691 Thief

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oh yeah
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Re: 691 Thief

#76 Post by oh yeah » Wed Dec 18, 2013 7:10 pm

Hmm, there's something a little too sanitized about the look of the first still, but I'll reserve judgment until I view the disc myself. And most of the other stills on blu-ray.com looked quite excellent, I think.

LavaLamp
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Re: 691 Thief

#77 Post by LavaLamp » Fri Dec 20, 2013 9:22 am

Well, I prefer the first still (Criterion Blu-ray), since it's darker & IMHO thematically goes along with the way the rest of the film should look...I don't like the second HDTV theatrical cut still as much, since it's too "light", IMHO. Irregardless of the way the film looked like when it first came out in the theatre, that was 30+ years ago and I don't mind some minor modifications, as long as they improve the film & don't change it too much....

Of course, I will have to reserve judgement until I see the BD in person....

For the same reasons mentioned above, my preferred version of the original "Halloween" film (1978) is the most recent 35th anniversary BD edition, in which even the daylight scenes have a dark tone to them (seemingly much darker than previous versions). IMHO this enhances the dark theme of the film...

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FrauBlucher
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Re: 691 Thief

#78 Post by FrauBlucher » Tue Dec 31, 2013 6:51 pm


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sir_luke
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Re: 691 Thief

#79 Post by sir_luke » Tue Dec 31, 2013 11:03 pm

He doesn't say whether the weirdly sped-up slow motion ending has been remedied. Huff.

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L.A.
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Re: 691 Thief

#80 Post by L.A. » Wed Jan 01, 2014 4:56 pm


oh yeah
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Re: 691 Thief

#81 Post by oh yeah » Wed Jan 01, 2014 9:43 pm

Hmm, so the music cue on cutting to the beach scene is intact from the theatrical version, but otherwise the film seems to be the director's cut? Including the Willie Dixon/Lake Michigan scene at the beginning. I, too, am hoping that that awkward sped-up effect has been removed from the ending.

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Adam X
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Re: 691 Thief

#82 Post by Adam X » Thu Jan 02, 2014 11:41 am

Mondo Digital wrote:Though billed as a director's cut, this isn't the same version. The extra scene is still there, but thankfully the beach sequence is back to its original length with the music intact, thus creating the longest version we've had to date (about 30 seconds longer than the DVD) and something much closer to the theatrical version overall, including the restoration of slow motion during the last gunfight instead of the goofy sped up effect applied to the laserdisc and DVD.

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sir_luke
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Re: 691 Thief

#83 Post by sir_luke » Thu Jan 02, 2014 1:30 pm

Thanks, Adam. I must have missed that. What a relief!

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Re: 691 Thief

#84 Post by kneelzod » Thu Jan 02, 2014 2:12 pm

sir_luke wrote:Thanks, Adam. I must have missed that. What a relief!
I emailed Nathaniel about this and he revised the review to include the info about the restored slo-mo at the end. I can live with the extra scene, seeing as we now have the beach scene and final shootout restored to their much more effective original iterations.

oh yeah
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Re: 691 Thief

#85 Post by oh yeah » Thu Jan 02, 2014 4:38 pm

Phew - great news!

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Cold Bishop
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Re: 691 Thief

#86 Post by Cold Bishop » Mon Jan 13, 2014 8:51 pm

RE: the gunfight. Just caught the tail-end of the new restoration on television. I could tell it was the new one because the speeding-up was indeed gone. However, there are several instances of freeze frames (and what looked like a jump-cut in one instance) that I don't recall from old viewings. More Mann tinkering?

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Red Screamer
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Re: 691 Thief

#87 Post by Red Screamer » Mon Jan 13, 2014 9:26 pm

I just watched an old recording I had of the film and it had the slow motion ending but no jump cuts or freeze frames.

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JamesF
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Re: 691 Thief

#88 Post by JamesF » Tue Jan 14, 2014 6:38 am

I for one remember at least a couple of freeze frames and jump cuts from my old VHS, not least when
SpoilerShow
Prosky gets shot.
Here's the theatrical ending if anyone with the BD wants to compare.

flyonthewall2983
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Re: 691 Thief

#89 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Tue Jan 14, 2014 10:04 am

What about the shots of Frank's house and bar being blown up?

