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

24fpssean

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And I do love the intermission, very startling, very dramatic. Also more even than Lawrence's intermission, which probably should have come right after Akaba rather than half an hour after Akaba.
 

Brandon Conway

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Originally Posted by 24fpssean

And I do love the intermission, very startling, very dramatic. Also more even than Lawrence's intermission, which probably should have come right after Akaba rather than half an hour after Akaba.

Well, Lawrence's Intermission comes right at the peak of his ascent, and it's all the prideful and manipulated fall in the second half.
 

FoxyMulder

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I have the blu ray UK edition of Great Expectations in my film queue for rental, i hear it's a good transfer and i'm looking forward to it.
 

24fpssean

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Like Icarus, Lawrence flies too close to the sun. There is even a shot of him on the back of the train with his cloak outstretched like wings, illuminated by the sun behind him.
 

benbess

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Originally Posted by 24fpssean

Like Icarus, Lawrence flies too close to the sun. There is even a shot of him on the back of the train with his cloak outstretched like wings, illuminated by the sun behind him.

Outstanding analysis. Puts it brilliantly in a nutshell.


At the beginning he puts out a match with his bare fingers. It hurts, but he says the trick is to not mind the pain. By the end he's had more pain, physical and psychological, than he can stand, and he can no longer ignore it...It's broken him, in a way. When he goes back to England, which is the prologue to the the film, he's withdrawn from much of the life he'd had, and retreated into a world of fun and distracting games, I guess, including his motorcycle. I don't know how true it is to the real story. I read up on it long ago, but I've forgotten how far the film diverges from the real story of Lawrence. Peter O'Toole in 1962 was certainly a lot better looking (and taller) than the real Lawrence was...
 

24fpssean

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I've read Seven Pillars several times and the basic structure is the same, though Gasim was NOT the same man Lawrence had to execute in the valley before Akaba. O'Toole was a full foot taller (6'3") than T.E. Lawrence (5'3"). The film is more about the legends Lawrence wove around himself, assisted by Lowell Thomas, villainously portrayed as the new hungry Jackson Bentley in the film. Thomas was himself an extraordinary man and we owe the advancement of the Cinemarama process to him.
 

24fpssean

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And thanks for the compliment on the analysis. I'm writing a book now on film (a dark humorous look at the changes digital has caused, rather than a tedious academic text book) and have a whole chapter devoted to what I call Visual Poetry.
 

benbess

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Originally Posted by 24fpssean

And thanks for the compliment on the analysis. I'm writing a book now on film (a dark humorous look at the changes digital has caused, rather than a tedious academic text book) and have a whole chapter devoted to what I call Visual Poetry.

Sounds like a fun book! Hope you'll let us know when it's done so we can buy a copy.


I'm guessing that maybe you're going to say--in a sophisticated, analytical, and funny way, of course--that digital lets filmmakers just "cheat," more or less. They don't need to craft, wait for, and create an amazing shot--it's all done in digital effects and fixes...But maybe I'm wrong about that.


And that phrase visual poetry describes Lean in a nutshell...


What do you think of Peter Weir? He's another director I like for visual and conceptual poetry.
 

24fpssean

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Yes, the book will be about how digital has changed filmmaking. One of the biggest changes in the last twenty years or less is that films used to be made as investments, to be re-released either in cinemas or home video for decades so as to continue making money. Now, a film is expected to make back all its money on opening weekend, or it is considered a failure.


I like Weir, he's great. I prefer any director's earlier films because that's when they had to prove themselves. That's why I'll take Lean's Oliver Twist over Lawrence of Arabia, or Spielberg's Sugarland Express over E.T. anyday; the economy of visual storytelling is refreshing in the earlier films. Only Hitchcock seemed to not succumb to that bloated ease of success, more or less. Despite how mindblowing Faust and The Last Laugh are, I think Murnau got better, subtler, in America.


But that's just my point of view!
 

FoxyMulder

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Originally Posted by 24fpssean

Yes, the book will be about how digital has changed filmmaking. One of the biggest changes in the last twenty years or less is that films used to be made as investments, to be re-released either in cinemas or home video for decades so as to continue making money. Now, a film is expected to make back all its money on opening weekend, or it is considered a failure.


I like Weir, he's great. I prefer any director's earlier films because that's when they had to prove themselves. That's why I'll take Lean's Oliver Twist over Lawrence of Arabia, or Spielberg's Sugarland Express over E.T. anyday; the economy of visual storytelling is refreshing in the earlier films. Only Hitchcock seemed to not succumb to that bloated ease of success, more or less. Despite how mindblowing Faust and The Last Laugh are, I think Murnau got better, subtler, in America.


But that's just my point of view!

Have you seen Spielbergs Munich. ?


