Criterion Discussion and Random Speculation Volume 7

[derekbd]

I know it's a bit late for this reply, but the German bluray of Happy-Go-Lucky looks excellent.
I agree that a special edition (ideally with commentary) would be very welcome.

I want Vera Drake first, though. ⭐

What's the possiblity of Happy-Go-Lucky or even Vera Drake? Neither of those are on BR as far as I know.

Happy-Go-Lucky was actually issued on a region-free Blu-Ray in Germany, and Amazon.de has it brand-new for 9 euros (with used copies going as low as 5 euros) . I have no idea what the quality is like though. I myself would like to see it on a U.S. Blu-Ray with solid extras - one of my favorite films from that year.

[FrauBlucher]

I'm going to put one foot over the line by posting this here because I think CC will eventually release this.... I am currently watching on a cable channel called Movies!, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. How many cuts and versions of this film are there? Has there ever been a definitive Peckinpah version?

[beamish14]

I'm going to put one foot over the line by posting this here because I think CC will eventually release this.... I am currently watching on a cable channel called Movies!, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. How many cuts and versions of this film are there? Has there ever been a definitive Peckinpah version?

According to Paul Seydor's brilliant and exhaustively-researched The Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, there are five major versions of the film. There is no truly definitive cut, but the "Turner 1988" version that Peckinpah supposedly kept a copy of in a gutted-out refrigerator is the closest, and it's far and away the best. WB makes that version available for 35mm screenings, thankfully.

[Hogfather]

According to Paul Seydor's brilliant and exhaustively-researched The Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, there are five major versions of the film. There is no truly definitive cut, but the "Turner 1988" version that Peckinpah supposedly kept a copy of in a gutted-out refrigerator is the closest, and it's far and away the best. WB makes that version available for 35mm screenings, thankfully.

I know that there are three versions for certain: the theatrical cut, the rough cut that Peckinpah kept, and the TCM cut, which has stuff not included in the rough cut and doesn’t have stuff that is included in the rough cut. What are the other two?

[cowboydan]

Did anyone notice that we collectively guessed 3 of the 5 title announcements? That's higher than the average month right? Lots of people guessed Memories of Murder, a couple people guessed Irma Vep, and I was the only one who guessed Masculin Feminin. What a fun game.

[beamish14]

According to Paul Seydor's brilliant and exhaustively-researched The Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, there are five major versions of the film. There is no truly definitive cut, but the "Turner 1988" version that Peckinpah supposedly kept a copy of in a gutted-out refrigerator is the closest, and it's far and away the best. WB makes that version available for 35mm screenings, thankfully.

I know that there are three versions for certain: the theatrical cut, the rough cut that Peckinpah kept, and the TCM cut, which has stuff not included in the rough cut and doesn’t have stuff that is included in the rough cut. What are the other two?

Cut #4 is a wildly different television version. Cut #5 was, I think, released internationally, but I could but mistaken (I wish I had the book here!)

[therewillbeblus]

I was the only one who guessed Masculin Feminin.

cowboydan=bressonaire’s Dead Ringers twin

[Big Ben]

You'd think Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid would have had a better release by now but as it stands it's still DVD only in the States. I think it would make for one hell of a release from Criterion. It's certainly no forgotten but I wish people would show it a bit more love. If anything it gave us one of Bob Dylan's most famous songs!

[Bressonaire]

cowboydan=bressonaire’s Dead Ringers twin

Very cute, TWBB. But as long as we're giving credit for guesses, let me point out that CSM126 drew on the New York Sunday Times article and its aftermath, Channel programming, and the zeitgeist to come up with what seemed to me, as soon as I saw it, an almost inevitable deduction. It didn't happen for April, but I expect him to be hailed or vilified for his processing of public information by the end of the year.

