Probably my second favorite Fellini.

Tyler Foster (who doesn't post here anymore, but still reviews I think) mentioned over at blu-ray.com that he has a contact at Criterion who told him they weren't working on MD as recently as May, but assumes they must have started work on it recently. He also mentioned that Eraserhead was kind of a "trial run" for working with Lynch (they had problems with each other in the past) and that the experience was positive, so they've moved on to MD.

La Dolce Vita is exciting news. I remember the rights holder (was it New York Video or Koch Lorber or whatever they changed their name to) held on so fucking tight to that title all through the DVD era and their DVD was a shitty PAL conversion.

Uh-oh. The color timing of Criterion's SCANNERS is the center of some controversy on the Blu-ray & Criterion Forums.

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Scanne...6/#Screenshots

One frame comparison that's making the rounds:

Oh, gosh... That looks terrible in all honesty.

That can't be right. I haven't seen the disc, but that looks like a screencap that was captured incorrectly.

I read through the entire thread, which was exhausting. Criterion confirmed that Cronenberg was involved and this is the color timing he prefers. The side-by-side comparisons always look worse in a screenshot, when you're actually watching a movie the color timing isn't that distracting. I'll definitely be picking up the Criterion version.

We're going to have to start distinguishing between "director's intent" and actual "theatrical version." I don't know how everyone feels, but when I buy an older movie being updated for Blu-ray, I want to see the movie as close as possible to how it appeared in theaters, NOT how the director INTENDED it to appear (which is usually just an excuse for him to tweak with his movie). This is really not too much different than someone like Lucas updating special effects - it's changing the original version (and often for no good reason).

You're certainly a braver man than I! Nobody posting in those threads over there ever seems willing to read back more than 3 posts, so they just keep going on and on in endless circles.

One other thing to note, Criterion also confirmed that he DID NOT use any sort of references when supervising the color timing. In other words, there wasn't much of an effort to make sure they were authentic to the original release. They pretty much just represent how Cronenberg wants it to look now. Who knows if he purposely changed them up, or just went it with a blank slate and did his best. I will say that the example cap above is by far the most jarring one I've seen. Many of the others are quite close to the other editions out there.

Cronenberg's a smart dude, and knows what he's doing. I respect his opinion enough, I'm really looking forward to seeing how this bluray looks. Everybody was up in arms over Thief but that release looked amazing.

Not you too, David. Goddamnit.

Dvdbeaver's review of Scanners is up. They are praising the new color scheme and to them it's more "film like".
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-r...rs_blu-ray.htm

Is anyone here the same person they were twenty (or thirty+) years ago?
Do you have the same tastes, value the same things, preoccupied by the same thoughts?

Neither are these directors. People think because they inhabit the same aging physical shell, that these are the same people that created the material all those years ago. They aren't. For as different as they are now, they may as well be entirely different people unassociated with the film entirely.

I need to start a petition to the studios to not allow directors to revise their films after a short grace period (say 2-5 years). If they want to do it at home and show it to a few friends, fine. But any public exhibition of any kind needs to locked down early on. As a supplement people can choose to ignore, fine. But there really needs to be some permanence returned to this art form. If it can be altered at any time by the indulgences of the studio and the current caprices of the artist, the work isn't finished to begin with and shouldn't have been declared as such.

And screw Star Wars. I'm still vexed I can't watch the original Warriors without the cheesy on-the-nose comic book transitions in HD.

The newest Terminator BD, along with that abortion release of The French Connection are the most glaring examples I can think of. At least Fox new well enough to release an alternative version that didn't alienate cinephiles.

Director intent doesn't really matter to me. It's no different than what Lucas has done or studios that press the DNR button to scrub away film grain.

If it's not how it was shot and not how it was presented in theaters, its very difficult to look past that (at least to me).

Is Cronenberg going to get a pass for this just because he's Cronenberg?

The problem that people like Lucas, Mann, Cameron, and etc is that it's ok to have a different intent now but to change some films like that is to change film history. That bothers me.

Cronenberg is starting to rape my middle age

Easiest solution is to buy the German Subkultur release for viewing and the Criterion if you want the extras.

I wish I knew who said it (I'm pretty sure it was a director - but it may have been an actor...but it was someone of note in the Hollywood community), but recently someone was quoted as saying that (and I'm paraphrasing, as I don't remember the exact language) every movie is a reflection of the time it was released and should be preserved - warts and all - as closely to its original version as possible.

Movies are a window to our past, and every bit of tinkering that is done to them - however small, takes away some of that past when they're tampered with.

Now it's one thing to clean up a film to make it look as close as possible to the theatrical release, it's quite another thing to change it because "that's how I always intended it to appear." We're seeing more and more of the latter these days, and it's really sad to see - particularly from people who claim to love film.

The problem is, it's the studios that are facilitating it. It takes studio money/go ahead to go back in and revise it and consecrate the changes with a new master to then dispense on all the platforms.

You have to head this stuff off at the studio level.

Fully agree!

Also, I think you might be referring to a Spielberg interview from a few years ago.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/49921

In other news...

Criterion's latest newsletter hints at It Happened One Night in the works.

Great news to me as it's still one of my favorite classics.

Awesome. I'm hoping they have the rights for other Capra films.

It is certainly more film-like, but that's not a comment at all on the color timing and brightness. The Koch one looks close to an upscaled DVD, from those screenshots.

Random question- how many releases were in the dual format? (spine # to spine # if possible) thanks

Just to make sure... everybody here knows about this....
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/blu-ray-bar...july-28-a.html
... right?