Electric Shadow

RE-ANIMATOR Given Life on Blu-ray

On the 4th of September, we get a full 1080p, DTS-HD audio version of Re-Animator with all of the extras that most people care about from the most-packed DVD edition, losing photo, poster, storyboard, and advertising galleries, a Stuart Gordon text bio, and the screenplay via DVD-ROM (not major losses, if you ask me). Here's what it comes with:

  • Documentary: “Re-Animator Resurrectus”
  • Audio Commentary by Director Stuart Gordon
  • Audio Commentary by Producer Brian Yuzna and Actors Bruce Abbott, Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton and Robert Sampson
  • Interview with Director Stuart Gordon and Producer Brian Yuzna
  • Interview with Writer Dennis Paoli
  • Interview with Composer Richard Band
  • Music Discussion with Composer Richard Band
  • Interview with Fangoria Magazine editor Tony Timpone
  • Deleted and Extended Scenes
  • Theatrical trailer
  • TV Spots

I would have loved to see them include a short video piece on the musical adaptation directed by Gordon, which I had the pleasure of seeing in previews back in early 2011.

Marty's Day Out (featuring Siri)

I wish that Scorsese would do another side thing featuring himself, like My Voyage to Italy. This time, it woud feature his plucky new sidekick, Siri. Oh the escapades they'd get into. Think of something that'd be called Marty's Day Out, with a Gershwin score.

Not Quite HD

Tonight, I went to a screening event for the Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1 Blu-ray. I went and paid my money, having already watched the entirety of a review copy of the set over the weekend. I went because I wondered how the crowd would react to the astounding jump up in quality on two of Season 1’s more visually impressive episodes: “Where No One Has Gone Before” and “Datalore” (aka an “If Only You Listened to Wesley Crusher” Double Feature).
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MANOS: The Game on 26 July

Ben Solovey, a college pal of mine, has been HD remastering the legendarily terrible Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) for nearly a year now. He somehow managed to get his hands on the original camera negative at an auction. Since it's in the public domain, there's nothing preventing Ben from doing what he's doing. Take a look at his site to see the painstaking effort he's making to get this thing done.

Manos is a movie immortalized by its lambasting in a 1993 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Shot in West Texas on a shoestring budget, it is a horror movie from a legendary era in genre film. Even though it may not be any good, it is an important part of independent cinema history.

For a couple of months now, I've been aware of a British indie developer making an 8-bit style touch game adaptation of the movie. Thanks to a post on Mashable, we now know it has an iOS release date. Expect a review from me at some point.

Busy Day

I've spent much of the day on "work work" in addition to working on a Comic-Con wrapup for Ain't It Cool News.

Late in the afternoon, I started digging into a freshly-arrived copy of next Tuesday's Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1 Blu-ray. It's impressive to say the least. If you are into TNG and own a Blu-ray player, I can confidently say that this will bring you a great deal of joy.

Regarding the other thing that has flooded the news today: I decided to carry on to the best of my ability as if it had it not happened in the first place.

Lawrence of Arabia Blu-ray: November 13th

The essential info:

The new 4K digital version will start screening in theaters on the 4th of October. The 3-disc Blu-ray arrives on 13 November, with no extras listing announced yet. They scanned the 24-year-old restoration negative at 8K (the impossibly huge resolution of 8192 × 4320 pixels). This is the negative struck by restoration king Robert A. Harris back in 1988. [UPDATE 3: Robert Harris tells Jeffrey Wells the following: "It would have been far easier for Crisp to simply take one of our 65mm interpositives and scan that, but he decided that what was best for the film was to scan our neg, which was in very worn condition. With this Crisp knowingly opened a Pandora's Box, but for the betterment of the film. He's been working with those elements tirelessly for two years, and went far beyond what any studio executive would normally have done. My hat is off."]

No word of any new celluloid prints being struck.

[UPDATE 1: The Digital Bits posted about rumored new extras here, which include a featurette and an enhancement track.

UPDATE 2: Above is the first image of the box art and guts. Perhaps the fourth disc is a score CD?]

 


Full text of the freshly-arrived press release:

David Lean’s masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia returns to the big screen 50 years after its 1962 premiere in a 4K digitally-restored version of the Director’s Cut. Following its international debut at Festival Du Cannes this past May, Lawrence of Arabia will screen nationwide in a digital-only theatrical event in theaters starting October 4th.   The film will be available in a Blu-ray™ 3-disc collectible boxed set starting November 13thfrom Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Additionally, the film will be featured for one night only on Turner Classic Movies, November 16th at 8:00PM in a television exclusive.  The U.S. premiere of the new restoration will take place in Los Angeles on July 19th with a special 4K presentation at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Nominated for 10 Academy Awards®, winning seven, including Best Picture and Best Director and staring Best Actor nominee Peter O’Toole and Best Supporting Actor nominee Omar Sharif, the film is one of the crown jewels in the legacy of Columbia Pictures.  “We wanted to return this film to as pristine a condition as possible to honor its anniversary release,” says Grover Crisp, EVP of Asset Management, Film Restoration and Digital Mastering for SPE.  The original camera negative was scanned at 8K and the film went through a painstaking process of repairing problems inherent to the 50-year old film elements.  Using the latest digital imaging technology, the color grading and re-mastering was completed in 4K at Colorworks, Sony Pictures Entertainments’ digital intermediate facility.  “The original negative was seriously damaged in a number of ways, some problems dating from the original release and some accumulated over the years.” says Crisp.  “But, until now, we did not have the tools available to address these issues.   We think fans of the film will be as amazed as we are at the detail and resolution in the imagery captured by cinematographer Freddie Young to compliment David Lean’s immaculate direction.”

