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Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Page 2

post #31 of 182
8/26/03 at 3:48pm
has anyone bought the single-disc DVD that is now out?
I have the 2-disc but was wondering about getting the single one as it mentions something like "new high-definition transfer" on the back. does anyone have both? does the single one look better than the double, picture-wise?
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post #32 of 182
8/26/03 at 4:03pm
I really think it is just first disc of the 2 disc set. Identical. This happens on alot of 2 disc titles
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post #33 of 182
8/26/03 at 4:51pm
ok, thx will
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post #34 of 182
8/26/03 at 4:56pm
I wonder if there will ever be a Superbit version, especially since Columbia is releasing older titles now.
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post #35 of 182
8/26/03 at 5:04pm
Quote:
I wonder if there will ever be a Superbit version, especially since Columbia is releasing older titles now.


Presumably the current releases are already SuperBit discs, as the movie disc (either disc 1 of the 2-disc set or the single disc release) has only the movie with DD and DTS 5.1 tracks and no extras. Perhaps compression methods have improved in the last 3 years, though. The removal of the 2.0 dub tracks may also provide some marginal improvement to the peak bitrate, too, but I doubt it would be significant.

DJ
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post #36 of 182
8/27/03 at 6:17am
Quote:
8. The "final director's cut" screened at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's Samuel Goldwyn Theater on January 12, 1999 (this was edited according to an original Spielberg story outline---and markedly different than the 1998 edit).

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I've never heard of this one. What's the story behind it? Did Spielberg do the editing or did someone else do it? More importantly...why? It seems a little strange to me.

I've been wondering about this, too. I remember hearing about the limited release in '99, but I thought it was the '98 LD edit.

I have the '98 VHS and the 2-disc DVD. From what I can tell, they are the same version. What are the differences between this and the '99 theatrical release?
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post #37 of 182
8/27/03 at 7:09am
Quote:
I don't know about anyone else but I actually like the ending with Roy inside the mothership. I like the effects, the music and Roy's reaction to seeing it all. It demystified the UFO's to a certain extent, but IMO it seemed like a bigger pay-off to the entire movie than just seeing Roy board the ship and take off.

Agreed. Personally, I enjoy the movie more with that ending...seems more of a "payoff" after the long journey to that finish line.
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post #38 of 182
8/27/03 at 8:02am
Quote:
Many clueless audience members also thought that the shower of lights that hits him inside turns him into the alien that comes out at the end! I overheard them on the way out of my theatre every night when I played the special edition in 1980

That's great!!!
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post #39 of 182
8/27/03 at 9:44am
Quote:
Presumably the current releases are already SuperBit discs, as the movie disc (either disc 1 of the 2-disc set or the single disc release) has only the movie with DD and DTS 5.1 tracks and no extras. Perhaps compression methods have improved in the last 3 years, though. The removal of the 2.0 dub tracks may also provide some marginal improvement to the peak bitrate, too, but I doubt it would be significant.


In addition, Superbits are known to have had less filtering which results in greater horizontal detail. Bjoern (sp.?) has talked about this before I believe.
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post #40 of 182
8/27/03 at 3:19pm
", I enjoy the movie more with that ending...seems more of a "payoff" after the long journey to that finish line."

Is that scene in the 2-Disc DVD edition in it's entirety? It seems like it fades off prematurely during the "Shower of Lights" I wish on this DVD and many others that the deleted scenes were bookended by a few seconds of the Theatrical cut so you could see exactly where the deleted scene would have been
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post #41 of 182
8/27/03 at 3:58pm
Yes, I have the single disc DTS version that I bought at Wal-Mart for 10 bucks. CEOTK is, next to "Hook", was the Spielberg movie I liked least of them all. After buying the DVD and watching it in DTS I have actually come to like it a lot more.
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post #42 of 182
8/27/03 at 4:30pm
Thread Starter 
I've always loved CE3K but I too disliked Hook. Then I delved into the absolutely wonderful soundtrack(one of Williams' best IMO) and eventually picked up the DVD and bam I was(insert pun here). I think Hoffman is terrific.

"I've just had an apostrophe."
"I think you mean an epiphany."


