Movies that Deserve Blu-ray Treatment

Its nice to see an optomist out in the wild .  What did you think was missing from Independance Day that you would like to see added on a special edition?

The films that really deserve Blu-ray treatment are "wide vista," big canvas epics such as:
Ben-Hur
The Ten Commandments
Star Wars saga
Star Trek movies
Westerns like The Big Country -- the type where they show off the on-location shooting
Lawrence of Arabia
Dr. Zhivago
Many of the MGM and other musicals
. . . and so on.

The small-cast, intimate dramas and comedies benefit a little, but I don't see all that much difference between, say, "The Proposal" on Blu versus DVD.

Exactly why I refuse to buy the current blu-ray....I know that FOX will double-dip on this title someday.  I will wait for that release thank you very much!

While they are at it, they should release The Abyss: Special Edition too....

I'd like to see some of John Sturges' films make it to blu-ray. No one was better at composing images for the widescreen than Sturges...

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
Last Train from Gun Hill (1959)
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
The Great Escape (1963)
The Satan Bug (1965)
Hour of the Gun (1967)
Ice Station Zebra (1968)

among them.

Doug

Raul Walsh's The Big Trail

all 5 cuts of the film in their original lengths

70 mm Grandeur
35 mm
Italian
French
German


and WB's and MGM's Kubricks that have not been released

Barry Lyndon
Lolita

Paths of Glory
The Killing
Killers Kiss 

70MM
If it was filmed in 70MM it should be on Blu-ray
 
Yet many grainy films from the 70 - 80s are available - great films like "MASH" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" good films "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind" "Kramer vs Kramer" but those films weren't demonstration quailty visually in theaters as were 70MM films (which may not have been great (like "Cleopatra" "Mutiny on the Bounty" "Star" and "Hello, Dolly") but still not on Blu-ray

But if you ever saw a 70MM print of "Cleopatra" "Star" or "Hello Dolly" your jaw would drop - these films were made for 70MM and even viewing them in 35mm leaves a lot to be desired.
The production values far out weighted the acting, story, pacing  etc.

These 70 MM prints looked incredible in the theater:

South Pacific (Already on Blu-Ray)
West Side Story
Lawrence of Arabia (My 1st 70MM film)
How the West Was Won (Already on Blu-Ray)
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
My Fair Lady
The Sound of Music
Those Maginificent Men in Their Flying Machines
Doctor Dolittle
Star!
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Patton (Already on Blu-Ray)
Ryan's Daugther


Doctor Zhivago (35mm) is coming on May 4
Spartacus (coming May 25)


by the way: "Star Wars" was a blow up from 35MM and not shot in 70MM
Edited by Greg_M - 2/26/10 at 8:39pm

To be fair, films like MASH and Cuckoos Nest look the way they do by design, and for the first time they actually look the way they are supposed to on blu-ray. One of the advantages of blu-ray is its ability to accurately reproduce the look of films that are intentionally grainy.

I love 70mm films too, but I don't think they are any better demonstration material than a film like Bullitt. The point being, is the home theater system accurately reproducing the look of the original film?

You are correct about Star Wars. In fact there have been only 3 feature films made in 65mm since 1970.
Far and Away (1992)
Map of the Human Heart (1993)
Hamlet (1996)

Map of the Human Heart only got a 35mm release in spite of its 65mm photography.

Doug

IIRC, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Dr Zhivago have all been dated and detailed for release in the next 6 months.

Lord knows I loves me some "Smokey and the Bandit", but can't we agree that the third one never happened?



I'm pretty sure Emmerich went on record saying he didn't approve of the longer cut and that its release was a marketing ploy. Maybe FOX finally listened and agreed not to release it. (Tongue planted firmly in cheek here.)

MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART was filmed in 65mm?  I always thought it was Super-35.  Beautiful film either way, but when I saw it (in 35mm) it was quite grainy, a look which I felt fit the movie, and I can't imagine it being as grainy as it was if it was filmed in 65mm, unless Miramax was REALLY cheap with the prints.

Also, wasn't TRON 65mm?  And parts of LITTLE BUDDHA, and of course BARAKA.

Vincent

Map of the Human Heart is listed among the films shot in 65mm but notated as only having a 35mm release. IMDB lists it as having been photographed in 35mm anamorphic, so I'm not sure on that one. I believe you are right about Tron. Its live action was photographed in 65mm, and the effects sequences were shot in VistaVision. For some reason this film is never listed as a 65mm film, even though it had a 70mm release.

Little Buddah only had a few scenes photographed in 65mm. The majority of the film was shot in Technovision. Baraka was shot in 65mm, however being a documentary, it is rarely listed among feature films.

Doug

MY FAIR LADY, HELLO, DOLLY!, CLEOPATRA, and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA are obvious choices.

I also want to see the long promised release of FORBIDDEN PLANET.

I am going to have to plug the Bronston movies:
FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, EL CID, 55 DAYS AT PEKING & KING OF KINGS.

