What Blu-Ray did you watch last night?

[Mike Newell]

I started (too late to watch it all) on Gone with the Wind, up to the burning of King Kong's Skull Island compound - sorry I meant Georgia. I have to say that the Blu-ray quality is much better than the scandalous 70mm blow up/cropped for height print I saw in the early 1980's. The rest today I hope.

That’s about the halfway mark Brian. It actually gets better from there onwards . I alway thought it was way too long. I was offered a 8mm copy for around £100 years ago. No other takers and was tempted to buy and edit it down.

[Mike Newell]

Westworld. Superb early Michael Crichton Sci Fi movie. Stunning print. Tight running time of 90. Minutes. Made on the cheap by MGM as he couldn’t get a deal anywhere else. One of the last movies made on MGM backlot before it was torn down for real estate. Richard Benjamin gets top billing and Yul Brynner did the movie for $70,000 as he was desperate for money. Extras are trailer, short promo and a pilot episode for tv series from 1980. I had a decent print of this title on 8mm with good colour most were faded or pink from day 1 . Title is at a reasonable price and well worth getting.

[Graham Ritchie]

Another blast from the past this time the blu-ray and not the 35mm print we ran during December 2007, yikes that's 15 years ago, what happened anyway I always liked "The Water Horse" nice film. I still have the poster and 35mm trailer on one of my trailer reels

Having lived in two countries although New Zealand being 50 years, another yikes you pick things out on films. With "The Water Horse" most of the filming took place here near Queenstown here in the South Island with one of the lakes filling in for Loch Ness. The film makers were very careful to try to match things with Scotland as best as they could.

What caught my attention was the end of the film where another youngster finds the egg, now back in 2007 I thought, now that looks like Inveraray to me with the old Jail in the background. Inveraray is really the gateway to the West Coast of Scotland if you are heading up that way and a great place to stop for a break from driving, been there many times I should add.

Anyway back to The Water Horse some screen shots from last night, plus a couple of the making of here in the South Island.





Now we are back in Scotland with "Inveraray" in the background .

I should add the old jail is open to the public and well worth a visit, also Inveraray has some of the best fish and chips

The Making off as I say with most of the filming taken here in New Zealand.

break during filming

the blue screen filming was done in Wellington in the North Island same studio that LOTR was made.

[Lee Mannering]

Die Hard 4k Uhd blu ray.

First half on 4K Uhd. Rest in Super 8 Scope as you do.

[Graham Ritchie]

Its been years since I watched this one until tonight, Tim Allen "The Santa Clause" I really enjoyed it, with excellent picture and DTS 5:1, projected using the Panasonic VP, With Christmas just around the corner this blu-ray is well worth getting.

Below just one screen shot from tonight .

[Graham Ritchie]

"All Quiet On The Western Front".

Excellent picture and sound, highly recommend this blu-ray, projected using the Panasonic VP from the other night.

[Mike Newell]

The Sicilian Clan pure delight heist movie with Alan Delon and Jean Gabon. 1960s Paris is extremely well captured. Nice to see Guns for San Sebastián being shown as the in flight movie on the plane another movie directed by Henri Verneuil.

if you haven’t seen it Highly Recommended.

Brand New 4K Restoration! International superstars Alain Delon (Le Samouraï), Jean Gabin (Touchez Pas au Grisbi) and Lino Ventura (Le Deuxième Souffle) star in this action-packed thriller that delivers white-knuckle suspense from its exciting opening chase to its thrilling conclusion. Aging Sicilian mobster Vittorio Manalese (Gabin) springs master thief and hit man Roger Sartet (Delon) from prison so he can help him pull off the most ambitious heist of his illustrious career, which includes hijacking a New York bound plane and transporting 50 million dollars in jewels. But after the audacious crime, Sartet betrays the crime boss and the two partners in crime become engaged in a tense game of cat-and-mouse and a no-holds-barred battle of wit and bravado. Wonderfully directed by Henri Verneuil (Any Number Can Win), who also co-wrote the screenplay with José Giovanni (Classe Tous Risques) and Pierre Pelegri (The Last Adventure), based on a novel by Auguste Le Breton (Rififi, Bob le Flambeur). Two of the film's other best features are the stunning cinematography by Henri Decaë (Le Cercle Rouge) and original musical score by the legendary Ennio Morricone (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).

[Graham Ritchie]

Back to digi land tonight, with this outstanding release projected using the Panasonic VP, "giving the Epson a rest at the moment" Its another second hand 4k/blu-ray bought just lately. I have always had a soft spot for "The Dark Crystal" ever since we first watched it at the cinema many moons ago. The picture quality as with the sound of the blu-ray that comes with the 4k disc is really outstanding

For fans of the film I would certainly recommend getting it.

[Lee Mannering]

Jack and the Beanstalk A&C. The new Blu-Ray which has some fab extras worth every penny and a thank you to all who supported the project.
Goodness knows how many times I projected my 8mm print with great memories projecting it to the family and when it ended we all marched off to bed singing Jack and the Beanstalk. Oh turn the clock back someone.

