"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[gandley]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

No problem.
And don’t be toooo hard on jd123 because he just strikes me as another who reads, believes and then parrots what hobbyist-type bloggers (lyris) spit out….. all the time either not being aware of their true technical expertise or just plain forgetting about it…..

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=5960

^
In the above link I’m not referring to WickyWoo but to the “Someone on another forum” that WickyWoo is referring to namely……..”lyris”.

Ah go easy on Lyris, he is actually a decent chap. hes currently smacking down toshiba XDE edge enhancment lovers across various forums and gave a decent report about blu ray while he attended IFA

[cipher]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Heads-up for moderator dialog in Toronto to catch a premier………………
• Ed Harris steps behind the camera for the first time since Pollock in Appaloosa, which looks to be an old-school Western about "a pair of hired guns who come to clean up a dangerous town run by a ruthless, powerful rancher." The film's cast boasts Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renée Zellweger and Jeremy Irons.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/b...nd-others.aspx

I agree. I've heard great things about Appaloosa and really wanted to see it but I couldn't get tickets for tonight's showing. I'll have to catch this when it's released theatrically. However, I will be checking out Passchendaele and J.C.V.D (ie Jean Claude Van Damme) tonight. For those of you wondering about the latter, here's a great review:

http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/jcvd-review/

[Uxi]

Originally Posted by Icemage

Not sure if anyone's seen this, but I thought it would tickle some funny bones around here.

http://gizmodo.com/5045144/sony-just...ead-dead-horse



Cheers to you, Penton-Man, as one of the key figures who helped bring it about!

Bwahahahaha! That was great.

Cheers to Penton!

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by Kees Van Oostrum, ASC

It is both sad and unfortunate that the industry doesn’t do a better job of educating people who are making these decisions without really understanding the possibilities of modern technology.

That issue certainly has affected numerous movie releases in the past and arguably still does today.

Thankfully, the tyranny 1.33:1 SD televisions had over movie productions is drawing to a close. I remember the late 1980s when the home video boom (via VHS tape) was really kicking into high gear. Most movies were shot 1.85:1 and the few filmed in 2.35:1 format were often composed with home video "safe action" in mind. It was a heck of a thing to travel well out of the way to watch a 70mm blow-up print of a certain movie only to see it presented in a "flat" aspect ratio instead of super wide. One example: if Total Recall was made today I think the chances are slim it would be shown in 1.85:1 as it was back in 1990.

That discussion of Super35 and Anamorphic 35mm 'scope left out factor of larger film formats. Movies today could be shot on 5-perf 65mm, 8-perf 35mm VistaVision or anamorphic 8-perf 35mm Technirama and yield much higher levels of image quality than standard 35mm film formats and downright stomp the somewhat questionable quality of HD digital video methods. The movies we watch on Blu-ray would see a noticeable improvement in visual quality. And the very high resolution original camera negatives would be effectively future-proof toward any higher resolution video playback format to be produced in the coming few decades.

If I were running a major movie studio, I'd have my big tent-pole movie projects shot in 5/65mm or 8/35mm.

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Thanks for the complement and the chart.
Kinda puts things into perspective, doesn’t it ?

It sure does. And no need for thanks - we love you here, P-Man!

P.S. How are your "girls" lately? If you haven't checked back on it recently, there's some more great pix over at the Daily Coyote (which I think I mentioned to you a while back).

http://dailycoyote.blogspot.com/

[Penton-Man]

4K2K –
I read your previous question and I just don’t have time to explain but, I’ll offer up something in its place……….

Hancock, which has been announced on Blu-ray is one of the handful of relatively current (not restored) feature films that actually arises from a 4K digital intermediate master format.

This is something that I don’t think has been widely advertised………at least, not outside of the Digital Cinema realm.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Icemage

It sure does. And no need for thanks - we love you here, P-Man!