Off the top pf my head, some personal favorites I would love to see on Blu-ray:
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
BLACK NARCISSUS
THE ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN
LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN
THE THIEF OF BAGDAD
SCARAMOUCHE
THE BAND WAGON
SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS
BRIGADOON
FUNNY FACE
BLITHE SPIRIT
GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES
SOME LIKE IT HOT
THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI
LAURA
SPELLBOUND
THE PRISONER OF ZENDA
THE LION IN WINTER
SOME CAME RUNNING
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
DEAD AGAIN
KINGPIN
SCROOGE
1776
VICTOR/VICTORIA

Some fun genre titles:
HALLOWEEN: H20
SCREAM
THE CROW
JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS
FIRST MEN IN THE MOON
HORROR OF DRACULA
CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN
THE MUMMY
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT
DRACULA, PRICE OF DARKNESS
THE DEVIL RIDES OUT
THIS ISLAND EARTH
THEM!
IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH
THE COMPANY OF WOLVES
BLOOD AND ROSES
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
PIT AND THE PENDULUM
MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
TOMB OF LIGEA
THE RAVEN
THE COMEDY OF TERRORS
SON OF FRANKENSTEIN
DRACULA
FRANKENSTEIN
THE MUMMY
THE WOLF MAN
LIFEFORCE
NIGHT OF THE DEMON
IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS
THE FOG
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK

Apocalypse Now.

Showgirls
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Ms. 45
Clueless
Jawbreaker
Not Another Teen Movie
She's the Man
Dazed and Confused (hopefully better than the HD DVD - more like the Criterion DVD please)
The Car
Black Christmas (2006) (Released on BD in Canada, but is interlaced)
Blue Crush
Mallrats (HD DVD is excellent, but would buy it on BD too)
Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
Valentine
Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers
Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland
Friday the 13th, Part IV: The Final Chapter
Friday the 13th, Part V: A New Beginning
Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives
Halloween II (1981)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
The Nightmare on Elm Street series (at least 1-4)

Abyss
Jurrassic Park Trilogy
Schindler's List
ET
Star Wars
Back to the Beach
Chasing Amy
Ken Burns: Civil War (the potential for extras an on limited discs with high quality would be awesome)
Wim Wenders "Until the End of the World"

The last one is a must.  It was the first film ever shot using HD cameras.  It deserves an HD release so it can be seen as it was filmed.

The first one is coming out on April 6. People can hate remakes all they want but they do get the studios to release the originals.




It's available.

Ultra Panavision films:

Raintree County
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
The Fall of the Roman Empire
The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Hallelujah Trail
Khartoum

Lady and the Tramp (1955)

The Incredibles (2004)

and, for good measure...
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

Absolutely The Incredibles!

With The Maltese Falcon coming, I'd also like to see a properly cleaned up version of The Big Sleep on blu-ray.

Doug

Add another vote for all the obvious classics like Lawrence, My Fair Lady, The Maltese Falcon, as well as the modern classics like the Star Wars films, Jurassic Park and Jaws (which I seem to recall has been announced.)  Plus everything Pixar has ever produced, because there isn't a dud in the bunch.  But I'd also like to see a few more obscure films, which never even got a decent DVD release, show up on the new format:

The Rocketeer.  Disney criminally failed to market what should have been the first film of a franchise to rival Indiana Jones when it was released, then added insult to injury by botching ever home video release I've ever seen of the film.  They did finally condescend to issue it on DVD - but only by porting the existing non-anamorphic laserdisc transfer to the small disc.  Extras were minimal and the soundtrack was 2 channel.  The film deserved (and deserves) better.  C'mon.  We're talking rocket packs and Jennifer Connelly in white silk.  Who could ask for anything more?

Streets of Fire.  OK, this is kind of a guilty pleasure, but I just love Walter Hill's "Rock 'n' Roll Fable"  It has a terrific cast (I'll watch anything with Diane Lane in it, and this is the first time I ever saw Willem DaFoe in a film), great action and an absolutely unique "look" that just cries out for HD.  This is one of the few modern films where the colors "pop" almost as much as they did in the days of three-strip technicolor, and Andrew Lazlo does a wonderful job capturing the strange world - "another time, another place" created by Hill and production designer John Vallone.  But the current DVD is another "digitize the letterboxed LD transfer and slap it the little disc" hack job.  I have to fiddle with the settings on both my DVD player and my TV to even get it to display at the full width of the screen.  (Although at that, with the upscaling done by my JVC LCoS set, the disc looks better than it has any right to.  Still, not a patch on what it could be in HD.) 

The film also has one of the greatest soundtracks in the history of movies (Ry Cooder, Jimmy Iovine and Jim Steinman - who wrote some of Meatloaf's operatic classics - are just three of the contributors.  If you listen closely you'll also hear Stevie Nicks adding an uncredited background vocal to a song she wrote.)  The DVD at least provides a 5.1 soundtrack, but I'll be that could be improved on Blu-Ray, too.  

Anyone else have any idiosyncratic personal favorites either never released on DVD or release so badly they may has well not have been that you'd like to see revisited?   (I should note that until recently the third film on my own personal "I want it on Blu-Ray" list was The Last Starfighter - but that has been released, by some miracle.  So maybe if they could release a cult film like that, there's still hope for SoF and The Rocketeer.) 

Regards, 

Joe 

1941 please....

Doug

...as many of the MGM musicals as possible (...thought that "Singin' In The Rain" and "The Band Wagon" were previously talked about as being worked on...)

...in past years WB had put so much effort into restoring and issuing them in SD that, I feel, it would be a shame not to take them to the next level...

Grand Prix (1966)
Made it onto HD-DVD but will it ever make it to Blu-ray?

  Major guilty pleasure. 

Joe

Once Upon A Time In The West

No guilt for me. I think its one of the funniest movies ever made, and one of my favorite moves of all time.

Doug