BD 44-45 Double Indemnity & The Lost Weekend

Discuss releases by Eureka and Masters of Cinema and the films on them.
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swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
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Re: Where's my MoC?

#76 Post by swo17 » Wed Jul 04, 2012 9:35 pm

effigy105 wrote:So, might anyone have some tips on how I might remove the glue residue without unduly endangering MacMurray's head?
You can commiserate with the rest of us starting here.

stwrt
Joined: Tue Mar 11, 2008 8:24 pm

Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity & The Lost Weekend

#77 Post by stwrt » Thu Jul 05, 2012 4:01 am

Did you notice any flashing (image fluctuation ? I don't know the technical term) in the darker scenes of the Double Indemnity Blu-Ray ? I've seen the same sort of thing on the Double Indemnity Region 2 DVD, didn't see any on the Lost Weekend Blu-Ray picture. I've also seen it on the Sunset Boulevard DVD, I put it down it unavoidable deterioration due to age of the film (unless it's my LCD monitor).

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HerrSchreck
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Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity & The Lost Weekend

#78 Post by HerrSchreck » Thu Jul 05, 2012 11:11 am

It's always interesting hearing the accolades heaped on Gordon Willis for his work on GODFATHER 1 & 2 in pushing the envelope and shooting in very slight, dim light . . . to the point that they called him the Prince of Darkness. While I find his work absolutely stunning and that of a complete pictorial genius, it has very little on that of John Seitz in DI, particularly in the (obviously) scene in Neff's apartment when Phyllis first visits him, and the proceed to drink bourbon, feel each other out (and up) and then of course doink one another.

Seitz is really pushing the envelope and taking heretofore unprecedented risks . . . much of this is not the high-contrast photography that say Sternberg employed in bathing much of his sets in huge pools of darkness int he 30's. What Seitz is doing here in spots is relatively relaxed in terms of contrast, particularly in the gloomy, rainy mood of Neffs apartment in where he very nearly forces the viewer to squint his eyes to pick out Neff and Phyllis in the gloom . . . pictorializing the murky world that these two glorious sleazoids are beginning to jointly travail. Glorious, awesome stuff. DI is an endlessly watchable film.

Titus
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Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity & The Lost Weekend

#79 Post by Titus » Thu Jul 05, 2012 12:29 pm

The hiss on the soundtrack for Double Indemnity was a little more noticeable than I expected, but that's pretty much the only mark against it. The image is pretty remarkable -- among the best I've seen for a 40s B&W release. And given that Universal will likely sand all of the grain and detail off of the image when they eventually release it themselves in the US, there's really no reason for anyone capable of playing it to pass on this.

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Sloper
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Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity & The Lost Weekend

#80 Post by Sloper » Thu Jul 05, 2012 1:59 pm

HerrSchreck wrote:Seitz is really pushing the envelope and taking heretofore unprecedented risks . . . much of this is not the high-contrast photography that say Sternberg employed in bathing much of his sets in huge pools of darkness int he 30's. What Seitz is doing here in spots is relatively relaxed in terms of contrast, particularly in the gloomy, rainy mood of Neffs apartment in where he very nearly forces the viewer to squint his eyes to pick out Neff and Phyllis in the gloom . . . pictorializing the murky world that these two glorious sleazoids are beginning to jointly travail. Glorious, awesome stuff. DI is an endlessly watchable film.
Couldn't agree more - some great examples in Sunset Boulevard as well, especially the revelatory scene in the garage between Holden and Stroheim. On my old VHS copy that scene is visually indecipherable, and I always wondered whether there was some kind of lighting fuck up which no one had time to correct; on the restored version you can make out the human figures better, and it's clearer that the obscurity is a deliberate (and wonderful) effect. It evokes better than any other scene in the film the atmosphere of Norma and Max's insular, wilfully benighted life - and of course it shows how deeply Joe is now immersed in this world. Tragic and scary, and melodramatic in the best possible sense.

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MichaelB
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Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity & The Lost Weekend

#81 Post by MichaelB » Tue Jul 10, 2012 6:43 am

I see from the Digital Fix review of Double Indemnity that my former colleague James White supervised the transfer at MoC's end.

When he was at the BFI, he was responsible for pretty much all the in-house telecines and transfers, including what are still some of the best black-and-white HD presentations I've ever seen - so I'm delighted to see that he's still keeping up the good work.

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MichaelB
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Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity & The Lost Weekend

#82 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:19 am

david hare wrote:Michael where on earth is he now? Come to think of it where are you now?
We're both freelancing. At roughly the same time (Easter last year, give or take), he got a job offer that didn't work out, while I took voluntary redundancy as a by-product of the 15% government grant cut announced in late 2010.

Which was one of the best decisions I've ever made: the redundancy money paid off all my non-mortgage debts, I've got to see infinitely more of my kids in the last year than I ever did before, and relations with the BFI remain excellent (what with me effectively taking a bullet for the rest of the team).
Has the BFI Shed it's older HV staff like a lizard?
I was never 'HV staff' as such - I only ever worked for BFI DVD Publishing on a freelance basis. In fact, I actually contribute more to their releases now than I did before, on account of having more time!

In fact, there's a huge overlap between BFI DVD Publishing staff now and four years ago - the last big shake-up was in 2008 when Sam Dunn took over, after which there was an aggressively risk-taking push into Blu-ray and dual-format releases, the introduction of the Flipside range and a significant increase in the number of documentary/archive-related compilations.