The resto on this is truly amazing in HD as is just about all things via the 3D Film Archive, a precious disc for our collection.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Lee,

We were very lucky at this past CineSea to have Robert Furmanek, founder of the 3-D Film Archive, give a presentation on restoring Jack and the Beanstalk. I never knew how complicated the CineColor process was!

[Graham Ritchie]

Tonight blu-ray projected on the Panasonic was "Behind Enemy Lines" outstanding picture and sound, based on a true story. Its been a while since I last watched it, but certainly remember running the 35mm print way back in 2001. I am not sure I still have the 35mm trailer, will have to have a look, it would be nice to find the actual Scope feature on 35mm, you just never know.

Anyway its a excellent film and highly recommend it, so that's my Friday nights entertainment over, got the Ernemann 2 all ready for tomorrow nights run.

[Graham Ritchie]

I was in town today which included a visit to my favorite record store, anyway while I was looking through the shelfs they were playing music that had started me thinking ....mmmmm... I have heard that before. I asked the assistant? what is the name of the music you are playing? as I remember it from the film we ran long long ago. Its "Angel" by Massive Attack was the reply Now I might be 70 years old, but as they say, you are never to old to learn something new, well today I just did. Just to make sure that I had got it right about this track in the film, and its very effective addition I should add, that's why I remember it. I watched the blu-ray using the Epson VP. Sure enough at the end of the credits, there it was "Angel" by Massive Attack

I have to add this was a favorite film of mine during its 35mm run when screened it. Also outstanding is the brilliant intro by Johnny Cash, so here it is

[Graham Ritchie]

Tonight it was once again a screening of "Logan's Run". still remember going to the cinema one night long ago on its initial release.

[Ed Gordon]

We are lucky that so many early TV specials were produced on 35mm film. The 4K transfer of this one is excellent and the remastered audio with the Jazz score is outstanding. You will find this disc on the internet for about $15. Since Apple now has exclusive rights to show this, it won't be on broadcast TV this year.

[Ed Gordon]

Citizen Kane Review
Nothing harms a film more than expectation. And nothing breeds expectation like a title such as ‘the greatest film ever made’. So when the American Film Institute gave Orson Welles’ debut feature from 1941 that very title in 1998 (as they did again in 2007, alongside Sight and Sound who gave the film the same title in 2002), it could have been as much a millstone around the film’s neck as it was an honour.

Luckily for the film and for eighty years’ worth of cinema fans, the title is absolutely earned.

A tremendous gallop through an extraordinary man’s life, the story of the hunt for meaning in Charles Foster Kane’s infamous final words is as much a dazzling technical triumph as it is riveting character study, all held together by a twenty-five-year-old Radio Enfant Terrible’s unprecedented grasp of cinema and all of its tricks and techniques...

Citizen Kane 4K Video
Citizen Kane was shot on 35mm film with a Mitchell BNC camera, using Cooke Speed Panchro and Astro-Berlin Pan Tachar lenses. It has been restored in 4K from a fine grain master after the original camera negative had been lost, yet reports suggest that different additional restoration work was carried out by both WB for this release and Criterion for its own release over in the US (although this can’t be confirmed at this time, due to scant details about the WB restoration work being published). This new WB 4K edition though presents a native 3840 x 2160p resolution image with an academy aspect ratio of 1.37:1 that uses 10-bit video depth, High Dynamic Range (HDR10) and is encoded using the HEVC (H.265) codec.

Given its use of so many optical tricks, there’s a level of inconsistency to the film’s overall image that is only to be expected. Stock footage looks rough, certain scenes have been manipulated to give certain effects and of course all that optical work, from wipes and dissolves to the special effects work, softens things up. Yet when the image on screen is as it was originally captured, it looks fantastic. The scene of Kane’s coffin leaving the church at the 4:57 min mark bristles with fine detail that wouldn’t look out of place for a film shot in the last decade. The greyscale ranges from deep inkiness in its blacks to blistering bright highlights, but never showing any overt signs of crush or blow out. This is helped by the lovely HDR10 grade given to it, seemingly a perfect fit for Gregg Tolland’s superb cinematography and its rich shadows and represents that depth of focus so critical to its aesthetic perfectly. And grain, again while inconsistent due to the optical issues mentioned, looks finely realised with no digital issues appearing within.

The print is virtually free from any kind of damage at all and it's rock-solid in its stability. The extra pixels that 4K gives enables the film to have a density in its texture that almost convinces the viewer they are watching a piece of celluloid passing in front of a lamp, it looks so wonderfully organic. Not quite the last word in sharpness thanks to that inconsistency and lack of available original camera negative, nevertheless it looks almost as you imagined that very first print on opening night would have looked eighty years ago.

And finally, disc compression appears to be consistent and good, with no noticeable artifacts observed – bit rates hover between 27 and 37 Mbps for the most part across the entire film, with the odd peak nudging a whopping 91 Mbps during the final scenes of the film, all of which were observed with a quick scan through the film’s playback information for those that like numbers...

Source: https://www.avforums.com/reviews/cit...view.19375/

The only thing better to view than this UHD release would be a nitrate print from the original camera negative!

Also see related post: https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/vbb/f...cene#post15053