IT's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World Restoration - Page 4

I doubt Mr. Harris would agree with you George.

I doubt that he would actually take a guess as to what Mr. Kramer would have wanted to include. I think he respects the film and the art of filmmaking too much to do such a thing.

Mr Harris?

We do not deal in guesswork.

Although it took almost a year of research, we now have the precise continuity for the Premiere cut of the film...

down to the frame.

RAH

I thought as much Robert. Awesome news. Thanks!

Tino, I never said that I wanted Robert Harris to guess what Kramer wanted. I said I wanted him to used his expertise to figure it out. Which is exactly what happened.

Robert,

Does this mean a new dvd with the proper cut is to be forthcoming at some point?

If it helps George, I got the point you were trying to make.

With that in mind, what needs to be done to make it so?

I've chipped in for the DVD. I'll buy it again. I'll even pay to see it in a theater. (I'll even take a day off work like I did for the opening of your Lawrence of Arabia.)

- Steve

Ron is most aware of the state of the trimmed elements.

There are certain fixes which need to be taken care of re: the Oneg, but then the problems begin. Some trims exist with audio, less the final second. Some trims exist with no audio. For others, only audio is extant. The mix of trims is both normal ultra-pan and ultra-pan rectified. There are holes in the film for which we have audio only. There are holes in the film for which we have image only. There are some missing shots for which we have neither. All trims have a fully crushed cyan layer.

A "final" search has never been performed for elements which had been excised from the Oneg and separation masters. Some material was lost in a facility which was being razed. Other elements were lost in the '94 quake. Other elements are (we feel) buried in a Southern Jersey or Pennsylvania landfill.

Other than that we have no problems.

As to a new DVD forthcoming?

RAH

Robert,

I'm glad to see you're having no problems with this at all!

Sigh. I feel like the big 'W' has been chopped down. Oh wait, it is almost gone.

As I said, my money is on the table for a new DVD. But I'm not holding my breath.

Thanks for all your effort!

- Steve

I always thought a remake of IAMMMMW with a current crop of comics and cameo appearances would be interesting.

If that ever came about, a studio might be interested in releasing the original as a tie-in. I doubt that would include the cost of a major restoration, however.

Still, how hard would it be to get that current print with the police band chatter onto a DVD? I'd pay for it... so would a lot of fans...

- Steve

Mr. Harris' news is a bit heartbreaking at first, but considering how he was able to work miracles with the decomposing elements of My Fair Lady, Lawrence of Arabia, and Vertigo, I have hope that he can do it again. I wonder if he has checked possible foreign sources for old negatives/prints from the film's first international run. I've heard of many an older film (e.g., silents) which was restored due to film elements found in foreign film archives- look at the recent discovery of the Swanson-Valentino film Beyond The Rocks!

Also, he could try contacting as many of the surviving cast and crew- maybe they can give him leads. I only hope that sometime in the near future I will be able to see a restored roadshow version in 70mm at the Ziegfeld Theatre, as I did with Lawrence and My Fair Lady!


P.S.: The film itself isn't the only thing about the film being restored- apparently, "the big W" is in process of being replanted!

http://imdb.com/title/tt0057193/trivia

wasnt RAT RACE a remake?

I could probably trot out some of my previous postings about theaters and proper film presentation here - but once again, what theaters could today give justice to a restored
version of "Mad4World"? Only a handful have the curved
"Cinerama" screens used for the original presentation; beyond that, not many theaters are presently equipped for
70mm presentation - and even in those that are, few devote
the attention to presentation found in the glory days of the
"roadshow". The Uptown in D.C.'s gotten rid of most of their real projectionists and, I believe, doesn't use their
curtains anymore. The Ziegfeld in NYC shows commercials before their movies - even before "Lawrence of Arabia"!
(incredible sacrilege!)

It'd be a shame to do a restoration just so we could have
a better DVD!

(Thanks again to Mr. Harris - who's given me some of my most
memorable film going experiences!)

I was listening to Stanley Kramers commentary on the IAMMMMW soundtrack and he stated that his film was NOT filmed in Cinerama as I assumed it was. He said it was blown up to fill that format and he traveled all over the world trying to fit it on movie screens, sometimes with great success and sometimes not.

If anyone is interested, i can transcribe it and post it here. very interesting.

The film was created for use on either flat or highly curved screens, with differnt prints for different venues. Flat screens necessitated an anamorphic lens to unsqueeze the image, usually to an aspect ratio of around 2.55:1.

Curved screens could run the image all the way out to 2.76 without an anamorphic adapter. The curve of the screen and the unique "rectified" prints would yield a perfect image.

There is no problem running this film today, as there is no problem running Ben-Hur. Of necessity is the desire to do it.

RAH

Eh, not quite as epic in scope, but I suppose it could be called that.


There are some, but agreed they are few and far between.


Great theaters. Northpark in Dallas was the best theater in the southwest until they tore it down to build a mall anchor store. We have other theaters in town that have a big enough screen--not sure about the 70mm equipment, though.


But that's the nature of the beast. DVD drives movie production. Movies get the green light based on the kind of overall projected revenue, DVD sales included. I believe it was the New York Times that had an article regarding this.

I understand that your point is to see the movie on the big, curved screen. I have entertained the notion of spending $$$$ to travel halfway across the world to see movies in Cinerama, so I do appreciate the concept. But those $$$$ would sure seem better spent on some permanent additions to my home theater, including its library.


Indeed! I took the day off work when the restored Lawrence of Arabia opened in Dallas. The theater, AMC Glen Lakes, had decorated the halls with sheets to make it look like a tent. Some rather uncomfortable-looking teenagers were in costumes, taking tickets. It was great fun. What was that? 15 years ago, and I still remember it?

