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Xanadu and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (Blu-ray) Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)

Brian Kidd

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I just noticed that the back of the Xanadu cover lists one of the audio tracks as "Español DTS Digital Surround 2.0 Mono." Now if that isn't the most contradictory description I've seen, I don't know what is. lol.


Prepare to be SURROUNDED by the mono!
 

Brian Kidd

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One of my favorite jokes from Cheech & Chong: Still Smokin' is that they were in Amsterdam for the Burt Reynolds/Dolly Parton Film Festival.
 

ahollis

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Brian Kidd said:
One of my favorite jokes from Cheech & Chong: Still Smokin' is that they were in Amsterdam for the Burt Reynolds/Dolly Parton Film Festival.
I think that was the only good joke. :)
 

MatthewA

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Rick Thompson said:
Personally, I'm awaiting the combo release of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, At Long Last Love and Lucky Lady.


It's for all of us who never missed a Burt Reynolds musical!


:D

Don't forget All Dogs Go to Heaven. :P
 

Mark-W

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Both are must haves for me. I don't find Xanadu remotely "unintentionally funny" but I was born without the camp gene so that might explain it. Terrific 1980s pop from Olivia and Electric Light Orchestra. As for Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, it's uneven but its assets outweigh its liabilities. One liability is the godawful dance in the locker room by the "football team" though the closest those chorus boys ever got to a football was cheerleading squad.
But that song and dance number in the locker room is the one scene to check out those very fit dancers in the shower and in towels. (That number was an early, "I knew I was gay when..." moment for me.) :)
 

Mark-W

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Anybody else notice the price drops on these two titles on Amazon but for some reason those price drops don't get reflected in my pre-orders?


I've already had to cancel & reorder twice to get the lower price. Today BLWIT dropped to $9.99.
I have cancelled and re-ordered from Amazon out of the same concern previously, but I have found that Amazon does do this automatically if I leave my orders alone. Sometimes it takes a day or two, but it happens. I ordered these when they were both $13.48 each, now my order shows them both at $9.99 and I have not done anything to trigger that drop.
 
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Thomas T

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But that song and dance number in the locker room is the one scene to check out those very fit dancers in the shower and in towels. (That number was an early, "I knew I was gay when..." moment for me.) :)

Pretty boys never did it for me and those high kicking chorus boys, er ... football players are pretty effete to me. But then again when I saw first saw Bonnie And Clyde years ago and my companions were swooning over that "hunk" Warren Beatty, I was thinking "Yum! I'd like me some Gene Hackman!" so I suppose it depends on your taste in men.
 

Kyrsten Brad

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I have cancelled and re-ordered from Amazon out of the same concern previously, but I have found that Amazon does do this automatically if I leave my orders alone. Sometimes it takes a day or two, but it happens. I ordered these when they were both $13.48 each, now my order shows them both at $9.99 and I have not done anything to trigger that drop.

Same thing just happened for me. Got the new price on Xanadu.
 

Will Krupp

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Pretty boys never did it for me and those high kicking chorus boys, er ... football players are pretty effete to me.

Fortunately, I like a boy with a little sugar in his tank so I've always loved it!

Like Mark, this was a seminal gay pubescent moment for me so I've always had a nostalgic soft spot for this movie, plus it's fun and a good show.
 

MBrousseau

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I received my blu-ray edition of XanadU yesterday. Very surprised to get it so quickly but very excited to be among the very first to have a look at this high definition release. All I can say is that for me, the video transfer looks a lot like the previous DVD Magical Edition, which was not bad for a DVD. This time, better resolution and cleaner than the DVD. They got rid of a few spots here and there. I really saw the differences in the opening XanadU logo and some split screens colorful art works in the movie. Universal proves me that they didn't go with a video transfer from original negatives of the film. That said, the image quality is very good. As for the sound, it also looks like a fine mastering. There are people in this forum that said earlier that the previous DVD soundtrack mastering was bad. I have the feeling that the blu-ray sounds better. Specialists here will tell. The bonus documentary also looks good and seems to me that it is 1080i instead of 480p as mentioned on the back cover of the blu-ray. I'll check later using MediaInfo and tell you about it. I didn't have the time to watch the whole movie yet but I did some surfing on several musical cues.
I believe the blu-ray to be a higher level of satisfaction, compared to DVD. But, I'm still hoping to get some day a real 4K film transfer with nice picture detail and accurate color.

I have two screen captures to show. Enjoy. - Martin
12829111_1285019878179694_843431632772460771_o.jpg
12819414_1285022094846139_2752827014219713656_o.jpg
 
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Keith Cobby

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I received my blu-ray edition of XanadU yesterday. Very surprised to get it so quickly but very excited to be among the very first to have a look at this high definition release. All I can say is that for me, the video transfer looks a lot like the previous DVD Magical Edition, which was not bad for a DVD. This time, better resolution and cleaner than the DVD. They got rid of a few spots here and there. I really saw the differences in the opening XanadU logo and some split screens colorful art works in the movie. Universal proves me that they didn't go with a video transfer from original negatives of the film. That said, the image quality is very good. As for the sound, it also looks like a fine mastering. There are people in this forum that said earlier that the previous DVD soundtrack mastering was bad. I have the feeling that the blu-ray sounds better. Specialists here will tell. The bonus documentary also looks good and seems to me that it is 1080i instead of 480p as mentioned on the back cover of the blu-ray. I'll check later using MediaInfo and tel you about it. I didn't have the time to watch the whole movie yet but I did some surfing on several musical cues.
I believe the blu-ray to be a higher level of satisfaction, compared to DVD. But, I'm still hoping to get some day a real 4K film transfer with nice picture detail and accurate color.

