More missing dialogue on Artisan's "Reservoir Dogs: Ten Years" DVD (1 Viewer)

GuruAskew · May 18, 2003

I sat down and watched this DVD again last night and noticed another missing line of dialogue. Shortly after the DVD was first released, it was discovered that a line of dialogue was missing from the scene where Mr. White and Mr. Pink return to the room where Mr. Orange is bleeding to death. A line, spoken by Mr. White, is missing. The line in question is "I think he just passed out", and it's represented on the closed captioning track but is omitted from all soundtracks on the DVD. I discovered more missing dialogue last night. Right before Nice Guy Eddie, Mr. White and Mr. Pink go to get rid of their cars and pick up the bag of diamonds, Marvin Nash says "I haven't been looking" when Nice Guy Eddie says he's seen all of them. This line is also omitted, as is "shut the" in Mr. Pink's "shut the fuck up, man!". It appears as though Pink punches Marvin Nash for no good reason thanks to the omitted line. So we have two complete lines and the beginning of a third missing from the DVD. I know we've all taken our 40 whacks at Universal for the whole "Back to the Future" fiasco but at least they did something about it. Artisan will most likely never attempt to correct these errors on the "Reservoir Dogs: Ten Years" DVD.

Vince Maskeeper · May 18, 2003

Let's see: Horrible transfers that are misframed, embarassing extras and multiple lines of missing dialog. It's amazing that they wouldn't WANT a second chance at making these discs right. I know if I screwed up such a great film so badly, I'd want another chance.

It's also odd that QT seems to have no opinion or care on the matter. I would imagine that if someone could get Lawrence Bender in on the case, something might get fixed (like Bob Gale was the one who pushed the BTTF issue). I wonder if anyone has the ability to get in touch with anyone at Artisan and find out if they are aware of the multiple problems.

Anyone have IMDBpro and have contact infor for Bender, or maybe for DP Andrzej Sekula-- I'd love to hear what Andrzej has to say on the current DVD transfer and frame.

-V

GuruAskew · May 18, 2003

In all fairness, QT's priorities are most likely on "Kill Bill" at the moment, understandably, but it's unfortunate that the timing of the production of his latest film coincided with such a problem-laden DVD of his first. Perhaps QT could have been more involved if Artisan had delivered the DVD earlier in the year as promised. I believe I read something on aintitcoolnews.com about Quentin being concerned about the problems on the DVD but I never heard any followup. In any case, I too would be interested in hearing what anyone involved thought of the many problems. It would be nice if one of the main contributors of the movie could get a return process going. The most promising debut film of the 90's deserves better than this.

Mark_vdH · May 18, 2003

transfers that are misframed

Not to defend this pretty lame release, but although the new transfer is certainly differently framed than the previous R1 release, I wouldn't jump to conclusions. Both my VHS copy and UK dvd also don't feature the tighter framing of the early R1 disc for instance.

I am no cinematography genius, but how can a OAR transfer of 2.35:1 (Super35) movie actually show substantially more vertical information than intended? That's only possible when it was the original intention to (substantially) crop the movie on the horizontal side too, right? Why would anybody do that?

I know, theoretically an insecure movie maker could shoot his movie with very loose framing, so that he could entirely reframe it later. But do things like this actually happen in practice?

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Reagan · May 19, 2003

FYI, Reservoir Dogs is not Super 35 (I know that's what it says on imdb). I read an interview in which QT said it was filmed in Panavision (i.e., anamorphic). His quote was something to the effect of "I don't care how much cropping happens for VHS, I only care about the laserdisc version (of the home video)." This, of course, makes it even stanger that it would be misframed, assuming that it wasn't one of the older versions that was misframed.

-Reagan

Joshua_W · May 19, 2003

RD certainly looks like it was shot Super-35. There's a lot of extra image in the fullscreen version.

GuruAskew · Jun 16, 2003

I finally got a response from Artisan Entertainment about the missing dialogue. I initially sent the info to six Artisan e-mail addresses, none of which responded for weeks. I was watching the supplements of the "T2: Extreme Edition" DVD and I noticed a Manuel Casillas credited as "Artisan Head of DVD Production" or something like that. The format of the previous Artisan e-mail addresses was first initial, last name, so I figured I'd give [email protected] a shot. Sure enough, it worked, and he responded:

thank you for bringing to our attention -- we will investigate further the cause of such an oversight--and correct the error as soon as possible.

