assume since i have so far tested about 4 of the discs Russ sent me in late 05, or early 06 on bulpaq media generation 2 are all rotters.  Should i bother testing all my discs, i pretty much have come to the consensus that all my bulpaq discs are gone.

I have Rikters set but for some reason star wars played back at 18 fps on my pc, and has mpeg audio not ac3 so no dolby decode.  His also is worse quality than DJ.

Unfortunately for Kersh the only good mainstream flick he ever made was Empire.  Robocop 2 and Never say never again were awful.

I had the dark jedi 4 disc special widescreen set, but they are now rotters.  Does anyone still have these in non rotted copies ?

In fact i now have to collect the other dark jedi discs as well because they were all on bulkpag media.  At the moment all i really want is the disc with the 1985 audio for star wars.  It is from a 1989 laserdisc.

Lucas has destroyed star wars.  Simple as that.  We will never see the true theatrical trilogy ever again Lucas has them banned and buried, except for the crap gout.

THX 1138, not real version of the movie bad cgi cut.

American Graffiti color timing changed and cgi shot added, not real version.

And of course the star wars trilogy will be the crap 2004 video edit.

Hopefully they don't add that cgi shot in Raiders on the blu ray or no sale!

Supposedly George Lucas is also hacking away at a script for Indiana Jones V.

I really wish he would stop destroying Star Wars and Indiana Jones and make those films he has talked about making for like 30 years, those little experimental things.

Supposedly LucasArts was outsourced or most of the company to a new building.  I cannot remember if it was malaysia or singapore.

Makes sense as to why Hayden Blackman was let go and force unleashed III canceled and all in house development pretty much coming to a crawl.

But since clone wars is made not in the USA, also outsourced.  Not really a surprise.

Lucas also wanted to set up a studio in Austria to shoot  the live action series on video there, but don't think much became of that because he got no tv station to agree to his budget, or proposal for full control.  He was adamant about that because he has always held a grudge over young indy being canceled by network executives.

A version of Bane was in Batman and Robin, so i guess he won't be used.  Nor will they do the whole two face arc because of tommy lee's jones over acted forever version.

To me the Nolan films have been the first batman movies watchable as films and not cringe worthy like those Burton/Shumacher pieces of crap.  Burton never even bothered to read the comic its Batman perverted to fit his Burtonverse.  Tried to sit through batman '89 recently, Keaton horribly miscast as batman, he is sort of okay as an aloof Bruce Wayne.  The Joker horrible overacting by nicholson, and bad dated Prince music.  The only thing i think is timeless about that movie the gothic noir, the batsuit and batmobile and the music score not bad soundtrack.

doubleofive said:

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=71200

"The Dark Knight Rises"

I don't think I like the title. Sounds too much like a direct sequel to The Dark Knight rather than the third Batman Begins. Which in turn reminds me of "Dark Forces III: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast"

I do applaud Nolan's refusal to do it in 3D (while I think it would be cool, it should be the director's prerogative in what format to make his movie), however I was looking forward to a Riddler plot line...

Nolan does not overuse cgi or shoot on Video, had he done so i would just stay home.  The Hobbit will be shot on video so i am refusing to see it, and if star trek 12 goes forward without JJ Abrams and is shot on video i will boycott that also.

Gaffer Tape said:

Before I get back into this actual topic, this does remind me of something I encountered a few days ago.

I was at Best Buy, and I happened upon the big collectors' set of the old Fleischer Superman cartoons, which was cool.  I grew up watching those cartoons.  I have a few VHS tapes of them myself.  It looked like a pretty solid package.  So I picked it up and turned it over.  On the back it read, "Made for the serious collector.  Not intended for children."

What?  What?!  "Not intended for children"?!  Um, why?  So the nerds shelling out $50 for this won't feel emasculated?  Or has our society become that sensitive that children can't watch these cartoons?  I mean, who the hell were these things made for in the first place?  And the '90s Batman The Animated Series was based in tone and art style on those old cartoons.  Does that mean those aren't meant for children anymore either?  Ugh.  Society needs a good smack in the face.  Followed by a stick of dynamite down the pants, a rolling pin over the head, and all the other glorious violence we've turned our highly-evolved backs on.

I think it is because of racism against the Japanese.

So not only is this being shot on video not film, but it is not even being filmed in New Zealand.

Epic fail of the highest possible magnitude.  Wish it was shot on film and directed by Del Toro, as he was going to stay close to the Tolkien book.

I wonder what other elements from the trilogy will be missing.  Will Ian Mckellen be playing Gandalf, Andy Serkis Gollum, Hugo Weaving as Elrond.  Who will play Beorn, and who will play Thranduil Legolas father, who captures the dwarves in mirkwood.   Who will voice Smaug the Dragon.

What about Howard Shore as the music composer.