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colinr0380
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Re: 691 Thief

#90 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Jan 18, 2014 9:19 pm

The house explosion does not appear sped up or otherwise treated (I love the moment of the 'pink tree' that Belushi's character scoffs at earlier in the film bursting into flames!), and the bar scene similarly doesn't seem sped up, though it is in slow motion and there are a few dissolves on top of dissolves there.

A great film. It was the one Michael Mann film I have put off seeing for the longest time, and in a way it is a shame that I waited so long as strangely for a debut film it sort of encapsulates all of the themes he would go on to explore in various differently veiled ways in the rest of his work. I particularly liked the conflict between a man with a code of ethics in some ways being brought down by the ‘weakness’ of having a slight spark of romanticism in his nature about his current life, his future and those around him. He is sort of pragmatic in his dealings with everyone and everything (the adoption failure and success scenes neatly illustrating this), yet there is still that core of almost naïve idealism and romanticism about love, family, work, and the old chestnut of ‘the final job’ actually being the final job.

That ‘flaw’ doesn’t exactly bring about his downfall (in a way having that goal to drive towards is what has kept him going through the toughest times), but it does mean that he is able to live in a kind of delusion that steadily gets torn away from him throughout the film. In a way the entire film is set up in the first half hour to provide Frank with all of the issues that are inevitably going to blow up in his face in the final half hour (the father figure wanting to get out of jail, being forced into a crime syndicate and letting that happen rather than end with the inevitable gun fight there and then on the dock) and then the hour in between is Frank getting lost in the procedural aspects of building a life, falling in love, planning a heist and pulling it off, before the supreme (and most deluded) moment of the idyllic walk along the beach with friends and family at the point where it seems that all the dreams will come true.

There is not a surprise there that Frank will be betrayed, but the bleak inevitability of the story gets veiled a little in that middle section as we the audience get fascinated by the little details of the heist or the love story. And this is also a film that seems to set up all of those male-female ‘soul mate yet ripped apart by fate’ relationships, with the women being more of the realist counterpoint, albeit an often powerless realist, to the off in the clouds, living an iconic life men that turn up in most of Mann’s later films from The Keep and Manhunter to Last of the Mohicans and Heat, etc.

And Tarantino take note, this is how you do a righteous vengeance ending! Have the courage to destroy your hero too, or at least leave their future uncertain! All or nothing!

oh yeah
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Re: 691 Thief

#91 Post by oh yeah » Wed Jan 22, 2014 2:29 am

The film looks and sounds great (although I'm not quite convinced that Mann didn't push the blue/teal knob just a notch or two too high during the process, just sayin'). Watching it again I am reminded of its roughness, that there is a slouchness of pace at times, distinct to a director finding his way. Still, it's a terrific work, with a fascinating sort of early-80s aesthetic futurism -- Nick James's namedrop of Blade Runner in his essay is spot on, as the film portrays Chicago as some kind of giant, dank, shiny-neon cage full of rain and grit. Of course the TD score cements this futuristic feel, and I can't imagine the film having wall-to-wall blues music as Mann originally intended.

The interview with Mann is illuminating as usual. At one point, he somehow makes the point that Thief is not influenced by film noir via a digressively erudite riff on how noir was molded out of the atrocities of World War II and the inconceivability to people at that time as to how such brutality could occur. It took me by surprise but it makes complete sense. It's a typical Mann moment.

Another interesting moment comes at the end when Mann basically says that Thief differs from his other films in how it has a message or point it wishes to impart to the viewer, and that he just wouldn't make a film that direct/simple again. The wording's a little vague but I think I understand; I see this simplicity in shots like the crumpled collage of broken dreams tossed aside by the flaming car-lot, and it's in contrast to a more ambiguous structure of something like Heat where there are many arrows pointing to ideas but nothing quite so loud and 'obvious' as Thief's nihilistic conclusion. I also am much more fascinated by the ethereal, liquid impermanence of the shooting style he's adopted in the past decade as opposed to the far more static, traditionally 'pretty pictures' of Thief, but this is small stuff, and I do quite love the film on its own terms. Its most famous sequences (the opening heist, the diner scene, and the revenge at Leo's) are certainly three for the canon, but I'm also fond of smaller moments such as the dreamy travelling shot on the highway that sweeps around to reveal where Frank has placed the police tracking device: on a tour bus headed to Des Moines.

