New Apocalypse Now DVD set this year? (1 Viewer)

[Damin J Toell]

Well, in that comment in particular, I meant what they say as to what their intended outcome was as to two possibly disparate technical aspects. Even Storaro doesn't claim that 2:1 was ever intended as an exhibition AR at the time.

DJ

 

[MarcoBiscotti]

Coppola owns the film I believe, and does not want it shown... or at least commercially available.

Despite my initial enthusiasm over this upcoming release, I have to say that unless the transfers and audio tracks are significantly improved upon and not tampered with to ill effect in anyway, than I will not be buying this set.

I already own both cuts of the film with existing albeit minimal features and commentary. I'd gladly welcome any new extras, but without HOD and with High Definition on the horizon, I'm not so eager to spend money needlessly on rehashed of existing DVDs with so much unreleased content coming from the better studios in my opinion (read: Warners, Criterion, Kino, Eureka, etc)

That cover art is horrendous btw. It looks like a ripoff of the Office Space DVD. What's wrong with the original poster art? It was one of the best of the decade...

This is definitely going to be a wait-for-reviews purchase, and even than... I'm extremely dissapointed at the lack of HOD.

 

[widescreenforever]

Apocalypse Now is supposed to Be and always has Been 2.0 to 2.1 aspect ratio.., It has never been 2:35.1 ..
Like ... the 1955 movie of Oklahoma is wider at 2.20 ( Todd A-O ) than it's 2.40:1 cinamascope's twin ..

 

[Lee-c]

Sticking in a bunch of extras with only two disks is a bad idea, that eats into the space for the
movie bit-rates, they should have done a 3 disk set. One for each movie and one for the extras.

Great looking cover and interior design, though.

 

[Damin J Toell]

I can't tell if you're kidding or not...

DJ

 

[Andrew-V]

I think Paramount and American Zoetrope (so, yes, Coppola) own the film. Supposedly the reason for there not being a DVD release is that Coppola wants the film to be buried. Although the documentary certainly portrays him and many of the other cast members as being eccentric, I think much of this has to do with the issue of the cut footage. In the documentary Coppola pretends that much of the deleted footage (that would end up in Redux a decade later) was never even shot. Now he acts like Redux is the definitive version of the film and is what he wanted to make all along.

I think that's part of it. If you watch the documentary there are some intense lines spoken by Coppola though:

"Martin Sheen is not dead until I say he is dead."
"This film is a $30 million dollar disaster...I'm thinking about shooting myself."

 

[Elijah Sullivan]

It's odd that those comparison screengrabs that Matthew provided us with show a certain degree of pan-and-scan at work.

If Storaro doesn't mind losing part of image, fine... but when he shifts the shot, the image no longer distorts consistantly. That is, the natural curvature of the camera lens is unbalanced, with the actual physical center of the lens off to one side, and more pronounced distortion on the other side.

This isn't such a big deal with little screengrabs, but on a cinema screen that change of distortion is HUGE and very distracting. When I saw the Redux DVD I thought something about the image seemed strange -- but I attributed it to additional vertical information, the crummy color, and the very soft image.

Lens distortion is a ludicrious thing to deliberately introduce to your film. Storaro and Coppola have totally baffled me.

 

[Sean Richardson]

I care on principle that he shouldn't be going back and re-formatting it (especially if the rumor is true that Storaro has a financial stake in the "Univision" process and, thus, is requiring the new framing to make more money off the release), but I'll buy this (at some point) for the extras. Whatever the reason, it doesn't sound like Storaro is going to change on this one.

 

[Damin J Toell]

Reformatting AN after the fact still doesn't make it a Univision/Univisium production. It's just a standard 4-perf 35mm scope film. Univisium gets no royalty for reformatting a standard scope film to 2:1, regardless of what financial stake that Storaro might have in the company.

DJ

 

[Dave Mack]

Any more news on DRACULA??

 

[Andrew-V]

Apocalypse Now won an Academy Award for best cinematography. It's all so hard to believe that Storaro would want to do this to his own work.

 

[Peter Neski]

Please are you crazy,it was shot in 35mm at 2.35:1 first ,that was the OAR
then they cropped it when it was blown up for 70mm prints,then it was
cropped yet again when Storrao did his first Video ,then came the dvd
which was different color wise but the same cropped image as the Laser.
Next came the Redux version in the Theatre in 2.35:1 (Not 2.1)
then another cropped dvd,

 

[JohnTRU]

In regards to what's spread over the discs - the above tells me that the full Redux cut is NOT included in the set, only the significant scenes added to it.

