Tidbits that don't deserve their own thread... (1 Viewer)

[Vickie_M]

It seemed a bit silly to start a thread for a movie when it just concerned "something interesting I noticed" so maybe this will be a catch-all thread. Anyway, here's one:
I'm watching the Leone "Man with no name" trilogy (though Eastwood had a name in all three, and they were 3 different names). I've finished A Fistful of Dollars and was halfway through For A Few Dollars More when I realized that one of the bad guys is played by a very young Klaus Kinski! I had no idea.
Next up: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly so I can vote with a clear conscience in tourney brackets when it comes up! I saw all of these films at the Drive-In when I was a kid, but hadn't seen them since. It's interesting to watch them with adult eyes, though I still don't have much more to say other than "damn, a lot of people get killed!" and "damn, I bet it stunk to live in the Old West!" (literally and figuratively). I really love the music! I understand why Morricone is considered a god.
I guess I grew up not all that interested in Westerns. My dad was a huge fan and watched them all, but they bored me to tears. I loved film noir, though I didn't know what it was called back then. These aren't boring me to tears, now that I'm older and much more used to long, slow scenes in movies. I'm finding the techniques very interesting, if not the actual storylines.
I love Leone's Once Upon A Time in the West and I'm very very fond of Silverado, neither of which my dad cares for. He's more the Audie Murphy/John Wayne Western fan.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

Doesn't Claudia Cardinale in OUATITW have a striking resemblance to Julia Stiles, or rather the other way around?

 

[JasenP]

Seeing (A VERY young) Jack Nicholson in The Raven recently was quite a treat. I hadn't seen the film since I was probably 12. Where is that DVD by the way?

I didn't realize that James Coburn was the voice in the "Like A Rock" Chevy truck commercials until it was mentioned on CNN.com after he passed away.

and non-movie related...

If you drop a brick of Velveeta processed cheese food product from at least a 5 ft. height, it will bounce!

 

[Mark Zimmer]

The Raven is coming, I think next spring, double-billed with The Comedy of Terrors.

It's amazing the places Kinski turns up. I checked him on DVD Profiler and I'd guess that he's in more movies in my collection than just about anyone other than people I specifically collect, like Karloff and Lugosi.

 

[Lew Crippen]

You will probably get all kinds of ‘Western’ suggestions Vicki. But to kick things off, try The Naked Spur.

Directed by Anthony Mann, the protagonist is played by Jimmy Stewart and it also has Janet Leigh and Robert Ryan. Beautiful scenery in Technicolor. Stewart plays a bounty hunter, who, at best can be described as obsessive and, at worst, psychotic. I expect that the plot will grab you. And if it does not, the scenery will.

One of my favorite Westerns and my favorite Mann. It’s not on DVD (VHS only), but is shown on TCM from time-to-time.

Some like Man of the West, another Mann film even better. It has Gary Cooper instead of Stewart. The literary allusions here are to Greek tragedy. Only you can decide if its heavy-handed or not.

Check them out.

 

[teapot2001]

The Ox Bow Incident is on TCM tonight. Be sure to watch that if you haven't seen it already.

~T

 

[Brook K]

Try The Professionals with Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale. I think Kinski turns up in it too.
I've seen it stated a couple of different times that it is impossible to build a complete filmography for Kinski because of the sheer number of movies he did over the years. He spent his money faster than he could earn it, so he constantly worked and also turned down chances to work with Fellini and a number of the top European art directors because they weren't offering enough $$.
If you haven't seen Werner Herzog's magnificent documentary My Best Fiend, it's a must.

 

[Charles J P]

Vickie, off topic, but how did you do your signature. I always think its interesting to see people try to display the differences between medium on one of the two (or even a third) type of media. I.e. neither of those is high def or DVD, they are both images on my computer screen; one is just pixalated. Kind of like the little trailers before the special edition star wars tapes announcing the theaterical re-release "For year star wars fans have only been able to experiance star wars like this (small picture and very compressed quiet star wars sound track) but now, you can see it on the big screen (large picture, sound uncompresses and gets louder). Its funny because neither representation of the sound means anything. The small sound may not be an accurate representation of what people with prologic systems and good speakers during the 80s would have heard, and how could the second sound be any indication of what it would sound like in the theaters since these trailers were running on TV and most people were probably listening through their TV speakers. Any way, not attacking you at all, just wondering how you determined that those images are any kind of representation of the differences between DVD and HD?

