Director's cuts in blu-ray?
- Thread starter mythme
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Star Trek II was restored for Blu-ray, and it looks atrocious:
DVD:
Blu-ray:
That being said, I am expecting Blu-ray re-releases next year to coincide with the 50th, and I've heard a few rumblings to that effect (notably that CBS Digital went straight from wrapping TNG HD and moving over to the TMP director's edition). The recent Amazon fire sale on the movie Blu-rays is only adding more fuel to the speculation.
DVD:
Blu-ray:
That being said, I am expecting Blu-ray re-releases next year to coincide with the 50th, and I've heard a few rumblings to that effect (notably that CBS Digital went straight from wrapping TNG HD and moving over to the TMP director's edition). The recent Amazon fire sale on the movie Blu-rays is only adding more fuel to the speculation.
I've suspected the same. They've done fire sales in the past, but they've been this price for about a week now.
TNG-HD still isn't wrapped. S6 is still a few weeks from the street. S7 is still in the process of being remastered. No release date has been announced yet, but speculation is the end of the year.
Wouldn't the 50th be in 2016, two years from now?
Well, I love the rumor about CBS Digital starting on TMP Director's edition, BUT CBS doesn't handle Trek movie product---only the various TV series'---so I think that is unfortunately BS as well.
Any actual proof or a link to the rumors?
I'm hoping you are right and that they fix the color on TWOK !!!
BS or not, these are long overdue. I don't think I am alone when I say I feel like Paramount is snubbing fans by not making DE on Blu-Ray available.
And yes, TWOK must be color-correct. While I think the restored version has a fresh look to it, the color is just wrong. That is NOT the movie we saw in theaters or have owned on multiple formats for decades.
And yes, TWOK must be color-correct. While I think the restored version has a fresh look to it, the color is just wrong. That is NOT the movie we saw in theaters or have owned on multiple formats for decades.
The TWOK DE is certainly not the movie we saw in theatres either. With alternate, and inferior, takes of key scenes and unnecessary additions like the Peter Preston "comedy banter" with Kirk in engineering - which only served to slow the prefect pacing of the original down.
Also, although I do believe the original is closer, do we have any definite proof which versions colour timing is correct? I certainly can't remember what I saw in theatres, and there hasn't been any "official" statement about it. Just saying.
I have and had dozens of vintage pictures from the movie including shots of the Regula "half-sphere" model as it was being filmed by the FX people and it was always brownish-red as was the movie itself and all the promo material at the time.
So yeah it is wrong on the Blu-ray and although I much prefer the Director's cut--any new Blu-ray should have the original cut included as well via seamless branching. But hey if you're happy with the color and the cut of the first Blu-ray ----you're all set already.
Hopefully the fans of the DC can get their wish as well.
I certainly have no problem with the colour timing on the BD - in fact - it looks rather good actually. Although I definitely have a propensity towards "purism" when it comes to movies, I like to think I remain open minded enough to judge something on its individual merits. In the case of the TWOK BD, the colour timing looks excellent to my eye, I therefore accept it.
That doesn't mean I reject or dislike the original in any way - quite the opposite. I would happily double dip on a seamlessly branched disc containing both cuts of the film - restoring the perhaps more familiar balance of colours. I'm positive this will happen at some point, so we'll all be happy as you say!
But, yes, you're right, I prefer the theatrical version of the movie by a landslide!
What baffles me is that there were some excellent blu-ray releases by Paramount for films that came out around the same time as the TOS films, yet those Trek films were not given the same treatment video wise. THE VOYAGE HOME was nominated for an Oscar for cinematography, but you wouldn't get that impression when watching the blu-ray as the picture quality is just underwhelming for a variety of reasons. The worst being the DNR, especially for THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. Boy oh boy, that flick looks like rubber city.
After what CBS has demonstrated with their blu-ray releases of the TV shows, Paramount ought to step up.
After what CBS has demonstrated with their blu-ray releases of the TV shows, Paramount ought to step up.