Visual storytelling is very much a part of Lawrence Of Arabia and the whole frame is used to great effect.
 

24fpssean

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Yes, I liked Munich, a lot. But like most of his films after E.T., they tend to stay on the screen too long after they've tied themselves up. The Color Purple, as beautiful as it is, has shots directly pulled from Zhivago (dolly past a candle to look out the window, for example).


I like how Lean reverses the famous Lawrence "match cut" in Ryan's Daughter, as if to close the chapter on those kinds of visual parlor tricks. In Lawrence, the blown out match cuts directly to a sunrise. In Ryan's Daughter, a sunset cuts directly to a match flaring up. :)


At the beginning of A Passage to India, Adela Quested is buying her "passage" to India and sits before the travel agent (in the same marbled room used years later as a bank in Howards End, another E. M. Forster adaptation!). The camera holds on her for a while and if you notice, there are two giant globes on stands in the lobby behind her - she is framed directly between them meaning, visually, that she is at this point in her life between two worlds.


Speaking of Forster adaptaions: also in Passage, the blue/green drapes at the very end of the film that Adela looks out of just as the movie closes are the EXACT same drapes in the Schlegels' drawing room window at the beginning of Howards End. Even the credit font for both movies is almost the same, at least in the opening titles. And the same train station, and train, are used in A Room With a View and Where Angels Fear to Tread. The same giant clock at Charing Cross is used in both Howards End and Where Angels Fear to Tread. And Judy Davis from A Passage to India, Rupert Graves and Helena Bonham Carter from Room with the View and Maurice, are all in Where Angels Fear to Tread. Lean, Ivory and Charles Sturridge have succeeded in connecting these Forster adaptations to the screen visually. Just as Forster said, "Only connect..."!
 

Stephen_J_H

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Originally Posted by Douglas Monce /forum/thread/299956/a-few-words-about-dr-zhivago-in-blu-ray/30#post_3686606
 

Douglas Monce

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Originally Posted by 24fpssean

Yes, the book will be about how digital has changed filmmaking. One of the biggest changes in the last twenty years or less is that films used to be made as investments, to be re-released either in cinemas or home video for decades so as to continue making money. Now, a film is expected to make back all its money on opening weekend, or it is considered a failure.

I think this is probably not as true as you might think. In the days of the Studio system, early 1930's through the early 1960's, films were just considered a product. Studios cranked out 52 A pictures a year, and there was very little thought given to them beyond their theatrical run, unless they happened to be a monster hit. B pictures and shorts were really made only to fill time on a double bill. Fewer than 20% of films made in a particular year ever actually got a re-release. In fact so little thought was given to the film libraries, that the powers that be at RKO had the original camera negatives for all of their films destroyed to recover the silver content. There are now no original negatives for films like King Kong, Murder, My Sweet, Out of the Past, and Citizen Kane.


It was only after studios started to realize they could rent their film libraries to TV that they again became important. Most studios didn't understand the importance of this until they had already sold off their libraries, as Warner Bros. did, selling off all their old films to MGM. The product was really not thought of as an investment.


Doug
 

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Interesting thing about Spielberg's films, such as Munich and Minority Report, is how they are not part of the digital-era despite Spielberg thematically often elevating technology as spiritual/God (see Jamie associating the atomic bomb explosion with being touched by God in Empire of the Sun). None of Spielberg's films have had a Digital Intermediate, and all of them have been cut on film. That's so radical in 2010 filmmaking it's practically avante garde. ;) So far as I know he's the only director in the world who still cuts on film for commercial cinema. Cutting on film also makes War of the Worlds feel different from most action/disaster films. The "quick cutting' in that film holds longer than quick cutting you see in other directors films. Likewise, the fabulous look of Munich, at once modern, and also harkening to the color stylistics of 70s films/stocks, was all achieved in camera, rather than with digital manipulation, which makes one all the more impressed with Kaminski's skillful lighting.


interesting thing about DIs. I've soured on them lately, a few months ago I was seeing a smallish, new film at the landmark, it was a print, and at one point there was a pan up to the trees above. green leaves blowing in the wind, but it was with a wide angle lens, so they were 'far away'. The shot was a smeary blur, but the camera was "in focus" the smearyness of the tree leaves was because the 2k DI they did on the film couldn't resolve the detail of the leaves, and frankly, no one was ever going to notice in non-theatrical. Since then I've taken too looking at trees and other high detail areas of film prints to see what kind of DI they had. It's not something you want to start noticing because you start to realize just how poor a process it is to master in a 2k DI. It also made me appreciate why Spielberg hasn't ever had one done on his films, you lose a tremendous amount of quality from 35mm Color Timing.
 

24fpssean

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Yes, but Rear Window, which had it's negative stripped down to almost nothing from repeated use, will always be remembered. Prince of Persia will not.
 

