Contact coming in October!

Re: Contact coming in October!

CONTACT is still $19.99 at Amazon. My preorder went in this morning.

I am looking forward to seeing this again. Not the most memorable
movie I have ever seen, but the opening sequence is incredible (and
should be moreso on BD) as well as the fact that this film is pure
Zemeckis. I love his style, including (if I remember correctly) a
wonderful camera tracking shot in the first 30 minutes of the film.
I think it involves a mirror. Anyhow, I am so happy WB is getting
this one out.

Re: Contact coming in October!

here are some screencaps from the Sky UK HDTV Broadcast in 1080p:

http://achumpatoxford.com/u/files/1/vlcsnap-299428.png
http://achumpatoxford.com/u/files/1/vlcsnap-300306.png
http://achumpatoxford.com/u/files/1/vlcsnap-300036.png
http://achumpatoxford.com/u/files/1/vlcsnap-300082.png
http://achumpatoxford.com/u/files/1/vlcsnap-300243.png

imho, WB won't spend $ to make it a true Lowry Digital remaster. it'll probably have some dirt/scratch removal. minor color timing balances and a then a straight dump into VC-1 encoding machine. if they do offer lossless, it'll also be a minor tweak of levels, quality checking and then a dump into TrueHD 5.1.

i really wanted this to be a 'Oz' treament or even Gone With the Wind, etc. =).

Re: Contact coming in October!

Why on earth would Lowry Digital need to be involved in an HD transfer for a 12 year-old film? It's not like the elements are beyond repair or even in bad condition. As for the audio, it should be just fine as well. Not everything needs a digital restoration.

Re: Contact coming in October!

I remember Contact as not just a good film which I enjoyed, but also as the first RSDL disc (and unfortunately on my old Toshiba 2006 I could tell where the layer change was every time, here's a hint: it involved a phone cord). Despite that, this was one of my earliest "demo" discs I used to wow friends (especially the space travel scene).

I look forward to revisiting this film in HD on Blu.

Re: Contact coming in October!

I remember all the fuss that was made about it at the time, but I never had any problems with "DVD rot." I got the Contact DVD in 1997, and watched it just last week--it played flawlessly. Did I just get lucky?

Re: Contact coming in October!

Ron, I see it has gone back to $19.99 today, although I do assure that it had gone to $23 and change. Why it would go back and forth I don't know, but that is, I guess an alert that one must be mindful that that site does sometimes do that pricing "thing."

Glad you slipped in there and were able to get it at the lower price!

Re: Contact coming in October!

Just a note/reminder about Amazon pre-orders... If you initially pre-order at a higher price and they then lower that price at any point before they ship you the item you will automatically be credited the difference. In other words if you pre-ordered at $23 and they lowered it to $19 (even if only for a day) you will only be charged $19.

Re: Contact coming in October!

I didn't know about that problem either. I haven't rewatched mine in the past year or two, but I'm pretty sure mine was still fine a couple years back. I might give it another spin soon, if I find time -- I still have plenty of other unwatched discs waiting for me to get to.


They also have free shipping for orders >=$30 right now, so if you want something else to go w/ Contact, eg. John Adams, Watchmen or maybe The New World, then Contact would only cost ~$16.50 or so plus tax, which is quite good.

_Man_

Re: Contact coming in October!

I know the exact shot you are referring to, Ron, and I agree it's great. In fact, I consider it one of the best "shots" of the last few decades.

Re: Contact coming in October!

There is also a pull in shot that goes 'through' a house window that I really like too.

Re: Contact coming in October!

I like the shot that starts by seeing young Ellie in the bathroom mirror, then pulls back to see her running through the house and downstairs to find her father...

Doug

Re: Contact coming in October!

That is the mirror shot Ron is referring to.

I recall that this was Zemeckis' first film after Forrest Gump made a ton of money and won a ton of awards in 1994. Bob Zemeckis used to be (and probably still SHOULD be) big-time A-list, and this was an interesting choice. He also basically discovered Peter Jackson for Universal (exec producing 1996's The Frighteners and throwing WETA some effects work).

I'm pleased to see so many enthusiastic fans for the film. It's a good adaptation of a great book by a brilliant man. And made with great skill and outstanding visual EFX.

Re: Contact coming in October!

I've always loved the film. I'm looking forward to the BD upgrade.

Re: Contact coming in October!

The shot in question is actually the reverse of this, and it IS quite amazing. Ellie starts downstairs and the camera leads her up the stairs (i.e. the camera is moving backwards), across a hallway (turning a corner) and into the bathroom. When we get there, the camera pulls back to reveal that we're watching Ellie's reflection in the bathroom mirror (a practical impossibility, due to corners and stairs). The commentary track mentions how the VFX guys even added a distortion effect that mimics the bevel on the edge of the mirror and how such a minor detail really helps "sell" the shot at the end.

Zemeckis (IMO) is unfairly left out of the discussion many times when people talk about visual effects innovators. His films (much like David Fincher's films) are exceptionally good at the "invisible" special effect. Cast Away is another excellent example of this.

Re: Contact coming in October!

Contact is a release day purchase for me. Certainly one of the better SF films of the past 15 years or so. I've also read the book. Like a lot of other folks here my it's one of my earliest DVDs (darn snappers!), bought way back in '98. I still remember all the hoopla about it being the first dual-layer DVD. Can't wait to see it in HD!

