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A Few Words About A few words about...™ Barbarella -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

FanboyZ

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Female nudity in PG films was really a commonplace occurrence that didn't freak anyone out until PG-13 rendered PG films "uncool".
We are much more prudish now about women's bodies than we used to be.
 

Brian McP

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Thank you Billy about mentioning Joan Greenwood, who had the sexiest voice of all time ("Whiskey Galore" never sounded better) -- and yes, "Danger Diabolik" runs rings around "Barbarella" - Jane Fonda, as they would have said in a John Ford western, is 'a fine figure of a woman' (I think even she would have been flattered by such a comment), but give me Marisa Mell from Diabolik any day.
Diabolik -- a terrific movie, with one of the great Ennio Morricone scores (the original music soundtrack, lost for many years) - sadly, don't know if it will make it to bluray being essentially a movie about a terrorist - very mod in 1967, not so these days.
 

FoxyMulder

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Originally Posted by Brian McP /t/321593/a-few-words-about-barbarella-in-blu-ray/30#post_3939867
Thank you Billy about mentioning Joan Greenwood, who had the sexiest voice of all time.


Jane Fonda was no slouch in the sexy voice department.
 

rdimucci

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Robert Harris said:
Returning to the original point, which was that Barbarella went out unrated.  For re-issue, with cuts, it received a PG.
Not "unrated" so much as "before the ratings came into existence."
 

rdimucci

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adklz said:
The comic strip "Li'l Abner" had two feature length films. The first in 1940 and the second, based on the Broadway musical, in 1959.
The first of the 28 features based upon the comic strip "Blondie" was released in 1938.
RKO released the film "Little Orphan Annie" in 1932.
 

SilverWook

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Brian McP said:
Thank you Billy about mentioning Joan Greenwood, who had the sexiest voice of all time ("Whiskey Galore" never sounded better) -- and yes, "Danger Diabolik" runs rings around "Barbarella" - Jane Fonda, as they would have said in a John Ford western, is 'a fine figure of a woman' (I think even she would have been flattered by such a comment), but give me Marisa Mell from Diabolik any day.
Diabolik -- a terrific movie, with one of the great Ennio Morricone scores (the original music soundtrack, lost for many years) - sadly, don't know if it will make it to bluray being essentially a movie about a terrorist - very mod in 1967, not so these days.
Since the DVD came out in 2004, I can't see why it would be a touchy issue releasing it now?
 

Mark Oates

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Shout me down if you like, but I have a theory:
Studios, particularly Paramount and I think Columbia/SONY have a sort-of favourites list of titles they put on the market with each new format/medium that arises. I say this because I was thinking about titles which always seem to be available. Stuff like Barbarella, CE3K, Chinatown, the Flint movies and others. It might be memory playing tricks but it seemed to start in the very early 1980s with 8mm digest versions of movies. There had been a market for them for ages, but in the very early 1980s there seemed to be a sudden boost in titles coming out (fired I suspect by the success of Star Wars on the format). Barbarella was one of the titles that came out at that time. When VHS came out, there was a similar rush of titles and sure enough Barbarella was among them. Ditto DVD in 1999. Now we have it coming out on Blu-ray in 2012 and I will bet that whatever big implementation of streaming/downloading brings that into the mainstream one of the Paramount titles will be Barbarella.
 

Jeff Ulmer

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DVD Beaver has their review up if anyone is interested in screen grabs.
Now all I need is for Amazon to doa big sci-fi sale on this, Outland (still waiting on reviews) and a few others.
 

Mark Oates

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The screengrabs look amazing, and the technical information has made me look forward to the release even more. Call me crazy, but I'm looking forward to running it with the French soundtrack (Fonda did her own dubbing) as up to now I've only had the English and German audio on my R2 DVD.
 

Charles Smith

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Well, here's a curious state of affairs.

For the first time in the few months I've had the Oppo BDP-93, I've got a disc that won't load... this here one called Barbarella. It not only doesn't load, it hoses the player.

After the brief "loading" message, the screen goes black and the player lights up all zeros on its own display. At that point it's totally unresponsive.. Have to pull the plug and start over. Tried several times, in between which I successfully loaded other BDs and DVDs just to make sure all else was fine -- which it was. FWIW, the disc looks pristine.

Has anyone besides RAH played this one yet?
 

Charles Smith

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Thanks. It really must be a defective disc.

I will, of course, check on firmware (I don't keep any of this stuff connected to the internet), even though the Oppo was current as of receiving it in April, the time of their last update. (Just signed up for email notifications.)
 

Mark Oates

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It'd be a mess if we started having compatibility issues with Blu-rays and players like we did in the early days of DVD.
 

Charles Smith

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Definitely a coaster, as it also refuses to load on an old but robust Sony that takes whatever you give it and says thank you sir. This time it said thanks but no thanks.

I'll return it, and I'd also like to make Paramount aware of the problem, but I'm coming up empty on my search for a customer service number or a "contact us" link.
 

Jeeva

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Chas in CT said:
Well, here's a curious state of affairs.  
For the first time in the few months I've had the Oppo BDP-93, I've got a disc that won't load... this here one called Barbarella.  It not only doesn't load, it hoses the player.
After the brief "loading" message, the screen goes black and the player lights up all zeros on its own display.  At that point it's totally unresponsive..  Have to pull the plug and start over.  Tried several times, in between which I successfully loaded other BDs and DVDs just to make sure all else was fine -- which it was.  FWIW, the disc looks pristine.
Has anyone besides RAH played this one yet?
I received my copy yesterday and it plays fine on my OPPO BDP-93. No problems whatsoever...
 

Charles Smith

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Right, this had to be a single dud off the assembly line. I returned mine to Best Buy where there was no second copy to take home in exchange. But they took the opened BD as a straight return, against most stores' usual policy (especially theirs, in this day and age), which was nice of them. I'll start again from Amazon.
 

FoxyMulder

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Originally Posted by Chas in CT /t/321593/a-few-words-about-barbarella-in-blu-ray/30#post_3953805
I'll return it, and I'd also like to make Paramount aware of the problem, but I'm coming up empty on my search for a customer service number or a "contact us" link.

Try this phone number or email contact address.

Paramount Home Entertainment
1-323-956-3010

[email protected]
 
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FoxyMulder said:
It's my understanding that the MPAA have always been puritanical when it comes to nudity and sex on screen but they don't mind someone's head being blown off, in the UK we have always been less restrictive on sex and nudity but more strict on violence, things improved considerably when James Ferman retired as the head of the BBFC as far as the latter goes and indeed as far as censorship in general, i don't miss those dark days of censorship under Ferman's reign, he would often deem a film suitable for the cinema required cuts for the home video market and thus as a film fan i hated that, under his reign many a good film was denied a home release.
A hyperbolic myth. If a film shows a head getting blown off it's going to get an R-rating, at least. Talk to Paul Verhoeven and David Lynch about that.
Back to Barbarella, I'd be much more concerned with the impression left by the "Excessive Machine" scene than the rather tame and innocent opening scene.
 

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