 

[Vickie_M]

Thanks for the suggestions guys! I've set my Tivo to get The Ox-Bow Incident tonight, and set up Wishlists so that Tivo will automatically record The Naked Spur and The Professionals the next time they come on (oh the joys of not having to cull through TV Guides and set VCRs anymore!)
I may not get to Ox Bow for a few days, I have a bunch of movies I haven't ever seen queued up in my Tivo I have to watch (The Man Who Cried, Throne of Blood, The Hospital, Grass, Sunrise, Insomnia, as well as 8 1/2 and Ragtime, which will be also be recording this evening, and, um, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).
I got very engrossed by For a Few Dollars More last night. It gets much more interesting toward the middle. Still, I couldn't do a triple feature as I'd planned. I needed a bit of a break, so I watched Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which I'd been meaning to watch for a week now, and Bullets Over Broadway, which I'd also never seen. I loved them both!
I keep thinking of other Westerns (with and without quotes) I've seen and liked. The Cowboys, True Grit and The Shootist are 3 Wayne Westerns I liked very much. In fact I was a True Gritophile when it came out. I loved that movie SO MUCH! I'd read the book before I saw the movie and couldn't imagine it being done well, but it was, I thought. I like Mackenna's Gold. Shane and High Noon, of course. McCabe & Mrs Miller, All The Pretty Horses, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and The Claim (those would all be "Westerns" I believe). The Valley of Gwangi! I'm sure more will come to me.
Yes Brook, I have seen My Best Fiend! I saw it a couple of years ago at the Chicago Film Festival, then my husband bought me the Herzog/Kinski Box Set for my birthday.
Now that you point it out Wayne, Claudia Cardinale does look a bit like Julia Stiles. A bit. I think that Cardinale was one of the most beautiful women ever so it's a hard thing for anyone to live up to.

how you determined that those images are any kind of representation of the differences between DVD and HD?

Charles, I took screen captures from both the HD broadcast and the DVD (the original release, not the Extended Edition). The HD picture is full size, not resized up or down. By necessity, I had to blow up the DVD image to make it the same size as the HD. It didn't seen fair at first, blown up, of course more pixels are going to show up. But if the DVD image were as detailed as it should be, it should still be clear. The HD image, while showing more pixels, is still very clear when resized.
That's just about as technical (or, uh, not) as this technomoron can get for you, sorry. Hubby, who isn't home, is the uber-geekoid in the family. I just know what the end product looks like and what I want, and HD looks spectacular, I like DVDs, and so I want HD-DVD. If you ask specific technical questions, I'll pass them along to my darlin' and get answers from him. (When I say technomoron, I am NOT kidding. I still don't even understand aspect ratios. All I really know is that I want to see the whole picture, so I like widescreen over P&S)
Btw, here's a picture of an HD detail blown up roughly (see "technomoron" above) the same amount as the DVD.

Did I just lose all credibility? Yikes! :b

 

[Charles J P]

No, I dont think you lose any credibility, but as you can see the HD version doesnt look great blown up either. We all know that HD has better resolution than DVD, but like I said, you take two pictures from two different formats and and display it on a third format. I'm not bagging you, I've just always been curious how people know that the images are accurate. All the screenshots of TPM supposedly showing edge enhancement come to mind. Someone would take a screenshot and then blow it up until it was 1cm by 1cm pixels and then point to these black pixels and say "see, edge enhancement!" I always just thought oh come on. I think it would be more valid to show two native resolution shots of a full frame, but I dont know how to do that. Oh well. Where did the HD version of LOTR come from btw?

Edit: Maybe someone like Ron who obviously has tons of experience taking screen shots will stop by.

 

[Vickie_M]

I think it would be more valid to show two native resolution shots of a full frame

That would be impossible since the HD image is freaking HUGE, but here are small portions of the HD and DVD images at their capture sizes, no Paint Shop Pro manipulation. Btw, the HD came from a PPV showing on, I think, HD NET.
HD:

DVD:

(and sorry, no, I don't understand why they're two different sizes to begin with. That would be a question for the hub)
The original, full-sized images are:
http://vickie.homeip.net/lotr/Fellowship_10_hd.jpg
http://vickie.homeip.net/lotr/Fellowship_10_dvd.jpg

 

[Vickie_M]

Wait, hold on...

 

[Vickie_M]

There we go.

 

[RobertR]

Where did we go?

 

[Vickie_M]

Where did we go?

Ha! To why-the-hell-isn't-this-image-showing-up-oh-there-it-is land!