The funny thing is that they went back and supposedly found the TWOK original negative was so bad that thye decided to completely restore it complete with a 4K scan.
So they cleaned up the one that was the hardest to restore and then took all the other 5 movies and just rescanned existing prints at 1080p. Then they did a quick clean-up on those with standard 2K scans.
So we got one out of six true restorations and five that are just scanned at 1080p with a later digital clean-up.
I know these aren't huge money makers for Paramount at this point but that's pretty lazy and a real slap to the loyal fans who have been supporting Trek on video for over 30 years on multiple formats.
I would be real sad if in 2016 we get the Director's cuts in a less than stellar release (no branching, no true restoration, no color correction, no deleted scenes), BUT on the other hand we probably won't get the director's cuts at all.....
So they cleaned up the one that was the hardest to restore and then took all the other 5 movies and just rescanned existing prints at 1080p. Then they did a quick clean-up on those with standard 2K scans.
So we got one out of six true restorations and five that are just scanned at 1080p with a later digital clean-up.
I know these aren't huge money makers for Paramount at this point but that's pretty lazy and a real slap to the loyal fans who have been supporting Trek on video for over 30 years on multiple formats.
I would be real sad if in 2016 we get the Director's cuts in a less than stellar release (no branching, no true restoration, no color correction, no deleted scenes), BUT on the other hand we probably won't get the director's cuts at all.....
All the TOS movie BD's are considerably superior to their DVD counterparts, with TMP probably the best looking. Sure, they're definitely not "eye popping" demo discs, and suffer from over zealous DNR in some cases, but minimally, TMP and TWOK are decent transfers.
To call the TWOK BD "atrocious" is pretty ridiculous and somewhat disingenuous IMHO. Even if I hated the altered colour timing, the thought of watching a fuzzy upscaled DVD in preference to it on my home cinema system fills me with dread!
To call the TWOK BD "atrocious" is pretty ridiculous and somewhat disingenuous IMHO. Even if I hated the altered colour timing, the thought of watching a fuzzy upscaled DVD in preference to it on my home cinema system fills me with dread!
I believe I've said this before, but the Directors Editions of TWOK and TUC are available in HD on iTunes ... no BluRay quality of course, but better than the DVDs. In fact I think they used the same transfers as for the DVDs, only that this is a higher resulution.
Thanks for that information!
Have you personally watched the Director's cuts from iTunes?
I did. I have them sitting on my hard drive and I can watch them anytime I want to. Am I allowed to talk about DRM removal here? Probably not, so I won't.
I won't be holding a requiem reference staying tight lipped over DRM removal!
Really? From what I've read the other five films were merely taken from existing video masters made back in the early 2000s for TV broadcasts, rather than actually bothering to rescan them for the blu-ray release. That explains why there was DNR applied to hide the imperfections of the scans.
However, it's actually not a bad method had they handled it much better. This is typically done for many films out there, but for whatever reason the Trek films came off the worst.
Here's a good example of a film being cleaned up from an existing video master. http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Living-Daylights-Blu-ray/5075/#Screenshots Originally, the first eleven Bond films were newly rescanned at 4K and cleaned up. However, because it's so expensive (over 20 films!) only those first eleven films were done in that fashion, whereas the rest were taken from existing video masters and cleaned up from there, retimed, ect. It probably made sense in that case because the films by the 70s were in much better condition anyway and didn't require as much clean up as the films from the 60s. Whatever the case, they managed to really make the films look gorgeous on blu-ray. I pick this THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS as a good example as it was released at the time when the TOS films were made and show that they could look this good if done right. From what I understand, this was also done for the Indiana Jones films. For the blu-ray, RAIDERS was restored at 4K, while the rest were from existing video masters and they all look just as gorgeous.
I suspect if CBS-D are working on The Motion Picture: Director's Edition, that they will be working together with Daren Dochterman and his team since they still have all the CGI project files for the new visual effects that were added to that film.
I sincerely hope it's true because I've been hoping for a proper HD re-release of that film, with the CGI properly re-rendered, and not simply upscaled.
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