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Topic: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA Blu Ray
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Claude S. Ayakawa
Film God
Posts: 2738
From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 11-14-2012 11:22 AM
It is an entirely new restoration from the 65mm film elements, Leo. I plan to watch LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in it's entirety this weekend but I did watch bits and pieces of the film last night and all of disc 3 that is exclusive to the deluxe set that has a lot of special features about the movie itself and the restoration. From what I saw, the restoration job done to the film was fantastic. On a side note, it is unfortunate my Japanese speaking father is deceased because if he was still living, I would have loved to let him watch the movie in Japanese. In additional to the usual other language such as French, Spanish and one or two others, the Blu Ray of LOA has a 5.1 Japanese soundtrack and subtitles and it is very good. If you love the movie like I do, the deluxe set is the way to go because the exclusive disc in Blu ray as well as the book ,the soundtrack CD and a mounted 70mm film frame plus the movie makes it all worth while.
-Claude
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 11-14-2012 03:54 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
In going back to the original camera negatives the restoration team basically had to start over. At 8K the 65mm O-Neg yielded a great amount image detail along with a far more daunting image clean-up job. This is one of the reasons why it has taken so long for LOA to make it onto Blu-ray. Just scanning the O-Neg alone was a very risky thing. It might not have made it through the film scanner without incurring serious damage.
Many thanks Bobby.
I'm not that well up on 65/70 scanners, but there are 4K scanners for 35mm and smaller on the market that are totally sprocketless: the film is simply pulled through the mechanism by the take-up reel and a laser detects the position of each perforation to determine the frame area to scan (e.g. on the Kinetta and the MWA Vario). Assuming you keep the film path clean and lace them up correctly, it really is impossible to damage even severely shrunk and brittle acetate in one of these scanners. Either this technology isn't available in any 8K large format machines as yet, and/or the camera negs must be very badly shrunk and brittle.
Apologies in advance for the heresy, But LoA isn't one of my all time favourites - the extent to which it f***s about with history (and in particular, portraying Allenby as a Blimpish stereotype, when all the evidence is that he was a very shrewd invidivual) is something I find irritating enough to get in the way of it telling a good story. Yes, it's visually stunning, and I'd always be happy to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon at a 70mm (or 4K) matinee screening ... but $60 for the BD? That having been said, I'll probably give in to the temptation ... ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-11-2014 05:06 PM
I finally got around to buying the Lawrence of Arabia Fiftieth Anniversary Limited Edition Blu-ray box set. Amazon has had it on sale for $44.99 over this past week. That's the lowest price it has run in its price history on Amazon. I got another $19 knocked off the price by using the available cash back bonus from my Discover Card. So I ended up paying about 25% of the list price for this box set.
This is a huge box set. Like Claude said, the case measures 12" X 12" and is 1 1/2" deep. I've grown more accustomed to the "digi-book" Blu-ray packages, such as the ones for 300, Seven, The Matrix, etc. This box set dwarfs those things. Obviously this big case won't fit in neatly with a collection of other Blu-ray discs. However the 3 BDs and 1 CD are packaged in a standard sized Blu-ray case that will fit properly on a shelf with other BDs.
The hardcover book is pretty nice. It has a lot of huge images from the production, including some 2 page spreads. I like the collection of movie poster art and photos of theater marquees from the film's release.
These box sets have a mounted 70mm film frame. The box I received had frame #21837, an image of Auda Abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn); I think it's the scene where he is sitting at a council table in Damascus arguing with other Arab tribal leaders. I like the clean look of the package, but I kind of wish it was mounted in such a manner where you could see the entire film strip, including the perfs.
Obviously, the image quality of this Blu-ray disc is excellent. It's not the same as watching the movie in 70mm on a big screen, but it's very impressive for all the fine detail in many shots. It would be great demo material for an electronics store selling big screen TV sets.
I've seen comments in other threads complaining about the image quality of the DCP version of Lawrence of Arabia. I'm not sure how that would relate to this Blu-ray.
Anyway, if anyone has been sitting on the fence about buying this box set think fast. That $44.99 price will likely go up into the $60 or $70 range again shortly.
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