If Redux is not present, then a two-disc set seems about right, if it is, then it should be more than two discs and the 'Added and Expanded scenes of Redux' feature would become redundant.

FWIW, I don't need another version of Redux. I've already got it, but everything else is a welcome addition.

In regards to HoD, Coppola doesn't have to release anything he doesn't want to, so if he doesn't want to release it yet - then so be it. Be thankful for what he is releasing, not what he isn't.

 

[Sean Richardson]

I wouldn't dispute what you're saying, but, for instance, if a studio takes a film to Skywalker Sound to do the final sound mix, it obviously doesn't make it a Lucasfilms production, but Lucasfilms does make money off of doing the sound mix. If Storaro used a company he had a stake in (and, as I said earlier, I don't know this as a fact) to transfer the film, he would make more money than if he used a company he had no stake in.

I doubt Storaro is getting any royalties of AN either way; it's possible Coppola might've given him a few points (I hope so; he earned them), but I don't know if Coppola would've been in a position to do so once the film was way over budget.

 

[Sean Richardson]

I thought that feature you're referring to was a short featurette discussing the scenes which were added, why they had been cut/added back in, etc. Not an actual presentation of the scenes themselves, but a discussion of the scenes rather than recording an entire second commentary over the 'Redux' cut which would probably be largely redundant.

EDIT: Whoops, I guess (according to the Bits) he is doing a commentary on both ... so, yeah, that does sound redundant.

 

[Andrew-V]

I'm a huge fan of Apocalypse Now and have been waiting for a special edition ever since Redux hit theaters in 2001.

This release, although somewhat exciting, really isn't all I have been hoping for.

If it were up to me, the set would include both cuts of the film with the theatrical aspect ratio:

Disc 1: Original cut of the film with audio commentaries from Coppola, Milius, and Storaro and Murch
Disc 2: Redux cut of the film with commentary from Coppola on selected scenes
Disc 3: Hearts of Darkness documentary with audio commentary by Francis and Eleanor Coppola. Deleted footage from the documentary. Anything else that Hickenlooper can throw in.
Disc 4: Remaining footage from the workprint with audio commentary. Original release and Redux trailers. New featurettes.

 

[Damin J Toell]

All of that would have nothing to do with the fact that the DVDs are at 2:1 instead of 2.35:1. If they used Storaro's facility to do the transfers, he would have gotten paid no matter what AR it was done at. That would therefore certainly not be a situation where, as you suggested, Storaro might be "requiring the new framing to make more money off the release."

Anyway, I'm sure that Zoetrope did the transfers in-house, with the participation and approval of Storaro. I doubt the Univisium company had any involvement.

DJ

 

[Patrick McCart]

Isn't Univisom just the format name?

Here's what I was getting at... here's a photograph I took in very high resolution. I simulated both 2:1 and 2.35:1 images. The main difference is that the 2:1 is more detailed in the 2:1 area than the 2:1 area of the 2.35:1. That seems to be what concerns Storaro and Coppola. It's not really a lot of resolution gained, but it seems to be important to them.

[url=http://img454.imageshack.us/img454/5876/2to12fx.jpg] [/url]

[url=http://img454.imageshack.us/img454/353/23517pf.jpg] [/url]

Again, this can be justified due to the low-res nature of NTSC, but with HD, there's really no reason. So, I'm hoping they go for full 2.35:1 in the eventual HD incarnation.

 

[Vincent_P]

That's not the same thing. Skywalker Sound would actually be doing the remixing on the soundtrack, and thus obviously would be paid. Univisium is not a company that does film-to-tape transfers. APOCALYSPE NOW and REDUX would've been transfered at a reputable film-to-tape transfer house, likely in LA, and yes, said transfer house will get paid to do that work, but so would they if the film had been framed at 2.35:1.

Vincent

 

[Sean Richardson]

Ah, see, the thing is, I thought that Univision was a specific transfer process which required specifically built (or, at least, re-calibrated) equipment, and that, because it's not used by anybody besides him, said equipment hadn't particularly spread through the film-to-tape transfer houses. I didn't realize Univision had widespread availability.