Here's looking to more memorable experiences!

- Steve

My point's not that "Mad4World" be shown only on "Cinerama"
screens - though that's the way I saw it originally, and it would be neat to see it that way again. I'm quite aware that the movie was not actually Cinerama (just a marketing gimmick exploiting the format's name), and I'm also aware that most theaters which still have curved screens don't use the full Cinerama curve, nor do they use the louvered panels which Cinerama screens used.

My point is that there are far fewer theaters capable of
doing a successful 70mm presentation than there were at the time of Mr. Harris' "Vertigo" restoration in 1996. It appears that both the Ziegfeld and Uptown have joined the ranks of those theaters which just don't care about presentation quality. (Please don't flame me for this - just a dumb idea. Perhaps it's better to do a 4K digital "restoration", since digital's such a buzz-word these days and would have much more marketing clout than 70mm, which nobody cares about unless it's IMAX.)

FWIW - if the restoration happens, I'll be on a plane to the
Cinerama Dome in L.A., where the movie had its premiere in 1963 - and which still cares very much about presentation quality, as evidenced by the effort put into their showings of
"How the West Was Won" and the 70mm cut version of
"Mad4World".

As I said, I'm not sure about the state of 70mm equipment in Dallas anymore, with the demise of Northpark. I saw Vertigo there, BTW. Northpark was also one of a handful of theaters showing Titanic in 70mm with DTS. It was awesome--especially when they turned the temperature down in the auditorium once the ship hit the iceberg. But I digress.

In the day and age of today's megaplexes, I fear that you are right that few theaters care about presentation and can show something to its fullest potential.

Which means that movie fans are left with plane rides, long drives, or with these little shiny things that contain digital approximations of what appeared on screen (or--gasp--digital video tapes with high-definition resolution. But despite my last few pre-recorded movie purchases, that's a dead format.)

Let's just hope that a properly restored IAMMMMW is not a dead idea.

- Steve

With this continuing discussion, it should be mentioned that at this time there is no plan for a reconstruction or restoration of Mad World.

RAH

In that case, hang on to your VHS's, LaserDiscs, or DVD-R dubs of the "extended LaserDisc version"!

What's absolutely amazing- and incredibly disheartening- is that Hollywood executives are willing to THROW OUT an entire $35-million budgeted film and refilm it with a new director (i.e., EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING)- or even the SAME director i.e. CURSED- at great cost only to find out when they release the resultant POS that they should've simply released the first version, yet they won't spend a couple million at most to restore one of their catalogue classics.

This is just downright absurd. There needs to be established a "classic film restoration" fund or something. If some of these billionaire Hollywood directors i.e. Spielberg are truly in love with cinema, you'd think they'd be willing to donate to such a fund, no?

Vincent

doesnt scorsese already have one of those foundations.

I think so, but does he have a sense of humor?

- Steve

i think amc used to have a film preservaton weekend that was sponsored i some way by scorsese.

i cant find anything on this at amctv.com.
but have wondered for as long as we have been discussing this, why martin scrosese hasnt been brought into this.

i found this at amctv.com
http://www.amctv.com/article?CID=1049-1--0-3-EST



Our culture, literally, is going up in smoke. Less than half of the twenty-one thousand films made before 1950 still exist, because their nitratefilm stock, over time, turns to acid and burns the images away. Even more recent films are at risk; movies shot in Eastmancolor from the 1950s through the mid-70s, for example, lose their color over time, fading toa pale pink (more evidence for Joe McCarthy of a Hollywood Communist conspiracy).

AMC is proud to join The Film Foundation and its founders ? Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, and others ? in an effort to save these decaying films and thereby save the twentieth century's most important means of cultural expression.

Film preservation is a recent idea. As early as twenty years ago, the only people preserving films were underfunded archives. The big studios simply saw film libraries as an unnecessary storage expense that they were unwilling to indulge in. Often, films would be copied onto video tape and the negative destroyed. This haphazard "preservation," however, didn't take into account the low quality of videotape compared to the high-definition digital technology available today. And who knows what technology awaits in the future? In addition, some of the video transfers that were made were of edited cuts of the films. Often the films were not letterboxed before the transfer to video, which caused them to lose the wide aspect ratio of big-screen cinemascope movies, thereby sullying the integrity of the film picture.



Film preservation is now recognized as an important cultural endeavor, and some of the studios have built preservation facilities and improved the preservation policies of their libraries. But funds have been shrinking. Adjusted for inflation, government funding of the effort is less than half of what it was in 1980. A black and white film costs from $10,000 to $50,000 to preserve; a color film from $30,000 to $300,000. AMC's efforts to raise money through our annual Film Preservation Festival are now more important than ever in helping archives preserve not only Silent and Golden Era films, but irreplaceable historical documents like newsreels as well.

In the past, AMC has raised over $1.5 million to support the Foundation's six member archives. We've helped raised the money to restore and preserve films like Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).

another article.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/enc...eservation.htm

i think i found the link to the main site for Film Foundation.
http://www.film-foundation.org/default.cfm

mybe they dont even know the problem with mad world.

Have you seen GOODFELLAS? Or AFTER HOURS? Or any number of other Scorsese films that have great amounts of humor?

Vincent

Mr. Spielberg is a major benefactor in a number of areas. It is not his responsibility to fund the restoration of films, the copyrights (and asset trails of which) are owned by huge corporations.

You gotta be kidding. AMC used to be a great network. How can they say they support films in any way when they regularly, edit, censor, shorten, pan&scan and have commercial interruptions??

TCM is a real channel for film fans. AMC is an embarassing joke!