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colinr0380
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Re: 691 Thief

#92 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Jan 22, 2014 6:18 am

oh yeah wrote:The interview with Mann is illuminating as usual. At one point, he somehow makes the point that Thief is not influenced by film noir via a digressively erudite riff on how noir was molded out of the atrocities of World War II and the inconceivability to people at that time as to how such brutality could occur.

Another interesting moment comes at the end when Mann basically says that Thief differs from his other films in how it has a message or point it wishes to impart to the viewer, and that he just wouldn't make a film that direct/simple again. The wording's a little vague but I think I understand; I see this simplicity in shots like the crumpled collage of broken dreams tossed aside by the flaming car-lot, and it's in contrast to a more ambiguous structure of something like Heat where there are many arrows pointing to ideas but nothing quite so loud and 'obvious' as Thief's nihilistic conclusion.
It is a great interview and both of those statements are interesting if pushed forward to The Keep, which is both World War II set and features many 'messages', but is moving much towards the 'ethereal' rather than narrative passages that are the highlights of the later films. One thing that I would have liked to have seen talked about in that interview was the role that genre plays in Mann's works as a structure to riff on, from the horror of The Keep to the crime stories and especially the investigation of Manhunter (the resolution of which doesn't resonate as strongly as the other moments, such as the tiger stroking or the hotel room revelation. Or rather the climax is less powerful for its resolution than the way it is scored to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida!)

oh yeah
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Re: 691 Thief

#93 Post by oh yeah » Wed Jan 22, 2014 5:09 pm

Indeed, I've always thought that Manhunter ends poorly, at least compared to the rest of the film -- Mann is typically great with endings, and Collateral is the only other one that kind of fizzles out. I do actually like the Iron Butterfly song, and the climax in Dollarhyde's house -- the frenzied, jump-cut rhythm works quite well in suggesting the disorientation of the moment, unlike the weird, similar effect in Thief's earlier DC. But the problem is the film's almost Spielbergian beach-house family ending, complete with eye-rolling turtle metaphor ("not all of them survived") and especially that gaudy, annoying Red 7 pop song -- a blight on the otherwise perfect soundtrack, I think. One could look at the ending freeze-frame -- of Graham and his wife standing together while their young son is caught mid-throw with his arm raised high, tossing a pebble seemingly in their direction, his stance suggesting violence -- as a kind of foreboding encapsulation of Dollarhyde's own Oedipal neuroses, but this may be entirely tenuous.

I read in a different, recent interview with Mann that he has no plans to ever revisit The Keep... it's a little vague, but I think he's saying that he won't alter or produce a different cut, but there's still a possibility of a proper DVD/blu release.

Here's the interview.

That led someone else to ask whether he’s ever consider revisiting his 1983 supernatural thriller “The Keep,” which other than a brief run on Netflix Instant has long been unavailable on home video since its initial release on VHS.

“I doubt it,” Mann said flatly. “Wally Veevers, who was the visual effects supervisor on “The Keep” and played a big role in “2001” and “The Things to Come,” tragically died right during the making of the film. A lot of his methods were very esoteric and how he was actually going to put these things together he kept to himself, so we actually had a lot of volunteers from the [special effects] community in London at the time to help out and they did, but we never really got able to pull it back together.”


Another interesting bit from that interview is that Mann says there are only two films he's made which he would not change a frame of: Collateral and The Insider. Makes sense considering they're pretty much the only two that weren't altered between theaters and DVD.

Bressonaire
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Re: 691 Thief

#94 Post by Bressonaire » Fri Jan 24, 2014 10:27 am

I just watched the film for the first time last night and enjoyed it. However, at 1:20:35 on the DVD, when the corrupt cop is following Caan’s character, there’s a bit of dialogue that goes. “…on this guy’s ass. This guy’s gonna be history.” If you watch the picture, though, it’s clear that the cop mouths the word “shit” right after "ass." The audio for it isn’t there. I checked the Blu-ray (the timing there isn’t identical; it’s at 1:20:41) and found the same thing. It seems the line is supposed to be “Shit, this guy’s gonna be history.” There’s plenty of other foul language throughout, so it’s weird that the word has been censored.

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swo17
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Re: 691 Thief

#95 Post by swo17 » Fri Jan 24, 2014 11:24 am

Sounds less like censorship and more like he just changed his mind in post about what would be the best line of dialogue there.

