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Zodiac Blu-Ray? (1 Viewer)

David Prior

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TravisR said:
Which is tragic because investigators could have been concentrating on other people (rather than wasting time on someone who just wanted attention) and maybe caught the real killer.
That's tricky. I think Allen was so compelling a suspect that the police had to focus as much attention on him as they could or it would have amounted to negligence. What's really tragic is the interdepartmental screw ups, jurisdictional disputes, and CYA tactics that allowed Zodiac to slip away from the Washington and Cherry murder. That was the best chance anyone had of catching him and he waltzed away.
 

TravisR

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David Prior said:
What's really tragic is the interdepartmental screw ups, jurisdictional disputes, and CYA tactics that allowed Zodiac to slip away from the Washington and Cherry murder. That was the best chance anyone had of catching him and he waltzed away.
I don't know if it's entirely warranted but I even feel sympathy for the officer(s) who let him go. They certainly made a mistake but the surviving officer looks like he has lived with some serious guilt for the last 35 or so years. And, once again in my non-expert opinion, I think he's lying about not stopping the man they saw in order to not go down in history as the guy who let the Zodiac killer escape.
And on a sidenote, I'm really looking forward to the Benjamin Button disc.
 

Merrick Gearing

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David Prior said:
Jack Tarrance (no relation to Jack Torrence, though I love the coincidence) has been on the radar before, but in my opinion the evidence is fairly sketchy.
My personal opinion is that Leigh Allen was not the Zodiac killer. I arrived at this after two years of heavy research and interviews with literally dozens of people involved in the case. When I first started delving into the case I was 90% sure Allen was the guy. By the time I was finished with the DVD, I was 80-20 against. The coincidences are very compelling, but the hard evidence is non existent, and I susbcribe to Charles Dickens admonition: "Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule," at least when it comes to criminal investigations. I think the key to Allen is that he was not the Zodiac, but he really got off on people thinking he was.
All that aside, no one knows for sure. And that's what's so tantalizing and so maddening about the case.
Thank you for answering my question. I do think it would be nice if they end up catching Zodiac.
But, lets say that it does turn out that Tarrance is the killer, do you think that Zodiac will be updated in anyway to reflect this revelation.
I also seem to recall that DNA testing has confirmed that Allen was NOT the killer and last I heard the DNA evidence on Tarrance was inconclusive.
 

David Prior

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merrick97 said:
I also seem to recall that DNA testing has confirmed that Allen was NOT the killer and last I heard the DNA evidence on Tarrance was inconclusive.
DNA testing will not be able to completely rule out Allen, nor any other suspect, until a better source of DNA for the killer is found. The sample used in the Allen test was consolidated from several samples from the flaps of envelopes and stamp backs, since no single sample provided enough material to test. So even if we could be sure that the same person who licked the envelopes also committed the murders (which we cannot be), the samples themselves are questionable.
Aggravating as it may be, I think we have to consign ourselves to the reality that Zodiac's identity will most likely never be known.
 

GimlinPatterson

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Hello Mr. Prior, thank you for your exhaustive work on the special edition. I understand that the 2 disc Blu-Ray is no longer in print. Should we take that as a sign of something even more exhaustive is in the cards? I hope that all your additional effort wouldn't go to waste and will eventually see the light of day.
 

David Prior

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Hi Roy. Been a while since you posted this, I apologize for the delay ---
The very idea of a disc more exhaustive than the one we already did makes me exhausted... which isn't to say I wouldn't happily jump at the chance to get into Zodiac again. But there are no plans to revisit the project at this time. The disc going out of print has everything to do with 1) the film not catching fire at the box office and 2) the bloodshed going on in home video industry-wide. Sad as it makes me, the market has dramatically shrunk over the last few years, and it's become harder and harder to convince studios to invest in ambitious projects, let alone revisit past ones, particularly for films that didn't set their britches on fire to begin with.
All that said, I have no doubt that the special edition of Zodiac will find its way to market again eventually, if only to tie in with the release of some future Fincher project. In fact, I'm a little surprised they didn't re-release it to coincide with Dragon Tattoo. But unless the general customer base re-discovers the value of ownership and collectibility, I wouldn't expect too many full revisits of any but the most lucrative, blockbuster movies.
 

Robert Crawford

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Scott Burke

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I know I'm late to the table, but I just picked up the 2 disc collectors edition. Also, please excuse my naivety of film techniques, but I was curious why the documentary seemingly erratically cuts to black while people are talking? What is the purpose of that? The documentary was excellent for sure, and the sound effects and things creeped me out pretty effectively. So kudos.
 

Dave Simkiss

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Scott Burke said:
I know I'm late to the table, but I just picked up the 2 disc collectors edition. Also, please excuse my naivety of film techniques, but I was curious why the documentary seemingly erratically cuts to black while people are talking? What is the purpose of that? The documentary was excellent for sure, and the sound effects and things creeped me out pretty effectively. So kudos.
Wow! I came here to ask the exact same question...

In no way do I want to sound even slightly critical about the Blu Ray set because it really is superb, but...
I just watched the US / CAN Blu Ray version and many times throughout it cuts to black while people are talking.
I'm not talking about it 'fading' to black, I'm talking about abrupt cuts to solid black.
As if there should have been photos in this black section. The main one that stood out was when Bryan C. Hartnell is speaking about his stab wounds - it literally cuts abruptly to black, Bryan continues speaking, the subtitles continue, then it cuts back to Bryan.

Was there originally crime scene photos here that were removed?

To re-iterate, I am not referring to the fade to blacks that are throughout the documentaries. What I'm curious about are the very abrupt cuts to black.

I no longer have the US / CAN DVD on hand to compare this as I sold on the DVD when I upgraded to Blu Ray, but I don't seem to remember these cuts to black being on the DVD?, but I fully accept that I could be wrong about that.
 

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