Which I was delighted by, as MoC and many others were doing an excellent job covering traditional European/Japanese arthouse titles (the BFI's main stamping ground in the 1990s/early 2000s), which opened up an opportunity for the BFI to start focusing on its unique strengths.
Last edited by MichaelB on Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

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MichaelB
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Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity & The Lost Weekend

#83 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:40 am

david hare wrote:I am afraid I come from an age group, and culture that expected reliability in the workplace and some semblance of a social/democrat conscience free of the prevailing neocon capitalist opportunistic tyranny of slavery. In other words I simply don't understand how and why people lose jobs, and indeed jobs themselves disappear. In fact I loathe the modern world. What a time to be naturally paranoid. (And a depressive!)
I was lucky - I have a wife with a rock-solid job, she was only too happy to return to it full time, and even though I personally took a roughly 50% income cut it was more than absorbed by her increased salary, me paying significantly less tax (one of the few things I can thank the Liberal Democrats for) and no longer having to pay out four-figure annual sums apiece for commuting and childcare. So it evened out more or less perfectly.

But I'm glad I had the opportunity to volunteer - based on precedent, I anticipated a voluntary redundancy offer as soon as the Tory-led coalition got elected in May 2010, so we had several months to work out financial and other logistics before having to take the plunge, which is a luxury that most people being made redundant don't get. In fact, with regard to what you said earlier, I'd argue that 30 and 40somethings have a harder time than younger people in these situations, as they're more likely to have kids and a mortgage.

Anyway, back to Billy Wilder...

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hearthesilence
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Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity & The Lost Weekend

#84 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:20 pm

Just got this and was amused by the "viewing notes" in the back of the booklet - absolutely love it, wish Criterion did this!

(Seriously, you'd be surprised at who needs it. I talked to this guy who installed a high end system once in an Oscar-winning filmmaker's home - when they tested it out, the filmmaker played an academy ratio film stretched out to fill the screen. The guy tried to undo this, thinking the filmmaker was having trouble with his remote, but it turns out that's the way he wanted to see it. The guy explained why this was wrong and the filmmaker said, "but then it doesn't fill the screen." An OSCAR winning filmmaker! Wouldn't say who, but Jesus, considering who wins those things these days...)

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tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
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Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity & The Lost Weekend

#85 Post by tenia » Wed Jan 16, 2013 11:59 am

hearthesilence wrote:Wouldn't say who, but Jesus, considering who wins those things these days...
Yeah, high aesthet people like Tom Hooper. :|

Still, it's a quite surprising story and I am extremely curious to know who this might be.

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TMDaines
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Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend

#86 Post by TMDaines » Tue Jun 02, 2020 5:36 am

Jeff wrote:
Sun Mar 11, 2012 11:15 pm
Nick tweeted the menu he's working on for The Lost Weekend. Note that one of the extras is apparently Volker Schlöndorff's Billy, How Did You Do It?. I believe that the original German series included six 45-minute episodes. A very truncated (71 minute) version was shown on TCM in the U.S. as Billy Wilder Speaks. That cut was later released on DVD by Kino with an additional 70 minutes of the excised footage as a bonus feature. If MoC has the entire four and a half hours, it'd be quite a coup.
The German Blu-ray of The Front Page comes with a bonus DVD of the full 6-episode version of Billy, How Did You Do It?. Picture quality is very acceptable. German burnt-in subtitles for the English dialogue though.

Edited botched title.
Last edited by TMDaines on Tue Jun 02, 2020 7:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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reaky
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BD 44-45 Double Indemnity & The Lost Weekend

#87 Post by reaky » Tue Jun 02, 2020 10:48 am

Is there really 90 minutes more of Billy, How Did You Do It? than on the Masters of Cinema Lost Weekend blu? Or is it recaps and repeated titles and credits?

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TMDaines
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Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity & The Lost Weekend

#88 Post by TMDaines » Tue Jun 02, 2020 11:02 am

reaky wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 10:48 am
Is there really 90 minutes more of Billy, How Did You Do It? than on the Masters of Cinema Lost Weekend blu? Or is it recaps and repeated titles and credits?
Not quite 90 minutes, but well over an hour. They are basically two different bespoke edits made by Schloendorff by what I can tell. I've got a longer post drafted which I'll share soon. I'm not doing a scene by scene analysis of what is missing though.

Marwood
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Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend

#89 Post by Marwood » Tue Jun 02, 2020 5:27 pm

TMDaines wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 5:36 am
The German Blu-ray of The Extra Page comes with a bonus DVD of the full 6-episode version of Billy, How Did You Do It?.
What's The Extra Page? Some kind of behind the scenes feature to The Front Page? Can you supply a link please :)

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TMDaines
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Re: BD 44-45 Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend

#90 Post by TMDaines » Tue Jun 02, 2020 7:18 pm

Marwood wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 5:27 pm
TMDaines wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 5:36 am
The German Blu-ray of The Extra Page comes with a bonus DVD of the full 6-episode version of Billy, How Did You Do It?.
What's The Extra Page? Some kind of behind the scenes feature to The Front Page? Can you supply a link please :)
Sorry, I fused The Front Page and its German title, Extrablatt in my mind. It looks like the bonus disc with the documentary only comes in the great, affordable boxset (which I own) and not the standalone release: https://ssl.ofdb.de/view.php?page=fassu ... vid=442655

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