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Author
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Topic: Best Digest Ever?
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Paul Adsett
Film God
Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted July 14, 2006 10:18 PM
Last night we watched the DVD's of 'The Jolson Story' and 'Jolson Sing's Again'.
The whole time I was watching these movies, I kept thinking how great the editing of the Columbia 400ft S8 digests were, because they really captured the essence of both of these great films. Not only that, the print quality of the S8 Columbia prints of the Jolson films was simply stunning. As great as the DVD quality is, I thought that there were many scenes where the S8 colour rendition was actually much better, particularly on the 'Jolson Sings Again' print, where the S8 colours are beautifully rich with superb contrast, and the print is needle sharp. So I would have to vote both these films as one of the best ever S8 digests.
Whether you like it best on DVD or S8, both mediums have stunning quality renditions of these films, and Larry Parks is superb in his miming of Jolson, getting a well desrved Oscar nomination. Unfortunately, right after the Jolson films, Larry was a victim of Senator McCarthy's 'Un-American activities' witch hunt and he was blacklisted from Hollywood movies (thanks to information generously supplied to the FBI by Ronald Reagan), essentially ending his career at its peak. Very sad.
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Rob Young.
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1633
From: Cheshire, U.K.
Registered: Dec 2003
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posted July 15, 2006 05:22 AM
Hi, Paul.
From a totally different genre, I think the Universal 8 cut-down of Spielberg's "Duel" is a classic.
To be fair, there isn't that much story to contain, but the 400ft version manages to keep many of the main scenes and succeeds in building the tension of the feature in it's short running time.
Also, as a Spielberg fan, I have to mention the 400ft version of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". I know this title has come up before when we've discussed abridged versions and that many people do not rate the editing job, but I have to defend it as one of my most screened extracts.
Not only do I think that the editor manages to keep most of the best action sequences, but even pulls off some very elaborate editing within sequences; the truck chase, for example is halved in length but is cut so well, with smooth mixes in the music, etc. that if you didn't know the film, you could hardly tell. I find it amazing that this much effort was put into Marketings last release, especially given the perceived state of the 8mm market at that time.
Sadly, again from previous threads on this, I believe the prints range from good quality (I've owned 3 and never seen a bad 'un) to very poor (soft and green tinged). Shame.
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Osi Osgood
Film God
Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted July 16, 2006 01:30 PM
Aw C'mon guys! I have seen most of those digests, and I don't think they hold a candle to the "ALIEN" digest! This is film with a very slow nice pace, and so to edit it down to 18 minutes, it's easy to keep the story intact. One of the things I liked about the edit is that as the story builds, the editing becomes quicker, actually giving it an incredible pacing. Whoever did the editing, I think they might have been a professional editor.
By the way, the CE3K digest is pretty good.
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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "
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Mike Peckham
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1461
From: West Sussex, UK.
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted July 19, 2006 03:18 AM
My favourite Digests have to be the MGM cut downs which I have been collecting for the past few years. Perhaps the best among them are the musical edits. My first purchase in this series was "Singin' in the Rain" on 2 x 400ft reels, it's a little like a collection of musical numbers with no attempt to tell the story, this works very well, the sequence of musical numbers is not as they are found in the film as they have been edited to work better with themselves in the absence of the story line, it works very well. Likewise "High Society" and "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" work well as a series of musical numbers, with the associated choreography and dance routines, my personal favourite from Seven Brides is the Pole Cat Dance, how nobody lost a limb through a misplaced axe blow through the making of this great number I shall never know!
Another great 2 x 400fter from the MGM stable is "Fame" which succeeds in tying together the great musical numbers and giving a sense of the story too. I have this condensation re-spooled onto an 800ft reel and it provides a very re-watchable 40 minutes of pure "feel good" cinema ![[Smile]](smile.gif) .
Of the 3 x 400fters released by MGM "Clash of the Titans" is great fun, an excellant print with still good colour and sound, and my most recent purchase; an Ebay buy from just before I came away so not yet properly appraised, is the 3 x 400fter to "American in Paris", one of my favourite Musicals and it was great to see almost the entire "Gershwinesqe" Ballet scene preserved towards the end, what a great musical score this has!
"Wizard of Ox" and "Easter Parade" both make great little 400fters, preserving a little of the story amongst the song and dance routines along with lots of colour.
On another note entirely, I have both the 400fters released of "Star Wars" and (I'm sure other forum members no more about this than I do), understand that the first reel to be released was originally intended to be the only release but the response was so good that the studios did a second cut down that could be cunningly edited in to the original to give a longer final extract with no repetition. Mine were skilfully spliced together by the original owner to good effect, sadly though there is quite a varience in colour and sound quality on the two releases so the cuts are nolonger seemless ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) .
Mike ![[Cool]](cool.gif)
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Auntie Em must have stopped wondering where I am by now...
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