I love the camera work too. Besides the other shots mentioned I also like the one that follows Ellie as she runs from her car to the control room when the signal is first detected.

every classic deserves to be fully preserved for keepsake and posterity. while it's "fine" it isn't perfect.

One of the few 1997 DVD's still in my collection.

I remember buying a good number of DVD's back in the summer/fall of 1997 before I even owned a DVD player. In fact, the first time I finally got to watch these was when I bought a Creative Labs DVD drive and decoder kit for my computer. I would run the video out to my old 25" television and watch them that way. I didn't finally buy a standalone DVD player until around 2000-2001. Good times

I tried playing it not too long ago and it still worked flawlessly. Plus, for a transfer over ten years old, it looked surprisingly good. And being that this is one of my favorite movies of all time, I'll definitely be picking this up. Let's hope Warner doesn't screw it up.

How do you know the film elements need any work? The DVD is nearly ten years old. I highly doubt a restoration is needed. A new HD master should look great.

because:



^while decent, can be improved to look like it was just filmed yesterday. and the soundtrack, while great for its time, can now be remixed to take FULL potential of lossless. even if Contact BD came out as TrueHD, if the original tracks aren't remixed to be fully optimized to today's technology, it's still a wasted potential. it also means an inevitable double dip in the far future.

The DVD is no barometer of how the film looks and sounds. An HD master is not gonna be derived from the master the old DVD uses. Those screen grabs only prove that the old DVD is not up to current standards.

Your thinking is backwards.  TrueHD and other high-resolution lossless audio codecs are designed to best reproduce a movie's soundtrack.  You seem to want exactly the opposite: for the soundtrack to be designed to best show off an audio codec. 

Contact's sound mix was completed twelve years ago and it's perfectly fine.  Including it as-is in TrueHD would reproduce it wonderfully.  Remix it "to take full potential of lossless" would be as bad as pan-and-scanning a widescreen film "to take full potential of the television screen."

but if the source can be improved via remastering, then why not do it? what you are saying is don't remaster Wizard of the Oz@4k, or any of hte Bonds through Lowry. just stick to what the best reproduction technology of when the original work took place. i don't agree with that. 400 blows looks amazing on criterion, the mono lpcm is out of this world. i think studios need to work on all transfers, not just do a encoding dump and sell it to consumers. that's the opposite of what films deserve: preservation, not "best at the time of 1st generation products". sleeping beauty is so much better than it ever was back then. i wouldn't have it any other way, but have to live with it cause it's still a business. having said that, dude where's my car shouldn't deserve the same treatment as Contact.

Making a new HD master at 4k and doing a Lowry-style restoration at 4k are two different things. Contact should look great by doing the former, and as far as sound goes, they just need to use the original theatrical mix and encode it with a lossless codec. Done and done.

Completely agree with Brandon.  There is absolutely no reason to modify the original theatrical track on this film.  Encode at lossless quality and be start pressing discs. :)

But you originally said "remix" which is an entirely different thing. Remixing is pulling out all of the original sound stems and rebalancing them and panning the stereo effects to create the final mix. "Contact" was made in the digital age and was mixed very well, and the files have not degraded since then so it doesn't really need to have anything done to it but, as others have said, be transferred to Dolby TrueHD.

With the film elements only being 12 years old, I seriously doubt they need to be tinkered with or restored either. All that really needs to be done is the master rescanned using current HD transfer equipment, which I hope happens. But it doesn't need a lot of work.

the soundtrack sounds hollow, less punchy than today's soundtrack. it can definitely benefit from remixing.

Sounds hollow on what? The lossy DD track on the DVD?

Again, the DVD is not an adequate reference source.

Not to mention, what's most important about this soundtrack is the quiet sequences. Often the film intentionally goes silent, and it needs to sound absolutely quiet. Something DTS and Dolby Digital did better than the old analog format which left an audible hum or hiss. And I'm sure Dolby TrueHD will do equally as wonderfully going absolutely silent. 

Another great but subtle shot is the camera move early in the film which goes through the window into the house onto the Ellie + Dad talking in her room scene! Or how about the seamless blend of the external VFX to interior for the machine test & launch!

I still remember how this sounded in the THX Theatre I saw it in back in the day used to be a Warner Bros THX cinema in Leicester Square which sounded incredible. Randy Thom is the sound designer and he does some amazing work (think he is on the commentary track as well).

Zemeckis is IMO up there way above Cameron as a VFX genius. To me Zemeckis is probably the master filmaker as he can blend, comedy, technical wizardry & bleak drama seamlessly like no-one else (Sometimes all in the same movie!). I just wish he would go back to live action as his CGI movies have all the wizz bang but are pretty hollow story wise as they are more about the technique than any master story telling.

Spielberg still has the When Worlds Collide remake up his sleeve & Zemeckis or Bay would be perfect for that!!!


 

I saw Contact twice at Northpark I in Dallas, Texas, which was the best sounding THX theater in the region.  I still remember the sound of the missiles launching to rotate the outer ring on the machine.  Sound you could feel...

And I also saw the movie twice on opening night.  Heck, all this talk about favorite scenes makes me want to spin up the DVD tonight!

- Steve