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Return of the Joker: Uncut AND Letterboxed (1 Viewer)

Adam Lenhardt

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Dave: When I hit Borders in my futile search for the B:TAS disc, the only title they hadn't sold out of was the Justice League disc. So move fast, it seems to be moving fast.
 

Thomas Newton

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Between Target and SunCoast, there are plenty of copies of all five of the discs to be had around here.

Also several copies of earlier discs (the censored B:ROTJ, B:Mask of the Phantasm, and the BB: premiere).
 

Tony Whalen

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Bought mine last night at Future Shop here in Calgary, AB. But they didn't have a ton of 'em. Either they were selling well (at that particular store) or they didn't have as many of 'em as, say, Justice League.
 

Brian

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Even Scooby Doo is superior by far to stuff like X-Men Evo or that dumb robot WB thing I can't even remember the name off.
I really hate to start another arguement over this, but have you even watched X-Men Evolution? It has some of the best animation I have EVER seen in a Saturday morning cartoon. Only some of the early Jackie Chan Adventures episodes exceeded it in character animation (it almost looked like they were using rotoscoping.) The Direction is also innovative, simulating real camera movements and film editing styles.

Compare it to the earlier incarnation of X-men and it's hard not to wince at the harsh style of the original.

-Brian C.
 

Rob T

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It looks like we Canucks got the shaft with this disc. No store in Ottawa that I've visited has it and it shows up as sold out on the Future Shop website. Could this be another case of too much demand in the U.S., so no copies for Canada for a few weeks?
I did, however, pick up the other Batman animated discs.
Yes, that could be why I couldn't find it. I'll try The Future Shop again on Tuesday. If I can't find it, I'll be ordering it through DVDBoxOffice.com. :)
 

MikeM

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Nov 23, 1999
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Wow, this new uncut version is EXCELLENT!

Quick question, does anyone have a link that I could have sworn was posted before about the exact differences between the edited and uncut versions? It had screenshots showing the differences, etc.

I did a search and couldn't find it. Please repost this link, thanks!
 

MikeM

Screenwriter
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Nov 23, 1999
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Thanks, Tony. That small little "click here" escaped me when I originally looked, thanks again!

Oh, please. We aren't talking about Akira or Grave of the Fireflies here.
 

Ken_McAlinden

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Picked up ROTJ yesterday and will join the discussion in progress with my stale two cents. It looks great in widescreen. Compositions are balanced and layouts are striking. My only real complaint is that it suffers from "digititis". In other words, it appears to be somewhat bit-starved despite its relatively short running time. This is particularly noticeable during many shots of "camera" movement where the combined effect of the non-anamorphic jaggies and medium to low bitrate encoding create some strange artifacts around the black lines. I assume it is a single layer disc, although I didn't really check. No reason not to pick it up, though.

As far as the discussions of reduced production value in TV animation, there have traditionally been several ways in which animation producers have responded to budget restraints. The most interesting involved increased stylization. For example, when WB started squeezing the budgets on their animated shorts in the 50s, one of the areas they cut back on financially was their backgrounds. Folks like Maurice Noble & Philip DeGuard responded by coming up with very wild abstract layouts and background designs that were in some ways more interesting than the elaborate paintings of old and are heavily imitated to this day. A more recent example is Samurai Jack which goes a long way towards making up for limited animation techniques via heavy stylization. Although, speaking of animation art direction, Samurai Jack does have some of the coolest hand-painted backgrounds in US TV animation.

Of course, once the budget is squeezed too dry, no amount of stylization will save it (think of mid-60s WB animation).

Regards,
 

Joseph Young

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This is particularly noticeable during many shots of "camera" movement where the combined effect of the non-anamorphic jaggies and medium to low bitrate encoding create some strange artifacts around the black lines.
Ken,

I noticed something very similar to what you are describing on my Sony KV-32FV27. At very least, the non-anamorphic picture was very obvious. I also felt that the film's composition was well suited to the aspect ratio.

Great film!

Joseph
 

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