Twilight Time Discussion Thread

[CinemaScope]

Originally Posted by cakefactory

I'm sorta disappointed they're re-releasing Journey to the Center of the Earth considering that one's available elsewhere and is cheap, here's hoping someone else releases Mysterious Island (if it turns out the fourth title is "The Big Heat").

Yeah, I have Mysterious Island & it really does look great (I can still remember seeing it at the cinema on a double bill with Hammer's, The Pirates Of Blood River way back in 1962). I'm surprised that no one else has released it.

[iank]

It's amusing to see how many copies of Fright Night are suddenly showing up on eBay from hucksters desperate to find a sucker who'll buy it for $200+ who doesn't know it's being re-released.

[AgentOrange]

Originally Posted by cakefactory

I was unaware of this thread, apparently it's in the no-man's land of the generic "international" forum.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=239285

I'm sorta disappointed they're re-releasing Journey to the Center of the Earth considering that one's available elsewhere and is cheap, here's hoping someone else releases Mysterious Island (if it turns out the fourth title is "The Big Heat").

Journey is supposedly from a new 4K scan though. No idea if any of the existing (or upcoming) international releases use them, but the new Twilight Time should at least best it's prior release - rendering it obsolete.

[The Great Owl]

What's up with the two minutes of extra footage on the StudioCanal Blu-ray of The Driver?

This is a moot point to me, since I'm limited to Region A releases, but I love the film, and I'm curious as to whether or not the missing footage on this Twilight Time release makes a difference.

[Frank9080]

Twilight Time confirmed on facebook that Purple Rose of Cairo is one of the upcoming Woody Films!

[bruceames]

I very much enjoyed watching Thunderbirds are GO. I didn't feel at all like a kids movie and the puppets were pretty cool and gave the film a unique charm. A couple of catchy '60's musical numbers in the movie as well. I haven't seen nor even heard of the TV series from which this is based, but from what I've read that's a good thing since it has seemed to negatively bias those people who have seen it. And since they were able to use the props from the TV series it made everything look more authentic than if they had to start from scratch. The '60's was a really cool period with the Beatles, spy movies and great TV series (a really creative time, IMO) and this show has a lot of that in it. I'll have to check out the other movie and the features, but I'm really glad I got this one (oh, and the PQ is very good).

[Member-222782]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

What's up with the two minutes of extra footage on the StudioCanal Blu-ray of The Driver?

This is a moot point to me, since I'm limited to Region A releases, but I love the film, and I'm curious as to whether or not the missing footage on this Twilight Time release makes a difference.

Could it be a PAL speedup thing? I will need this if it turns out it's a longer version. I basically worship this movie.

[Rory]

Originally Posted by bruceames.

I very much enjoyed watching Thunderbirds are GO. I didn't feel at all like a kids movie and the puppets were pretty cool and gave the film a unique charm. A couple of catchy '60's musical numbers in the movie as well. I haven't seen nor even heard of the TV series from which this is based, but from what I've read that's a good thing since it has seemed to negatively bias those people who have seen it. And since they were able to use the props from the TV series it made everything look more authentic than if they had to start from scratch. The '60's was a really cool period with the Beatles, spy movies and great TV series (a really creative time, IMO) and this show has a lot of that in it. I'll have to check out the other movie and the features, but I'm really glad I got this one (oh, and the PQ is very good).

Luckily, all the 1960's Gerry Anderson "Supermarionation" show are still available on DVD and will no doubt eventually be remastered for HD. You've got a lot of viewing ahead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarionation

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

What's up with the two minutes of extra footage on the StudioCanal Blu-ray of The Driver?

This is a moot point to me, since I'm limited to Region A releases, but I love the film, and I'm curious as to whether or not the missing footage on this Twilight Time release makes a difference.

Originally Posted by cine74

Could it be a PAL speedup thing? I will need this if it turns out it's a longer version. I basically worship this movie.

I decided to do my own Google homework, rather than ask y'all to do it for me.

