WB/MGM 70MM films (1 Viewer)

Warner Bros has a few 70MM titles currently on Blu-Ray:
How The West Was Won (Cinerama)
Battle of the Bulge(70MM)
2001: A Space Odyssey(70MM)

But where are the rest?

The film company only released two 70MM features:
Cheyenne Autumn
My Fair Lady (CBS owns the rights to license out for Blu-Ray)

Plus the MGM films:
Raintree County (WB is working on it)
Ice Station Zebra (this should look great on Blu-Ray)
Ryan's Daughter(this should be reference/demo quality)
Ben-Hur

And the HD -Releases yet to be released on Blu-Ray (though these are rumored to be coming)
Grand Prix
Mutiny on the Bounty

It's great to get excellent films from WB like "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" and "Dog Day Afternoon" - but these were never demonstration quality in the theaters, let alone Blu-Ray

You would think WB would want to have all the 70MM released to help push the format?

HOW THE WEST WAS WON was not shot in 65mm and projected in 70mm. It was shot with the three strip 35mm film process and projected with three 35mm projectors on a deeply curved scheen.

-Claude

Warner owns the '56 Around the World in 80 Days - shot in Todd-AO. The 2-disc DVD from '04 is terrific, but there's a lot they can do with the BluRay. There's two versions, exactly like Oklahoma! (which had both cuts released by Fox on DVD). Both seem to exist, even the DVD only had the 24fps version. Unlike Oklahoma!, it was shot entirely in 65mm except for most of the prologue (obviously).

Even better, there's a lot of materials at the Library of Congress not touched. They have hundreds of reels of documentary footage shot during the production, deleted scenes, screen tests, and more outtakes and trims.

The big problem is that the film has a lot of issues since it was very poorly handled before Warner inherited it, so it would be a very expensive project. Not to mention that it wouldn't be right to just "fix' the problems at 1080p while the film elements are still busted.

Movies shot on 65mm are releases that should be expected to be treated with the greatest care as they represent the pinnacle of picture quality achievable on Blu-Ray and most of them make for a great showcase of the format.

These movies are rather expensive to prepare in order to realize their potential and not the hottest sellers either, except for titles like 2001 and maybe Sound of Music, Lawrence of Arabia and Ben Hur. Therefore I do not expect Warner to release more than two of them per year and indeed two will be fine with me when the quality is right.

Mutiny on the Bounty is a good example for a movie that might have been OK when it was released on HD-DVD in 2006 but with stunning releases like South Pacific by Fox and Warner's own HTWWW we can demand more from a release of MOB on Blu-Ray than what we got on the HD-DVD.

How will they convert the 30 fps version to Blu-ray? Won't it have to be interlaced?

There are three different sources of 65mm footage in HTWWW:

1. footage from Raintree County shot in MGM Camera 65
2. footage from The Alamo shot in Todd-AO
3. footage shot during the making of HTWWWW, mostly process shots, an Ultra Panavision 70 camera was used

It's apparently possible. Fox's "remaster" of Oklahoma! for the 30fps version is both 30fps and progressive - even if NTSC. The previous 4x3 LBX DVD had interlacing artifacts. There's HD cameras that can shoot progressive 30fps at 1920x1080 resolution.

What I really would like to see on Blu Ray is LAWRENCE OF ARABIA from the restored 70mm print master Robert Harris had done a few years ago. I first saw it in 70mm at the now defunct Northpoint Theatre in San Francisco and again here in Honolulu at both the Cinerama and the Kapiolani Theatres. Sadly both theatres are also gone. I remember how impressed I was when the curtain slowly opened when the Columbia Pictures logo flashed on the screen and could not believe how gorgeous the picture was. I know it will look superb on Blu Ray!

-Claude

Blu-ray is capable of showing 30fps progressively.

Doug

?
What do you find lacking with the A/V of the HD DVD release?

A few years ago? Try twenty years ago. The restoration may need a restoration

You can start with the lack of lossless audio. One great score dumbed down to Dolby Digital.

The most important issue is that the transfer is sorely lacking in high frequency detail that is clearly there in the original film elements and also in two 70mm prints that I have seen of the movie. What is the point of releasing a movie that was shot on 65mm film stock in HD when it does not take advantage of the superior resolution that the original film elements have to offer ? I will not go into the issue of completely missing film grain but I will repeat the words of Robert Harris: "Scan the film. Don't make changes.!"

For a more practical approach if you own the disc and an HD-DVD-player I suggest to compare it to South Pacific when you have a chance - the difference is substantial and it shouldn't be by todays standards - a lot has happened in the 2 1/2 years since Mutiny was released and what was OK then is not state of the art anymore, there are lots of evidence that we can do much better today.

Plus John has mentioned it already: Lossless audio is something that we should be demanding from every release, but especially from a movie that was produced with an excellent 6-track magnetic soundtrack.

OliverK has it right.

I've said it many times before, but it bears repeating. Quality work is worth waiting for.

I asked of Robert Harris (in his own forum) whether today's technology would benefit another pass at My Fair Lady (for example's sake) and he said yes. He didn't say that he'd participate in such a re-restoration or that one was in the works, but he implied that he could certainly make it look better than his '93 work.

Well, if they do restore it again, they'd better ask him to do it and not farm the work out to film students and contractors. Same goes for Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus...everything!

I can not wait for My Fair Lady and any other great classic that was shot on 65mm and 70mm film. I hope the studios take great care in retoring the classics for Bluray. I hope that they will not do what they did to Patton and learned from that mistake.

Was Gone With The Wind shot on 70mm or 35mm?

35mm