Hopefully they'll follow through. I also e-mailed Mark Rance of Three Legged Cat, who produced the DVD, and he says he'll look into it as well, even though it was Artisan and not TLC that did the transfer and audio.

UPDATE:

If you're interested, here's the exact timecodes of the missing dialogue, the dialogue itself and the character who should be speaking:

0:28:32 MR. WHITE: "I think he just passed out"
0:38:23 MR. BLONDE: "Joe"
0:51:33 MARVIN NASH: "I haven't been looking" MR. PINK "Shut the..."

Click to expand...

Matthew Brown · Aug 12, 2003

Any new news on this one?

Matt

James Lambert · Aug 12, 2003

The missing dialogue is unfortunate but I can't see Artisan reissuing this solely on that one issue. It is a matter of two lines which is less than the Day of the Dead/Anchor Bay affair. As for the misframing and colour issues, were these ever confirmed? I remember when the disc first came out and a number of reviewers mentioned this, but they also mention never seeing RD in the theater. When it was shown theatrically it always had a very greenish washed out look to it which I think is well represented on the disc.

CraigF · Aug 12, 2003

Since you guys know the movie so well, probably a dumb question: do you know if there's any difference between the Mr. Blonde/Orange/White/etc. DVD's and the one with the "four colors" on the cover? I have never seen the four colors cover around here (only found out about it a few days ago) and noticed it was apparently released on a different date. Just curious...Artisan re-packaging the same old stuff at it's worst excess I guess?

cafink · Aug 12, 2003

The Mr. Brown/White/Orange/Yellow/Pink case was just a cardboard slip with the "four colors" cover inside it. I would imagine that they've simply stopped including the individual character slipcases.

CraigF · Aug 12, 2003

Doh! Thanks Carl, I *suspected* it was a dumb question, and now I know for sure... Went and checked my Mr. Blonde copy...never remembered or thought about the slipcase covering it.

What I thought was weird the other day (when checking prices to sell a copy of the previous release version) was how the different colors are all priced differently at places I checked, even the common ones. Mr. Brown is more than twice as expensive as all the other ones, though apparently easily available...that brown cardboard slipcase is worth quite a lot it seems.

Randy A Salas · Aug 12, 2003

As for the misframing and colour issues, were these ever confirmed?

I talked to an Artisan executive when the controversy surfaced and he defended the transfer as being "fabulous." He said the framing is accurate vs. the old release, which cropped the image on all sides. He added that Artisan has no intention of "fixing" anything because nothing is wrong.

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Lyle_JP · Aug 12, 2003

I have no issue with the framing on the new Res Dogs disc, but even a J6P can see how completely out of whack the black levels are on that disc (hint: what black level?).

-Lyle J.P.

GuruAskew · Aug 13, 2003

Any new news on this one?

As a matter of fact, I e-mailed Artisan's Manuel Casillas about two or three weeks ago and he told me that he expected the audio correction to be finished up by September.

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EdwardKarlinski · Aug 13, 2003

Will they make replacement disks available?

Matthew Brown · Aug 13, 2003

Bill -
Thanks for the info. I hope we don't have to jump through hoops to get a replacement Disc.

Matt

GuruAskew · Aug 13, 2003

Hopefully they'll offer a mailaway program, but if you want to be really cynical and pessimistic, you'll notice that while the responses I've recieved have mentioned correcting the problem, there has been no mention of offering an exchange program. Of course, in my original e-mail, I said something along the lines of "an exchange program would be appropriate in this case" and that was never contested, but with Artisan you never know. I would like to think that offering exchanges would go without saying but you never know. Hopefully, we won't have to buy it again just to get the corrected audio track.

Magnus T · Aug 13, 2003

And hopefully they'll exchange my copy as well, eventhough, they probably won't, as I live in Norway... :frowning:

Matthew Brown · Aug 14, 2003

I would doubt that an exchange would include the special cover if Artisan does do one.

As long as I get a corrected one, I don't care. I actually have two because I couldn't decide if I wanted Mr. Blonde or Mr. Brown. I might keep one to compare the "corrected one" to.

Matt

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