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Re: 691 Thief

#96 Post by kneelzod » Fri Jan 24, 2014 12:02 pm

For those still wondering, after A/B'ing between the British DVD (theatrical cut) and the new Criterion Blu, everything on the Blu appears to match what was in the theatrical cut--in terms of speed, dissolves, dialogue, explosions, etc. The only thing different from the theatrical cut is the added early morning scene on Lake Michigan with Willie Dixon. As to the colors, it definitely seems like it's been pushed perhaps a bit too much with regards to the blue / green tinting, though the booklet notes that the color on the Blu was referenced from Mann's 35mm answer print.

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Re: 691 Thief

#97 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Feb 08, 2014 7:54 pm

The Schmoelling interview was fascinating. I've heard it second-hand that Michael either wanted to use Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" for it's guitar solo for the finale, or more likely (and according to Schmoelling, true) that he had it in mind as a template for how the film should end musically. It should also be noted that Michel Rubini's "Graham's Theme" for Manhunter bears much more of a distinction to said Pink Floyd song.

I like the part in Michael's interview where he says he still struggles with whether or not going in the direction of an entirely electronic score as opposed to something more rooted in the blues. In 1980 (or maybe now) it may not have been possible to have found a happy medium, but the Tangerine Dream score works extremely well in setting itself apart from the more jazzy orchestral approaches of previous crime films to that time.

And also working as a musical counterpart to the drilling equipment used in the robberies. It would be interesting to research the use of film score acting as such with the raw sounds picked up during filming. A primitive example of this that I can think of is the opening credits of Once Upon A Time In The West. A collage of natural sounds that is very musical in how it was edited, and actually an idea that came from Morricone despite the absence of his music. A more recent example I can think of is David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, specifically a couple of sequences where the natural sounds bleed into Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score and vice versa.

I'm glad that this edition retained the commentary track from the previous edition. Michael and James are more candid about the actual production than in their individual interviews (which are interesting enough, mind you). Michael's a little more loose in part because of trying to acknowledge Caan's banter, which is sometimes humorous, but you can tell how much he loved what he did in it. Even to this day in the new interview, saying it's one of the best things he's ever done.

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whaleallright
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Re: 691 Thief

#98 Post by whaleallright » Sun Feb 09, 2014 4:28 am

And also working as a musical counterpart to the drilling equipment used in the robberies. It would be interesting to research the use of film score acting as such with the raw sounds picked up during filming
I imagine that few if any of the sounds in that opening sequence wwere recorded live; my guess is it's mostly foley and maybe stock sounds.

The canonical "early" example of effects and music tracks seeming to merge (to the extent that you can't quite parse whether individual sounds are meant to be diegetic effects or non-diegetic score) is the opening of Blade Runner. But of course, that was made shortly after Thief.

Jack Phillips
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Re: 691 Thief

#99 Post by Jack Phillips » Mon Feb 10, 2014 11:48 am

jonah.77 wrote:
And also working as a musical counterpart to the drilling equipment used in the robberies. It would be interesting to research the use of film score acting as such with the raw sounds picked up during filming
I imagine that few if any of the sounds in that opening sequence wwere recorded live; my guess is it's mostly foley and maybe stock sounds.

The canonical "early" example of effects and music tracks seeming to merge (to the extent that you can't quite parse whether individual sounds are meant to be diegetic effects or non-diegetic score) is the opening of Blade Runner. But of course, that was made shortly after Thief.
One should not fail to consider the work of Toru Takemitsu in this regard, especially his work with Shinoda. As is made clear on the commentary track of Pale Flower, Takemitsu was put in charge of the entire sound design for that film. Takemitsu, apparently, made no distinction between sound effects and score--all the "noise" on the soundtrack contributed to the finished composition.

beastwave
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Re: 691 Thief

#100 Post by beastwave » Mon Feb 10, 2014 4:55 pm

I just had a screening of this at my house last night.

Its crazy how many people said the exact same things, mostly of having never heard of the film despite being either a fan of Tangerine Dream, Michael Mann or most notably James Caan. Of course everyone continued to make the comparisons to Drive but It lead to questions about similar films such as Mann's own Manhunter and Friedkin's To Live & Die In L.A. and whether or not either film is on the same level as Thief in regard to overall quality. How do you guys feel?

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