Scott Calvert
Supporting Actor
- Joined
- Nov 2, 1998
- Messages
- 885
I thought this was supposed to have a PCM track...if it does I can't find it. My cheap bluray player doesn't do TrueHD or DTS-MA. The DTS-MA downconverted did still sound great though
I still have a soft spot for the 77 cut. I never really knew why, and I think you nailed it.Originally Posted by 24fpssean
To me, the 77 version is vastly superior. Sometimes a director does need to be forced to finish his damned film. Shots of the ship in the desert and the UFO shadow passing over Neary's speeding truck are utterly unnecessary in the long run. What is great about the original theatrical release is the characters: rather than have an endless scene of Roy's noisy, cluttered and deeply unlikeable family, as we get in the SE and DC versions, we get Roy's toy train crashing into a ravine and a shot of him sitting back unhappily; that tells us all we need to know about his situation - toy trains are no longer doing it for him.
In the 77 theatrical cut, each character is dealt with respectively. Roy's situation is dealt with, then Jillian's, then Lacombe's, then they are all brought together at the end, a la Bridge on the River Kwai. The checker-boarding of their scenes in the two subsequent versions destroys the personal drama, it breaks up each persons' story just as it's getting underway and makes it feel like television. Adding the Cotapaxi scene and other little "cool" bits just turns it into a large screen Amazing Stories episode. All we ever need is the opening sequence with the planes because the pilots of those planes are the first to come off the Mother Ship at the end; full circle.
Adding the family fight, with that ridiculous scene of Roy sobbing in the bathtub, deflates the family fight the following morning, when Ronnie leaves him because he's shoveling dirt into the house. Without that midnight battle, Roy's actions the next morning are all the more powerful and we can absolutely understand why Ronnie would take the kids and leave.
Close Encounters has a complicated psychology and telling the story as simply and linearly as possible makes it a beautiful drama, rather than a jazzy sci fi. The 77 cut feels like a complete human odyssey.
Originally Posted by Mark_TS ">[/url]
also in the '77 version we have that great chaotic scene at the power station where the incredulous Neary is assigned the job of getting 'The Sag' area lines back up and working, as munincipalities are asking to be cut from the grid, and the supervisor barking "...were going to candlepower in 10 minutes!"[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]Originally Posted by [b]24fpssean[/b] [url=/forum/thread/267168/a-few-words-about-ce3k-in-bd/30#post_3683066]
Interesting. I saw this projected digitally a couple of months ago and the line was in there, as was the power station scene - but it wasn't the '77 cut as the ship in the desert scene was also there.Originally Posted by 24fpssean
No. Rings around the moon is not in the 98 director's cut, or it wasn't in 98 when I saw it projected in the theatre.
I have no clue which version(s) of the film contain that line, but, respectfully, I would be extremely skeptical about trusting my memory of watching a movie twelve years ago in making that kind of determination, especially for a movie that's had as many different versions as Close Encounters. Think about all the people who insisted that the theatrical version of Hannibal included a more graphic "dinner" scene than the DVD, or the continued debate about Poltergeist's infamous, weird jump-cut.Originally Posted by 24fpssean
No. Rings around the moon is not in the 98 director's cut, or it wasn't in 98 when I saw it projected in the theatre.