 

[Jack Briggs]

Robert:
They're talking about "bigfoot" in After Hours. That thread caused karmic shockwaves to ripple through the ether. This thread has been affected.
But...
Video scaling and westerns in a single thread! This may be a first, for all I know. And so "tidbits" shall it be.
JB

 

[Dan Lindley]

Wait, hold on...???

Are we about to detect a fault in the AE 35 unit?

No wonder there are image troubles....

Dan

 

[RobertR]

Gotta check it out, Jack

 

[Seth Paxton]

Vickie, they are different sizes because a CPU display is in X pixels by Y pixels size. Your screen may be 1024 x 768 for example.
The HD image has more pixels per square inch (source image size) than the DVD image. People are used to thinking in terms of actual size, but as we know (thanks to different size TVs) that does not really make sense with digital images. My 105" 16x9 has no more resolution than a 65" 16x9, for example. It's only bigger because each pixel is made bigger (or sometimes, as in your DVD case, you assign more pixels to represent the 1).
Maybe you had X
and now it becomes
XX
XX
4 for 1.
HOWEVER, the Hi Def can take that same picture space and actually sample it 4 times uniquely so you get
XQ
RE
(pretend those other letters are different colors )
The HD image is bigger for the same section (without blowing either up) because you have more pixels for the same image space (the image space is the sampled space on the film cell - the square that has been "cut out" on the film for your capture), and on your CPU those pixels are the same size (a 5x5 section of pixels is always the same size no matter how "big" the picture you are showing is).
So if the DVD capture is 10x8 then the HD might be 22x17. That means more pixels in height and width for the same picture section. Thus it looks bigger when screen size is determined by number of pixels (as is with your CPU monitor for example).
It's very fair to blow up a DVD image to give it the same number of pixels as the HD image (for the same picture section). However, since the quality of the blow up will depend on the pixel ratio, it is more fair to find a compariable ratio between the 2 pictures.
In other words, if you take 2 pixels and zoom them into 3, then you have a problem because that 1 new pixel is a made up one (probably an average of the 2). That could give a false softness.
But if you go from 2 to 4 then you are just doubling (depending again on the method used in your image program) and you get a more natural expansion of the image.
Of course, that is not totally fair either because DVD doesn't normally get to zoom to a "fair" size, but rather it must conform to the pixel size of the HD monitor.
So if you run DVD to a HD screen, those 480 lines must become 1080, and that's not an even ratio. Thus bluriness can come back. That makes a native HD resolution all that much better suited for display on an HD monitor, especially those LCD and DLP FIXED PIXEL SIZE displays which can't adjust the number of scan lines and have no type of analog response along each line (scan lines are analog electric waves even when created from a digital source originally).
In short, if you have X by Y pixels PERMANENT for your display (which LCD and DLP displays do - such as 800 x 600) then you are best off with an image that has that exact pixel ratio as well.
HD size displays do not evenly match DVD resolution.
Bottom line - your method is very fair in depicting the benefits of improved resolution.
Think of it this way. If you show the 2 pictures in their "actual" size (meaning true pixel size) then the very fact that one is smaller than the other despite covering the same original picture image tells us that the larger image has more pixels sampling the same space. And that means more of the small info is captured.
Just think of how much of the picture a pixel represents in each image. You can't capture a detail any smaller than the size of a single pixel in that picture window.
BTW, you can resize your monitor because it is a MULTI-SYNC device (thus the high cost - plus it's progressive scan too). Your typical non-CPU display is not capable of that (few TVs can do interlace AND progressive for example). Your monitor is a very special display device that is capable of showing a different amount of scan lines (which bascially means different amounts of pixels).
Your TV basically isn't going to be able to do that. The home theater PC usually comes in to play at this point to get good matching to the TVs native display size using the CPU power for optimal pixel resizing (adding/removing pixels to get the same number of pixels as the TV has available).
It's the catch all thread after all. I realize this has long since wandered into a hardware zone and still isn't totally complete or accurate (so many special cases). :frowning:
Hey, doesn't the man with no name actually have a name in For a Few Dollars More?
Speaking of seeing someone "back when", I was watching an SNL rerun when Jeff Goldblum was on during the Jurassic Park release. The monolog featured questions from the audience (joke was people thought the dinos were real, Laura Dern was one of them).
One of the audience members was a young Dave Attell, now of Insomniac fame (which I think is a freaking genius show BTW).

 

[Brook K]

Vickie, if you love True Grit than you need to check out Rooster Cogburn if you haven't seen it already. It's something of a sequel, while also drawing a lot of elements from The African Queen, and of course co-starring Katherine Hepburn.
I just watched Bullets Over Broadway for the first time last night. I loved it too!