Quote:
Is that scene in the 2-Disc DVD edition in it's entirety? It seems like it fades off prematurely during the "Shower of Lights"

Hmm, I haven't seen it in awhile but I'm almost positive it shows the entire scene inside the mothership. The shower of lights is the last thing seen inside.
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post #43 of 182
10/1/03 at 6:00am
After recently watching the DVD version I was shocked to see the mothership interior ending was missing, I had pretty much grown up with the 1980 special edition. So I decided to do a little research and found this truly excellent thread, which really brought me up to speed.

But then I started talking to workmates about CE3K and one pointed out to me that here in the UK when Signs was released on DVD Woolworths had a special offer on, buy Signs and get CE3K on DVD for about £4. The weird thing was (as my friend described it) that the case for CE3K on display was different to the 2 disker, there was no mention of it being the collectors edition and it appeared to be one disk.
Did anyone buy this release? was it simply a display case, or was it perhaps the 1980 special edition? Im kicking myself for not seeing this at the time, so any info to set my mind at rest would be greatly appreciated.
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post #44 of 182
10/1/03 at 6:59am
Quote:
the case for CE3K on display was different to the 2 disker, there was no mention of it being the collectors edition and it appeared to be one disk.


This was brought up earlier in the thread but the edtion you are refering to is just a scaled back version of the 2-disc collectors edition. It is just the 1st disc of that set, and it Spielberg's "Definitive Cut" A Hybrid of the 1977 and the 1980 version. However it is without the Spaceship interior. I would reccomend passing on that edition and go for the 2 disc with contains the Spaceship interior as a deleted scene on Disc 2, plus a great Making of Doc. that runs about an Hour-Forty
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post #45 of 182
10/1/03 at 9:27am
Will - thanks for the reply. I was aware of the previously discussed 1 disk edition, but according to every DVD compare site I’ve been to it was only ever made available on Region 1, there doesn’t seem to be any info anywhere about a single disk edition release on Region 2.

Thats why Im so curious about this, I can’t find evidence that the UK ever got the 1 disk version, so why would Woolworths alone have it? I know this will probably turn out to be the 2 disker and they were just using an alternate cover as a display case for the shelves, but still, I would like some confirmation.

Did anyone in the UK buy this?
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post #46 of 182
10/1/03 at 10:50am
Ok, I guess I didn't see what you were getting at, but I would imagine that if a 1-Disc is available in the R2, it would probably be the same thing as what we have in R1
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post #47 of 182
9/9/05 at 10:39am
Can someone settle an arguement about the 5 tones they were playing over and over. My friend said those tones were the encrypted code that gave them the instructions to Devils Tower. He said that this is explained at the scene before they go grab that big globe from the office to get the latitude and longitude. I say it was just the aliens way of saying, "Hello". Which is right?

- Colton
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post #48 of 182
9/9/05 at 11:32am
Harry Knowles wrote a nice little article on attending a Rolling Roadshow tour where they screened CEOT3K at Devil's Tower!

God I would have killed to see this there!

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=21166
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post #49 of 182
9/9/05 at 11:34am
Quote:
Can someone settle an arguement about the 5 tones they were playing over and over. My friend said those tones were the encrypted code that gave them the instructions to Devils Tower. He said that this is explained at the scene before they go grab that big globe from the office to get the latitude and longitude. I say it was just the aliens way of saying, "Hello". Which is right?

I don't think the 5-tones contained the information. It wasn't until the mothership appeared that they were able to communicate with the aliens using tones.

During the scene with the globe, I believe they were counting pulses and the repeating pattern of numbers gave them the lat/long coordinates.
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post #50 of 182
9/9/05 at 11:48am
Quote:
I don't think the 5-tones contained the information. It wasn't until the mothership appeared that they were able to communicate with the aliens using tones.


I definitely remember seeing something about the tones being representations of the sign language that Lacombe uses with the aliens. That is, I think the tones WERE supposed to represent "Hello".
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post #51 of 182
9/9/05 at 12:04pm
Quote:
I definitely remember seeing something about the tones being representations of the sign language that Lacombe uses with the aliens.
The sign language Lacombe uses was meant to teach music to deaf people so the signs represented the tones instead of vice-versa.
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post #52 of 182
9/9/05 at 1:06pm
So what was the reason for the five tones? Just to irritate?