[therewillbeblus]

Not trying to hail or vilify anyone, and I'm struggling to see how comparing someone who deduces info well to prophetic in silly ways could carry that connotation, but I'm sorry if you took offense. It's a joke. I genuinely appreciate your rationales behind your choices in your posts, which seems like a fun way to predict based on clues in the absence of newsletter clues/new years drawings, and those long-gone phantom pages

[Hogfather]

This is probably nothing, but considering Criterion’s deal with Netflix it’s beginning to feel more and more likely that Napoleon will come to the collection at some point, especially with this most recent development.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... f-napoleon

[Bressonaire]

Not trying to hail or vilify anyone, and I'm struggling to see how comparing someone who deduces info well to prophetic in silly ways could carry that connotation, but I'm sorry if you took offense. It's a joke. I genuinely appreciate your rationales behind your choices in your posts, which seems like a fun way to predict based on clues in the absence of newsletter clues/new years drawings, and those long-gone phantom pages

My apologies. I meant my posting not as pushback on your comment, to which I did not take offense. It was obviously playful. The poor segue was entirely my fault.

[therewillbeblus]

No worries, classic internet misinterpretation

This is probably nothing, but considering Criterion’s deal with Netflix it’s beginning to feel more and more likely that Napoleon will come to the collection at some point, especially with this most recent development.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... f-napoleon

Yeah this was discussed in the Napoleon thread and it seems that the jury's out on if it can be shown in the U.S. and Coppola's involvement could muddy the waters for a physical media release as well. However, Coppola was involved in Criterion's release of Rumble Fish, so I could see a world in which the Netflix relationship initiates a clause of agreement, but that's just my aimless musings (which I guess is what this thread is for)

[Shrew]

Though as mentioned earlier in the Napoleon thread, Coppola has already been involved with the Cinematheque Francais restoration. He did a press conference back in 2015 where they were saying that the score for the restoration would be a rearranged version of Carmine Coppola's score. Of course, at that point it was announced that the restoration would be coming out in 2017, so who knows if the situation has changed. But I would expect that a U.S. home release would come to Criterion, either through Coppola or Netflix.

[CSM126]

I look forward to being hailed and/or vilified.

[justeleblanc]

When I spoke to Criterion's producers at the SCMS conference in Montreal (this would have been 2015), they said they were struggling to find a way to handle the 4:1 widescreen effects. They didn't want to simply go from a 1.33:1 picture to a 4:1 picture as this would make the picture smaller, not bigger. But I suppose they now figure that there are no other good options.

[hearthesilence]

The BFI came up with a pretty cool solution, IMHO. Not entirely practical, but when I was working in school, save for region-locking it would've been very doable as we had several large flatscreens on wheels and a multiple players on rolling carts to boot.

[swo17]

The only thing I would do differently about the BFI release is put the center panel on Disc 3 so that you could play the movie through to the end without having to remove that disc and place it in the player displaying the right panel.

Also, this isn't perfect given the loss of resolution, but if you are watching on a projector, you could do an extreme zoom at the transition point to avoid the "picture getting smaller" problem, even if that means that part of the film would project on the walls surrounding your screen.

Anyway, it would be nice to have both options

[Big Ben]

Restoration Trailer for Mirror

[beamish14]

Restoration Trailer for Mirror

How badly did they fuck up the color timing on this one...?

[Drucker]

Not at all?

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

When I spoke to Criterion's producers at the SCMS conference in Montreal (this would have been 2015), they said they were struggling to find a way to handle the 4:1 widescreen effects. They didn't want to simply go from a 1.33:1 picture to a 4:1 picture as this would make the picture smaller, not bigger. But I suppose they now figure that there are no other good options.

One solution that would never happen for a whole host of perfectly justifiable reasons would be to include an anamorphic encode of the entire movie for users of projector setups who can manually adjust the image geometry, with the Polyvision segments filling the entire 1920x1080 frame and the rest of the movie pillarboxed. Of course this would mean the ~95% of the movie not in Polyvision would be scrunched up to a resolution of just 640x1080, though since I'm talking about a wildly implausible fantasy scenario I could imagine a UHD release, in which case it would be 1280x2160.

[therewillbeblus]

Restoration Trailer for Mirror

How badly did they fuck up the color timing on this one...?

Not at all?

Yeah my first reaction was that this -thankfully- looks exactly right (even though the previous versions I've seen have an awful image quality for comparison)

[FrauBlucher]

Not sure who you mean by "they" but I have the utmost confidence in MosFilms' restorations

[JSC]

Maybe this has been brought up before, but just out of curiosity, has there been a more recent restoration of Solaris?