OUYA Adds Ethernet, Hardware Design Chief

Matt Helgeson at Game Informer reports:

The update introduces Muffi Ghadiali, a key member of the hardware design team, and announces an important change to the hardware design.

The OUYA is a Kickstarter-backed Android OS game console that is very aggressively set for a March 2013 release at a $99 price point.

Their initial goal was $950k. With 21 days left, they're now at over $5 million, with 40,000 backers.

Yet another box to connect to your TV. What does it fully replace and make redundant, or is it a box in search of a free HDMI port?

Hrmph Dark Knight Hmphmhhmppphhh

I just got out of a press screening of The Dark Knight Rises. I'll have thoughts about the film itself later on, but for now I had to get this out:

Who is it that still allows AMC to set their sound on "extra quiet" for press screenings?

What's the point of even doing these things unless the sound presentation is at least reasonably audible?

I had to lean in so far just to hear what everyone on screen was saying (not just Bane, everybody) that by the end of the movie, I had pushed my head through the screen and halfway into the center channel speaker. Nothing was more audible than a muffled mumble throughout the entire runtime.

Saying something to the press rep resulted in a microscopic uptick in the sound volume. AMC wouldn't dare blast their speakers at acceptable operating levels, since that might requirte them to...I don't know...give a good goddamn?

The worst thing about this is that we freeloading critic-types didn't get unique treatment. This is how most mass-market moviegoers will hear the movie, or rather, not hear The Dark Knight Rises.

If Christopher Nolan or Thomas Tull had been there this morning, the projection and/or management staff would all be jobless. If anyone still cared in the mass-market ehibition business, it never would have happened in the first place.

Rotten Dark Knights of Fandom

Regarding fan outrage taking the form of death threats and other violence here's Devin Faraci, reporting at Badass Digest yesterday:

Rotten Tomatoes was forced to go to tweet a reminder that any commenters who broke their basic terms of service (which I'm sure include things like 'Don't make death threats') would be banned from the site. That they would feel the need to do this only hours after the first negative reviews hit shows the force of the onslaught. There are thousands of hate comments still standing, with many having been deleted by a surely overworked moderator.

Since originally posting, he's issued an update that Rotten Tomatoes has disabled commenting in advance of instituting a Facebook-backed, anti-anonymity system.

It's terrible that fandom has devolved into this sort of statistic-obsession, rather than the fandom-positive nature it once had.

Amazon Optimal Prime

I'd missed this. Farhad Manjoo, reporting last week at Slate:

If Amazon can send me stuff overnight for free without a distribution center nearby, it’s not hard to guess what it can do once it has lots of warehouses within driving distance of my house. Instead of surprising me by getting something to me the next day, I suspect that, over the next few years, next-day service will become its default shipping method on most of its items. Meanwhile it will offer same-day service as a cheap upgrade. For $5 extra, you can have that laptop waiting for you when you get home from work. Wouldn’t you take that deal?

As hard as it was for me to find Blu-rays today in a city as cine-centric as Austin...this would be the death knell. I don't know that I would drive across town if I could have it at my door tomorrow morning.

Dignity, Always Dignity

Taken in my living room with my Nikon D7000. This is my Blu-ray screen capture solution until I can do them directly via computer.

The new 60th Anniversary Blu-ray of Singin' in the Rain features a clean, crisp HD image that properly honors one the most beautiful (and best) motion pictures of all time. The increase in detail from digital cleanup does not diminish grain authenticity or the texture of items on screen. Contrast remains consistent throughout the film, with rich black tones alongside lush, bright colors without diminishing either. What some may perceive as softness in the picture is simply how Technicolor films of the period looked.

It bothers me that the only English track is the 5.1 surround sound mix, as marvelous as it is. Keep in mind that I'm one among very few who like listening to things in the "archaic" configuration in which it was originally released, so this isn't a dealbreaker. Beggars can't be choosers, so I'm glad that the single choice I was given was one that requires no adjustment throughout the entire viewing experience.

Singin' in the Rain is a movie whose plot turns on the introduction of a revolutionary filmmaking technology. Even if the story and music didn't hold up, that we find ourselves in a similar transitional period with technology (digital production and high frame rates) reminds us that the movie is just as relevant today. One could argue that it's even more directly relevant today than the year it was released (1952), almost a quarter century after the move to sound. Color had recently been introduced, but that wasn't as big of a sea change as the beginning of talkies.

The beautiful picture and sound, as well as the reasonable ongoing price point for the single-disc version, make this a Top Shelf Disc.