I have two screen captures to show. Enjoy. - Martin View attachment 29843 View attachment 29844

Thanks for that. Gene Kelly and Livvy dancing together is the best scene in the film for me and one of the best musical numbers ever.
 

MBrousseau

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Correction on my statement about the documentary "Going Back to Xanadu". MediaInfo says it is 480i. Boy! It looks great on my Panasonic plasma. I really thought it was HD. I'm sorry for misinformed you all. :unsure:
 

MBrousseau

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Something else I found out is that you'll have to crank up the volume a bit to enjoy this musical. Of all the different language soundtracks available on the Blu-ray, the original English (DTS HD ) track is the lowest audio level.
 

Ethan Riley

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I got them both, if you'll permit some mini-reviews. They both look like they were used from the same masters as the dvd versions. Not sure about that, because I don't know if they were, at that time, remastered by downscaling 4K scans, or what they did. One thing I notice about Xanadu is that the colors are in better register than the dvd...in fact, the colors look as good as they did in 1980. Proper saturation and a very rich palette. That said, half the movie is shot via awkward process shots to get all that disco animation on film. There's smudges here and there, but I think they've always been there in home video. The sound is a definite upgrade from last time, but it's a little weak. I don't know if it's a compression issue or they just couldn't get anything out of the original tape masters. This doesn't look like much of a "restoration" so they probably didn't even go back to the tape masters to re-composite--just cleaned up the soundtrack from the film as it stood.

Because of all those composite shots, you're bound to notice some not-so-slick moments here and there. It's pretty much the same problems as exist in "The WIz," which used similar special effects (although the blu-ray of that one seemed from a better print than Xanadu's). Xanadu's special effects are just bizarre and are here on high-def for easier scrutiny (or ridicule). The opening scenes when the muses come out of the wall are especially bad now, thanks to the clarity of blu-ray. Ditto, the scene in Olympus when Olivia sings "Suspended in Time." She's all washed out because of the animated yellow halo that somebody drew around here while trying to block out the green scene she must have been standing in front of. And for whatever reason--the Don Bluth animated sequence looks very washed out. Maybe some of you know how that problem could have been solved. I recommend this blu anyway, because it's still a much needed improvement over the dvd and belongs in anyone's collection.

Whorehouse sounds about twice as good as the dvd. The soundtrack is full and rich and an improvement over Xanadu. The colors here don't look wrong to me, but they don't look right. The colors are a tiny bit washed out...if they were maybe 5% better I wouldn't say anything. I don't know if there's fading from the negatives, or what's going on here. The film doesn't look wrong, mind you--just a little weak. But then, it looks pretty much like every other movie from 1982 on blu-ray. Universal gets an extra ten points by using the original painted poster art (one of them) for the blu-ray cover. It's also a fine print reproduction of that cover, in miniature form. This alone is a huge improvement over the photoshopped covers we've gotten for the old dvd and even the vhs tape.

I recommend both blu-rays if you've been waiting for them, but don't expect any miraculous restoration work; just good, decent hi-def copies of both films.
 
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RobertSiegel

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Well, I have finally had the chance to scan through Xanadu. I am so happy with this disc, in fact overjoyed. This brought me back to the 10 or 12 times I saw this in its release year, all at the same theater in Minneapolis, where they had it "cranked up to the max." And of course I had the original MCA Discovision laserdisc followed by the widescreen laserdisc and 2 different DVD editions.

I have one big issue. As far as I can tell just from scanning through, there were a few changes in the surrounds.

Case 1: After I'm Alive, Kira comes back to earth and zaps through the park (which is actually Ocean Park in Santa Monica). She skates toward Sonny and when she connects with him, there is a special effect sound there, which used to be very loud in the surrounds. It is hardly even in the surrounds now.

Case 2: The end of "Xanadu" song. Olivia comes back after singing Xanadu for a reprise in a silver shining costume. The girls sing Xanadu with her, and when their clothesd get changed to the ones they had in the painting at the beginning, a row of yellow bars (special effects) come off of each of the girls and head toward the screen. That went right into the surrounds and loudly too, it doesn't seem to do that now in such a fashion.

Case 3: During All Over the World, they get out of a car, and the car, with the help of special effects, and a pink outline, comes at the audience. Those sounds slowly came from the front channels to the rear and they were SO loud in the rear before and it sounded like they were moving back. Now it doesn't sound that way at all

I am not unhappy with the quality of the sound. The Tubes scene and others, like the breaking apart of the different scenes with special noises, is just as great as before, as is all of the music, in fact ELO sounds better here than they have on ANY video version. But they DID alter some surround effects, more like removed them. I don't know why, but I am so used to this soundtrack I don't question it at all, it was changed at some point for certain surround sounds, they chose to make them more front heavy and the loud surround effects, however short they are, seem to be gone.

I checked with one of the stereo tracks from a foreign track on the disc, listen to Case 2 (above), you can hear those gold bars really hit the surrounds, in the 5./1 track, they seem to fade away rather than fully go in back of us.

Maybe I don't have my surrounds loud enough but I can hear them on many others areas.

I will always think of how it used to sound, but the instances are so rare, I rate the sound on these discs 4 star (one star removed for tinkering, otherwise it would have been 5).
 

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