I found these threads on the Internet Movie Database that seems to offer a little bit of detail about the missing minutes on the Twilight Time disc of The Driver.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077474/...read/208155015
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077474/board/nest/12521711
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077474/...hread/48102765

The UK release apparently includes a prologue to the movie that some consider to be unnecessary. I'm not sure if this was the director-intended theatrical cut, though.

From one of the threads...
"i can confirm that there were longer TV version shown on some USA and Europe TV channels. Nothing special,just 3 minutes longer (making the TV cut of the movie 91 minutes long) cut with original opening scene where The Detective and Gold Plainclothesman characters meet for the first time with Red Plainclothesman in some street,and also where the Connection and the Player also meet for the first time in some apartment."

This is not going to keep me up at night. I love the film that is on the Twilight Time disc.

[tama]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

I decided to do my own Google homework, rather than ask y'all to do it for me.

I found these threads on the Internet Movie Database that seems to offer a little bit of detail about the missing minutes on the Twilight Time disc of The Driver.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077474/...read/208155015
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077474/board/nest/12521711
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077474/...hread/48102765

The UK release apparently includes a prologue to the movie that some consider to be unnecessary. I'm not sure if this was the director-intended theatrical cut, though.

From one of the threads...
"i can confirm that there were longer TV version shown on some USA and Europe TV channels. Nothing special,just 3 minutes longer (making the TV cut of the movie 91 minutes long) cut with original opening scene where The Detective and Gold Plainclothesman characters meet for the first time with Red Plainclothesman in some street,and also where the Connection and the Player also meet for the first time in some apartment."

This is not going to keep me up at night. I love the film that is on the Twilight Time disc.

That's not it.

There is a 2 minute scene between two key characters roughly around the 49 minute mark. It's not necessarily essential to the film or plot.

That prologue you referenced is included on the TT disc as an extra btw.

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by tama

That's not it.

There is a 2 minute scene between two key characters roughly around the 49 minute mark. It's not necessarily essential to the film or plot.

That prologue you referenced is included on the TT disc as an extra btw.

Thanks. I remember the extra scene now, come to think of it, so I stand corrected.

(I don't pay much attention to deleted scenes on Blu-ray discs, hence my bad memory.)

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by Rory

Luckily, all the 1960's Gerry Anderson "Supermarionation" show are still available on DVD and will no doubt eventually be remastered for HD. You've got a lot of viewing ahead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarionation

I see it's available from the UK and Japan. Unfortunately the UK release is cropped for widescreen and the Japan release is very pricey, so hopefully it'll get released in the U.S. on Blu-ray at some point.

[whiteberry]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

I decided to do my own Google homework, rather than ask y'all to do it for me.

I found these threads on the Internet Movie Database that seems to offer a little bit of detail about the missing minutes on the Twilight Time disc of The Driver.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077474/...read/208155015
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077474/board/nest/12521711
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077474/...hread/48102765

The UK release apparently includes a prologue to the movie that some consider to be unnecessary. I'm not sure if this was the director-intended theatrical cut, though.

The prologue is an extra on the UK blu-ray, just like the Twilight Time blu-ray. The Twilight Time blu-ray is missing the scene that occurs right after the orange Mercedes is destroyed in the parking garage. Here are screenshots of the scene:
http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=655156

The missing scene is not quite 2 minutes. The UK blu-ray has a 24 second StudioCanal logo before the 20th Century Fox logo at the start of the movie.

The UK blu-ray contains the uncut American 20th Century Fox version of the movie. This can be easily identified at the beginning when it says "A Twentieth Century-Fox/EMI Films Presentation". If it was the European version, it would have had "EMI Films Presentation/A Twentieth Centruy-Fox" at the beginning.

The UK blu-ray also has teaser trailers that the Twilight Time blu-ray does not. The teaser trailers and theatrical trailer are in PAL format.

The question is why was the master that Fox supplied Twilight Time cut but the master supplied to StudioCanal uncut?

The only advantages that the Twilight Time blu-ray has over the StudioCanal blu-ray is the isolated score and a much higher bit rate.

[silverlakephil]

Originally Posted by whiteberry

The prologue is an extra on the UK blu-ray, just like the Twilight Time blu-ray. The Twilight Time blu-ray is missing the scene that occurs right after the orange Mercedes is destroyed in the parking garage. Here are screenshots of the scene:
http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=655156

The missing scene is not quite 2 minutes. The UK blu-ray has a 24 second StudioCanal logo before the 20th Century Fox logo at the start of the movie.