Blu-grade Advice


Buyer A
To those with $75 to burn and no DVD version of the movie so far: go ahead and grab the big chocolate box full of paper reproductions, a photo book, and an umbrella. It also includes the exact Special Edition discs that were released previously.

Buyer B
To those who want the most economical way to get the Blu-ray and all the extra on-disc features: find the 2-disc Special Edition as cheap as you can used and grab the single-disc Blu-ray for $14.

Buyer C
To those who already have the two-disc DVD Special Edition from a few years ago: do not get rid of it.

If you then get the single-Blu-ray version that Amazon is selling for $14, you gain the only new on-disc features contained in the massive mega-box: the movie in HD plus a new 50-minute fluff documentary.


The New


Singin' in the Rain: Raining on a New Generation (~50 minutes)
This nearly-hourlong talking head festival features loads of professionals who have been inspired by the movie or Gene Kelly himself. The first face is Broadway pro Matthew Morrison, who just so happens to play the teacher on Glee. He's joined by a pile of choreographers, directors, historians, and performers including Paula Abdul, Adam Shankman, Rob Marshall, Rudy Behlmer, Corbin Bleu, Usher Raymond, and Baz Luhrmann.

Not much of substance is discussed here, even by the historians. This featurette exists in the hope that a marketing piece aimed at The Glee Generation (for lack of a better term) will help move copies.


The Old


The commentary with Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Cyd Charisse, Kathleen Freeman, Stanley Donen, Betty Comden and Adolph Green (together), Baz Luhrmann, and Rudy Behlmer.

The "Jukebox" (jump to specific songs)

The trailer (still in SD)

Blu-grade and Top Shelf Discs

For years, all of my Blu-ray posts have been designed to help make a comparative decision as to whether the double-dip (or sometimes first release) of a title is worth your money.

While guesting on an episode of The CriterionCast, I coined the term "Blu-grade" (I think) to describe the process of a title arriving on (or making a repeat appearance) on the HD format of kings. Some are true upgrades, while some are terribly lackluster, and yet others are so light on any compelling incentive to re-purchase that I want to shout it from the rooftops as soon as possible.

All posts in this category will include comparative data in addition to my verdict on whether it's worth it or not so that you can make your decision based on a composite measurement as you see fit.

All these posts (past, present, and future) are now tagged Blu-grade and linked in the sidebar site-wide.

Your Top Shelf is where your best and favorite things sit. Top Shelf Discs is a new recurring category on Arthouse Cowboy that is designed to give special recognition to the best of the best in the realm of physical media.

Even if it isn't packed with extras, or the surviving film elements do not allow a crystal-clear and flawless restoration, these are the best Blu-rays and DVDs (yes, DVDs) out there. They are the ones I find to be most worth your time and money in an age when both of those resources are in decline for many of us.

I'll be digging back into my archives and adding titles I've reviewed extensively in the past to this listing too. Watch for that.

You can also find all Top Shelf Discs posts in the sidebar as well.

Archived posts in all categories need a generous amount of reformatting work that will progress as I am able.

(While I was at it, I also threw in a link for Criterion Collected, my ongoing series of articles about Criterion.)

In related news, my review of the Singin' in the Rain Blu-ray is imminent.

Finding Today's Blus on Shelves

I spent about three times longer than I assumed I would tracking down today's Blu-ray releases at brick and mortar outlets here in Austin. Here's a cheat sheet for the titles I was after, in case other Austinites are looking for the same stuff.

Fry's Electronics
Mean Streets: $9.99

Waterloo Records
Singin' in the Rain ($17.99 single disc version)
High Noon ($23.99, available Thursday)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956 ($23.99, available Thursday)
American Masters: Johnny Carson, King of Late Night ($24.99)

Barnes & Noble
Singin' in the Rain ($17.99 single disc version)
Down By Law ($19.99 Criterion Collection Blu-ray)

That's right, the Blu-ray debut of one of the greatest films of all time, Singin' In the Rain, is unavailable at Best Buy, Target, and Walmart.

I went to Best Buy and left completely empty-handed. They had none of the above titles, with Singin' marked as "online-only".

Best Buy does have a retailer-exclusive version of Get the Gringo that includes a half hour of additional extras not found on the standard edition. In the interest of full disclosure, I produced the premiere event for Gringo a few months ago here in Austin.

"Ask Christopher Nolan if he would mind if you text during the opening weekend of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES"

The Wrap's Chris Davison wrote an idiotic editorial encouraging cinema chains to create texting-friendly shows. The National Association of Theater Owners email blasted it to its entire membership, including my friend and Alamo Drafthouse CEO Tim League. He wrote an open letter in response:

The only answer to this debate is taking a hard line.  Texting and talking can not be allowed in movie theaters.  Our spaces are sacred spaces for movie fans.  Chris Davison, you are wrong.  NATO, you should add commentary to Davison's article before blasting to the entire membership.  You do this for the trend in shrinking VOD/theatrical windows.  To me, the leniency towards talking and texting is a greater threat to our industry.

The crux of the argument is in that closer. Ruining the theatrical experience for more people by endorsing bad behavior encourages less return business, period.