24fpssean

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Wow, Adam, so it couldn't resolve those leaves! I know the first pass Warners did at Zhivago almost a decade ago had leaves and snow flakes missing. They just sort of disappeared as they were moving. That, of course, is because a quick clean up had been done and the program must have thought they were neg dirt.
 

FoxyMulder

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Originally Posted by Adam_S

Interesting thing about Spielberg's films, such as Munich and Minority Report, is how they are not part of the digital-era despite Spielberg thematically often elevating technology as spiritual/God (see Jamie associating the atomic bomb explosion with being touched by God in Empire of the Sun). None of Spielberg's films have had a Digital Intermediate, and all of them have been cut on film. That's so radical in 2010 filmmaking it's practically avante garde. ;) So far as I know he's the only director in the world who still cuts on film for commercial cinema. Cutting on film also makes War of the Worlds feel different from most action/disaster films. The "quick cutting' in that film holds longer than quick cutting you see in other directors films. Likewise, the fabulous look of Munich, at once modern, and also harkening to the color stylistics of 70s films/stocks, was all achieved in camera, rather than with digital manipulation, which makes one all the more impressed with Kaminski's skillful lighting.


interesting thing about DIs. I've soured on them lately, a few months ago I was seeing a smallish, new film at the landmark, it was a print, and at one point there was a pan up to the trees above. green leaves blowing in the wind, but it was with a wide angle lens, so they were 'far away'. The shot was a smeary blur, but the camera was "in focus" the smearyness of the tree leaves was because the 2k DI they did on the film couldn't resolve the detail of the leaves, and frankly, no one was ever going to notice in non-theatrical. Since then I've taken too looking at trees and other high detail areas of film prints to see what kind of DI they had. It's not something you want to start noticing because you start to realize just how poor a process it is to master in a 2k DI. It also made me appreciate why Spielberg hasn't ever had one done on his films, you lose a tremendous amount of quality from 35mm Color Timing.

I was under the impression the last Indiana Jones film had a 2K digital intermediate.


I agree with what you have to say regarding digital though, perhaps when they move to 4k for every film it will improve.
 

Douglas Monce

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Originally Posted by Adam_S

Interesting thing about Spielberg's films, such as Munich and Minority Report, is how they are not part of the digital-era despite Spielberg thematically often elevating technology as spiritual/God (see Jamie associating the atomic bomb explosion with being touched by God in Empire of the Sun). None of Spielberg's films have had a Digital Intermediate, and all of them have been cut on film.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had a 2K digital intermediary. I don't know if that means that his films from here out will be done that way or not. However you are correct that Michael Kahn edits on a flat bed film editor rather than digitally.


Doug
 

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Have only watched the first c. 15 minutes of this one, but so far I'm loving it all over again. I've seen it twice before, I think, once on regular tv in the 80s, and once on vhs in the 90s.

This is much better!

I love Lean's visual poetry. Or in this case, as I learned on blu-ray.com from RAH, it's in part Nicolas Roeg. Anyway, what poetry in that funeral scene early on with those distant mountains. Amazing. The falling leaves and the fallen mother...

And Alec Guinness is wonderful, as always. It's a small role, but quite memorable.
 

PaulaJ

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BenBess -- Lawrence of Arabia (the movie) skips over the entire post-war experiences of Lawrence's life, which includes attendance at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, his writing of Seven Pillars and the various printings (a knotty subject), his near mental breakdown several years after the war, his enlistment into the RAF (twice) as an airman, his work in the RAF testing speedboats intended for rescue of pilots and air crew downed in water, the never ending renovations he made to his small home at Clouds Hill, Dorset, his writing of The Mint -- and much more.


Also Lawrence in real life knew much earlier about the Sykes-Picot agreement than shown in the movie and his knowledge that the French and English intended to dupe the Arabs and carve up the Middle East between them was the cause of much inner conflict and guilt.


Some of this later post-war period is treated in the 1992 TV movie A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia, starring Ralph Fiennes as Lawrence and Alexander Siddig as Prince Feisal (both very fine performances) which is out on a rather fuzzy DVD. It's not entirely accurate either but no biopic ever is. :)


Lawrence of Arabia is the greatest epic ever made (IMHO) and I anxiously await its appearance on Blu-ray but it's an introduction to the subject and definitely not a historical treatise. :) Jeremy Wilson, author of the authorized biography of T.E. Lawrence, posted a very long scene by scene description of the movie contrasted with the actual historical record. You can find this information at http://lawrenceofarabia.co.uk/ Click on "David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia" under "Analysis."


The real T.E. Lawrence was a fascinating individual -- even more so than in the film. Which is saying something, since Lawrence, as played by Peter O'Toole, is mesmerizing. :)
 

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