And it's not just one or two scenes either. Think about it. A canoe is a long boat with a paddler at either end, and cargo in the middle. Is the cargo more interesting than the paddlers?
Didn't Warner Bros. say at the last chat that the Deliverance SE was set for 2007?
The current Region 4 version I have is very badly window boxed, there must be a lot of resolution lost due to that alone.
However, for the first time it has been discounted locally down to about AUD$8, suggesting that they are trying to get rid of what they have in their warehouse(s).
Yeah, the heavy, heavy windowboxing on Deliverance really bugs me. I just hope that Warner don't drop the vintage on-set featurettes that are on the current DVD, as they are excellent and provide rare footage of Dickey. BTW, did you guys know that David Webb Peoples wrote an adaptation of Dickey's extremely powerful, disturbing and enthralling 1993 novel, To the White Sea and later, the Coen brothers wrote their own adaptation, using some of Peoples' ideas/passages. But it remains on the shelf.
Deliverance is not one of my favorite films. Nevertheless, I still enjoy watching it, and not because of the disturbing rape sequence.It's a decent drama, with good cinematography (unfortunately marred by the unnecessary window boxing). However, I have avoided the 4:3 P&S, except for a few scenes where I wished to compare composition. Is it possible that interpretations of this film depend on what aspect ratio Deliverance was exhibited in?
From an interview with Laurent Bouzereau on mi6.co.uk -
"Can you tell us what project you are currently working on?
I will tell you what is coming out, in October I believe my DVD on Warren Beatty’s ‘Reds’ is coming out and that is an amazing experience and a DVD people will like. Aside from being involved with the documentary on that, I was involved with the Special Edition of Body Heat that is also out in October. I’ve also done a Stephen King collection for ‘Pet Semetery’ and ‘Dead Zone’ and I believe that is also coming out in October. So October is going to be a big month for me. I’m completing the ‘The Black Dahlia’ for Brian De Palma and ‘Deliverance’ for John Boorman. And there are fifteen others that either I’m pitching, filming, or working on that will be coming soon."
I'll probably be beaten down for writing this, but if they do a SE of this film, I wish they would digitally correct the day-for-night scenes. I know this would alter the film as originally seen in theaters, but today's technology could improve those scenes so that you would believe that is is actually dark outside. Those scenes always look so bad to me.
Yes, the shot of Voight reaching the summit of the cliff is quite poor. But I've always felt that the poor shot added an eerie, ghostly, unsettling quality to an already unsettling film.