P.S. How are your "girls" lately? If you haven't checked back on it recently, there's some more great pix over at the Daily Coyote (which I think I mentioned to you a while back).

http://dailycoyote.blogspot.com/

Perhaps you missed this................

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...38#post1116738

and also the following post which includes a pic of The Leader of the Pack.

[Bobby Henderson]

Sorry to throw in a different topic, but I believe an arguably serious issue has revealed itself regarding the Vol. 1 and 2 BDs of Kill Bill.

According to the reviews at DVD File and the one just posted for Vol. 1 here at Blu-ray.com, the Kill Bill BDs have only one audio track: LPCM 5.1.

Some other sites that have posted reviews of these discs state DD 5.1 English and French tracks are also included. But the latest reviews cast doubt on that.

LPCM 5.1 isn't a problem for anyone with a HDMI equipped receiver, or a BD player/receiver combination connected with analog 5.1 input/output cables. There's a lot of people, such as myself, who have older (but still quite good) receivers only able to handle LPCM 2.0 and the lossy versions of DD and DTS. The new, and already highly regarded Kill Bill discs would leave customers such as myself stuck playing the movie in plain 2-channel stereo.

Anyway, to get to the point of why I'm posting this gripe in this thread -I'd like to ask the "more knowledgeable" folks involved with Blu-ray if there is some sort of standards requirement regarding the use of LPCM 5.1/7.1.

Every BD I own that has a LPCM 5.1 track also includes a DD 5.1 track for backward compatibility. Does Blu-ray standards mandate such a thing? Or is it perfectly OK for a studio to release a disc with LPCM 5.1 as the only audio track on the disc?

Obviously this exposes one of the chief advantages Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD have over LPCM 5.1. The Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD tracks have backward compatible lossy cores for viewers with older equipment. LPCM 5.1 doesn't provide that kind of backward compatibility. LPCM 5.1 uses twice as much disc space and requires an additional DD 5.1 lossy track for backward compatibility.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

Sorry to throw in a different topic, but I believe an arguably serious issue has revealed itself regarding the Vol. 1 and 2 BDs of Kill Bill.

According to the reviews at DVD File and the one just posted for Vol. 1 here at Blu-ray.com, the Kill Bill BDs have only one audio track: LPCM 5.1.

Some other sites that have posted reviews of these discs state DD 5.1 English and French tracks are also included. But the latest reviews cast doubt on that.

^
I don't know anything about it (the audio, that is).
I'll need further comments from you guys (verification, etc.) before I approach the Mouse House with the subject.

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

^
I don't know anything about it (the audio, that is).
I'll need further comments from you guys (verification, etc.) before I approach the Mouse House with the subject.

Perhaps Ben can stick his head in:

Kill Bill: Volume 1 (Blu-ray)

~Alan

[dialog_gvf]

Gasp, I shudder to give this link.

Highdefdiscnews.com review

It shows a back cover capture showing English and French DD5.1

[GreenScar]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Heads-up for moderator dialog in Toronto to catch a premier………………
• Ed Harris steps behind the camera for the first time since Pollock in Appaloosa, which looks to be an old-school Western about "a pair of hired guns who come to clean up a dangerous town run by a ruthless, powerful rancher." The film's cast boasts Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renée Zellweger and Jeremy Irons.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/b...nd-others.aspx

This movie looks great! I love Westerns and ma looking forward to seeing this!

[Bobby Henderson]

Ben logged into the Kill Bill thread in the Movies and Releases section to confirm the discs have backward compatible DD 5.1 English and French audio tracks. The menus in the disc and back cover art list the tracks. The reviews at DVD Beaver and Highdefdiscnews show the menus and back cover art.

With that, I placed my order at Amazon for both of the Kill Bill BDs.

Still, I'm wondering if there is a BD standards policy to mandate that movie studios provide a legacy DD 5.1 or DTS 5.1 audio track when featuring a LPCM 5.1 primary audio track on a BD release.