The UK blu-ray contains the uncut American 20th Century Fox version of the movie. This can be easily identified at the beginning when it says "A Twentieth Century-Fox/EMI Films Presentation". If it was the European version, it would have had "EMI Films Presentation/A Twentieth Centruy-Fox" at the beginning.

The UK blu-ray also has teaser trailers that the Twilight Time blu-ray does not. The teaser trailers and theatrical trailer are in PAL format.

The question is why was the master that Fox supplied Twilight Time cut but the master supplied to StudioCanal uncut?

The only advantages that the Twilight Time blu-ray has over the StudioCanal blu-ray is the isolated score and a much higher bit rate.

Good question, I guess I should save some if not all my vitirol to Fox not Twilight Time. They can only work with what's given them, but their business model is starting to be questionable, when more & more of their releases are available in Europe these days.

[jrsl76]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

From one of the threads...
"i can confirm that there were longer TV version shown on some USA and Europe TV channels. Nothing special,just 3 minutes longer (making the TV cut of the movie 91 minutes long) cut with original opening scene where The Detective and Gold Plainclothesman characters meet for the first time with Red Plainclothesman in some street,and also where the Connection and the Player also meet for the first time in some apartment."

This is not going to keep me up at night. I love the film that is on the Twilight Time disc.

By this it seems the scene was from the TV cut. I'm not worried about a scene that is from an extant version.

[filmmusic]

Originally Posted by jrsl76

By this it seems the scene was from the TV cut. I'm not worried about a scene that is from an extant version.

Actually, according to imdb, 91 minutes (including the 2 cut minutes) is the theatrical release!
That makes the TT release a cut theatrical version of the film, and not THE theatrical version of the film.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077474/...ef_=tt_dt_spec

The only one who can tell for sure, is someone who saw the film on original release at the theater.

[The Great Owl]

It doesn't look as though we're missing much here in the U.S., with respect to our Twilight Time Blu-ray of The Driver. Any scene with Isabelle Adjani is a good scene, of course, but the omission of the sequence in the above-mentioned cut is something that I can live with in exchange for a great-looking transfer.

I wonder if this is the cut that Walter Hill ultimately prefers.

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by filmmusic

Actually, according to imdb, 91 minutes (including the 2 cut minutes) is the theatrical release!
That makes the TT release a cut theatrical version of the film, and not THE theatrical version of the film.

Not necessarily. The film was a co-production between Fox in the US and EMI in the UK (the latter providing the largest proportion of the budget) and it's entirely possible that both studios released slightly different cuts in different territories, especially since Europe got the film later - Convoy, another EMI co-production, was released in two slightly different cuts in some territories, dropping Sam Peckinpah's cameo depending on where you saw it. Adjani was better known in Europe, so adding more of her may have made commercial sense while in the US the critics were pretty merciless about her performance (the words 'rigor mortis' feature in many of them) so they may have trimmed the scene after previews in the US. Indeed, it was pretty much the norm to trim British or European films for US release at the time.

The only one who can tell for sure, is someone who saw the film on original release at the theater.

Well I saw the film several times on its theatrical run in the UK where it hung around on floating release for the best part of a year (trust me, those car POV chases looked extraordinary on the giant screen), and that deleted scene certainly was in the UK theatrical print that EMI distributed (the line about the country and western songs was memorable because it tied in with the whole cowboy desperado theme) - but that doesn't necessarily mean that the scene was ever in the US theatrical version that Fox distributed.

[surfinhank]

Is there any chance it's an issue with music rights? Anyone in the U.S. knows what a sore topic that is.

What's the song that's playing, is it repeated elsewhere in the film?

[Blu Titan]

Originally Posted by tama

That's not it.

There is a 2 minute scene between two key characters roughly around the 49 minute mark. It's not necessarily essential to the film or plot.

That prologue you referenced is included on the TT disc as an extra btw.

There's not much character development in the film...so that could help. No sweating it either way.