There are so many possible things that could go wrong.

The sound mix was doomed from the beginning considering it is the same guy who did the 2004 mix.

The Blu Ray is doomed because it will be the bad 2004 versions with no fixes, changing the audio even further and making it worse does not equal a fix.

The Blu Ray probably will kill the bootleg HD market of the HDTV broadcasts and will be better with less compression. But it will still be from a master limited to 1080p, with messed up colors and DVNR.

If it is true the master files created in 2004 were thrown together in a quick turnaround with no quality control, i think the 2004 DVD was thrown together in 30 days or something.  Quite unlike Fox spending 20 million for a meticulous restoration, not done in the digital realm but photochemically, in 1997.

Lucash already had the work done but mucked it up.

The directors cut of wrath of khan soundtrack was derived from the 70mm mix, i mean the 5.1 track in english of course.

I think the recent release of the restored theatrical cut is based on the 35mm mix of the film, but i could be wrong.

The Horner music sounds awesome though on the first issue pan and scan laserdisc and somewhat muffled on the newly cooked up DVD mix.

It is possible that the blu ray is sounding superior and  because they purposely made the re-issue DVD sound like crap.

I know they did this with star trek remastered on the DVD the 5.1 was a faked mix and did not have the mono track.  On the Blu ray not only did they have the correct mono track, but also the original effects as a bonus via seemless branching.

Also the first time the mono tracks have been available since the japan laserdiscs of the original series, the 2004 DVD's had the mono retracked into stereo 2 channel fakery.

The Music was re-recorded for the series so in that essence that is not faked when they did a new 7.1 mix, but the rest of it is faked from the surviving mono broadcast tapes.

zombie84 said:

Maybe. But when he was in preproduction in England he bought all this expensive video equipment that he used to do tape-to-tape video editing using old war films that he used to show people and ILM guys how the scenes would cut together, for both the "here they come" sequence and the end battle.

Then when he was in Tunisia someone broke into the house he was renting and stole all the video equipment. I don't think the tapes he made have ever been publically seen, its possible that they don't exist anymore for one reason or another. Maybe he did like what I did for Return of the Jedi in 1989 and recorded Super Dave Osbourne over it. :p

But yes, maybe they were able to get 35mm prints to use for the workprint. Also, the workprint is black and white for all footage, including the live action original footage which obviously was filmed in colour. It was all printed to black and white for editorial use because it was cheaper, so probably 633 Squad would have been too.

Correct the John Jympson rough cut exists in black and white.  While the dailies exist as color footage.  Who knows how  much fading has happened after all this time though, i would imagine it was the same bad eastman kodak that eventually was phased out.

The ball is in Lucas court all he has to do is restore the original trilogy from 77-83 and make it viable for future generations of film fans.

Not just for DVD and Blu Ray, the existence of the movies on restored film prints need to be worked on for archival versions.

Fans like me could not care less about the special edition and prequels if we could watch the movies in a modern transfer that is not twenty years old, from thirty year old analog video format.

The thing is Lucas did not bother to release a restored version of star wars for its 30th anniversary, and the 30th anniversary of empire will also have no restored theatrical empire strikes back.

I am also fairly sure when 2013 roles around Jedi won't get a decent release either.

So all we have are these books but no films to watch.  Thanks to Luca$.

Reading a book like making of empire opens old wounds, that we got the shit Gout in 2006 in ported over laserdisc masters in non restored DVD's that they did not even bother to do new anamorphic transfers for.

For one of the greatest sequels ever made, and it gets this treatment.

I wonder if Rinzler has started research yet on the making of Return of The Jedi.

So little is known as to what went on during filming, the peacher book and  barely scratches the surface.

I don't think any journalist was given the same access as Once Upon a Galaxy, the filming of jedi was done very secretive.

A fan working from every available source which has been published or leaked, can only reconstruct so much.

Rinzler has access to the archives.  Too Bad David Tomblin is dead, he would be quite a person to interview on the making of Jedi.

I also wish we did not have to wait for 2013 for Jedi's making of. 

Also too bad Marquand is dead.  But he could interview Kasden, Robert Watts, Howard Kanzanjian.

The bootlegs out there sourced from the TVland airings look really clean and good, except for the station watermark.  THe ones taken from vhs mastertapes given to crew on the first batman movie in 1989 are uncut and have no station watermark but are shit quality.

All 16mm prints around are mostly very badly faded, at least the ones on eastman stock.

I wonder what shape existing 35mm prints are in if any exist, or the original negatives, ideally you want to work with the best film source for a restoration.  With all the film grain intact, i noticed some of the new broadcasts seem to have boosted colors and look like video, film like DVD or Blu rays would be nice.

WB are cheapskates they won't restore the original superman film for Blu Ray so what hope is there for 60's Batman.