- Colton
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post #53 of 182
9/9/05 at 2:42pm
Great read, this thread. Between the constant re-edits on Close Encounters and the trimming of two separate internal monologue scenes on the long-awaited Duel DVD, I'm surprised there isn't more consternation over Spielberg's revisionism as there was on *ahem* other threads.

It's almost as if, in return for Spielberg directing certain scenes in Revenge of the Sith, Lucas edits Spielberg's films for home video. :wink2:
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post #54 of 182
9/9/05 at 3:23pm
Quote:
Between the constant re-edits on Close Encounters and the trimming of two separate internal monologue scenes on the long-awaited Duel DVD, I'm surprised there isn't more consternation over Spielberg's revisionism as there was on *ahem* other threads.


I would guess there is less debate as "The Collector's Edition" of CE3K does seem to genuinely cut the best elemets of the Theatrical Cut and The Special Edition together for what is truly does seem to be the best version of the film. However, I would love to a DVD release that contains all three cuts of the film....cough...2007..cough...30th anniversary....cough
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post #55 of 182
9/9/05 at 3:43pm
Quote:
So what was the reason for the five tones? Just to irritate?
I think it served the same purporse as the mental images of Devil's Tower. Sort of a mental homing beacon, or an invitation that said, "We're throwing a big party in Wyoming. Be there."
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post #56 of 182
3/15/06 at 1:31am
Quote:
However, I would love to a DVD release that contains all three cuts of the film....cough...2007..cough...30th anniversary....cough

I really hope so. I agree that the "Collector's/Definitive" cut is the best version, but just for historical value, it would be great to see all the versions again.

I just watched this again in a Sci-Fi Genre class at my school the other day, and they showed an actual print of the '98 cut. It wasn't the biggest screen in the world, but it was still great to see the level of detail in Zsigmond's cinematography. There's a depth to it that even DVD just can't replicate.
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post #57 of 182
3/15/06 at 6:17am
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It wasn't the biggest screen in the world, but it was still great to see the level of detail in Zsigmond's cinematography. There's a depth to it that even DVD just can't replicate.


For anyone who lives in the NYC area, the Ziegfeld theater in Manhattan is running screenings of CE3K starting on 03/17 along with screenings of "Alien" and "2001: A Space Odyssey. The are showing all three movies each day over the weekend. I'm going to check it out.
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post #58 of 182
3/15/06 at 12:02pm
I believe the whole line mentioned in the first post is...

"They can fly rings around the moon, but we're years ahead of them on the highway"

And, I'm pretty sure the pillow scene is on the Criterion LD. I have the 3-disc CAV set in the gatefold cover (there was also an earlier boxed packaging), but I never bothered to try the programming that was listed on the included letter.

What bothered me more about the original Special Edition release than the tacked on ending, was the removal of the whole "Roy rips up the neighborhood landscaping and throws it all into his windows" scene. Instead it makes an all too abrupt jump from "Roy pulls the top off the little clay mountain" to "Ronnie and kids suddenly leave" for no apparent reason after seemingly just getting over the night before. I was glad to see it back in place on the LD set, and later on the DVD.
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post #59 of 182
3/16/06 at 9:43am
Great thread.

I've been a big, big fan of this film for years. So much so that, well, I used to own a 35mm print of it. Nothing like showing it at a local theater when everyone's gone .

The pillow scene: it was in my 1977 print. It's too bad I don't have the print anymore, but it was mono and I couldn't handle the bad audio knowing that I should be listening to at least stereo.

The Criterion CAV LD: In the last week I threw out my old Radio Shack multiunit remote control which dates back to 1992 or something. I had programmed it to handle everything I could cram into it for each disc in that set. Man, I hated pauses. Anyway, before I tossed the thing last week I checked and the program was STILL IN THERE.

One thing I never, EVER, EVER found out was: what the heck happened to that tall alien at the end of the film? He comes out, raises his hands, and then...disappears. I never seemed to find a decent explanation of that.

Mike
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post #60 of 182
3/16/06 at 9:49am
Mike,

That's pretty cool. How did you obtain the print if you don't mind? How does the DVD picture quality compare to the print?
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