[FourToedStatue]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

So far, everything is on schedule for your being slimed on Oct. 21. All the important work has been done.

If anything unforeseen arises, then November would be the latest it should street.

That just made my year.

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by gandley

Ah go easy on Lyris, he is actually a decent chap. hes currently smacking down toshiba XDE edge enhancment lovers across various forums and gave a decent report about blu ray while he attended IFA

+1

I'd say he gave the only substantial report about the BDA press conference to be found anywhere.

He has also specifically debunked the "Warner raining on Blu-ray parade" biased account that had been given of Warner's appearance at the BDA press conference here, going as far as uploading the section of the press conference video recording where the Warner representative appeared (link).

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by Icemage

Not sure if anyone's seen this, but I thought it would tickle some funny bones around here.

http://gizmodo.com/5045144/sony-just...ead-dead-horse



Cheers to you, Penton-Man, as one of the key figures who helped bring it about!

What still amazes me is the corporate pride of Toshiba and their inability to move on. Come on, even Sony eventually made VHS players!

On that note, don't miss the engadget post regarding the Toshiba booth, aptly titled "Hands-on with Toshiba's SRT REGZA HDTVs (and other old crap)":

Man, what a toll the loss of HD DVD has taken on Toshiba. Judging by the vast expanse of floor space at Tosh's booth not covered with people (seriously, look for anyone in the gallery below) and the inclusion of CES-announced DVD / VHS recorders (yes, really) as premiere products, we'd say the outfit is still hurting from the outcome of the format war. In all honesty, we felt kind of sad sashaying through its installation while reading slogans like "See everything in HD (even the non-HD stuff)." We even viewed the Super Resolution Technology demonstration with an open mind, and while there's certainly a mild difference with SRT, these sets hardly make SD signals into high-def. Grab a tissue and wander through the gallery at Engadget HD.

[micks_address]

it did take sony quite a while to make that vhs player though (1988) but then betamax had a much better run that hd dvd and didnt withdraw from the market in the same way. You have to give credit to Toshiba for knowing when the game was up with HD DVD though.. they could have drawn out the thing a whole lot more.

as an aside- with all the talk of lense/formats etc.. where does the I Max camera fit into all this that was used to film parts of the Dark Knight?

Originally Posted by Grubert

What still amazes me is the corporate pride of Toshiba and their inability to move on. Come on, even Sony eventually made VHS players!

On that note, don't miss the engadget post regarding the Toshiba booth, aptly titled "Hands-on with Toshiba's SRT REGZA HDTVs (and other old crap)":

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by micks_address

as an aside- with all the talk of lense/formats etc.. where does the I Max camera fit into all this that was used to film parts of the Dark Knight?

http://www.ascmag.com/magazine_dynam...ight/page1.php
http://icgmagazine.com/2008/july/july08.html
http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvi...ssue/9703.html

[micks_address]

wow that first article is amazing... i wouldnt have realised the amount of effort gone into filming but its astounding... i have to say... from the opening shot in the film to the end i couldnt take my eyes of the screen. I didnt see the I Max presentation but the film was wonderfully shot.. its mazing the amount of prep they had to do even for the roof shots of the batlight.. when you'd think that would be straight forward enough to accomplish

Originally Posted by Grubert

http://www.ascmag.com/magazine_dynam...ight/page1.php
http://icgmagazine.com/2008/july/july08.html
http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvi...ssue/9703.html

[Grubert]

I agree. I respect Chris Nolan and Wally Pfister because they always go the extra mile when everybody else would go for a cheaper and easier solution. In that regard, that reminds me of another British-born director 25+ years earlier (BTW: Where the #$&% is the Alien Blu-ray? )

The Academy has nominated Pfister twice (for Batman Begins and The Prestige). Nolan has only been nominated once (and that wasn't even the Direction category - it was for cowriting Memento). I think they both deserve the award this year.